The concept of torturing people in hellfire for eternity is not taught in the Bible. Archaeologists digging up temples of pagan gods, from Egyptians to Buddhists to Mayans, have found abundant evidence that, completely unrelated to the Bible, pagan priests regularly threatened their laity with an afterlife of fire – no doubt for breaking the priests’ rules, or failure to pay for the priests’ lifestyles.
"Hellfire" should not appear anywhere in a good translation of the Bible.
If God intended fiery torture to be a potential penalty for Adam and Eve for disobedience, justice would demand that God should have warned them of it. But He didn’t.
The only warning God gave Adam and Eve about disobeying Him was: “As for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:16, 17)
After Adam disobeyed, did God then bring up hellfire? No. “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19)
That’s it. Death, even in open defiance of God, equals returning to the dust. No mention of burning forever.
So, how did the idea of burning as punishment get so popular?
Jesus called Satan the “father of the lie.” (John 8:44) It is no stretch to imagine him coming up with the hellfire lie to get people to obey his priests.
The hellfire-and-brimstone crowd should take a warning from that. They should be trying to avoid doing Satan’s work. Instead, they have found verses in the Bible they can twist to sell the threat to their parishioners.
Let’s see if we can make those passages less ambiguous.
Many of the passages that refer to destruction by fire modify the word ‘fire’ with the word ‘consuming’. The fire didn’t just destroy something, it “consumed” it. It left no trace. This was true of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fire that destroyed Aaron’s misbehaving sons, Nadab and Abihu, and the fire that “consumed” the Israelites who were bitterly complaining in the Wilderness. (Numbers 11:1)
Israelite law required them to reduce to ashes the idols of the pagans; and, in some cases of heinous crimes, to burn the corpses of those who had been executed.
Interestingly, before they even got to the Promised Land Jehovah warned the Israelites about a practice they would encounter (Deuteronomy 12:31): “They do for their gods every detestable thing that Jehovah hates, even burning their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.” The message was repeated 700 years later in the time of King Ahaz (2 Kings 16:1-3) and a century and a half after that in the time of King Zedekiah (Jeremiah 32:35), each time emphasizing that God found the practice “detestable”.
Fire did not signify torture. It signified complete destruction.
Let’s tackle some other passages that have been misused:
Isaiah 66:24 foretells the future of some wicked Israelites: “And they will go out and look on the carcasses of the men who rebelled against me; For the worms on them will not die, And their fire will not be extinguished.”
Undying worms and fire sounds a lot like hell, doesn’t it? But wait:
That verse does not say that the men would be somehow ‘undead’, to be tortured forever. In fact, it refers to them as carcasses. And all the scriptures from Adam to Revelation make it clear that the dead are dead. Rather, it says the fire would not die; the worms would not die.
Worms don’t live forever, but they do live a surprisingly long time – 5 to 9 years under ideal conditions. They also consume their body weight every day. I don’t know how much a worm weighs, but I’m pretty sure 9 years would be more than enough time for the worms to completely consume the carcass of a wicked person.
Fire, likewise, doesn’t last forever. But it does last as long as there is fuel. So worms and fire would definitely outlast a corpse. Worms are not compatible with fire, obviously. But if a corpse is tossed into a fire, and some of it isn’t actually in the flames, the worms would surely take care of it.
Here are some others the hellfire folks love: “Then he will say to those on his left: ‘Go away from me, you who have been cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41) Is that hellfire? No. The fire is everlasting. Those condemned to it are dead, and “the dead know nothing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). "Prepared for the Devil" doesn't mean he lives there; it means his destruction. (Rev. 20:10)
“He will clean up his threshing floor completely and will gather his wheat into the storehouse, but the chaff he will burn up with fire that cannot be put out.” (Matthew 3:12) Clearly, this is an illustration. People aren’t chaff; fire doesn’t last forever. But if you were chaff, fire sure would wipe you away.
“If, then, your hand or your foot makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it away from you. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or lame than to be thrown with two hands or two feet into the everlasting fire. Also, if your eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it away from you. It is better for you to enter one-eyed into life than to be thrown with two eyes into the fiery Gehenna.” (Matthew 18:8, 9) Same argument: the fire is everlasting, not the torture.
Here, we are introduced to another term: Gehenna. If you know a little Hebrew or Greek the word may be familiar. But those Bible readers who don’t know either of those languages are at the mercy of biased translators. I looked at 46 different translations online. 7 of them wrote “Gehenna”. The rest all used “hell” or “hell-fire”.
Is “Gehenna” hell? Decidedly not. Here’s how we know: First, it's an illustration. Jesus is not telling anyone to literally cut off a foot or a hand. Second, he said your alternatives are to “enter into life” or to go to “Gehenna”. What's Gehenna?
In Jesus’ day the garbage dump outside the wall of Jerusalem was the valley of Hinnom. In Hebrew, that’s ge hinnom and in Greek, Gehenna. Besides garbage, carcasses of dead animals and of executed criminals who didn't have family that would bury them were thrown there. Like the illustration above from Isaiah 66, worms and maggots ate up whatever organic matter was out of reach of the flames. Sulfur was occasionally thrown there to keep the fire burning when there wasn’t enough fuel.
On another occasion Jesus told his followers: “Do not become fearful of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear him (God, not Satan) who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” (Matthew 10:28) God can not only end a person’s life, but he can end any chance of that person every being resurrected. Jesus promised at John 5:28, “All those in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.”
The Jews in his day put the bodies of those they believed would be remembered in the resurrection into whitewashed tombs they called “memorials”. The bodies of criminals and others they judged unworthy of resurrection got consigned to ge hinnom, the garbage dump. For example, according to the Mishnah, the rabbis taught that a man conversing with a woman, as Jesus did with the Samaritan woman at the well, “brings evil upon himself and neglects the study of the Law and at the last will inherit Gehenna.” (Aboth 1:5)
Jesus made clear what he thought of their thinking: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you resemble whitewashed graves, which outwardly indeed appear beautiful but inside are full of dead men’s bones.” (Matthew 23:27)
Aside from the gospel writers the only other reference to Gehenna is an illustration made by Jesus’ half-brother James, in which he compared the destructiveness of a gossiping tongue to Gehenna. (James 3:6)
The book of Revelation doesn’t use the word. That may be surprising, until you remember that it was written more than a quarter century after the destruction of Jerusalem, including its garbage dump, ge hinnom.
Revelation does use a term that reminds us of Gehenna: the lake of fire. Is that a reference to Hell? No. If we just read what it says, we quickly see that the lake of fire is an illustration with the same properties as Gehenna; complete destruction, and no coming back.
“The wild beast was caught, and along with it the false prophet that performed in front of it the signs with which he misled those who received the mark of the wild beast and those who worship its image. While still alive, they both were hurled into the fiery lake that burns with sulfur.” (Revelation 19:20)
The “wild beast” and the “false prophet” are not people. They are organizations opposed to God. Organizations don’t go to hell. Being thrown into this fiery lake makes clear that those organizations will be destroyed and will never return.
“The Devil who was misleading them was hurled into the lake of fire and sulfur, where both the wild beast and the false prophet already were.” (Revelation 20:10)
“Death and the Grave were hurled into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:14)
Death: death as in, everybody dies because we all inherited sin from Adam… that death that we view as 'natural' will be destroyed. The Grave? Well, once everyone who is to be resurrected has been resurrected, there will no longer be memorial tombs, will there?
This verse also adds this detail, “This means the second death, the lake of fire.” Different from the death we all inherited from Adam and will be resurrected from. This second death has to be a death from which there is no resurrection, reinforcing our reasoning that the lake of fire is the same as Gehenna.
The next verse, finally, talks about wicked people in connection with this lake: “Whoever was not found written in the book of life was hurled into the lake of fire.” Hellfire? No. Complete destruction, with no coming back.
And the final reference that the hellfire people might lean on: “As for the cowards and those without faith and those who are disgusting in their filth and murderers and the sexually immoral and those practicing spiritism and idolaters and all the liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. This means the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)
AHA! Hellfire for the wicked! No.
The verse immediately before this says: “To anyone thirsting I will give from the spring of the water of life free. Anyone conquering will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son.” (Revelation 21:6, 7)
God, the father of Adam, is by extension our father. He wants us to be in that family arrangement. He provided his son as a ransom to buy us back from Adam’s sin, and the resurrection to bring us back from Adamic death. He arranged for Jesus to become our “eternal father” (Isaiah 9:6,7) in place of Adam. So naturally, anyone who rejects God’s family and persists in the practices listed in verse 8 is thrown into the lake of fire. Not hellfire. Destruction, with no chance of coming back.
