Why does everyone think they are going to heaven?

As we posited in the last column, Pope Francis did not go to heaven when he died, despite the diehard beliefs of millions. Nor did any of the popes that came before him. This is not to denigrate any of those men, though some may deserve denigrating. It’s simply a statement of fact about what doesn't happen when we die.

Where did that idea of going to heaven after we die originate?

People have believed, since almost the beginning of humanity, that they have a spirit or soul that continues on after death. Some attach the idea of an immortal soul to Satan’s false promise to Eve: “You certainly will not die.” (Genesis 3:4) But he wasn’t trying to teach this very inexperienced human a new philosophy. He was talking about her current, present, fleshly life. That was the life that she feared losing if she disobeyed God’s command about eating from the tree. She clearly understood that eating from the tree would end her life. She had no concept of life being temporary, of a soul that could pass on to some other world if her flesh died.

However, some time after she did in fact die Satan began spreading the lie that people didn’t really die when they seemed to; that some part of Eve, some part of every human descended from Adam and Eve, has had some spirit part of themselves that lived on.

It makes great fiction. But it has no basis in fact.

When false religion arose – or rose again, perhaps – in the days of Nimrod a couple centuries after the flood, Satan was able to use those religionists to teach that souls or spirits from dead people continued. Satan or his pet religious leaders eventually settled on the idea that promising good people a better afterlife, and promising those who disobeyed them a horrible one, was a great tool for persuading folks to do their bidding. The plentiful finds of archaeologists of food, wine, canoes, etc., in ancient tombs proves that the idea of life continuing after death has been around for a long time.

The belief was refined for the western world by Plato more than 400 years before Christ. According to Josephus , by the time Jesus came along the teaching of an immortal soul had infected even the Jews, who should have known better. Their scriptures, inspired by God, said clearly: “The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:5) ‘[When] he returns to the ground, on that very day his thoughts perish.’ (Psalm 146:4) They also knew what reward they could properly look forward to: “The meek will possess the earth, and they will find exquisite delight in the abundance of peace.” (Psalm 37:11)

 Did Jesus teach contrary to this? That people had an immortal soul, that they would go to heaven when they died? No!

Jesus reiterated Psalm 37: “Happy are the meek, because they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) He had grown up in the synagogue and had no doubt memorized this and all the scriptures. Further, Jesus had been there when his father told Adam and Eve, ‘fill the earth and subdue it.’ (Genesis 1:28) And he had been there when Satan lyingly told Eve she wouldn’t die.

So if Jesus didn’t teach it, where did everyone get the idea that they’re all going to heaven when they die? They got it at church. But the church didn’t get it from the Bible. They got it from Plato, who got it from Socrates, who got it from earlier pagan Eastern religions, all influenced by Satan.

Now, wait though: The Bible does talk about people going to heaven, doesn’t it? Yes, it does. But not everybody.

Here’s a rule you have to follow when reading the Bible: If one straightforward verse (correctly understood) contradicts your belief – even if your belief is based on another verse – it isn’t the Bible that’s contradictory. It’s your belief.

So Jesus told the apostles: “If I go my way and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will receive you home to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” (John 14:3)

'AHA! There you go! We’re going to heaven to be with Jesus!' But that's not what it says. 

Can we safely assume that the apostles have joined Jesus is heaven? Yes. But did Jesus say that to you and me? No. 

On one occasion Jesus told Peter to go throw a fishhook into the sea and the fish he caught would have a coin in its mouth with which to pay their taxes. So does that mean that we all should expect to find a coin in the mouth of a fish when we go fishing? Of course not.  

The belief that all good people go to heaven can’t be based on Jesus telling the apostles that they would be going to heaven. That belief contradicts Matthew 5:5 and Psalm 37:11.

What about this one: “But now they are reaching out for a better place, that is, one belonging to heaven. Therefore, God is not ashamed of them, to be called on as their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:16) Doesn’t that say that all Christians have a ‘city’ prepared for them in heaven? Not at all. 

We have to ask, about whom is Paul speaking? In this chapter, Paul lists many faithful people from the past, such as Abraham and Sarah. Was Paul saying they went to heaven? No. “In faith all of these died, although they did not receive the fulfillment of the promises.” (Hebrews 11:13) Who is Paul speaking to, then? “Those who speak in such a way” – speak, present tense, in Paul’s day, about Abraham and Sarah’s example of living their lives in the Promised Land as temporary residents, dying faithful without receiving their reward –  “make it evident that they” – the speakers, the Hebrew Christians Paul was writing to – “are earnestly seeking a place of their own.” (Hebrews 11:14)

Paul reassured those Hebrew Christians that they could have faith in a reward in heaven, even as Abraham and Sarah had faith in a future reward of being resurrected to inherit the earth.

So, can Hebrews 11 be used to back the belief that all good people go to heaven? No. That belief contradicts Matthew 5:5 and Psalm 37:11.

What about this one: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised up incorruptible, and we will be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:52) Does that say that everyone goes to heaven? No. Paul’s hope for the future had been changed, by God, from inheriting the earth to a hope of heavenly life. That was true also of those faithful Christians he wrote to in Corinth. But it cannot mean that everyone is going to heaven. That belief contradicts Matthew 5:5 and Psalm 37:11.

Other passages in the Bible add details about those humans whose future hope got changed, by God, from earth to heaven. It tells us that this arrangement of people going to heaven is a special arrangement rather than the future hope the rest of us have been promised. (2 Corinthians 5:17) The Bible tells us the people in heaven will be kings and priests, that is, intermediaries between God and humankind on earth. (Revelation 5:10) And it tells us that the ones going to heaven are a very small percentage of the human race. (Revelation 14:1-4; Luke 12:32)

Imagine this: my neighbor hands me a letter he received. I read it, and it says ‘Coming for a visit, Son. Look forward to seeing you. Love, Mom.’ What would you think of me if I read that and said, Oh! My mom’s coming for a visit!’ Idiotic, right? The letter is not telling me what is in my future, it is telling me what is in his. Paul was telling some of those Christians in his day what was in their future.

What is in my future? ‘Happy are the meek, for they will possess the earth.’

 Please feel free to leave a comment. To read another of my columns on a similar subject click here.

 

  Bill K. Underwood is a columnist and author of several books. You can help support this channel by clicking on this link to purchase one of his books at Amazon.com. 

 

Did the pope go to heaven or hell?

I know most Catholics would confidently answer that he surely went to heaven. I’m also sure there are detractors who would consign him to hell.

I can say with equal confidence, based on the Bible, that neither answer is correct.

God’s original purpose for humans was clear: “Be fruitful and become many, fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28)

He also educated Adam about death: “. . .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 2:17)

It was very clear: Adam and Eve were to live on the earth forever, 'subduing it', that is, turning the whole earth into a paradise like their garden of Eden. They need only worry about dying if they disobeyed God.

Ultimately they did disobey. Did they go to heaven, or hell? No.

 God told them what would happen next: “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)

God is the ultimate definition of justice. If torment in hell awaited Adam and Eve for disobedience, wouldn’t God have warned them of that in advance? For that matter, if some blissful life in heaven waited in their future if they were obedient, better even than their life in their paradise garden, wouldn’t God have let them know that reward awaited them?

They died disobedient, and they returned to the dust.

They had no offspring while they were still sinless in the garden. Cain, Abel, and their dozens of other kids and grandkids came along after Adam and Eve sinned. So the kids all inherited their parent’s imperfection. Over the past however-many-hundreds of generations since then, we all have inherited that imperfection. And every single human who ever lived died. It is such a normal part of life that, even though we hate death and the Bible rightly calls death an “enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26), it makes it difficult to get our heads around the basic fact that Adam and Eve had the prospect of never dying, of living forever in paradise. They deprived us of that potential.

When Adam and Eve sinned, would God have said, ‘Okay, new plan: Good people will go to heaven when they die, bad people to hell, and we’ll just burn up the earth.’Does that make sense to you?

Me neither.

So why do nearly all Christians believe they are going to heaven when they die? Why do so many believe that hellfire awaits them if they are bad?

We’ll get into that in Part Two. 

 

Feel free to leave a polite comment. To read another of my columns on a related subject, click here.

 

Bill K. Underwood is the author of several books, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.

Why Real Christians Don’t Vote

I walked past a neighbor’s house that was festooned with half a dozen “Vote for…” signs, all bearing names of people I’d never heard of. He was on his porch, so I asked him: “Do you know all these people?”

“Personally? No.”

“Then why are you advertising their campaigns?”

“I’m Republican. So are they,” was his answer.

Sure didn’t seem like a good enough reason to me, but thankfully I managed to bite my tongue.

As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, I don’t vote. I'm not registered to vote. I made a conscious choice long ago to never vote. I work hard to have no opinion as to who should win or lose.

A person may abstain from voting this time around simply because they don’t like either of the candidates. But that doesn’t mean they have rejected the system of a government run by individuals who won election.

You may be promoting a candidate; or you may be less than thrilled with any of the candidates but believe in the process, so you vote for the 'lesser of two evils'. In either case, until you separate yourself from the system, you are the system.

A renowned scholar of the 19^th century, Herbert Spencer, noted that whether a person votes for the winning candidate, votes for a losing candidate, or abstains from voting, he will be “deemed to have consented to the rule” of the winning candidate because of his tacit approval of the system.

Even if you don’t vote? Yes. Why? 

In parliamentary procedure, which also applies in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate - really most groups or classes that make decisions by voting - a member may be required to abstain from a vote in the case of a real or perceived conflict of interest, or may choose to abstain for ethical reasons. (In reality, most politicians have proven that they have no ethics. They are most likely to abstain from voting on a thorny issue for fear their constituents back home might hate them for voting for or against it.)

But: abstaining from voting doesn’t mean they are no longer a representative or a senator. Their simple presence provides a quorum; it makes it possible for the vote to go forward.

But you’re not a senator or a representative. Does the “quorum” rule apply to you? Yes, it does.

For example, let’s say you were a registered voter in 1968. You could have voted for Richard Nixon, voted for Hubert Humphrey, or voted for George Wallace. You could have tried to vote but found the lines too long at the polls; you could have been too sick to get to the polls; or you could have chosen to abstain from voting that year because you didn’t like any of the choices. Still: if you were part of the political system you were at least partially responsible for the 543,000 U.S. soldiers Nixon ordered to Vietnam in 1969, 11,780 of whom never returned. “But I wouldn’t have voted for that!” Doesn’t matter. You were part of the system. It's called Community Responsibility which I addressed in another column.

But, we've all been told that voting is a civic duty. Does voting really go against Christian principles?

When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus about his kingship Jesus replied, “My Kingdom is no part of this world. If my Kingdom were part of this world, my attendants would have fought that I should not be handed over to the Jews.” (John 18:36)

Being a Christian, then, means being “no part.” I am not for Trump; I am not for Kamala; I am not leaning toward one or the other.

But Bill, I can hear someone saying, until the kingdom is established, don't you want to have some say in these political decisions that might affect you?

No. None of those political decisions will have any effect on the kingdom I support. Here’s what I care about: The Bible told us what to look for in these last days: Major wars, check; Earthquakes in one place after another, check; Food shortage, starvation and inflation, check; pandemics and plagues, check; rapidly increasing lawlessness and loss of love of neighbor, check; ruining planet Earth, check. (Matthew 24, Luke 21, Revelation 6 & 11) Those prophecies have all been fulfilled. 

And they were fulfilled regardless of who was in office.

The next big thing I’m watching for will be a major outcry of “Peace and Security!” followed almost immediately by a governmental attack on religion.  Will that happen if Trump is president? Yes. Will it happen if someone else is? Yes. The simple fact is, it will happen regardless of who is in office.  

My stand is quite adamantly that this system does not work, cannot be made to work, and is no substitute for Christ’s kingdom. It isn’t a ‘back-up plan’, it isn’t some sort of God-approved band-aid to fill in until the kingdom is established.

Daniel 2:44 says very clearly that in our time God’s kingdom ‘will crush all these kingdoms.’ It does not say that somehow these governments are going to help establish the kingdom. "Crush." Picture the kingdom as a locomotive. In comparison, the world's governments are an ant standing on the tracks, trying to demand the train go around.

I don’t want to show even grudging acceptance of any of these man-made kingdoms that God is about to crush. I want to be as far away from all these kingdoms as I can get. 

Feel free to leave a polite comment. To read another of my columns on a similar subject, click here.

 

Bill K. Underwood is the author of several books, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.

Bible Translation Part 4: Jehovah or Yahweh?

 

A major challenge for a Bible translator is how to render God’s name. God does not have multiple names, as some supposed religious experts love to claim. But He does have one.

In literally thousands of old Hebrew documents, God’s name is spelled YHWH. What is the correct English translation of that? Many Bible-related articles on the web and in magazines use the spelling “Yahweh”. 

Some Bible scholars will tell you that this is closer to the Hebrew spelling than “Jehovah”. For example, Wikipedia says that “Yahweh is now accepted almost universally” as the closest-to-correct pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH. Is that true?

Absolutely not.

As discussed in an earlier column, way back when the first translations of YHWH were being made from Hebrew into Greek for the Septuagint, it was sometimes not translated. Some of the translators simply inserted the four Hebrew characters in the middle of the Greek, leaving it to the reader to pronounce how they wished. In some copies of the Septuagint, it was rendered with the Latin letters IAO or even, mistakenly, the Greek letters equivalent to PIPI (because of the resemblance to the four Hebrew letters). Without question, the ancient Greeks had a word for God's name. In modern Greek God's name is rendered Iechóva. But, so far, no Septuagint manuscript has been found with even a vague similarity to that.

Gutenberg’s first printed Bible in 1455 was a direct, letter-for-letter copy of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate which, as mentioned in previous columns, substituted Dominus, "Lord", for God’s name.

Soon after Gutenberg, (roughly 1466, but the actual date is unknown) a Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate into German by Johann Mentelin and printed in Strasbourg. In German it told readers that God’s name was “Adonai”, Hebrew for Lord.

In 1516 Erasmus was one of the first translators to skip Jerome’s Latin Vulgate and go back to the oldest Greek manuscripts he could find. He produced a new Greek text that attempted to unify all the variants in the old Greek manuscripts; and from that he produced a new Latin text of the New Testament. Among many other corrections, he found that passages had been added which were not in the original Bible. One example is the account in Mark of the woman supposedly caught in adultery, with the popularly vague quote of Jesus, ‘let he that is sinless cast the first stone’. Erasmus, since he was focused on the Greek rather than the Hebrew, did not deal with a name for God.

In 1522 a massive work was completed, commonly called the Complutensian Polyglot. Its principal translator was Alfonso de Zamora, a Jewish scholar who converted - perhaps forcibly -to Catholicism. The Polyglot featured a corrected Hebrew version in one column (which was liberally sprinkled with YHWH), a new Latin version in another column, a Greek Septuagint/Latin interlinear in still another, and an Aramaic version and explanatory notes at the bottom. In a marginal note attached to his interlinear of Genesis, Zamora explained that YHWH in the Hebrew text should be rendered in Latin as “jehovah”, even though he didn’t do so. This is one of the earliest renderings of God’s name in print in a modern language.

Zamora may have had access to a copy of a work from 1270 called “Pugio Fidei” (literally, “Dagger of Faith”, but he might have meant something like ‘Defending the faith’) handwritten by a monk in Spain named Raymondus Martini. When that work was finally printed, in 1651, it looked like this:

Note that Martini wrote God’s name in three syllables, not two. And the vowels he chose, e-o-a, don’t match either ‘adonai’ or ‘elohim’. So the argument by some that the vowels in Jehovah were borrowed from adonai simply doesn't hold water. Three other manuscripts by Martini are known, and two of them use God’s name – one spelled “Yehova” and one “Yohova”.

A Latin manuscript handwritten in 1303 called Victoria Porcheti Hebraeos (Victory over the Jews) rendered God’s name variously as “Iohouah”, “Iohoua”, and “Ihouah”.

In 1518, Petrus Galatinus published a work entitled De arcanis catholicae veritatis (Concerning Secrets of the Universal Truth) in which he spells God’s name “Iehoua”.

Bearing in mind that i/y/j were interchangeable in those days, as were v/u, Jehovah’s name was clearly being solidified.

In 1524 because of threats against anyone wanting to render the Bible into English, William Tyndale fled England for Germany. His goal was to translate the Bible from its original languages into English. When his Bible was published in 1530, it used the spelling “Jehouah” in 7 places. Here’s what that looked like:

A marginal note in his Bible reads: “Iehovah is God’s name.” Again, note the i/j and u/v interchangeability. People weren’t too fussy about spelling back then.

“Commentary on the Pentateuch”, 1531, written by a cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetanus used “Iehoua Elohim” in connection with Genesis 2:4, and “Iehouah Elohe” at Exodus 6:3.

Martin Luther’s German Bible of 1534, like the Latin Vulgate, omitted Jehovah’s name. He inserted “HERR” wherever the Hebrew had YHWH. In his other writings, however, such as his “Commentary on Genesis”, he used God’s name spelled “Jehova”. In one of his sermons printed in 1527, the printer spelled it “Jehovah”.

John Calvin, too, used “Yehovah” throughout his "Commentary on Psalms",(1557), when explaining Hebrew words for his readers. Yet the French Bible he had helped produce in 1535, commonly called Olivetan, in nearly every place where the Hebrew had YHWH, substituted a French phrase that means, ‘The Eternal’.

It did, however, use the spelling “Jehouah” at Exodus 6:3.

 

After what they viewed as a betrayal by Luther, the Church commissioned a new German translation from a Catholic professor of Theology, Johann Eck. Published in 1537, he, too, used “Adonai” for God’s name, but in the margin of Exodus 6:3 he added a note that read “Jehoua.”

 The Taverner Bible, published in English in 1539 included an explanation at Exodus that “Jehouah is the name of God.”

In 1557, “Jehova” was included in a Latin dictionary of Hebrew words.

In 1569, translator Casiodoro de Reina not only translated YHWH as ‘Iehovah’ in every instance in his Spanish edition, he defended the decision in the prologue:

“We have retained the name (Iehovah), not without serious reasons. First of all, because wherever it will be found in our version, it is in the Hebrew text, and it seemed to us that we could not leave it, nor change it for another without infidelity and singular sacrilege against the law of God…”

A. R. Cevallerius published a book in Italian called (roughly) Basics of the Hebrew Language in 1559. He used “Jehovah” throughout his work.

Tremmelius (Cevallerius' father-in-law) produced a Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible, released in 1575, that used “Jehova” throughout.

A Swedish coin from 1608 has both the tetragrammaton and “Iehovah”, showing that the name was becoming well known:

The original printing of the King James Version in 1611 spelled God’s name “Iehouah” in four places. It was revised in 1629. One of these revisions settled the spelling of God’s name on Jehovah.

The Bay Psalm book, printed in America in 1640, used the spelling “Iehovah” in many places throughout.

Gutenberg’s press, once invented, needed feeding. The proliferation of books had the same effect on scholarship that the internet had 550 years later: scholars and “scholars” began arguing about how to spell and pronounce God’s name. Those who had done the work of translating and rendered God’s name as Iehoua, Yehoua, Jehoua, Iehova, Iehovah, Yehova, and finally Jehovah, were all roundly dismissed by armchair theologians claiming that none of those could possibly be correct. Some even ignored all the scholarship and claimed that the name was pagan in origin, that Jehovah was actually descended from Jove, the Roman god Jupiter. The truth is the other way around. 

 So where did “Yahweh” come from?

It first appeared in print in a few translation-related articles in the late 1800s. The first Bible to use it was J.B.Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible in 1902. In 1911, however, Rotherham retracted it and reverted to “Jehovah” in his Studies in the Psalms, explaining that ‘Jehovah is more easily recognized.’ But the barn door had been left open, and the horses were out.

Through the first half of the twentieth century Jehovah remained the preferred spelling. Some scholars and archaeologists started using ‘Yahweh’ because it seemed closer to Hebrew – Hebrew, after all has no words that begin with J, but dozens that begin with Y. Never mind the fact that all those Y-words are spelled with a j in English. Open any Bible dictionary to the Y section. The only name you'll find there is Yahweh. Nevertheless, if you want to be taken seriously as a bible scholar, it seems you have to use Yahweh.

After 1931, when the International Bible Students Association changed their name to Jehovah’s Witnesses, but particularly when the New World Translation came out in the 1950s, no self-respecting ‘scholar’ wanted to use the name “Jehovah”. They wouldn’t want anyone thinking they were one of those weird Witnesses, would they?

Still, how can we say for certain that "Jehovah" is closer to God’s name than "Yahweh"?

Count the syllables. Ask any Facebook Hebrew scholar to name a Hebrew word other than 'Yahweh' that is spelled with 4 Hebrew characters, but pronounced in just two syllables.

Not surprisingly Israelites liked including God's name as part of their children's names. Names that include a reference to God are called "Theophoric". You are no doubt familiar with Bible names that contain -jah, short for Jehovah – Elijah, for example, means ‘My God is Jah’ or 'My God is Jehovah'. 

But there are other theophoric names that borrow two syllables from Jehovah. Check these out:

Jehosophat
Jehoaddin
Jehoahaz
Jehohanan
Jehoiachin
Jehoiada
Jehoikim
Jehoiarib
Jehonadab
Jehonathan
Jehoram
Jehoshabeath
Jehosheba
Jehoshua (Which became Jesus in the Greek scriptures)
Jehozabad
Jehozadak

 Clearly, -ho- is the second of three syllables of God's name, however you choose to pronounce it.

If the proper pronunciation of YHWH is Yahweh, none of those names would exist. Jehosophat’s name would be something like Jesophat. Jehozadak would be Jezadak.

But none of those supposed experts are clamoring to change Jehosophat to Jesophat.

Ultimately, you are free to use whatever name for God you are comfortable with in your language as long as it conveys the right thought to yourself and those around you about your relationship with God. If your primary language is English, “Jehovah” is the most accepted name for the almighty.

If, for some reason, that word seems to get stuck in your throat; if you rationalize that “the Good Lord knows who I’m praying to”; or if, in a pinch, when a name is really needed, you can say Yahweh but just can’t bring yourself to utter Jehovah, You might want to seriously ponder why that is. 

Feel free to leave a polite comment. To read another of my columns on a similar subject, click here. 

Bill K. Underwood is the author of several novels and one non-fiction self-help book, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.