Rob Bell Hell Controversy - He Takes You Halfway To the Truth, But You Can Go All the Way
The Rob Bell Hell Controversy Only Takes His Readers Halfway To the Truth, by Marc Speed
The Rob Bell hell controversy, fueled by his book Love Wins, is raging in Christianity right now. He is the first mega-church pastor to question the validity of Christianity's teaching on hell and eternal punishment. Notice I did not say "the Bible's teaching on hell and eternal punishment", I said it was the religion of Christianity's teaching.
This is because as Bell points out in the book, the Greek and Hebrew words in the original language manuscripts of the Bible that sometimes get translated into our English Bibles as "hell"...don't really mean "hell"!
The Hebrew word "sheol" means the "unseen". The Greek word "hades" means "the "unseen", "not-perceived"; it is used by the New Testament writers when quoting Old Testament passages and translating "sheol" into Greek, thus it is the Greek equivalent of "sheol".
The Greek word "Gehenna", the word Jesus used, is a physical place in Jerusalem referred to multiple times in the Old Testament as a physical place, and you can still visit it today - every person in Jerusalem could tell you exactly where it is. Jesus referred to this physical location in Jerusalem when quoting the end of Isaiah 66, a passage that clearly prophesies about the physical punishment of evil people during the millennium reign of Christ on earth.
The Isaiah 66 prophecy Jesus quoted about Gehenna tells us that when He returns to rule the world and bring in the kingdom of God on earth, evil people (including those who are running the world now) will be killed as a lesson for humanity that a new game is in town, and "all flesh", the rest of humanity in physical bodies, will watch this capital punishment event. The physical bodies of these evil people will be thrown into a physical fire (a good idea with dead bodies) at Gehenna in Jerusalem (the city from where Jesus will be reigning). This fire is "not quenched" (not purposefully put out), and of course fly larva will crawl all over some of these dead bodies too ("worm does not die" is classic Isaiah prophecy flowery language that Jesus was quoting).
"Tartarusing" is a Greek verb coined by Peter and refers to fallen angels (not humans) waiting in a dark place as confirmed by Jude 6.
The problem is, in Love Wins Bell doesn't actually tell his readers what I just explained to you. He doesn't say, "These words do not mean 'hell' and should never be translated that way." He just says, "These are the Greek and Hebrew words that get translated as 'hell' in our English Bibles, and uh, it seems to me that they might not mean 'hell', I'm not really sure, but in any case I've got doubts about this whole hell thing both Scripturally and philosophically, and I'm not really sure what to think about it all so I'm going to spend a whole book rambling on about it." It's like he got halfway through his research and then decided to write a book about his doubts and questions before he had time to find the answer.
My friends, the answer is simple. Conscious death and eternal punishment are pagan ideas that were never part of the Old Testament scriptures or the New Testament church founded by Christ; these ideas were mixed into Christianity by Catholicism, which was a purposeful combination of paganism and Christianity in the Middle Ages. The modern day church simply never purged these remnants of paganism out again (we missed this one with the Protestant reformation which purged out a lot of the other ridiculous pagan stuff like praying to dead saints, etc.), and thus by default the modern church has inherited these ridiculous pagan beliefs that make God into a nonsensical monster from Catholicism.
Our English Bibles (except for the Concordant Version, see www.concordant.org) are translated by translators who still believe in the Catholic/pagan-inherited traditions of conscious death and eternal punishment. These translators mistranslate a few key Greek and Hebrew words inconsistently and incorrectly according to their belief system instead of according to the plain meaning of those words in Hebrew and Greek. This obviously causes massive confusion about God, His overarching plan for humanity, and His nature to anyone who reads the Bible.
The simple fact is that none of the words that are sometimes translated as "hell" in your English Bible actually mean "hell" in the Hebrew or Greek. Blatant mistranslation of these words reinforces the "punishment" part of the pagan eternal punishment belief. Reinforcing the "eternal" part of the pagan eternal punishment belief is something else Rob Bell doesn't mention, probably because he doesn't know...
The Other Two Important Mistranslated Words In Your English Bible
Bible translators butcher two other extremely important words, the Hebrew "olam" and the Greek "eon", often mistranslating them as "eternal", "everlasting", "forever", "forever and ever" or "never". But neither "olam" nor "eon"/"eons" refers to eternity or endlessness.
So when you read along in your Bible and come across something that supposedly will occur "forever" or something that is "eternal"...if you're reading the New Testament it's referring to an age or ages ("eon" or "eons", usually it's talking about the next age, the millennium reign of Christ on earth, the correct translation would be "pertaining to an age or ages"). If you're reading the Old Testament it's the word "olam" which doesn't mean "forever" or "eternal", it means "a long time, no one knows exactly how long". It does not mean "definitely endless" or carry the meaning of endlessness at all. There is no English equivalent word or phrase for "olam". This makes it hard to translate, and the translators take the lazy way that also happens to agree with their pagan/Catholic-inherited tradition, and they just translate it "eternal".
There are many instances of "eon", "eons" (is it even possible to have a plural eternity?), and "olam" in Scripture that the translators cannot bring themselves to mistranslate as "eternal" or "forever" because it would make no sense to anyone. This is because these words don't refer to eternity. The only reason any mistranslation of these words as referring to eternity ever makes sense to anyone is because they match up in modern Christian readers' minds with their pagan/Catholic-inherited belief in eternal punishment.
Most Bible readers don't study enough to discover the inconsistencies in the translation they are reading. If they did, they would also discover
the simple solution
to the many inconsistencies, contradictions, logical problems, and philosophical problems inherent in trying to artificially superimpose a pagan belief in conscious death and eternal punishment onto Scripture.
One of the many instances in Scripture where mistranslating "eon" or "olam" as "forever/eternal" would make no sense even to the typical modern Christian is 2 Corinthians 4:4. This verse says that Satan is the god of this "eon". Satan is obviously not the god of this "forever". He is the god of this "age" - a period of time with a specific and definite end. Keep in mind that the word "age" carries the exact opposite meaning of "forever/eternal/eternity/everlasting/forever-and-ever"; one is a period of time with a definite beginning and end, and the other is a period of time with no beginning or end. Yet this doesn't seem to bother the translators.
When the translators come across one of these instances where their pet mistranslation of "olam" or "eon" is so obviously ridiculous that even modern Christians realize it's wrong, they just conveniently change their translation of the word. So we have English Bibles where the same Hebrew or Greek word is translated into several different English words that each have completely different meanings...and English readers are none the wiser. Needless to say, this causes tremendous confusion for well-meaning Christians who are trying to understand their Bible, and trying to understand God and why He does things!
I should mention that for all practical purposes there is such a thing as eternity because the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that we will receive "incorruptible" bodies and that God will eventually abolish death. But there is no word in the Hebrew or Greek original language manuscripts of the Bible that refers to eternity or means "endless".
The Bible clearly and consistently teaches that death is unconscious (Ecc. 9:5, etc.); I teach this thoroughly in the resources I share below.
"What about the parable of Lazarus and the rich man?" (Jesus took the setting of that story from the pagan Talmud to mock the Pharisees, and everyone in His Israelite audience 2,000 years ago would have understood that immediately just like modern Christians know that anything about getting 70 virgins when you die is referring to a Muslim belief; Jesus was mocking the Pharisees' pagan belief in conscious death, not teaching it.)
"What about Elijah and Enoch?" (They were taken into "heaven" or "the sky" which usually meant "the sky where the birds fly" in the Hebrew language, and plopped down somewhere else on earth, and later they died - I prove this clearly from Scripture in my book.)
"What about the times Jesus and Paul seem to talk about going to heaven immediately when you die?" (At death the spirit/breath "returns to God who gave it" - "into Your hands I commit My spirit" as Jesus said - UNconsciously according to Ecc. 12:7 but the soul - which Scripturally refers to consciousness - goes to "the unseen" or "sheol" or "hades" which is a poetic way of saying you become unconscious, according to Ecc. 9:5, Ps. 6:5, Ps. 146:4 and the use of the analogy of "sleep" for death throughout Scripture including by Jesus Himself. I explain this thoroughly in my book.)
"What about the lake of fire?" (The lake of fire is a physical fire in which those who are resurrected into mortal physical bodies to be judged by God after the millennium will have their bodies thrown and they will DIE - Scripturally, to become unconscious - their second death, becoming unconscious in death for the second time; see Rev. 20. This fire is not "eternal" or "forever", they Greek word used to refer to the lake of fire is "eon" which means "age" and does not refer to eternity or endlessness in any way - see 2 Cor. 4:4. Again, I prove this thoroughly in my book.)
(By the way, in my book I also explain the fascinating reason why the antichrist and the false prophet, unlike real/pure-blooded human beings, will not die or become unconscious when their physical bodies are burned up in the lake of fire, but will remain conscious to suffer for "the ages of the ages", a term like "king of kings" or "best of the best" that refers to the greatest of the five ages in God's plan which become clear to the Bible reader when "eon" is translated accurately and consistently throughout the New Testament.)
What I've given you in this article is short introduction to what happens at death and God's ultimate plan for humanity according to the Bible (when you translate certain key words accurately and consistently). Yes, the Bible reveals exactly what will happen to believers and unbelievers in God's ultimate plan. I explain it Scripture-by-Scripture inHell Is A Mistranslation.
Please forgive me for mentioning my book so often, I'm not trying to shove it down your throat, it's just that I'm afraid readers might think there is not enough proof in this article to convince them of the claims I'm making about what the accurately translated Bible teaches concerning what happens at death and God's ultimate plan. This article and this website simply don't have enough space to go through every Scripture on these subjects and prove everything to you thoroughly. That's why I wrote the book. If you read it and are not satisfied in any way, I'll give you your money back, no questions asked. (Just contact me at the contact form on this website or with my email address which you'll get when you purchase.)
P.S. Here's a video where I explain the eight threads of misunderstanding that must be unraveled in order to understand God's ultimate plan for humanity as recorded in the (accurately translated) Bible:
The Rob Bell Hell Controversy Only Takes His Readers Halfway To the Truth Copyright 2011 Marc Speed
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