What do you
believe is the eternal destiny of the human soul? Notice the special emphasis on eternal.
Most
Christians will say, ‘Well, if you’re good you go to heaven, if you’re bad, you
go to hell.’ End of story. But is this really the teaching of the Bible? No.
The idea that our eternal destiny is in an immaterial or purely
spiritual heaven or hell is not a teaching of the Bible. Nor is the similar idea that the righteous
will become angels and play harps in the clouds of heaven.
So what does
the Bible teach? The Bible says there’s
going to be a resurrection of the dead—of both the righteous and the
unrighteous! This will be a real, physical
resurrection.
This is a central and key teaching of both Judaism and Christianity. This is one of the central doctrines that Christianity accepted directly from Judaism. “For if the dead are not raised, neither has Messiah been raised. But if Messiah has not been raised, your faith is vain, you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:16,17). Without the resurrection, there is no Christianity.
A purely
spiritual heaven and hell are not our final destiny. Yes, those who die before the resurrection will
experience a time of purely spiritual existence. But this is only temporary, until the
resurrection takes place.
Do you remember
the souls under the altar in the book of Revelation? What do they say? “How long,
holy and true Master?” (Rev. 6:10). They
are impatient with waiting for the resurrection, and plead with the Lord,
asking how much longer they must wait until the resurrection takes place. To the Biblical and Jewish mindset, there is
something incomplete and even wrong about being without a physical body.
Paul calls
it being found “naked,” and says “we do not want to be unclothed” (2 Cor.
5:3,4). What’s wrong with being without
a body? It means being less than we were
created to be, being able to do less than we were created to do. And the souls of those that have died are
looking forward to getting their bodies back again.
Why are they
so concerned about this? What do they
need a physical body for? Because the
doctrine of the resurrection also implies a restoration to this earth: the “times
of restoration of all things” as it’s called in the New Testament (Acts
3:21, 1:6; Matt. 17:11; Mark 9:12), or as Jesus called it, the palingenesia (the regeneration, Matt.
19:28). This means literally “Genesis
again,” the regeneration of the world that will take place at the time of the
Millennium, when Messiah will come to rule and reign from Jerusalem.
But even
this is not yet our final destiny. Our
final destiny according to the Bible is a New Heavens and a New Earth for the
righteous, a lake of burning fire for the unrighteous. These will be real, physical places. Why would God give us beautiful new
resurrection bodies—eternal, immortal bodies—if we’re not going to need them
for anything, floating around in heaven somewhere?
The clearest
picture of the resurrection is given to us by Jesus himself. The body that he rose from the dead in was a
solid, physical body. He ate fish (Luke
24:42). They could touch him (John
20:27). But he could also appear and
disappear at will, even in locked rooms.
This resurrection body was like our physical bodies, but was also quite
different in many ways.
This is what
Paul also says about the resurrection.
When we die, it’s like a seed being planted in the ground. But when we arise, it will be new and amazingly
different than the seed that was planted (“and
that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain,
perhaps of wheat or of something else,” 1 Cor. 15:37). But it will still be a real body, not a ghost
or a spirit, though it will no longer be a body of flesh and blood (“Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable,”
1 Cor. 15:50).
The common
view of a purely spiritual heaven and hell held by many Christians today does
not take account of the resurrection! If
you ask them, do you believe in the resurrection of the dead, of course they
will say yes, because they know that’s what they’re supposed to say. But what do they say when somebody dies? ‘Oh Susy, don’t cry. You’ll see your Grandma in heaven some
day.’ Or ‘Your Grandma’s with Jesus now
in heaven. And some day you’ll go there,
too, and see her again.’
Do we ever
say, ‘Oh Susy, don’t cry. Death is not
the end. Soon Jesus will come and raise
all the dead back to life, including your grandmother!’ Or, ‘Yes, Susy, your Grandma has died. But one day soon Jesus will destroy death and
she will be raised back to life again.’ These
ideas are much less common. The
resurrection is accepted as a doctrine of belief, but not as a living
expectation by many, many Christians.
In fact,
many think that the resurrection is when you die and your spirit goes to
heaven! But if the resurrection is not a
real, physical resurrection, in a real, physical place, what need is there for
a resurrection at all? Why would God
recall his saints from heaven for a resurrection, if afterwards they go right
back to the same condition in heaven that they were in before?
The idea of
an eternal existence in an immaterial heaven somewhere is in fact a denial, or
at least a serious misunderstanding of the resurrection. It’s a replacement of Biblical teaching with
pagan Greek ideas. You see, Greek
philosophy taught that heaven—including the visible heavens and what today we
call outer space—are spiritual and pure:
that they are the opposite of what they considered this evil, physical
world. For them, spiritual was good,
physical was bad. And they wanted to get
away from this terrible physical existence as quickly as they could. Unfortunately, many Christians accepted this
view.
This is what
created the controversy over Galileo in the 17th century. Do you remember the story of Galileo? Galileo took a couple of pieces of curved
glass, put them on either end of a long tube, and pointed it at the sky. And what he saw shook the foundations of
civilization in Europe. Why? What did he see?
He saw (!)
blemishes on the moon: we call them
craters today. He saw (!) spots on the
sun. Why were these discoveries so
astounding? Because they demonstrated
that the lights in the heavens are not perfectly smooth and round. They have imperfections. They are physical! This contradicted the Christian world view of
the time, which on the basis of Greek philosophy taught that the heavens were
spiritual, that they were pure and perfect.
Galileo’s
writings were censored. He was tried by
the church for heresy, forced to renounce his views, and sentenced to life in
prison. Why? Because the church had come to believe in
Greek philosophy more than in the Bible.
And as part of this belief, the Church had accepted the lie that
physical existence was bad, when God in the Bible said that he had created it good
(Gen. 1:31)!
So what does
the Bible teach about the eternal destiny of the human soul? One of the difficulties in understanding the
Bible’s teaching is the meaning of the word “hell.” Some English translations, as in many other
languages (including Chinese), use one word, “hell,” to translate the names of two completely
different places: Hades and Gehenna. These two couldn’t be more different from one another: one is spiritual, the other is
physical; one is temporary, the other eternal. They are never confused in the original
language of the Bible. But because of
this translation problem, today most Christians can’t tell them apart.
Hades (in Greek) or Sheol (in Hebrew) is the place where the souls of the dead go to
wait for the resurrection. It’s a purely
spiritual place, and a temporary place, because the book of Revelation says it
will be emptied and destroyed at the time of the final resurrection and final judgment
(“And death and Hades were thrown into
the lake of fire,” Rev. 20:14).
You may never have heard of Gehenna before, but Jesus used it frequently in his teaching. It’s the same place called the Lake of Fire
in the book of Revelation. This is where
the damned go after their resurrection and final judgment. It’s a physical place of torment that will
remain for eternity. And yes, it’s hot
there.
For example,
in Matt. 5:22 Jesus said: “the one who says, ‘You fool’ (to his brother)
is deserving of the Gehenna of fire.”
In other words, he deserves eternal punishment. A few verses later Jesus says, in Matt. 5:29: “But if
your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away from you; for
it is better for you that one of your parts be destroyed than your whole body
be thrown into Gehenna.” And there
are many more like these.
Although the
name Gehenna first appears in the Bible in the New Testament, the idea of an
eternal place of punishment is much older.
For example, Isaiah mentions it in the last verse of his book, Isa.
66:24: “And they will go out and look at the corpses of the people that have
sinned against me, for their worm will not die and their fire will not be put
out, and they will be an abhorrence to all flesh.”
Isaiah puts
this at the time of the New Heavens and the New Earth, as he says just two
verses earlier in Isa. 66:22: “For as the
new heavens and the new earth that I am making will endure before me, says the
LORD, so will your seed and your name endure.” This is just what the New Testament teaches
(2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 20:10,21:1).
But in the
time between the Old and New Testaments, this place of eternal punishment
started to be called Gehenna. Where did this name come from? It’s the Greek version of the name of a
valley near Jerusalem: the Gehinnom Valley, which comes from gey (“valley of”) Hinnom (a man’s name,
Josh. 18:16, Neh. 11:30). It’s also
called the valley of the son of Hinnom (Ben-Hinnom,
Josh. 15:8, 2 Kings 23:10, Jer. 7:31,32).
Why was this
valley associated with eternal punishment?
It was located just to the south and west of the city. This was the “back door” of Jerusalem: the main gates were to the north, northeast,
and northwest. So naturally, this was a
place to dump garbage in ancient times. And
as with many other ancient cities, it became a burning refuse heap, a good
picture of an eternal, fiery judgment.
In
Jeremiah’s time, there was also a place of pagan worship located here called
Topheth. This is where they passed
babies through the fire to the pagan god Molech. This was not just a harmless fire
ritual: they actually burned the
children to death here (The sons of Judah “have
built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom,
to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire,” Jer. 7:31). No wonder the prophet was so upset about
this. In that same chapter, Jeremiah prophesied
that this valley would one day be filled with the people’s corpses because of
this sin (Jer. 7:32-33). So here was another
good reason to connect this valley with eternal punishment.
But although
the place of eternal punishment was named after this valley, these were two
different places. That’s why Jesus calls
the place of eternal punishment “the
Gehenna of fire” (Matt. 5:22), to distinguish it from the valley beside
Jerusalem.
So as you
can see, Hades and Gehenna were two very different
places. So where then did the word
“hell” come from that caused all this confusion? It’s the name of the goddess of the dead and of
the underworld in Norse mythology, and also of the underworld itself. She was the daughter of Loki. This is another reminder of the Scandinavian
origins of the English language, just like the days of the week: Wednesday, for example, means Woden’s day,
Thursday means Thor’s day. So hell in
Old English was the equivalent of Hades, a spiritual place for the souls of the
dead, and was not the same as Gehenna,
though these two later became confused with each other.
Another
point of confusion in understanding the Bible’s teaching is the two different
places called Paradise and Heaven in the Bible.
Today, most Christians use these words interchangeably. But originally they referred to two different
places: Heaven referred to the sky and
everything above it, including the upper heavens where God dwells, while Paradise
was the place of the souls of the righteous after death, which was a different place
than the immediate presence of the Father God.
To think of
these as two different places is a completely new idea to most Christians today. But the difference can easily be shown from
the Bible. Do you remember that Jesus
said to the thief on the cross, in Luke 23:43:
“Amen I say to you, today you will
be with me in Paradise”? But three
days later, after he arose from the dead, he said to Mary Magdalene, “I am not yet ascended to the Father”
(John 20:17). And he didn’t ascend until
40 days later (Acts 1:9). This clearly
shows that Paradise is a different place than the presence of the Father in
heaven.
One reason
that many people are confused about heaven is the many references to the
Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew. This makes
many people think of heaven as our eternal destiny. But in fact, this expression, ‘Kingdom of
Heaven,’ is just a Jewish way to avoid saying the name of God (so as not to use
it in vain), like those who write God as “G-d” today. The Kingdom of Heaven means simply the
Kingdom of God, which is how Luke and Mark usually put it to avoid confusion, since
they were writing primarily for Gentiles.
“Kingdom of Heaven” doesn’t tell us anything about the location
of this kingdom. It only tells us who rules
this kingdom: God who is in heaven.
There are also many other verses connecting believers with heaven, but
these only speak of our connection to God or to Jesus, and never speak of
heaven as our eternal destiny.
Even in Rev.
6 that we looked at a couple of minutes ago, the souls of the righteous, though
they are in heaven, are separated from the presence of the Father God, since
they are “beneath the altar” (Rev.
6:9). What would this be understood to mean
in Jesus’ day?
The actual altar in the
Temple in Jerusalem was a huge object, the size of a small building, made of
cut stone. When sacrifices were offered
up to God, the blood of the sacrifice was either sprinkled or poured out at the
base of the altar. Here there was a drain
that took the blood into an underground chamber, and from there out a tunnel to
the fields in the Kidron valley below.
Every once in a while, priests had to go down into this drainage system
and clean it out. So when Revelation
talks about the souls “beneath the altar,”
the picture they would get is of this underground chamber below the altar. This indicates that Paradise is a hidden place (an idea similar to the Jewish treasury of souls), and not the
direct presence of God the Father. Only later, after the Millennium
and the final judgment, will believers see the Father face to face.
So how can
we get all of these different names and places straightened out in our minds
when we read the Bible? That’s what
today’s teaching is all about, to get you straightened out in your thinking
about our destiny. I’ve also posted a
list online so you can see all the places these different words appear in the
original languages of the Bible (“Hell,
Hades, and Gehenna: A List of Verses”). So let’s go back now and review from the
beginning to see if we can get this all straightened out.
The most
basic and most common teaching of the Bible about what happens after death is
that our souls or spirits are separated from our bodies, and we go to the
underworld of the dead, called Sheol
in Hebrew and Hades in Greek. This was a purely spiritual, and not a
physical place. It was seen as a very
dark and dreary place, where not much happened.
“Will you do wonders for the dead?
Will the spirits of the dead rise up, will they praise you? Selah.
Will your lovingkindness be told in the tomb, your faithfulness in
Abaddon (the “place of destruction”—another name for Sheol)? Will your wonders be made known in the
darkness, and your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” (Psa.
88:10). This understanding of what
happened at death was shared by many different cultures in the ancient
world.
But
somewhere in the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament, people
in Israel came to understand that there were two different parts of Sheol :
one for the righteous and one for the unrighteous. The righteous part of Sheol had different names.
One of these names was the Bosom of Abraham, a name that also appears in
the New Testament (Luke 16:23). But the
most common name in Hebrew was Gan Eden,
the Garden of Eden.
This was not,
of course, the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve lived in. It was instead a spiritual Eden, a place of
spiritual blessing, just as the physical Eden was a place of physical blessing.
But though it was a spiritual place, it
was thought of as a garden-like environment.
This is where Abraham and all the righteous patriarchs and kings and
prophets were, waiting for the resurrection.
In Greek,
this good side of Sheol is called Paradise.
This is because paradise is
the Greek word for garden. So in the
Greek Old Testament, the garden of Adam and Eve is called the Paradise of Eden. So naturally this same name was used for the
spiritual Garden of Eden, too. This means that when
we see the word “Paradise” in the New Testament, it’s talking about this
spiritual Garden of Eden. This understanding
of Paradise as a garden-like environment is a belief that the early Christians
shared with the Jewish people and also later with the Muslims.
The
unrighteous part of Sheol or Hades just continued to be called Hades (or Sheol). This was thought to be a much less pleasant place,
even a place of punishment. The clearest
picture in the Bible of Sheol or Hades is in Jesus’ parable about Lazarus and
the rich man. The soul of the rich man,
suffering in the bad part of Hades, calls out to Lazarus, who is in the bosom
of Abraham (in Paradise, Luke 16:23,24).
Though the rich man and Lazarus are close enough to talk to each other,
they are separated by a great chasm that makes it impossible to cross from one
side to the other. As it says in Luke
16:26: “a great chasm has been set between us and you, so that those wishing
to cross over from here to you are not able, nor can they go across from there
to us.”
The bad side
of Sheol was itself also divided into parts.
The lowest part of Hades was called Tartarus. In Hebrew, this was the “depths of Sheol” or
“the lowest part of Sheol” (Deut. 32:22, Psa. 86:13, Pro. 9:18). This is where the angels that sinned with
human women in Gen. 6:2,4 were kept for the day of judgment (“For if God did not spare angels who had
sinned, but having thrown them into Tartarus delivered them to chains of
darkness, to be kept for judgment…” 2 Pet. 2:4).
Just before
the time of Jesus, the recognition that Sheol was a spiritual and not a
physical place led to some uncertainty about where exactly it was located. Originally it was thought of as being under
the earth, since that's where the dead were buried. But now, some began to put it at the
extremities of the earth instead. Others
felt it was more appropriate, as a spiritual place, to locate it in one of the
lower heavens.
This last
view was the understanding of the apostle Paul, when he had his vision of Paradise,
which he calls the third heaven (“I know
a man in Messiah more than fourteen years ago, whether in the body or out of
the body I do not know, God knows, such a one was snatched up to the third heaven…
He was snatched up into Paradise and he heard inexpressible words which it is
not permitted for a man to speak,” 2 Cor. 12:2,4). But it’s important to note that in this
experience he does not claim to have been in the presence of the Father. He only claims to have heard “inexpressible words.” This matches with the experience of Jesus that
we talked about before, and with Christian teaching in general in the early
years, that Paradise was different than the direct presence of God the Father. Another name for this heavenly Paradise is “the Jerusalem above” in Galatians 4:26 or “the heavenly Jerusalem” in Hebrews 12:22.
To reconcile
these different ideas about the location of Paradise, the Western Church
developed a teaching called the Harrowing of Hades. The idea of this teaching is that when Jesus
was in Hades (when, as the Apostles' Creed puts it, “he descended into Hades”), he
preached the gospel to the righteous dead in Paradise. These then went with him up to heaven when he
ascended. So in other words, according
to this teaching, Jesus moved Paradise from earth to heaven. The Church even found some verses to try to
support this teaching, though they don’t fit very well (see our teaching, “Can the Gospel be Preached to the
Dead?”).
For me
personally, the location of Paradise is not a very important issue. Paradise and Hades are spiritual places. They’re not physical. If you dig down into the earth, you’re not
going to find Hades there. It exists in
a different kind of reality than we live in, a spiritual reality. So if we talk about it being here or there in
the physical world, what does that really mean?
It’s just a way to help us think about it. The only important thing we need to know is
that Paradise is a beautiful place where we will be with the Lord, although not
yet face to face with the Father. For
that, we must wait for the resurrection.
The thing
that sets the Bible apart from all other religions is that the spiritual existence
in Hades is only temporary. One day
there will be a resurrection from the dead for all people, and we will be
restored to actual physical bodies on earth.
This resurrection will take place in two stages: first for the righteous, then for the unrighteous. The first stage is called the “resurrection of the righteous” by Jesus
(Luke 14:14). This is the resurrection
that will take place at Jesus’ return, when the dead in Messiah will rise first
(“For the Lord himself will descend from
heaven with a shout, with the voice of a chief messenger and with the trumpet
of God, and the dead in Messiah will
rise first,” 1 Thess. 4:16). This
is when we will be given new, resurrection bodies that cannot die or get sick
any more.
This is when
the righteous will rule and reign with Messiah from Jerusalem for 1,000 years. But the wicked will all be destroyed (“they were eating, they were drinking, they
were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered
into the ark and the Flood came and destroyed
them all... It will be just the same way on the day the Son of Man is
revealed,” Luke 17:27,30). During
this one thousand years, the wicked will be in Hades, awaiting judgment (“And they will surely be gathered together
as prisoners in a pit, and they will be shut up in prison; and after many days
they will be punished,” Isa. 24:22).
This means that only the righteous, “those
considered worthy to attain the resurrection” (Luke 20:35), will be on the
earth during the thousand years. This
will be a time of blessing and rest. The
earth will be restored to its original condition: a palingenesia,
a regeneration of the earth.
The
Millennium is not just a teaching of the book of Revelation, but of many places
in the Bible that talk about the coming rule of the Messiah on this earth. What’s different about Revelation is that it’s
the only place to mention a specific length of time for this period, 1,000
years. Since this length of time only
appears in Revelation, it’s not certain whether this is a literal length of
time or symbolic. But whatever the exact
length will be, it’s going to be a significant and amazing experience with the
Lord.
Then, after
the 1,000 years, the unrighteous dead will rise, to begin the horrible battle
of Gog and Magog (“and he (Satan) will go out
to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to
gather them to the battle, of whom the number will be as the sand of the sea,”
Rev. 20:8). They will be defeated and judged
in the Final Judgment.
This is when the
Father God will finally be revealed to all humanity, and the present heavens
and earth will be destroyed (“But the day
of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a
roar, and the elements, being consumed by great heat, will be destroyed; both
the earth and the things in it will be burned up,” 2 Pet. 3:10). The wicked will be sent to eternal punishment
in Gehenna (the Lake of Fire). This is the eternal destiny of the wicked. As it says in Rev. 20:15: “And if
anyone was not found written in the scroll of life, he was thrown into the lake
of fire.”
For the
righteous, there will be a New Heavens and a New Earth (Isa. 65:17). This is the eternal destiny of the
righteous. As Peter put it, “But we are waiting for new heavens and a
new earth according to his promise, in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet.
3:13). Many Christians have been taught
that the New Heavens and the New Earth are a symbolic description of heaven
rather than a real place. But this denies
the reality and the eternity of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:42,54). It’s also rejected by the clear statement of
Scripture that both the present heavens and earth will pass away, and
that there will be a new heavens and earth (Rev. 21:1).
How
different this new heaven and earth will be than the present one, we have no
way of knowing. As the apostle Paul put
it, quoting Isaiah, “things that eye has
not seen and ear has not heard and that have not come up in the heart of man,
things that God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).
The most
detailed description in the Bible of the New Heavens and the New Earth is of
the New Jerusalem, a city built by God himself, that will come down out of the
heavens to be on the New Earth (“And I
saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband,” Rev. 21:2). This will be a huge structure, larger than
most countries, with gardens and rivers in it (Rev. 22:2). This will be Paradise coming down to
earth.
It will be
made out of precious materials: even its
walls covered with precious stone, its gates made from pearls (Rev. 21:18-21). And there will be no Temple, because the veil
that has kept us separated from the Father will be removed (Rev. 21:22). We will dwell with him and see him face to
face forever.
So what have
we learned today? At death, we either go
to Paradise or to the bad part of Hades.
But then when Jesus returns, Paradise will be emptied and all the
righteous from all time will be resurrected to live in a restored earth, where
they will rule and reign with Jesus for a thousand years. All the wicked will be destroyed at Jesus’
return and will be in Hades for the thousand years. After the thousand years, the wicked will
rise to be defeated in the Battle of Gog and Magog and will be judged in the
Final Judgment. The present heavens and
earth will pass away, and the righteous will dwell in the New Earth with God
forever. The wicked will be in Gehenna forever.
You may
notice that this view of the endtimes is different at some points than some of
the popular teachings going around today:
especially the “Left Behind” series (Dispensationalism). But what I have shared with you today more
accurately represents the Bible’s own teaching about endtimes, and was the
accepted teaching of the earliest Christian Church. For a much more detailed description of the these final events as described in the Bible, see our book, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John."
