May last year something snapped in my while listening to a sermon at church that included “the unforgivable sin”. I was plagued by fear for days, it started a journey I have been on since then about the nature of God. The people I got involved with after becoming a Christian at 17 were zealots, but their beliefs about the after life were typical in the Christian church. I snapped out of these when some time after this I saw a funny sign by jewbelong.com “Judaism: Come for your girlfriend, stay for the lack of hell”. What? But Jesus preached to Jews, that was his primary audience, none of them ever said “what is this eternal damnation of which you speak?”. We know Jesus spoke about people suffering in fire, and that he described the lake of eternal fire in the Bible “where the worm never dies”. Some things to know, the Jewish people do believe in a place of punishment where people are tortured with fire, it’s called Gehenna, it’s a place of punishment for those who lived immoral lives – and it’s considered temporary. There is also Sheol, the underworld in the Hebrew Bible, a place of darkness and stillness after death (not torture). At the beginning of the Bible when Adam and Eve fell into sin God said “you have sinned, now you will die”, during Jesus’ ministry he repeated said that those who will be rejected by him/God on Judgement Day will experience “the second death”. Revelations also talks about Hades and Hell being thrown in the lake of fire, the fire that never ends – therefore hell will come to an end. The comment made by in Mark
47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell,
48 where
“‘the worms that eat them do not die,
and the fire is not quenched.’[d]
49 Everyone will be salted with fire.
This is often used as evidence that eternal hell is real, however this was a quote from Isaiah 66:24
24 “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
“dead bodies”. Yes, the flame is eternal, but the lava at the center of the Earth called by called eternal (compared to the lifetime of a human) yet you will die if you fall in an active volcano. Just because the flame is eternal doesn’t mean it won’t kill you.
So, long story short, I no longer believe in hell, I believe humans will die, they will receive paradise of a horrible punishment (of something in between), depending on how they lived, that punishment will be temporary, then judgement day will happen and those God has chosen will be given immortal bodies and put on a new Earth, the rest will be extinguished, not torture, just death.
Realising the church has lied all these years no longer surprises me, I recently took a holiday to Rome. The Roman church has taught Biblical inaccuracies from day one. In many of the churches there are sculptures of women with wings, these are thought of as angels, yet there are no angels of this discription in the Bible, most angels are depicted as wingless men dressed all in white. What did look like these women in ancient times however, were the goddesses Nike and Victoria. The more I look into church beliefs, the Bible and Roman & Greek mythology it’s clear how much of the Roman beliefs have bled (uncontested into our idea of Christianity – including ideas of Hades and Tartarus.
Then there the sexist views the church has taught for 2000 years, which reflect more the misogynist attitudes of ancient Rome than on the teachings of Jesus or Noah.
The behaviour of the Catholic Church still reflects Roman mythology. Romans worshipped human looking gods who specialised in helping certain demographic: Hermes/Mercury was the god of travellers and livestock, Aphrodite/Venus the god of love, Apollo the god of poetry, Mars the god of war. The Catholic Church still holds onto this idea, but they call them saints instead, praying to them as Romans did to their gods, Saint Nicholas to god….I mean saint….of children, Saint Valentine the god of lovers.
Paul was a Roman, and a self confessed religious extremist. He’s quoted as saying
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man;[a] she must be quiet.” 1 Timothy 2:12
There’s no justification for this statement, Jesus nor any of the other apostles stated a teaching such as this, quite the contrary, Jesus was a defender of women’s rights at time when women were oppressed within a religious extremist culture. Furthermore in contradicts many parts of the Bible. There have been numerous women mentioned in the Bible in leaderships and prophetic positions, such as Deborah.
“4 Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. 5 She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided.” Judges 4:4-5
One issue we need to consider with Paul’s teaching is, it’s possible not all the letters attributed to him were written by him, 6 have been questioned as being legitimately his – inc Timothy.