"Many raised in church still don’t know there’s no literal place of ‘hell’ or torment created by God. Did you know Jesus never once talked about hell? Or that the ancient Jews didn’t believe in a place of punishment or reward after death? Were you aware not one of the four (4) different words turned into ‘hell’ in our Bibles have anything to do with a place where God torments humans (or angels) and that the entire idea was ‘engineered’ into scripture based on mythical Greek philosophy?
Maybe you didn’t know Jerome’s Latin Vulgate (around AD 40, and then later on King James added these ideas of ‘everlasting torment’ in their Bibles for the effect of fear and control over people who were then told to only read their ‘authorized versions’, OR that every translation which now has hell in it merely followed their lead along the way.
Did you know there are at least 28 translations (some dating all the way back to the 1700’s) that never once speak of hell or the idea of everlasting torment for humans?
The truth of the matter is- ‘church taught history’ and ‘actual world history’ don’t always line up with each other."
"The word "Hell" is not in the Bible. "Gehenna" is. "Hell" is a mistranslation. "Gehenna" is the right translation. Either you're ignorant of this, or you've read it and yet choose to deliberately go with the mistranslation. Now you know.
The concept of "hell", or eternal torment in the afterlife is literally and exactly nowhere in the Old Testament. "Gehenna" however is in the OT just a few times. It is a literal place, right outside of Jerusalem, where Israel practiced gross idolatry and later became called "the Valley of Slaughter" because of its reputation of idolatry and loathsomeness. Dead bodies were thrown in Gehenna and they were eaten by worms and turned to ashes by fire.
This provides the context of Jesus’ usage of "Gehenna". Jesus quotes Isaiah when talking about Gehenna when he says "where the worm doesn't die and the fire is not quenched". He's referring back to the valley of Gehenna, directly quoting Isaiah 66:24, which says "...the dead bodies, the worms that eat them up will not die and the fire that consumes them will not be quenched." This literally happened. Dead bodies were eaten up by unquenchable fire and worms fed on the dead bodies until they were consumed to nothing. Interesting thing is, go to that Valley of Slaughter today and look in it and you will not see the fire still burning nor will you see immortal worms feeding on miraculously preserved dead bodies. The bodies are gone, the worms are gone, the fire is gone. The point is that the fire would not be deterred in burning up the dead bodies to nothing, the worms would not be deterred in eating up the dead bodies to nothing. And keep in mind these are mortal dead bodies in this life, not immortal conscious souls in the afterlife.
To read eternal torment into that is either gross ignorance or deliberate deception.
Even "eternal fire" or "eternal punishment" is a mistranslation, as "eternal" is a mistranslation of the Greek word "aionios", which does not mean "never-ending" or anything of the sort. It means "of the age to come", or to Plato, who may have invented the word, it means something which has its source in God and the unseen realm. It has nothing to do with ongoing, never-ending time.
There is literally no verse in scripture that can prop up the ridiculous, pagan, non-Jewish concept of eternal torment.
Spread the word to try to get rid of the ignorance on this issue.
This is not some new politically correct idea that people are making up because they don't like hard biblical truths. There is a long list of early fathers who rejected eternal torment because they understood these correct meanings of words, they didn't believe in the immortality of the soul (a pagan Greek belief), they had a touch of sanity (a good thing to have for theology), and they recognized that the scriptures either taught conditional immortality and/or final universal reconciliation. Eternal torment was the minority belief in the early church, and amongst those who were less familiar with the original meanings of the text. It did not become the prominent belief until after 500 AD, with the help of the violent organized institutional church established under Constantine.
Hell is not a good translation of Gehenna and it never will be. Gehenna was a real place with a real history in the Jewish mind, and it must be read in that context. Once it is read in that context, the idea of eternal torment falls to pieces, as it should."
Part V:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nHKUUULLnrs
