IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 411

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART IV

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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After 410 consecutive days of posts we skipped the last two days because of a sudden death in the family. This happened last week and caused our excursion into the current topic regarding the constitution of man. Current ideas on the the being that we call man are much muddied by the culture and religion as most of what is believed is not believed based upon any concrete fact but rather upon unproven assumptions, religious teachings and even superstitions. The current common ideas regarding heaven and hell, the rapture, the second coming of Christ and the ideas from the Book of Revelation and Paul’s Epistle to the Thessalonians have all done much to confuse the issues of Life and death and this is an unfortunate situation. Most common Christian beliefs are based upon a combination of all these things and a careful reading the above will reveal several different ideas as regards these points that are at best clouded in mystery. The reality is in the words of the Master regarding the Kingdom of God and the way to see these is clearly stated as we have been discussing.

We were brought here by the death of  a sixteen year old boy, a grandson who was taken suddenly by a severe asthma attack. Needless to say these things are extremely difficult on family and are difficult to understand under the premise of a Loving God. Moving through this with the church one can only come to realize that there are no answers that can ever make sense except when one recognizes the divinity of ALL men and the fact that the man IS NOT the body and the personality that passes away. Without this realization there is either confusion, a blaming of God while wondering why good young people must die or a sense of Faith that keeps one in the common understanding of heaven and the hope of one’s reuniting with passed loved one’s at some future time.

The Master is relatively silent on these ideas of Life and death and does not confirm the common understandings in any way. The Master’s words on heaven are clear as we say above and His words that we look to as hell require much interpretation and for this we will look to Vincent again.

• Hell-fire (thn geennan tou purov). Rev., more accurately, the hell of fire. The word Gehenna, rendered hell, occurs outside of the Gospels only at Jas. iii. 6. It is the Greek representative of the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, or Valley of Hinnom, a deep, narrow glen to the south of Jerusalem, where, after the introduction of the worship of the fire-gods by Ahaz, the idolatrous Jews sacrificed their children to Molech. Josiah formally desecrated it, “that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech” (2 Kings xxiii. 10). After this it became the common refuse-place of the city, into which the bodies of criminals, carcasses of animals, and all sorts of filth were cast. From its depth and narrowness, and its fire and ascending smoke, it became the symbol of the place of the future punishment of the wicked. So Milton:

  “The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of hell.”

  As fire was the characteristic of the place, it was called the Gehenna of fire. It should be carefully distinguished from Hades (adhv), which is never used for the place of punishment, but for the place of departed spirits, without reference to their moral condition. This distinction, ignored by the A.V., is made in the Rev. 25. Agree with (isqi eunown). Lit., be well-minded towards; inclined to satisfy by paying or compromising. Wyc., Be thou consenting to⁴.

• Gates of hell (pulai adou). Rev., Hades. Hades was originally the name of the God who presided over the realm of the dead – Pluto or Dis. Hence the phrase, house of Hades. It is derived from aj, not, and ijdein, to see; and signifies, therefore, the invisible land, the realm of shadow. It is the place to which all who depart this life descend, without reference to their moral character.

  By this word the Septuagint translated the Hebrew Sheol, which has a similar general meaning. The classical Hades embraced both good and bad men, though divided into Elysium, the abode of the virtuous, and Tartarus, the abode of the wicked. In these particulars it corresponds substantially with Sheol; both the godly and the wicked being represented as gathered into the latter. See Gen. xlii. 38; Ps. ix. 17; cxxxix. 8; Isa. xiv. 9; lvii. 2; Ezek. xxxii. 27; Hos. xiii. 14. Hades and Sheol were alike conceived as a definite place, lower than the world. The passage of both good and bad into it was regarded as a descent. The Hebrew conception is that of a place of darkness; a cheerless home of a dull, joyless, shadowy life. See Psalms vi. 5; xciv. 17; cxv. 17; lxxxviii. 5, 6, 10; Job x. 21; iii. 17-19; xiv. 10, 11; Ecclesiastes iv. 5. Vagueness is its characteristic. In this the Hebrew’s faith appears bare in contrast with that of the Greek and Roman. The pagan poets gave the popular mind definite pictures of Tartarus and Elysium; of Styx and Acheron; of happy plains where dead heroes held high discourse, and of black abysses where offenders underwent strange and ingenious tortures……..

  In the New Testament, Hades is the realm of the dead. It cannot be successfully maintained that it is, in particular, the place for sinners (so Cremer, “Biblico-Theological Lexicon”). The words about Capernaum (Matt. xi. 23), which it is surprising to find Cremer citing in support of this position, are merely a rhetorical expression of a fall from the height of earthly glory to the deepest degradation, and have no more bearing upon the moral character of Hades than the words of Zophar (Job xi. 7, 8 ) about the perfection of the Almighty. “It is high as heaven – deeper than Sheol.” Hades is indeed coupled with Death (Apoc. i. 18; vi. 8; xx. 13, 14), but the association is natural, and indeed inevitable, apart from all moral distinctions. Death would naturally be followed by Hades in any case. In Apoc. xx. 13, 14, the general judgment is predicted, and not only Death and Hades, but the sea give up their dead, and only those who are not written in the book of life are cast into the lake of fire (ver. 15). The rich man was in Hades (Luke xvi. 23), and in torments, but Lazarus was also in Hades, “in Abraham‘s bosom.” The details of this story “evidently represent the views current at the time among the Jews. According to them, the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life were the abode of the blessed…. We read that the righteous in Eden see the wicked in Gehenna and rejoice; and similarly, that the wicked in Gehenna see the righteous sitting beatified in Eden, and their souls are troubled (Edersheim, “Life and Times of Jesus“). Christ also was in Hades (Acts ii. 27, 31). Moreover, the word geenna, hell, (see on Matt. v. 22), is specially used to denote the place of future punishment⁴.

  Hades, then, in the New Testament, is a broad and general conception, with an idea of locality bound up with it. It is the condition following death, which is blessed or the contrary, according to the moral character of the dead, and is therefore divided into different realms, represented by Paradise or Abraham‘s bosom, and Gehenna. 

As we can see here, there is much confusion in these two Greek words that are translated as hell with the first referring to a “symbol of the place of the future punishment of the wicked“. This is a physical place of refuse and fire near Jerusalem and Vincent paints its history for us as such. It is used also as such a physical place by the Master in relation to some of the choices that He gives us in saying:

• “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:22)
• “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:29).
• “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).

In these ideas of hell as defined in the Greek word geenna we should see the place defined by Vincent as its nature. A place where one would fear to go in physical Life and should prefer to pluck out an eye or cut off a hand rather than to go there according to the Master’s teachings. There is of course no clarity in this and the sayings are rather parabolic and intended to show the severity of the offending eye or hand and the danger of anger; that these are equivalent to being cast into “the common refuse-place of the city, into which the bodies of criminals, carcasses of animals, and all sorts of filth were cast“⁴. Yet, the common understanding of this is that place called hell to which a man goes after death if he is not good enough to be elevated to heaven.

The other word translated as hell is the Greek word hades and the ideas here are of the more traditional meanings as we have been discussing above albeit the words are yet sorely misunderstood. Here we refer to the the invisible land, the realm of shadow or, as the lexicon paints it, the realm of the dead². Vincent tells us also that It is the place to which all who depart this life descend, without reference to their moral character and of importance here is the idea of without reference to their moral character which is contrary to the popular and common beliefs. This tells us that all go to hades and this is what we have called in past posts the afterlife, that place where the consciousness goes or rather that state of consciousness of the personality that did not die with the physical body and whose experiences will be based upon the focus of the just left Life in the Earth. Here too there is no clarity in the Master’s words that would lead to the beliefs that persist in the world; He says of hades:

• “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day” (Matthew 11:23).
• “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
• “And in hell he lift up his eyes, beingin torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom” (Luke 16:23).

Can we see in these three verses the confusion of terms that we are dealing with and which are explained away by doctrine as the heaven and hell of the good person and the sinner. Can we see that both do go to this same place as hades and that Vincent’s reference to the fate of Jesus is to the same, after His death on the Cross, and is not what it is generally made out to be; it is the place of ALL after death and from which the Soul who can will free himself as did the Christ. The reference to Christ is from the Book of Acts of which Vincent tells us above says: “He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption” (Acts 2:31).

Our purpose here today is to highlight the lack of reality in the way that death is approached by so many people and by the doctrines that purport to explain and interpret the words of the Master. When death is seen as the transition from the realm of men in form to the realm of men without form, the race will come to better understand it. Except for the Master there are none who have come back in such a public way and we must realize here that His return was not to the body of flesh that He left but, as we have discussed, to a body that could be whatsoever He desired it to be and this should be no more strange that the fig tree dying or Lazarus being raised. The Master tells us that “with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27) and it should not be in a man’s vocabulary to doubt anything of Him. We close with another saying from the Apostle Paul regarding death from a rather personal perspective but one which can be extended to others in the proper understanding of Life. This is to say that when the consciousness in form us focused upon the Soul, the Christ Within, and the Love and the Power of the Soul is being expressed through form, that we can say with the apostle that: “So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). And, when we can understand this of ourselves, we can understand this of others. We should note here that the word that is translated as grave is the same word from above, hades.

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day