Latest / Deep-Grace Diving with Tim Wright and Terey Summers / Episode #15: Hell!

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Episode #15: Hell! · Deep-Grace Diving with Tim Wright and Terey Summers

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, everyone.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you are wearing your asbestos underwear because today we're going to hell.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: And some have probably thought that already of this podcast a long time ago.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Tim Wright along with Terry Summers.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, I got to ask you a question.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Tim, do you drink coffee?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I do not drink coffee.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: You do not.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you're this hilarious without it in the morning.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's unbelievable, isn't it?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's cray cray.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: So we have been doing,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: we've been promising and teasing for several weeks that we were going to actually
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: dive into what does the Bible say about hell.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're technically in the third part of a five-part series on universalism,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: salvation,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: grace,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: punishment,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: hell.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it was prompted by a question that was asked.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so every week we're going to start with this question.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: And today specifically we're going to ask the question about hell.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then we'll spend the next two weeks sort of teasing out what we talk about.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: So Terry, read for us again the question.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: It comes from one of our listeners and they write,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was always taught that we must decide to accept Christ before we breathe our last
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: breath or we will end up in hell forever.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I know one can find scriptures to support this view,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: but are there also scriptures that support the view that Christ will continue to
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: pursue unbelievers forever?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: after death?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the question.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: And, um,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: A podcast or two ago, we looked at some scriptures that talk about God's desire to save all people.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: And let me read two of those for you.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is from 1 Timothy 2, 1-4.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: First of all,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: then I urge that supplications,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: prayers,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: intercessions,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: and thanksgiving be made for everyone,
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: for kings and all who are on high positions,
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is right and acceptable before God our Savior,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: who desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: For there is one God,
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: Christ Jesus,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: himself human,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: who gave himself a ransom for all.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: And we looked at these various verses in the Bible that say that all will be saved.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus, when he says, I will draw all people unto me, not just some, I will draw all people,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: me uh another verse from titus chapter two it's a short one for the grace of god
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: has appeared bringing salvation to all to all and uh if you want more information
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: you can go back and listen to a couple of those podcasts so uh we did look at god's
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: desire uh and will to have the final word and that the final word will be grace and
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: that god wins not evil
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: um so we're going to talk uh today now about this thing that really i would say
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: most christians probably be believe in the eternal damnation of hell but this was
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: not always the case in the early christian church that wasn't always the case there
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: was a belief that all would be saved
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then through all kinds of things,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: misreading of scripture,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: the desire to control people with fear rather than grace,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: this whole concept of hell evolved.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: So we need to peel away some of the layers that we have put on top of what Jesus is saying.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: So in the end, this is about the character of God.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's about the character of God.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: And what is God like?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the big questions that
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: non-Christian people will ask is how can you believe in a loving God who will send
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: people to an eternal damnation?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I was listening to a book today.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: I can't remember the guy's name off the top of my head.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'll put it in my notes in a couple of weeks.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: So he wrote a book.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: He's a theologian who believes that all will be saved.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: And he was talking about how morally
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: decrepit this view of hell is.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, just think about this for a moment.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Someone who has lived for 70 years, they made some kind of decision that offends God.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so they spend billions and trillions and trillions of years suffering in an
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: eternal fire for something that they did in the span of a blink of an eye.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: And for trillions and trillions and trillions of years,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: they're going to suffer in hell because God is loving.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: And if that's where they want to be, that's where they're going to go.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then just think about that person waking up in hell the next morning and thinking,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm at the first day of the rest of my life.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it's another trillion and trillion and trillion and trillion of years.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: And he just said, morally speaking, it's reprehensible.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: to say that that's what God is like.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: The character of God is such that God would do that to something that God has created,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: something that God loves and something that someone who God died for.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: So it does create a lot of challenges.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: And we looked at that a few weeks ago and we will again next week, but let's talk about hell.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously in a 30 minute podcast,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: We cannot plumb the depths of all of this as theologians have been arguing about it for 2000 years.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: But there are some things that we can at least get at today.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: So first of all, Terry, did you know the word hell is never used in the Bible?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: And are you thinking to yourself, what the hell?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: You read, you took the words right out of my mouth.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that I literally knew that, no.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: So we have a word or two.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: that have been now translated to hell with all of the cultural baggage that goes
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: with what we believe about hell.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the word hell is never in the Bible.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: So Jesus, and we're going to come back to this in a moment.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: He never uses the word hell.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: He uses a word Gehenna.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll talk about what that means in a moment.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: He uses the word Hades once.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: Paul never uses the word hell.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: And he would think that the chief articulator of the Christian faith,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: if Christianity was all about saving our butts from hell,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: that he would talk about it.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: He never once talks about hell.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: For Paul, the focus isn't us going to hell.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's about God rescuing us from death.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: John's gospel has no mention of hell.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: The book of Acts has no mention of hell.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so for a concept that so much of Christianity buys into, it's not even in the Bible.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: Now, are there references to punishment in the Bible?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: But we need to take, you know, context is important.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: Some say that the actual concept of hell as we know it didn't come into being until about 725 AD.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: So 700 years after Jesus is when this concept came into being.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then we had Dante's Inferno and all these kinds of things that began to put
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: images around hell that simply are not in the Bible.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so we want to make sure when we talk about,
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: especially something like this,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: where we're proclaiming to people,
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: not good news that God loves you,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: but the bad news is if you don't get your act together,
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: you're going to hell.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's the kind of God God is.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: If we're going to turn the gospel into bad news, then we better have scriptural backing for that.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we just don't.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: So you're ready to dive into a little bit for hell?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: What Jesus teaches?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: My heart's racing.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, is it?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we'll try to see you're going through hell right now.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: A little bit of it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: So, and I saw this when I was doing my research.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: There are, it's clickbait.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: But there are pastors out there who will say that Jesus talks about hell more than
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: he talks about heaven.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well, of course, the problem is he never talks about hell.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: You could maybe say he talks about punishment, but that's a different deal.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: But Jesus never uses the word hell.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: And quite honestly, Jesus rarely speaks about heaven.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: Because for Jesus, it was all about the here and now.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: First and foremost.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: It was about God's grace breaking into human history in the person of Jesus to
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: begin to put back together all the things that we've broken.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Does he save us for an eternal destiny with God?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: But his main focus was feeding the hungry, fighting for justice, healing the sick, forgiving sins.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: That was the focus of Jesus.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: yeah,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: he didn't talk a lot about heaven because he was really focused on how the gospel
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: is good news for us right now.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so when Jesus speaks of what we call hell, he's actually using a word called Gehenna.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: which is used 11 times in the first three gospels.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: Again, it's not used in John's gospel at all.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: So only 11 times is the word used in three gospels.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: And we've built a whole theology around it.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: But Gehenna... Can I interrupt for a second?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think sometimes even in my churched mind,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: when I think of the Gospels,
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think of them as that initial part of the Old Testament,
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the New Testament.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: But really the Gospels are everything cornerstone to our faith.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: because it's the life of Jesus, right?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So like,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's not just,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: so when you say it only shows up 11 times,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: that's,
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: qualify that on,
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: it's the importance of,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: it's not just that that showed up in this text as it's written word after word
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: after word,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: it really is representing a timeframe of the life of Jesus,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so the gospels become the foundation stone.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus becomes the foundation stone for Christianity.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: The gospel writers are, they're having to edit.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: So they pick and they choose what stories they believe are best going to tell the story of Jesus.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then Paul comes along and he sort of puts the theological wrapping around it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: Where Jesus was more of a storyteller and did his theology, so to speak, through story.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: Paul does it more sort of left brain stuff.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: He does it through argument and through comparison and contrast.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: So when we say that Jesus only talks about Gehenna or uses the word hell 11 times,
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: that may seem significant,
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: but that's over three books.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: And many of those uses would be from the same story, just retold.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because they retell the stories.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: So he didn't talk about hell all that much.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again...
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: there are the verses of Gehenna and then there are verses of judgment,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: the separation of the goats from the sheep,
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_03: the wheat from the tares and so on.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: And those are, that's a separate issue.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: We're looking just at the word hell right now.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: He used it 11 times and Gehenna, he didn't use hell 11 times.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: He used Gehenna 11 times and Gehenna for the original readers or people who are hearing,
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: they immediately knew where that was.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: It was an actual place in Jerusalem.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it was a place that his listeners would have known was a place of continual
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: burning because it was like a garbage pit,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: the Valley of Gehenna.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so there was constant burning there of garbage and waste.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: And in the Old Testament, Gehenna...
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: was the place that the pagan kings would sacrifice their children.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: And some of the kings, the Jewish kings, sacrificed their children in the Valley of Gehenna.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so that place was condemned by the prophets,
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: condemned by God,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: because God wanted nothing to do with child sacrifice.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so theologically, Gehenna became the place that God had abandoned.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: Or where God is not, God's presence is not there because it was so offensive to God's character.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: So they would have known it, first of all, as a garbage pit where there were continual fires.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: So when Jesus talks about the continual fires, they would, oh, yeah, yeah, we know that.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: We can go over there and look at it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: And they would also have known that that was a cursed place because of the child
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: sacrifices that took place there in the Old Testament and even done by Jewish kings
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: and then condemned by the prophets.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: So he's referencing,
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: when he uses that word,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: metaphorically,
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: by the way,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: he is referencing not a place of eternal torment for the damned.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: He's referencing, he's using Gehenna
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: as anything that stands against God's will for what is good.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: So it becomes almost a metaphor for the opposite of the kingdom of God.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: Where Jesus came to bring the kingdom of life, Gehenna represents death.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: Where Jesus came to bring grace and mercy and compassion,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Gehenna represents death and despair and God-forsakenness.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: So in a sense,
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: Gehenna becomes not Jesus' way of saying,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: get your act together or you're going to burn for eternity.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus is comparing and contrasting his message of good news,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: of life that God's broken in to rescue you from death and from brokenness and despair.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: And he's contrasting that then with the works of Gehenna,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: which would be anything that tried to rob people of life.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: where God is not.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: So,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: when we see like the evil of the Holocaust,
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: which we'll talk about next week,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: that would be a Gehenna experience because God was not in that in terms of making
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: it happen.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: Now, of course, the cross says that God entered into that kind of suffering.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: We'll come into that.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: But the point is Gehenna represented metaphorically for Jesus the place that was anti the will of God.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I was thinking metaphor before you said it.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe I'm almost as smart as you.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm kidding.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of metaphor,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: though,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: did the continual burning of Gehenna have any metaphorical play in what Jesus was
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: referring to at all?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: like we like the the trillions and trillions and trillions of years like you're
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: using in your story.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Does the fact that that place that literally continued to burn have any bearing
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: metaphorically in what he was saying?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think with Gehenna, one thing you could say was that anything is not of God just burns up.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: It just turns to ash.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Because in the end, it cannot survive.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: Evil cannot survive.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: So,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: yes,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think that the fire,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: and of course,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: as Jesus then uses it,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: when he,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: let me first wrap this up.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: When Jesus is talking about Gehenna,
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: and sometimes actually tells people that that's where they belong,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: and we'll get to that in a moment.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: Basically, he's saying that Gehenna is the place where people live outside the will of God.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: it's not a place of eternal torture.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's just missing out on God's best for us.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: So if you want to broaden that for a moment,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: anybody right now in the world who is living outside of God's will for them,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: who are missing out on the good news of the gospel,
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: they're living in kind of this place of Gehenna where they're outside of what God
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: wants for them and they're missing out.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: Again, it's not a place of torture.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a place of eternal condemnation.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's a way of saying, I've come to bring you life.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: But when you live outside of that, it's just kind of like living in the garbage heap.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: Your life has more value than that.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: But these are hard things to get our brains around because we're so used to any
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: reference to Gehenna being translated hell.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then immediately we think of punishment.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: Rather than, say, missing out.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I am still tethered a smidge to it, to be honest.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's good that I'm on this side of the thinking because maybe other listeners are too.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that it was burning still tethers to the torture part.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like the real location was that.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: But as I'm listening, I am catching what you're saying.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: But do you see how that could still make sense?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I see it from how we have placed that interpretation on the fires of Gehenna.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it's going to take us a long time to let go of that cultural imposition onto
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: something the text is not saying.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because we were all raised with the fires of hell or Gehenna being torture.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: And now what I'm suggesting is, first and foremost, it's not about torture.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's about the life outside of God just burns up.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: It has no life to it.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: And God is calling us out of that into life and hope and grace.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I got it.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I am with you.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just, like you said, it's those words.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then I don't know that this is the place to say it, but why stop me?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: The gnashing of the teeth,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't know where,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm showing my ignorance of scripture,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: but that all has language of torture too.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: But that's probably a different, we're probably coming to that somewhere in our talk.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yes, we'll touch on it a little bit, but those are,
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: The problem is we have enmeshed this mistranslation of Gehenna, translated again to hell.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then we have put together these other things where Jesus talks about gnashing of teeth and so on.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: And we have to be able to decouple them a little bit.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: We have to be able to understand that Jesus is using a language the people then would have understood.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: And we got to go back and understand what they were hearing, which is really difficult for us.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we may not get it in this podcast, but we will get there.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: Because this is a topic that will just raise questions over and over and over again for people.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: So today we're just going to kind of lay the groundwork and then we'll spend the
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: next two or three weeks anyway,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: coming back to it.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: When Jesus references Gehenna and he tells people, essentially, go to Gehenna, go to hell.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Which doesn't roll off the tongue in the same fashion.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: He never says that to sinners, outcasts, prostitutes.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: He only says it to the religious leaders.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: He only says it to the religious leaders.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: And basically what,
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: and this is really oversimplifying,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: what he's saying to them when he basically tells them that they're only good for
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: Gehenna or their teachings are only good for Gehenna,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: he's saying your teachings are so outside of and so contrary to the kingdom of God
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: that they belong in the trash heap.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: They should just be burned up.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so again, he's not speaking of Gehenna to condemn people to an eternity of hell.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: He's using Gehenna as a metaphor to compare the kingdom of God,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: which is grace and life and compassion with Gehenna,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: which is that place that God has condemned.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's outside of God's will.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: And anything outside of God's will,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: any teaching,
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: anything that robs us of life,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: it just burns up because it has no value to it at all.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: Now,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: we could go a whole lot deeper than that into Gehenna,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: but I think that just sort of serves as at least an introduction to say that Jesus
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: doesn't use the word that is translated hell.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's Gehenna.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't use it to condemn people to an eternity in a burning pit of fire.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's a metaphor often aimed at the religious leaders saying,
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: to say the kingdom of God is grace and life and compassion,
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: and anything that robs people of that belongs in the trash heap and should be burned.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Got it.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the religious leaders would not have taken kindly to that.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus is basically telling them, your teachings belong in the trash heap and should be burned.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they would have been deeply insulted, as we know they were.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: because that would have been probably the worst kind of criticism they could receive,
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: that their teachings are so far outside of God's will and grace that they belong in
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: that place that God has abandoned.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: So Jesus wasn't always, well, he didn't hold back his punches, right?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't pull his punches with the religious leaders.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk quickly about the gates of hell, and then we will kind of wrap up.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Again, we're going to spend more time on this.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: We're just laying foundation.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: So Jesus does reference the word Hades once, which we translate as the gates of hell.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: So we're translating Hades and Gehenna the same way, and neither one should be translated hell.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: So the gates of hell is a reference from Matthew 18,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_03: where Jesus takes his disciples up to Caesarea Philippi.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: Caesarea Philippi is up in the north.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was the center for paganism.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: The Greek god Pan was worshipped there.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: Some theologians call it the red light district,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: the theological,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: the religious red light district,
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: because almost any religion that you wanted was there.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so Jesus takes his disciples to that place, to a place really outside of the story of Israel.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: they're surrounded by all of these pagan religions,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: all of these different ways of worshiping these gods that don't really exist.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it's in that setting that Jesus says, who do you say that I am?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: And of course it's Peter who says, well, you are the Christ, the son of God.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: Now to get a little bit more context, Caesarea Philippi is at the headwaters of the Jordan river.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: And just above the headwaters is a cave that,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: I've been there.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: People believed that that cave was the entrance to Hades.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: And Hades didn't mean hell, as in torture.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: Hades just meant the place of the dead.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was where all people went, the good and the bad.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: Some would go to eternal rest.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: Some would experience some punishment.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: But it was not the kind of horrific torture chamber of weeping and gnashing of
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: teeth that lasts for an eternity that we have placed on it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: So there is an element of punishment there, but not like the hell we're talking about.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's a place of the dead.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: And they're dead.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: So when Peter says,
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: you are the Christ,
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: the son of the Messiah,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: the son of the living God,
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus blesses him.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: And he says that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: And what he means by that is that death cannot defeat the message of the gospel.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: That death will not have the final word, but life will.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: So however you want to interpret the word Hades, Jesus is standing right in front of it,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: And he's saying that place behind my shoulder is not going to have the last word.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to interpret it as hell,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: if you want to interpret it as the place of the dead,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: that place is not going to have the final word.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: I will.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: So for people who want to use that Hades as a place of eternal punishment,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus kind of says,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: no,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: no,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: it's not,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: not going to happen.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Not on my watch.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let me, I'm trying to think.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: Go ahead.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this is a place to ask this because I know we're coming down in time.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: But in the, is it the Apostles' Creed?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I know.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: That says that he descended into hell?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: He descended into the place of the dead.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: So he descended into death itself and beat it up.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: And walked out.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then threw open the place of the dead so that it can't hold its captives anymore.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: Got it.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm going to wait on some of this.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: Let me summarize kind of what we've talked about because this is a lot of stuff, right, Terry?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's why we call it a deep dive.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: So let me summarize at this point.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then again, we're going to keep going at this for a few weeks.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: Hell as we understand it is not in the Bible.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: The word is not in the Bible.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: There are places where there's reference to punishment,
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: but we have to look at those separately and see what Jesus is talking about.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: But sticking with the topic of the word hell, it's not in the Bible.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: The Bible, as we saw last week, speaks about all being saved.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: And we just saw now the gates of hell, death cannot win.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: But hell, having said that, hell is a reality.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: Hell as in going through life that is so difficult, the only word that you can give it is hell.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: Hell isn't a place we're sent to.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: Hell is an experience that many, many people go through all the time.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: So you think about...
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Just these last several months,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: a year ago,
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: these Israelis who were,
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: many of them butchered,
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: kidnapped,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: those families are going through hell.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: You think of the Palestinians whose almost their whole place of living has been
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: destroyed because of that.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: They're living in hell.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: The Ukrainians who are being attacked by the Russians, they're living in hell.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: People living in starvation and poverty, they're living in hell.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: People whose bodies are riddled with cancer or sickness, they're living in hell.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: People who are overwhelmed with depression, anxiety, they're living in hell.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's hell.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: Auschwitz was hell.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so hell,
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: for the Bible,
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: even though it doesn't use the word,
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: will use the word,
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: hell would be that sense that God has abandoned me.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: And where is God in this moment?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's a sense of hopelessness.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: And the story of the gospel is that Jesus entered into that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: When Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus was in hell.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: He was in the hell that many,
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: many of us experience from time to time where we feel like God is a million miles
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: away and we're going through it and we need God now and God is gone.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: And Jesus went into that moment for us and came out on the other side to tell us
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: that God had not abandoned him after all.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so not only did he defeat that kind of hell by entering into it with us,
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: but he,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: as we said,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: defeated the powers of death,
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: the powers of sin,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really what the gospel story is about.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's not about a God who condemns us to hell.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's about a God who rescues us from it.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's the good news.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: And again, if we believe people are going to hell, then now suddenly the gospel is not good news anymore.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's bad news.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: Get your act together or you're going to hell.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: And that's just contrary to the character of God.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: Let me read a quote for you, a couple of quotes.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: We can marshal all the metaphysical arguments we want against hell and the pagan
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: ideas that germinated alongside Christianity.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we may be correct in our arguments, which is what I've just been arguing.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yet reality tells hell is still felt by many today.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: It is experienced.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: It is real.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: It is the place into which Christ goes.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: We've quoted Moltmann several times.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: Moltmann accentuates this activity when he writes, it is pointless to deny hell.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: It is a possibility that is constantly around us and within us.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: In this situation, the gospel about Christ's descent into hell is particularly relevant.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: Christ suffered the inescapable remoteness from God and the God forsakenness that
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: knows no way out so that he could bring God to the God forsaken.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't that interesting?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: He could bring God to the God forsaken.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus comes to seek that which is lost.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: Not to send people to hell.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: Seek that which is lost.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: So again, a really fast overview.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to come back to it next week.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: So let me, what do you got for me before we go?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure you've probably got several things on your mind.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I just, yeah, I do.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm grateful that we're going to be having more podcasts on this.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I think just to surmise for me as I'm trying to sift through everything,
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: because I was going back and forth in my mind that hell,
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: as we use the word,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: and I understand the history behind that,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: is that
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: a God-forsaken place, not literally, but place in our experience.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, call it an experience.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is absent of God, but God comes into it.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's the dichotomy that like you're, you know, my head's spinning a little bit.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so the God-forsakenness is the belief and feeling that God has abandoned us
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: And the cross says, but God hasn't.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: God hasn't abandoned you.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: God has entered into the suffering with you.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: You may not feel God's presence.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: You may not even believe that God could possibly be present with you and such horrific stuff.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: But the cross says, God is there.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: God has not abandoned you.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so the cross becomes the promise that we're not in hell alone.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: That Jesus is there with us.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: He's been there.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: God got him through.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: And God will do the same for us.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: But when you're going through it, it's hard.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where we have to understand that it's God who hangs on to us, not us hanging on to God.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because sometimes we just can't anymore.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where I know my heart rests.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: in wanting to share the gospel or share the love of Jesus,
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: because the now of hell that we've been talking about is what we would want anyone to,
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: to understand that God will enter into that with them,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: So like that, that changes the understanding of evangelism or, or, or, or whatever, you know what I mean?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it gives a hope, I think, or, or it puts a light on hope because it,
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: yes very good great word because we have turned the gospel into this bad news right
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: well it was never meant to be it was it's always and only good news period god does
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: not condemn you god does not judge you well or let's say this way god judges you
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: only with love and and god is love not partly love god is love and if god is love
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: God can't possibly send creation that God loves and died for into an eternity.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: And an eternity is a long, long time of anguish and pain.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: So that issue of how can a loving God send people to hell is what keeps a lot of
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: people outside of the Christian faith.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: The big argument against universalism is the one we'll look at next week.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: And what the hell do you mean that Hitler's going to heaven?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: So we'll talk about that next time.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: Terry, thank you.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Tim.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody listeners too.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we hope you're still listening.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: And if you are,
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: come back next time because we'll go a little deeper,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: share it with your friends and listen to it a few times if you need to,
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: because this is new stuff for a lot of us.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I've been wrestling with this stuff for several years now.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I still find myself really,
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: pushing up against that old stuff that I used to believe.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And before we say goodbye.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been wrestling?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: That was actually a question I was wanting to ask you today.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: Probably all of my theological life, 40 years.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: But where I'm in today is very, you know, probably the last 20 years in particular.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, that's all right.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: You can talk over our Morse code.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, everyone.