Isaiah 25:8, The Death of Hell part II of II
He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces;
//Yesterday, I pointed out the verse in Revelation that tells how hell would be destroyed. It turns out that God isn’t destroying hell at all, but Sheol, a dark, shadowy netherworld where the Jews believed the souls of all men descended after death. At first it was imagined that these souls would gradually fade away and disappear, but in time, the Jews came to believe in bodily resurrection, and imagined Sheol to be only a holding place until its residents were brought again to life.
But what’s this about Sheol being destroyed? Today’s verse shows that the destruction of “death” was long believed to be part of God’s glorious plan. Paul jumps on the bandwagon as well:
1 Corinthians 15:26, The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
Many seem to read these verses as a sort of creative way of promising that there will be no more death in the age to come. Indeed, Revelation makes that promise, but accomplishes it by literally destroying the abode of the dead! It reads quite plainly: Death and Sheol are literally destroyed in a lake of fire.
A number of other Jewish writings continue this theme, if you want to study further: 4 Ezra 8:53, The Apocalypse of Baruch 2:23, and the Testament of Levi 18.
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Twice before Lee Harmon has written about Christian topics, once on the gospel of John and once on the book of Revelation. But the question people keep asking him is this: As a liberal Christian, why do you care so much about the Bible? Others wonder whether he is truly a Christian at all.
The Way It Happened
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| Revelation: A love story gone awry. | The Gospel: A love story set aright. |
What really happened 2,000 years ago? How did a persecuted minority of end-time believers known as Christians, with their dreams of Armageddon and a conquering Messiah named Jesus, evolve into the largest religion in the world? Author Lee Harmon explores the period in which the New Testament was written in his books about John's Gospel and Revelation.
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Lee Harmon interviewed on The God Show about the History Channel's miniseries The Bible and Lee's latest book, John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.
About Lee
Hello! I'm an author, historical Jesus scholar, book reviewer, and liberal Christian, which means I appreciate and attempt to exercise the humanitarian teachings of Jesus without getting hung up on any particular supernatural or religious beliefs.
The Bible is a magnificent book that has inspired and spiritually fed generations for thousands of years, and each new century seems to bring a deeper understanding of life’s purpose. This is true of not only Christianity; through the years, our age-old religions are slowly transforming from superstitious rituals into humanitarian philosophies. In short, we are growing up, and I am thrilled to be riding the wave.
I avidly read all thought-provoking religion titles. New authors: I'd love to read and review your book!
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Hi! While Lee writes the articles and reviews the books, I edit, organize, and maintain the blog. The views expressed here are Lee's but I'm his biggest supporter! :-)
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If the NT isn’t talking about hell when it talks about Sheol, then when is it talking about hell? When it talks about Hades? If so, why? Shouldn’t a Jewish concept of the underworld be more appropriate than a Greek one? Or would you claim that hell as we understand it is not actually a NT concept at all, but developed later?
Truth be told, the word used in Revelation is not Sheol but Hades. My research paints Hades very much like Sheol, or at least very little like today’s concept of a place of eternal torment.
It may have been about the time of Jesus that some Jews began to think seriously about a threat of eternal punishment. For example, some like Greek thought imagined that very evil people would be punished in the afterlife. The Essenes shared this view. We have a tendency to try to choose a single path for the N.T., as if all writers agreed on the concept of eternal punishment; I think we do an injustice to the N.T. this way. Revelation’s eternal punishment appears just for the very evil (the beast, false prophet, and Satan) but I’m not sure about Matthew, and it’s Luke who tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man, so…
I guess I never answered your question. “As we understand it,” Hell definitely developed later.