Raising Hell: Christianity's Most Controversial Doctrine Put Under Fire

by Julie Ferwerda

I was born asking questions—it’s part of my makeup. I’m especially one to ask questions when I come across things that don’t add up. And in recent years, I’ve noticed more and more things that don’t add up—things I’ve come across that challenge some of the core beliefs I’ve accepted and professed all my life.

why we must question the teaching of hell. The very name, character, and purposes of God are at stake! What if, by not questioning and not taking the time to get to the bottom of these matters, we are guilty of completely misrepresenting God’s character and intentions to the world? In my opinion, it’s not safe to NOT question.

Arminianism declares that God desires but is unable to save all people because He cannot infringe upon the “free will” of people, even that of uninformed, infinitely inferior, fatally wounded from birth, inherently self-destructive beings.

of all the multitudes of people He encountered, including well-trained, religious leaders and teachers of His day, Jesus had only a handful of simple, unscholarly followers who were willing to hear, follow, and even die for a different message than the orthodox teachings of His day.

Jesus died for ALL (1 Peter 3:18), and His Father’s unrelenting will that “none should perish” prevails in the end (2 Peter 3:9).

names. It is not the same as the New Age belief that there are “many ways to God,” or that living a life of sin is of no consequence. Universal Reconciliation is the belief that all people for all time will eventually be reconciled to God—that this lifetime is not the “only chance” to be saved—but that there is only one way to God, through Jesus Christ.

ingrained to believe over a lifetime: “God deeply loves every person He ever created, but in that love, He had to give them a choice to love and accept Him or to reject His free gift of salvation. God doesn’t send anyone to hell, people choose to go to hell by rejecting Him.”

Again, God doesn’t want them to go to hell—it’s their choice to go there because He won’t force anyone to accept Him.”

ourselves, and have suggested that we need a trained pastor or theologian to help us decipher what we are reading. But many of the errors and inconsistencies we’ve encountered are so elementary that even a third grader would be able to see them. Take Hebrews 1:2 for example.

(our modern Bibles evolved through five very different languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and English).

communicated from one generation to the next (for many centuries via oral tradition or hand copied), over four to five language changes, and hundreds, if not thousands, of scribes and translators, who were basically the only literates of entire societies (read: major lack of accountability). It’s not a stretch to imagine that “stuff happened.” As a result, the Bible we open today often reads very differently than it did 1,500 years ago.

even the Jews do not believe in the inerrancy of Scriptures, but teach that they are inspired writings in varying degrees, to be interpreted within the whole. Quoting from, The Seventy Faces of Torah: The Jewish Way of Reading the Sacred Scriptures,

Savior-of-all.com, asking me to read the article, “The Work of the Cross.”

If it was true that hell does not exist and the Bible doesn’t actually support the concept, there should be solid, overwhelming evidence.

If there is no hell, what did Jesus die for and exactly what then am I saved from? What about all the Scriptures that mention hell and eternal punishment?

Scriptures offer a much more sublime and glorious purpose to our future than the modern church acknowledges. The goal of this life, and ultimately the sacrifice of our Savior, is so much more profound than just living in preparation for an eternal vacation in the cosmos.

The disciples, His closest companions, were always complaining that the parables were hard (if not impossible) to understand and asking for explanations (Matt. 13:10; 13:36; 15:15; 16:5–12; Mark 4:13; 7:17–18).

teachers and religious leaders of His day, also hid truth from these wise and intelligent types. At that very time [Jesus] rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.” …Turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings [wise, important, and scholarly people] wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them [because they were hidden from them]” (Luke 10:21–24).

I’ve read statistics that only two percent of American church budgets go to overseas missions and humanitarian aid, while more than thirty percent or more go to building projects.[3]

Did you know that if Evangelical America put just their church building funds toward feeding the poor that they could drastically reduce, if not eradicate, world hunger?

How can a person exercise his or her “free will” to believe in a God and Savior of whom they have never heard? Don’t those who do know about Jesus and who believe in hell possess a grave responsibility to make sure everyone is offered an informed choice about their eternal destiny?

why are they not out 24/7, sharing the love of Jesus with the lost multitudes…or at least trying out a few parables on them?

If they really believe that hell is real, why are they not expending every penny and every spare minute they have to snatch as many people as possible from “the lake of fire” before it’s too late?

how many people over the course of our lives have we been responsible for sending to a never-ending BBQ, just because we were too lazy, or too scared, or too preoccupied to help them find their way? Why does the thought of hell not deeply affect most of us, changing the way we live our everyday lives? Sure, it’s up to God to convict and transform a person’s heart, but isn’t it up to those who are convinced hell is real to plant the seeds and spread awareness?

Perhaps if hell is true the angel should have said, “I bring you good news of great joy for only the people who receive it and believe it.”

the learned men of Athens, who were non-believing, idol-worshiping, pagan Greeks:

First of all, if you have to use the fear of hell to get people into the Kingdom, then what does that say about your gospel? What does it say about your God? If hell is the most powerful motivating factor for getting people saved, then they are only being manipulated into something out of fear and coercion, not out of love and desire.

all! This is the very kind of “faith” Jesus criticized when He quoted Isaiah, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Matt. 15:8).

If God is love, and if there is no fear in love, how has the primary doctrine of the most widespread religion on our planet become all about fear? How could such a fearful place as hell truly exist?

in the beginning is where He should lay it all out, not waiting until the middle or the end. So what does God say? The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you

shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:16–17). Nowhere in this passage does it say they will “die forever,” or they will go to a place of eternal suffering. It just says they will die, as in stop breathing, or kick

Sheol is the concept people devised in ancient times to imagine and describe the afterlife experience that they had no knowledge about. In ancient cultures, such as Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek, you see numerous mythologies and imaginations about this afterlife, each culture influencing and building upon later thought.

Gehenna (or Gehinnom) is a literal valley near Jerusalem.

Israel. In this valley, some Israelite parents sacrificed their children in real fire to their false god Molech (Hebrew: “king”), an act that God referred to as “evil, detestable, and an abomination” (Jeremiah 7:30–31).

the Promised Land in the OT has been assumed by Christianity to symbolize a future place of eternal rewards or eternal life (which it does not,

Originally, Judaism described life after death as a bleak underworld named Sheol, which was known as the common pit or grave of humanity. However, with the influence of Persian thought and the passing of time, the notion of ‘hell’ crept into Jewish tradition and became associated with the biblical word Gehinnom or Gei Hinnom, the valley of Hinnom

it was the Pharisees who best weathered Roman occupation, and their belief in Zoroaster’s heaven and hell was passed on to both Christianity and Islam.

“Gehenna” is sometimes translated as “hell,” but the Christian view of hell differs from the Jewish view of Gehenna.[5]

Gehenna, He wasn’t warning them of eternal hell. I believe He warned them of the impending real world consequences for their nation’s blatant transgressions of the timeless teachings of the Torah, which all involved acts of injustice (i.e. ignoring the needs of the poor and violent takeover of land).

Some people call it “karma.”

For the moment, let’s entertain the idea that Jesus was referring to hell as we know it—some kind of never-ending conscious torment after death. Most Jews of that day would have been completely perplexed since there had been no warnings of such a place in the Torah and the Prophets.

both JewFaq.org and MyJewishLearning.com,

Some views see Gehinnom (Gehenna) as one of severe punishment, a bit like the Christian hell of fire and brimstone. Other sources merely see it as a time when we can see the actions of our lives objectively, see the harm that we have done and the opportunities we missed, and experience remorse for

our actions. The period of time in Gehinnom does not exceed 12 months, and then [a person] ascends to take his place in Olam Ha-Ba [afterlife].[6]

that if hell is real, and God really doesn’t want anyone to go there, He would have taken great pains to explain it in repetitive detail through Moses and the prophets.

Jewish teachings on the subject of afterlife are sparse: The Torah, the most important Jewish text, has no clear reference to afterlife at all.[10]

In 1 Cor. 3:11–15, Paul does teach that our works will be tested with fire, and he certainly mentions a corrective process for sin, but he never claims anybody is going to burn forever.

What’s particularly ironic is that the modern Evangelical Church tries hard to distance itself from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, yet much of today’s orthodox theology comes directly out of the councils, doctrines, and creeds established by the early Roman Catholic and Latin Church.

the six part series, “God in America,” available on Netflix.

it’s time for us churchgoers to rethink the myth of orthodoxy, particularly when so firmly imposed on us as having “always been this way.”