Who has gone to Hell/Hades or the Lake of Fire?

[Hobie]

There is a place for the wicked of perdition, but it hasnt happened yet, but it will. We see many passages in scripture on the Lake of Fire and who is going to be cast there.
Revelation 19:20
And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

Revelation 20:15
And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

So what is this lake of fire that the Bible speaks of, is it what Christian call 'Hell'? Well Christ gives us some clues when He said 'As in the Days of Lot', we find it in Luke 17:28.
Luke 17:28
Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;

It was just another day, and was starting as usual, and folks were waking up and eating their morning meal and having their morning beverage and doing everything they did every other morning, it looked like another great day and then suddenly everything changed. We see it in the next part of the text:
Luke 17:29-30
29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.

So what did Jesus mean by this. Well lets look what was happening 'in the days of Lot'.
10 And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar.
11 Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.
12 Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.
13 But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.

Lot had picked out a place to settle in and it looks like a good choice with good sources of refreshing water and nice vegetation all around, but there was a problem. The people there it says 'were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.' and as a result of that, after years of patience God sent two angels to Sodom and we know how they were treated by the people of Sodom. The angels went to Lot's home. Abraham meanwhile, was certainly praying for Lot who was his nephew because God had clued him in that Sodom was doomed. And the angels told Lot to basically, get out of town, and escape for your life, and dont look behind you, escape to the mountains lest you be," what? The angels say to get out lest you be 'consumed', lest you be burnt up. We see it in Genisis

12 And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place:
13 For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it.
14 And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law.
15 And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.

You see Lot went to his family, his daughters and sons in law and said, God's told me this place is doomed get out of town now. But they mocked him like he was a religious fanatic. Can that happen again? Well finally the angels said, we can't wait any longer, escape for your life, lest you be 'consumed in the iniquity of the city.' And the Bible says he got out of town and the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. It rained down and it destroyed the city in basically a lake of fire, not the one that will be at the end, but Christ was giving a very true picture of what will happen at the end.

So what does the Bible teach about this lake of fire, which is what the bible calls, 'Hell' for sinners and those not in the book of Life. Is the devil in charge of hell? The Bible gives us solemn warnings about a day of destruction coming. Jesus speaks also of Noah's day with the same warning He gives about Lot and his family in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Matthew 24:36-39
36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
37 But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

There is a reward of the wicked, the punishment, that will eternally destroy them and all evil. The wages of sin is not eternal torment, but a complete separation from God, death in the lake of fire, This is the Second Death, the final place for the wicked and sinners before the Lord where they will perish, which is the hell/hades we are shown by scripture.

Revelation 21:8
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

[dpr]

The word "hell" in The New Testament has 3 different meanings, and we have to distinguish them because the translators often did not.

The "hell" Jesus used for where the "rich man" was taken after he died, per Luke 16, is Greek haides, the abode of the wicked across a great fixed gulf in Paradise.

In Luke 12:5, the word "hell" is from the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, about the Valley of Hinnom, a perpetual burning garbage pit outside the walls of Jerusalem. That is what Jesus used to refer to the perishing in the "lake of fire".

In 2 Peter 2:4, the word "hell" is Greek tartaroo, put for the deepest part of the abyss, the pit of hell, where the angels that sinned are assigned to in chains awaiting the day of God's final Judgment. One could say it represents solitaire confinement in Satan's pit prison in the heavenly.

[Hobie]

The word "hell" in The New Testament has 3 different meanings, and we have to distinguish them because the translators often did not.

The "hell" Jesus used for where the "rich man" was taken after he died, per Luke 16, is Greek haides, the abode of the wicked across a great fixed gulf in Paradise.

In Luke 12:5, the word "hell" is from the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, about the Valley of Hinnom, a perpetual burning garbage pit outside the walls of Jerusalem. That is what Jesus used to refer to the perishing in the "lake of fire".

In 2 Peter 2:4, the word "hell" is Greek tartaroo, put for the deepest part of the abyss, the pit of hell, where the angels that sinned are assigned to in chains awaiting the day of God's final Judgment. One could say it represents solitaire confinement in Satan's pit prison in the heavenly.

Well, lets look closer as the words were clear but got muddled up in the Greek. We see what the Bible says happens for both the good and the bad after death. And where the saints will go into the heavenly kingdom, and the ultimate destruction of the wicked in the Lake of Fire in a consuming fire, but which because of the Greek words used in translating from the Hebrew text has become confused with Greek myths. The scriptural teaching that the dead go to the grave and turn to dust and know nothing. And at the end, a eternal oblivion of the wicked happens, and a eternal life for the saints.

The Greeks had come up with myths that all the dead dwell below the earth in the realm of Hades and Persephon, good and bad alike, leading a shadowy and cheerless existence. The Greek god Hades was the king of the underworld, a place where souls live after death. The Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, would take the dead soul of a person to the underworld (sometimes called Hades or the House of Hades). Hermes would leave the soul on the banks of the River Styx, the river between life and death. Charon, also known as the ferry-man, would take the soul across the river to Hades, if the soul had gold: Upon burial, the family of the dead soul would put coins under the deceased's tongue. Once crossed, the soul would be judged by Aeacus, Rhadamanthus and King Minos. The soul would be sent to Elysium, Tartarus, Asphodel Fields, or the Fields of Punishment.

From the sixth century BC onwards the Greeks developed pagan ideas for the dead, and of reincarnation and even transmigration of souls. These ideas are particularly associated with the pagan Greek Religious Mysteries or Eleusinian mysteries , where initiation in this life into its 'mysteries' are the prerequisites for getting to paradise in the next life. So you see where the Greek words used came loaded with ideas not in line with the original Hebrew, but since at the time, Greek was used as basically English is used today to communicate between people across the world, it was translated into these Greek words, and we have to go back to what the original Hebrew scribes words they wrote to understand their meaning.

So lets first look at the translation of the words closely to see their original meaning:

· Hades was the Greek work used in some places for the Hebrew term, Sheol or grave as "the place of the dead". Thus, it is used in reference to both the righteous and the wicked, since both wind up there eventually.
· Gehenna refers to the "Valley of Hinnon", which was a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. It was a place where people burned their garbage and thus there was always a fire burning there. Bodies of those deemed to have died in sin without hope of salvation were thrown there to be destroyed. Gehenna is used in the New Testament as a metaphor for the final place of punishment for the wicked after the resurrection.
· Tartaro (the verb "throw to Tartarus") occurs only once in the New Testament in 2 Peter 2:4, and basically means the abyss or oblivion.
· The Hebrew word Abaddon, meaning to perish or "destruction", is sometimes used and basically means the same as the abyss or oblivion.

In most translations they often translate Gehenna as "Hell" which was the Greek closest to the meaning. Young's Literal Translation is a notable exception, simply using "Gehenna".

As you can see, Hades is the Greek word used for the Hebrew word Sheol in Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible. While earlier translations most often translated Hades as "hell", as does the King James Version, modern translations use the transliteration "Hades", or render the word as allusions "to the grave", "among the dead", "place of the dead" and many other like statements in other verses. In Latin, Hades began to incorrectly be translated as Purgatorium (Purgatory in English use) after about 1200 A.D., but no modern English translations put Hades as Purgatory. In the King James Bible, the Old Testament term Sheol is translated as "Hell" 31 times. However, Sheol was translated as "the grave" 31 other times.[54] Sheol is also translated as "the pit" three times. Modern translations, however, no longer translate Sheol as "Hell" at all, instead rendering it "the grave," "the pit," or "death."

In the Hebrew text it teaches that when people die they go to Sheol, the grave, we also have the word Gehenna which is the consuming by fire of the wicked. Which when the grave or the eternal oblivion of the wicked was translated into Greek, the word Hades was sometimes used, which is a term for the realm of the dead. Nevertheless the meaning depending on context was the grave, death, or the end of the wicked in which they are ultimately destroyed in the specific way in which scripture shows at the end, which is a consuming fire which destroys them for eternity at the lake of fire.

So we see where it meant the grave or pointed to the death or eventual destruction of the wicked, which was translated using Greek words that since they had no exact ones to use, became a mix of mistranslation, pagan influence, and Greek myth associated with the word, but its original meaning was simple death or the destruction of the wicked at the end. 'Hades' was simply the word closest in meaning to the Hebrew 'Sheol'. The new versions now leave the word 'Sheol' untranslated, which is better than the Greek words used which cause confusion if the necessary basic Hebrew to Greek word translation used at the time is not understood.