Immortality or Resurrection by William West (philippa perry book txt) 📕

is beyond belief that there would not be many clear and unmistakable warning about Hell if there were such a place. There are many clear and unmistakable warning that the wages of sin is death, but not a one about Hell or an eternal life of torment.
HOW HELL WAS PUT INTO THE BIBLE
AND IS BEING KEPT IN THE BIBLE
"Jesus said it [Hell] was a place where 'the fire...never shall be quenched...Hell is further described as a place where" Whitlock, Seibles Road Church of Christ bulletin, August 9, 1998.
Christ did not say anything about Hell, but was using Gehenna as a metaphor of destruction; but Whitlock uses Hell and in the same sentence he quotes only a part of a sentence used by Christ, adds to it, and makes it all one sentence. In doing so he has put the word Hell into the mouth of Christ, but he must deny that this is a metaphor. [1] He changes one proper noun into another proper noun, but does not tell us from where he got the proper noun "Hell." [2] He makes Christ say something He did not say. [3] He says, "Hell is further described as a place where," but he did not say where it is described as a place. Hell is not described as a place or is not described in any other way in the Bible. This is the very way the words of Christ were first misused by some of the so called church fathers in about the third century and after, long before it was mistranslated into any Bible translation. Unto after the end of the second century only a few of the "church fathers" taught that men have an immaterial, invisible part of a person that is immortal and it was not unto later that Hell came into being. The half converted "church fathers," looking for a way to put their philosophy into Christianity, used the words of Christ in the same way Whitlock did. The church fathers had to have a place to put their immortal soul, which came from their Greek philosophy. Very often statements like the one John Benton made, that the same word aionios, (eternal) is used to describe both Heaven and Hell. "How Can a God of Love Send People to Hell?" Page 44, 1985. Dr. Bert Thompson said both Heaven and Hell are described with the exact same terminology in the Bible. Reason and Revelation, July 2000. The sad thing is that many will believe such a statements without question. The truth is that aionios, (eternal) is not used in any passage with sheol, hades or Gehenna, not in any passage that any of the three words that are translated Hell in the King James Version. Dr. Thompson did not give one passage where Hell is described with the same terminology as Heaven. There is not one.
Summary: In Pagan and Greek philosophy [Plato, Socrates and others], souls went to a place underground to "a cold and shadowy subterranean realm" unto they could be reincarnated. They believed in the soul being immortal and would be reincarnated, but they did not believe in Hell, a place of everlasting torment before or after the judgment was unknown to them; and they had no word for it. The doctrine of Hell, as is believed today, became fully developed in the medieval Dark Age. Tyndale and many others in the Protestant reformation fought the Catholic Church teaching that most go to Purgatory to be purified on their way to Heaven, but "Hell" was accepted without Purgatory by most Protestant churches. It was preached in all its terror by the Jonathan Edwards type of Hell fire preacher and many Gospel preachers a few years back, with Satan tormenting the lost from the time of their death. Today it is almost never preached or written about by Gospel preachers; but when it is, it is almost always toned down from the Jonathan Edwards type of Hell fire preaching; and it is now God, not Satan, who will be doing the tormenting.
ANOTHER CHANGE: In the same way the King James Version changed Gehenna into Hell, it also changed the proper noun "Passover (Pasha in Greek)" into "Easter." "Pasha" is in the New Testament twenty-nine times. Twenty-eight times the King James Version translates it Passover. Only one time [Acts 12:4] is it translated Easter, which according to Webster’s New World Dictionary came from “Eastre” which is the Anglos Saxon goddess of the dawn. There is no way the King James translators could not have known Pasha is not Easter; this is another deliberate change where a Proper Noun was changed into another Proper Noun, which they know had a completely different meaning. Most other translations have corrected this change.
IF GEHENNA IS A METAPHOR, WHAT IS IT A METAPHOR OF? Present day preachers make it be a metaphor of a place unknown unto long after the last page of the Bible was written. BUT (after they change it's name) THEY CONTINUOUSLY USE IT AS IF IT IS A REAL PLACE, NOT AS A METAPHOR.
CAN ONE METAPHOR HAVE SEVERAL OTHER METAPHORS THAT ARE METAPHORS OF IT? After saying Gehenna was a valley that was used as a place of refuse where fires were always needed to consume, Hamilton said Jesus took the term and applied it to the place of eternal torment. C. Hamilton in Truth Commentaries, 1 Peter, Page 385. This is a typical example of how even well-educated men who know how Christ used Gehenna, but they are compelled to use the mistranslation of the King James Version to prove their belief. Then he said Hell is represented by several metaphors. He said Gehenna is a metaphor, and then he said this metaphor (Gehenna) is represented by several metaphors. He has one metaphor that has several other metaphors that are metaphors of it. Then on the same page he said, Gehenna, Hell, means the place of punishment in the next life. First, he says Gehenna, a valley used for the destruction of the unwanted city garbage, is a metaphor of Hell, and then on the same page said Gehenna is Hell! Which one does he think Gehenna is, a metaphor, or a real place? It comes down to what is the real thing, and what is the metaphor. He said all three, that Gehenna, the lake of fire, and the second death, are all metaphors. Then how could any of them be hell if all three are metaphors? How could he say Hell-Gehenna is a real place when he has just said it is a metaphor? His problem is that he knew Gehenna was the city dump (a real place), but needed to make it into another real place, namely Hell. He has the both the lake of fire and the second death being a metaphor of Gehenna-Jerusalem's trash dump. He said Hell is called the second death, and the lake of fire on page 385; but he did not give one verse where either one is called Hell. He did not for there is not one. This is one of the biggest adding to the word of God that can be found anywhere by anyone. When was Gehenna changed into Hell? When was one place changed into another place? When did a place of destruction of unwanted trash become a place of eternal torment and damnation? The second death is not a metaphor of anything. If the second death is only a metaphor then the first death would also have to be only a metaphor; or there would not be the first and the second, but two different and unlike things. The second death is a real death, just as real as is the first death. He changed Gehenna into Hell and used it over and over as if it were a Bible name for a real place (but not the name of the city dump). He has done what many do, He has taken the name of a particular place [the city dump] and made it into another particular place, which does not exist in the Bible; and then made the second death into a metaphor of the place he has made. He has taken a thing [death-the second death] and then made this thing into a place and calls this place he had made out of death "Hell."
How could he know Gehenna is a metaphor of Hell? If it is, then he would have to know about Hell from some other place, for he could never know Gehenna was a metaphor of a place called Hell if the Bible said nothing about that place. We would never be able to understand a metaphor if it were about somewhere far out in space which we know nothing about if we are not told by revelation that there is such a place. This is just what he is doing if he does not know there is a Hell from another part of the Bible. From where did he learn of Hell? From where did he learn it name? Maybe from the very badly mistranslated King James Version, and the theology he has heard all his life, but not from any revelation from God for there is not a word in the Bible that has the meaning of today's English word hell. He says in one breath that Gehenna is a metaphor of Hell and in the next breath it is not a metaphor, but that it is Hell. He and most others that believe in Hell say Gehenna is a metaphor of Hell. But if Gehenna, the city dump, is a metaphor of Hell why is this metaphor of Hell translated into Hell? If it is a metaphor of Hell, in what passage is "Hell" to be found? Without changing Gehenna into Hell, there is nowhere that Hell can be found in the Bible. They seem to be between a rock and a hard place. They know Gehenna is a metaphor, but if it is a metaphor then they have no place to get the name of Hell; yet, they tell us it is a metaphor and then tell us it is not a metaphor but that they know it is an actual real place of eternal torment even if they cannot tell us what passage they know this from.
Here is a strange statement for one who believes Hell is found in revelation from God. Hamilton quotes Henry Thayer who said, "Gehenna, the name of a valley on the S. and E. of Jerusalem...which was so called from the cries of little children who were thrown into the fiery arms of Moloch...an idol having the form of a bull. The Jews so abhorred the place after these horrible sacrifices had been abolished by King Josiah...that they cast into it not only all manner or refuse, but even the dead bodies of animals and of unburied criminals who had been executed. And since fires were always needed to consume the dead bodies, that the air might not become tainted by the putrefaction, it came to pass that the place was called Gehenna tou puros" A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament, Page 111. THAYER SAID GEHENNA IS A VALLEY THAT IS NEAR JERUSALEM; IF IT IS A VALLEY ON THIS EARTH, IT COULD NOT BE HELL THAT IS NOT ON THIS EARTH.
Hamilton said the concept of hell is derived from a valley south and east of Jerusalem. Truth Commentaries, 1 Peter, Page 385. Who does he think had this "concept," man or God? Is he saying God or man had this concept from the misuses of a valley on this earth? When was this "concept"? A big part of the Old