- What is hell?
- In mythology
- In the Christian religion
- Representation in Buddhism
- Representation in Taoism
- According to Mormons
- According to Jehovah's Witnesses
- According to Muslims. Hell in Islam Koran about hell
Hell is a place where sinners receive their well-deserved punishment after death, and this punishment involves suffering and torment, and hell itself is described as a terrible, terrible place, and is opposed to the concept of “Paradise”. The concept of “hell” in Russian has a synonym “underworld”.
This term is used by almost all religions and mythologies, including the Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism. The concept originated from the ancient word “Hades,” with the help of which the Hebrew word “Sheol” was conveyed in the Septuagint, and after that the word passed into the New Testament with a slightly rethought meaning.
In mythology
In ancient mythology, this concept is compared with such concepts as:
— Hades or the kingdom of the dead. Hades was also the name given to the god of this kingdom, who was the eldest son of Kronos and Rhea, and the brother of Zeus.
— Amentes or Amenti, the underworld, as the ancient Egyptians called it and where, according to their ideas, the soul went after death,
- Tartarus or the abyss that exists under the kingdom of Hades.
In German-Scandinavian mythology, this concept is compared with such concepts as:
— Helheim or the world of the dead, where the giantess Hel rules, it is also called Helgard
- Gjöll or the river that flows past the gate to the underworld.
If God did not create Gehenna, does it not exist?
Some people will think: well, if God did not create Sheol, then it does not exist?
No, this is a fallacy.
Hell is actually more real than we think. And for each individual person it begins where sin appears.
If we do not repent and sin consciously, then we deliberately separate ourselves from God. Consequently, such a person does not want to be with God, the source of life. That is, the sinner predicts himself to be isolated. By doing this, he, figuratively speaking, lays the foundation for his own Sheol.
In the Christian religion
Ideas and understanding of the existence of hell within Christianity itself vary greatly.
Hell in the Christian religion is mentioned in the New Testament, where it is given the definition of a possible afterlife place where sinners are tormented as punishment. According to the description, hell is a place filled with flames. The New Testament also speaks of the gates of hell.
Catholicism has historically divided hell into two concepts - hell and limbo. Limbo is intended for certain categories of people, including unbaptized infants and virtuous ancient saints, but the modern Catholic Church rejects this idea.
The Orthodox Church compares the concept of hell with such concepts as eternal torment, tartarus, and fiery Gehenna. In Orthodoxy, hell is a place where sinners go after the end of the world and remain there forever. This is stated in the words of God: “.. into Gehenna, into unquenchable fire ...”, “... and these will go away into eternal torment, but the righteous into eternal life ...”.
According to the teachings of the Orthodox Church, before the Last Judgment occurs, only the souls of sinners and demons will exist and experience torment in hell, but after the Last Judgment occurs, the material bodies of sinful people will be resurrected and will also experience terrible torment.
From the point of view of Origen in his doctrine of apocatharsis, which Emperor Justinian demanded from the Fifth Ecumenical Council to condemn, Christ will remain on his cross until then, and Golgotha will continue as long as at least one creature remains in Hell.
Nikolai Berdyaev believes that Origen's idea clashes with his own point of view, since, in his opinion, hell and its existence is a temporary concept, not an eternal one, and in its essence it exists as a purgatory, acquiring more pedagogical meaning. He considers Hell to be more of a subjective realm where the soul is plunged into its own darkness as a result of a person's sinful existence, but not a punishment for sins.
From the point of view of representatives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church , sinners who did not repent before death will be resurrected after death in order for them to be convicted. After this, fire will descend from heaven, Satan will appear accompanied by his minions, and all unrepentant sinners will be destroyed forever.
There is also another point of view, which is also shared by Alexey Osipov , according to which it is still a mystery for humanity what the otherworldly fate of a person is, and definitely humanity has not been told about what exists after death.
Is there a hell with demons and fire - no, Dante invented such a hell
What about hot frying pans and demons with tridents? The very image of the flame arose on the basis of fiery Gehenna (that same lake of fire). This is not hell, but a place where, according to the Bible, sinners from hell are yet to go.
“Both death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.”
(Rev. 20:14)
The hell in the illustration for Dante's Divine Comedy has nothing in common with the Christian idea of hell. Photo: eksmo.ru
The fiery hell is shown in Islam. Who came up with hell and fire for Christians? It was the poet Dante. He greatly distorted the idea of hell and the devil in The Divine Comedy.
Unfortunately, it is his fantasies that are known to a wide audience today. All that is in Dante's hell are fragments of Greek myths that have nothing to do with Christianity.
Representation in Taoism
Chinese tradition views the idea of hell differently than mainstream tradition. The Taoist understanding of the concept of hell does not provide ethical interpretations, as does Christianity or Buddhism. The Chinese tradition calls hell “huang quan,” which translated into Russian means “yellow springs” or can be translated as “the abode of darkness.”
Chinese tradition says that a person consists of many souls. And some of these souls, after the death of a person, go to Heaven, which is associated in the Chinese tradition with Paradise, and some of these souls end up after death at the yellow springs.
From rough souls after their death, the spirit Gui was formed, which is located at the yellow springs, where it drags out a ghostly shadow-like existence. Yellow springs are compared to a place that looks like ancient Hades - here souls drag out a joyless existence, there is no light and no liveliness. Chinese mythology contains stories of journeys to yellow springs, but travelers put themselves in danger by going there. The Yellow Springs consist of nine worlds, and the lowest world is ruled by Tu-bo, who is a horned deity. Each of the nine worlds has its own yellow source.
Eternal memory as eternal life
In Russian science fiction, one of the most interesting, complex and unique “afterlives” is described in Svyatoslav Loginov’s novel “The Light in the Window.”
In his version, there is no reward beyond the line, but simply another world, more reminiscent of purgatory than hell or heaven. And what matters in it is not how sinful or righteous you were, but how long you are remembered. Every time someone alive remembers someone who has died, this memory turns into a coin, the only currency in the land of the dead. Those who are remembered a lot and often live happily even after death. And those who remain only in the memory of two or three close relatives quickly fade away. This is a deliberately materialistic concept. In it, it is the memory of the living that is the measure of the meaning and value of human life. We don’t know anything about people who lived in the past, it’s as if they no longer exist, and those few who are still remembered, in a sense, continue to live. Morality is taken out of the equation, the tyrant-conqueror and the writer - the ruler of minds - find themselves in an equal situation. It's unfair, but unfortunately very plausible.
The phrase “a person is alive while he is remembered” takes on flesh in this concept of “after death”. And after reading the book you inevitably wonder how many will remember you after death?
According to Mormons
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has different meanings for this term.
Hell is a spiritual prison, a place that is located in the spiritual after-earth world, and this place is prepared for those who did not repent of their sins before death or did not believe. Hell in this meaning exists as a temporary place or state in which sinners are in order to study the Gospel, to repent, and then accept the sacraments of salvation that are performed for them in the temple. After these souls accept the Gospels, they go to Paradise, where they remain until the Resurrection, after which they will be given the degree of glory that they deserve. If the souls do not repent, but they are not counted among the sons of perdition, then they are left in spiritual prison until the end of the Millennium, and after that they will be released from Hell, punished, and then resurrected to telestial glory.
Clinical death survivors talk about heaven and hell, but their testimonies cannot be trusted
For many Christians, stories about hell and heaven are a kind of find, an opportunity to prove that their religion most accurately describes our world, in particular its afterlife.
But this is the wrong approach. Firstly, Christianity does not need anyone to prove its correctness. This has long been the most popular religion, which is not threatened. Almost every person on earth is familiar with it and, if desired, can study it in more detail.
The wild days of religious wars are over.
And miracles are now sought only by show-offers, who have no other way to strengthen their faith. Whether someone has seen hell, this does not change anything in Orthodoxy. It feels confident without dubious evidence.
Secondly, all kinds of “evidence” only distort people’s Christian ideas about the afterlife. Here, for example, says a certain “eyewitness” of the afterlife, Boris Pilipchuk:
“Behind the fiery gates I saw a cube shining with gold. He was huge."
One of the most popular images that people see at the moment of clinical death is a tunnel.
Photo: salik.biz How will such a story help Orthodoxy? The image clearly refers to the Hellraiser film series, or more precisely to the second part of the series, but not to the Holy Scriptures.
According to Jehovah's Witnesses
The views of Jehovah's Witnesses are based on the words given in the Bible: “... in the grave where you go there is no work, no reflection, no knowledge, no wisdom .” In their view, this is a common grave for humanity, a place where the dead are temporarily stored, and it exists only until the resurrection of the dead occurs after the End of the World, that is, as long as the very concept of death exists.
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that death is a sleep, based on the words of Jesus Christ when he said: “Our friend Lazarus fell asleep; but I’m going to wake him up...”
Those who have seen hell describe it differently
And here is the evidence given by afterlife researcher Raymond Moody:
“When the demons continued to torment me, I tried to get rid of them, tried to crawl out of this cell of mine.
I looked in one direction, but there was impenetrable darkness, and I heard millions of human screams there.
It was very loud screams. And I also had this knowledge that there were a lot of prison cells like mine and there were, as it were, pits in a burning fire.”
Raymond Moody
psychologist
This is clearly not the hell the Bible talks about. This is hell, which came from the works of Dante. After such “evidence,” don’t skeptical people have reason to look down on religious people?
According to Muslims. Hell in Islam
Islam represents hell as a place where dead unbelievers and sinners reside, whom Allah Almighty has not forgiven, relying as sources on the words of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and on the texts of the Holy Book of the Koran.
In Islamic texts you can find other names for Hell: “ jahim ”, which means “fire”, “ lyaza ” or “burning fire”, “ sa’ir ” or “scorching fire”, “ saqar ” or “underworld”, " hutama " or "crushing", " hawiyah " or "abyss", "abyss".
Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said that both Paradise and Hell have already been created by the Almighty, but only after the Last Judgment (Judgment Day) will people enter them.
The Islamic religion believes that Hell already exists in reality, and hell will always exist . There is no end to its existence, and those who are in it will remain there forever, and its torments and horrors will forever happen to them.
According to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ: “ When one of you dies, he will be shown his place every morning and every evening... If he is from the inhabitants of Hell, he will see his place in Hell .”
Hell appears to Muslims as an afterlife where fiery torment awaits sinners, but hellish fire is many times more painful than earthly fire, where they will be presented with drinks made from pus and boiling water, where they will have to eat the fruits of the hellish thorny tree of Zakkum. Unbelievers will remain in Hell forever, and Muslim sinners can be freed from the flames of Hell after some time , and only Allah knows after what time, and after that they will also enter Paradise.
Regarding the fate of the sinners and whether they will exist there forever or whether they will have a way to leave Hell, it is mentioned in the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, narrated by al-Bukhari in his collection of Hadith Sahih, where it is said that the Almighty Lord can deliver some of the inhabitants of the Hell from torment if they have faith in their heart. This hadith implies that the inhabitants of the Hell will be divided into two categories of people:
- - monotheists who committed bad deeds along with the righteous, and the Almighty will send them to Hell so that for some time they exist there and accept punishment for their deeds.
- unbelievers and hypocrites who existed in unbelief and died without accepting the One Lord, and such people will be sent by the Almighty to Hell forever.
Aztec hell
Several hundred idol images of Mictlantecuhtli have survived to this day.
Among the Aztecs, class divisions even extended into the afterlife. The place of posthumous appointment was determined not so much by a person’s personal qualities as by his social position. Depending on who the deceased was during his lifetime - a priest or a simple farmer - his soul, subject to righteousness, went to one of three types of heaven. Ordinary people found themselves in the Tlalocan circle of paradise, as close as possible to earthly life, but an enlightened priest could have the honor of going to truly cosmic heights, to the ethereal country of Tlillan-Tlapallan or to the house of the Sun Tonatiuhican. Hell in the Aztec tradition was called Mictlan. He was led by the cruel and evil (like almost all other Aztec gods) god Mictlantecuhtli. Sinners, regardless of position, had to go through nine circles of hell in order to achieve enlightenment and be reborn. Among other things, it is worth adding that a certain river flows near Mictlan, guarded by a yellow dog. A familiar plot, isn't it?
Osiris, ruler of the kingdom of the dead, Duat. Sometimes he was depicted not with a human head, but with a bull’s head.
Egyptian mythology, unlike Scandinavian and ancient Greek, includes a description of paradise. But there is no hell as such in it. The god Osiris rules over the entire afterlife of the Duat, who was vilely killed by his brother Set and then resurrected by his son Horus. Osiris is no match for the rest of the rulers of the afterlife: he is quite kind and peaceful, and is considered the god of rebirth, not death. And power over the Duat passed to Osiris from Anubis, that is, some kind of change of government took place already in those days.
Egypt in those distant times was a truly legal state. The first thing the deceased did was not to go to the cauldrons of hell or heaven, but to a fair trial. Before reaching the court, the soul of the deceased had to undergo a number of tests, avoid many traps, and answer various questions to the guards. Having gone through all this, he appeared before a host of Egyptian gods led by Osiris. Next, the weight of the deceased’s heart and Truth (in the form of a figurine of the goddess Maat) was compared on special scales. If a person lived his life righteously, the heart and Truth weighed equally, and the deceased received the right to go to the fields of Ialu, that is, to heaven. An average sinner had the opportunity to justify himself before the divine court, but a serious violator of the highest laws could not get into heaven. Where did he end up? Nowhere. His soul was eaten by the monster Amat, a lion with a crocodile's head, and absolute emptiness ensued, which seemed to the Egyptians worse than any hell. By the way, Amat sometimes appeared in triple guise - a hippopotamus was added to the crocodile head.
Amat, who devoured the souls of sinful Egyptians, was depicted as a cross between a hippopotamus, a lion and a crocodile.
How do Christians know how the world works?
First of all, from the Revelation of God Himself, which is contained in the Holy Scriptures. The very first commandment that Moses received from God reads: I am the Lord thy God... thou shalt have no other gods before Me (Exodus 20: 2,3). From the prophet Isaiah we read: I am God, and there is no other God, and there is none like Me (Isaiah 46:9). The Epistle of the Apostle James says: There is one Lawgiver and Judge, able to save and destroy (James 4:12). All biblical books are permeated with the idea that the universe was created by One God and is governed by the laws established by Him. Both physical and moral.
But, if sinners are together with the devil in hell, why don’t they support each other there?
It is no coincidence that the Apostle Paul calls Satan and the angels seduced by him spirits of wickedness in high places (Eph 6:12 ). Malice is the defining characteristic of these creatures. Christ calls the devil a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44 ). Over the thousands or millions of years that have passed since the moment he fell away from God, Satan has completely destroyed in himself all the grains of good that were in him before, and since then he has been all hatred and malice in their pure, unclouded form. He, of course, is not able to harm God Himself, and therefore he is gnawing at a passionate desire - to destroy God's creation and his crown - man.
It is very difficult to destroy what God has created, especially man created in the image of God. But Satan is inhumanly smart and cunning, so he does not act directly, but by deception. No wonder Christ calls him a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44 ). The devil slanderes God to a person (this is precisely what the Greek word διάβολος means) and offers various tempting thoughts that at first glance may seem reasonable, kind, and fair. But the devil has only one goal - to bring a person to death, to force him to finally renounce God, to push him to the edge, beyond which there is an abyss, where there is no longer any way to escape.
To expect any support from the murderer Satan means to be cruelly and fatally deceived.
Hell shows us the extent of God's love in that He saves us.
Why did Jesus talk about hell more than anyone else in the Bible? Because He wanted us to see what suffering He was going to endure on the cross for us. On the cross, the execution of Jesus was scarcely amenable to description: this bloody and disfigured man was hung on a cross that may have been used for this purpose more than once - he was covered in the blood, feces and urine of other people who had hung on him before . Experiencing incredible pain on the cross, He slowly died.
The worst part was the separation of the Father that Jesus felt, a separation that in itself was like hell.
“My God, My God,” He shouted. “Why did you leave me?” (Matthew 27:46). In all of this, Jesus took the hell of our sin upon His body.
People usually think that hell is some huge flaw in God's love for us. The Bible shows us the other side. Hell exalts God's love to us by showing us how far God has gone and how much He has done to save us.
It is not enough for God to take us out of hell; He must take the hell out of us.
Some people see the problem with using hell to force conformity to Christianity. It's as if God said, "Serve me or you'll be in trouble." This may seem manipulative. It may surprise you, but God will agree with you.
If people believed in God simply because they were afraid or because God performed some great miracle (Luke 16:31), they may submit, but this will not change the attitude of their hearts towards God. If you accept Jesus only to escape hell, then you will hate the idea of life in heaven, since only those who love and trust God will enjoy life in heaven. If you do not love the Father, then life in the Father's house will be like slavery. It's like being forced to marry someone you don't want to marry. You can only go to heaven if you learn to love and trust God.
Only when you experience the love of God does your heart begin to change and love and trust for God begins to arise in it. It is not enough for God to take us out of hell; He must take the hell out of us .
Author - J.D. Grear / thegospelcoalition.org Translation - Yulia Malyukhova for
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Yes, that's what it says in the Bible. But there are other books too...
What is written in the Bible is confirmed at every step by reality itself. The scale of good and evil is literally implanted in each of us. And it makes itself felt even in people who seem to have sunk to the very bottom of human society. There are many examples of this.
For example, the remarkable Christian writer and confessor Sergei Fudel (1900-1977), who spent 12 years of his life in prisons and camps, recalled how criminals who found themselves in the same cell with him and in ordinary times kept to themselves, united “when the offender was beaten in theft of bread rations." This behavior, of course, does not deserve praise, but it is very indicative. Criminals severely punished thieves in their own environment so as not to become victims of theft themselves. Many of them allowed themselves to break laws, but it never occurred to them to live as if these laws did not exist in principle.
Moreover, criminals usually do not consider even the offenses they themselves committed to be heroic deeds. Philology teacher Tatyana Shchipkova, sentenced to three years in 1980 for introducing students to the Gospel, recalled that her unfortunate friends who were serving sentences for criminal offenses generally did not challenge the fairness of the sentences. Even when the terms clearly exceeded the degree of their guilt. “When talking to such women, I always asked if they felt they had been treated unfairly. “Of course, fair. She killed a man, which means she has to serve time. Well, I'll sit it out. But she cleared the paths of life for the children.”
Even the most inveterate scoundrels, murderers and rapists realize: there is only one moral law, and although you can try to ignore it, it is impossible to doubt the very fact of its existence. There are no awards, promotions or “orders of honor” for murder, theft, or rape in the human world. Even among criminals.
