ETERNAL DAMNATION AND HELL

The Mystic Christ - Chapter Preview

Hatred makes the mind a hell. Likewise, anger, jealousy and uncontrollable craving for name and fame make life equal to hell. You lose your peace of mind. You lose the love in you, the beauty in you, and your mind becomes a madhouse. Ammachi, Awaken Children, vol. 5
There is a hell but it is not forever. The current orthodox view of eternal damnation to hell says that this unfortunate circumstance is simply the result of having been given free will. It's not God's fault that we will be painfully tortured in a world of gnashing teeth for all eternity. Somehow free will is supposed to make sense of this eternal torture chamber. God gave us free will and so God stands back with hands in the air, palms facing us, looking blankly a little off to the side, telling us that our decent into hell is beyond his control. "I'm sorry my dear ones, but there is nothing I can do to help you. I gave you free will." The pitfall in the "free will" line of reasoning is that if God gave us free will he can also take it back.

In the following scripture it is revealed that Jesus descended into a "prison" to preach to disembodied persons (spirits) who disobeyed at the time of Noah. A prison is probably not heaven and therefore it is safe to assume this "prison" is hell. Why would the Lord bother to preach to them if they were doomed to hell for all eternity? What difference would it make if there were no way out? At the very least, the following scripture indicates the existence of the soul in some sort of prison after the body has fallen away. It also indicates that they are able to receive a sermon without a body.

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. 1 Peter 3:18-20, NIV
In the entire New Testament the word "hell" appears twenty-three times. Fifteen of these were spoken by Jesus and were translated from the Greek word Gehenna (Matthew 5:22, 5:29, 5:30, 10:28, 18:9, 23:15, 23:33, Mark 9:43, 9:45, 9:47, and Luke 12:5). Gehenna is also used in James 3:6. Jesus used the word hell translated from the Greek word Hades four times (Matthew 11:23, 16:18, Luke 10:15, and Luke 16:23). Hades is also used in Revelations 6:8, 20:13, and 20:14. In 2 Peter 2:4 the Greek word for hell is Tartaros which is the deepest level of Hades.

As we can see the most common occurrence of the word hell in the New Testament is translated from Gehenna. Gehenna has been translated from the Greek word Ge-Hinnom which is, in turn, translated from a combination of the Hebrew word "gay" and "Hinnom." Gehenna was a dump, a refuse pit, on the outskirts of Jerusalem which contained rotting carcasses, trash and other foul items. A fire was often burning in it to consume the garbage. The stench of the smoke made it a very unpleasant place to be. Why does Jesus use the metaphor Gehenna when referring to hell instead of Hades, the literal word, for hell? That his metaphorical use of Gehenna is intentional is indicated in four other scriptures where the Lord opted to use the word Hades which, in Greek, can more properly be translated as an actual location. The most reasonable explanation is that hell is a state of mind and, like the kingdom of God (heaven), it is within us (Luke 17:21). He is referring to the mental and emotional torment that we experience now in this world when we become deluded by the ego and thus separated from God.
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