Heaven, Yes...Hell, No

[gregoryfl]

Makes me think the overcomers from all the ages will participate in the first rez, but I am not sure about it.

That is how I see it, and don't worry about the thread hijack.

Wow, I so misread that. The word 'overcomers' did not register with me. I had this thought of everyone being in the first resurrection, not just the overcomers.

:doh:

[marie glen]

Dont want to hijack the thread, but I have wondered about this....

39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

I've been pondering that very verse...

Mt 8:10 "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. 11 I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven;

Matthew 22:32 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."


Makes me think the overcomers from all the ages will participate in the first rez, but I am not sure about it.

...I think so.. :2c: ..as the Old Testament saints/believers were forgiven through the animal sacrifices as representing the one sacrifice when Jesus was lifted up on the cross..
          :2c:

[micah7:9]

"Makes me think the overcomers from all the ages will participate in the first rez, but I am not sure about it."

:dontknow: :Chinscratch:

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: Check out Peter Demetris's videos on YouTube. He has a lot of wisdom on the overcomers....

[joeteekay]

:cloud9: Check out Peter Demetris's videos on YouTube. He has a lot of wisdom on the overcomers....

Thanks Card. I found Peter Demetris's videos but is there one inparticular that deals with the topic of overcomers?
:Peace2:

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: I haven't watched them but I know Peter personally for over 25 years now and his site (which I think is down now) has a lot of his writings on it. He's like no one you've ever heard before when he gets going. One of the best true teachers out there that doesn't care what religion has to say if it contradicts the Word of God. Blessings...

[eaglesway]

Makes me think the overcomers from all the ages will participate in the first rez, but I am not sure about it.

That is how I see it, and don't worry about the thread hijack.

Wow, I so misread that. The word 'overcomers' did not register with me. I had this thought of everyone being in the first resurrection, not just the overcomers.

:doh:

To me, there could be no second resurrection if everyone went in the first.

[gregoryfl]

To me, there could be no second resurrection if everyone went in the first.

Yes, as I said, I misunderstood what you wrote until after I posted my first response.  :doh:

[Seth]

Dont want to hijack the thread, but I have wondered about this....

39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Mt 8:10 "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. 11 I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven;

Matthew 22:32 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."


Makes me think the overcomers from all the ages will participate in the first rez, but I am not sure about it.

Personally that's my thought on it too. I think it's altogether in one body at one moment.

[eaglesway]

Yea, I also think Paul's example of the olive tree in Romans is another example of a oneness that goes all the way back to Abel.

[micah7:9]

 :Chinscratch:

[eaglesway]

 "Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, 35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

37 "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 38 Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! 39 For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!'"

If Jesus attributed the Jews lineage to Cain(spiritually) I think it likely that our (spiritual) lineage is traced through Abel- who Jesus place in the company of prophets for whom Jerusalem(earthly) was responsible for their bloodshed(along with His own). So I think the first martyr was Abel, who prophesied of a Lamb slain in His offereing to God(my opinion). That would make Abel the first seed sown after the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and the beginning of the redeeming blood of the prophets and martyrs that cries out from the ground for the redemtion and restoration of the creation.

"Come quickly Lord Jesus!.....How long O Lord!"

Rev 6:9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" 11 And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also.

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: I think the seed/tree of both Cain and Abel are in all of us. Cain always seeks to murder the quickening spirit within us, to prevent us from adding faith to the Word/breathed so it's unprofitable. The Jews that were against Him were indeed doing their father's business, since Satan, who planted seed in Eve, produced Cain, and thus the flesh wars against the Spirit continually. My  :2c: Blessings....

[eaglesway]

If Jesus called the Pharisees children of the devil and attributed to them Cain versus Abraham as their father, I think He was speaking to something other than the daily struggle between flesh and spirit we undergo. We are children of God, born, not of the will of the flesh or the will of man but of God. Begotten from above by the incorruptible seed of the word of God..... so our heritage is traced through Abel to Abraham to Christ, through whom the old man(in whom Cain lives) is crucified- and we are reckoning him dead and mortifying his voice and his works in ourselves by the Spirit.

"If you do by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh you will live."

The mystery is to "Be still, and know that I am God"..... so tht Cain has no cause or means to rise up again :o)

So(imo) any residual of Cain in us is just that old man whispering from the grave, trying to rise up and pull us down with him into death.

Speaking allegorically, tho, I see your point.

:Peace2:

[Lazarus Short]

Now for this book, I only dealt with the Psalms which were of interest to my thesis, that being that the Damnationist Hell is not to be found in the Bible.

Psalm 1
"...the way of the ungodly shall perish."  Note that it does not say that the ungodly shall perish, but the final answer to that is still a long ways off.

Psalm 5
On the other hand, we have this:  "Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing [falsehood]..."  However, it is not said that God destroys them in Hell.  Again, the final answer is ahead of us.

Psalm 6
Eternal torture in Hell implies consciousness after death, but verse 5 contradicts it:  "For in death there is no remembrance of thee:  in the grave who shall give thee thanks?"

Psalm 7
David asks God, not to bring an end to the wicked, but to "...let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end."

Psalm 9
Hell again – verse 17:  "The wicked shall be turned into hell..."  It should be sheol, the grave, the unseen.

Psalm 16
Verse 10 gets the same comment as Psalm 9:17.

Psalm 18
Verse 5 gets the same comment as Psalm 9:17.

Psalm 30
Verse 3 mentions the grave and the pit – these could just as well have been translated as "Hell," for it is the same word in Hebrew.  Some may not agree, but I see inconsistent translation as bad translation.

Psalm 49
Verses 7-9,  "...none...can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:  (for the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:) that he should still live for ever, and not see corruption." seem a bit obscure, but the YLT renders it better:  "A brother doth no one at all ransom, He doth not give to God his atonement.  And precious is the redemption of their soul, and it hath ceased – to the age.  And still he liveth for ever, He seeth not the pit."

There it is, made plain, at least a lot plainer than the KJV – death is temporary, for an age, but life in the resurrection is truly forever.

Verse 15 is very plain:  "...God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave:  for he shall receive me."

Psalm 55
David says in verse 15,  "Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell..."  Now in the English of the KJV, "quick" means alive, and of course "hell" should have been rendered as sheol, etc.  What David is really saying is that his enemies should go alive into their graves.  Hell theology says those who go to Hell, go there after they are dead, but David flatly contradicts this.  He is merely wishing a fate for some much like happened to Korah and his followers in Numbers, chapter 16.

Psalm 63
In verse 9, David states that his enemies  "...shall go into the lower parts of the earth."  Given what we have seen so far, this is better interpreted as a deep grave or "six feet under," versus a shallow grave.  I know a strong tradition exists of Hell being deep in the so-called bowels of the Earth.  In fact the Earth is hotter deep down, but no one, no matter how deep he has drilled or mined, has found Hell.  Sound recordings of things in deep drill cores - interpreted as being the screams of the damned - are unconfirmed and may just be fraudulent.  God has a term for such things, and that would be "vain imaginings."  Things are what they are, and are most probably not Hell.

Psalm 69
Verse 15 gives us  "...neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me."  My comments on Psalm 63 apply here.  I'll just add that the Psalmist giving the pit (grave) a mouth is just the usual kind of poetic imagery we see in all the Bible's poetry.

Psalm 86
Hell again, in verse 13:  "...thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell."  My KJV, in the reference & translation section between the two text columns, gives this as "depths of Sheol," and that is just the way it should be – sheol, grave, pit.

Psalm 88
Verses 3 to 6:  "For my soul is full of troubles:  and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.  I am counted with them that go down into the pit:  I am as a man that hath no strength.  Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more:  and they are cut off from thy hand.  Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps."  If we keep in mind the parallelism of Hebrew poetry, it should be obvious that grave, pit, darkness, and deeps are all used to convey the same idea, and the horrors of Hell are not a part of it.  Christians should read the Word with their inner eye, not through the filter of theology.  Dig to the bottom in the Hebrew, so to speak, and it's always Sheol, the unseen.  Hell was inserted much later.

Psalm 92
Verse 7 tells us  "...the wicked...and...the workers of iniquity...shall be destroyed for ever."  This seems to lean toward annihilationism, and in fact it reminds me of the second death experience in the Lake of Fire in the Revelation.  That fate seems final and sad, but it is not the end of the story.  Stay tuned.

Psalm 115
Verse 17,  "The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence."  contradicts the common belief in life after death, or more accurately, life during death.  Surely there is life after death, due to the resurrection, but this psalmist agrees with Solomon, that the dead are really dead.  There is no way to reconcile this with conscious torment in Hell, as many churches declare as being true.

Psalm 116
Here's that pesky "hell" word in verse 3 – as ever, it's Sheol.  Just death here, folks, and the realm of death – the grave, the pit, dust, decay, and worms.

Psalm 139
Verse 8 gives us  "If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there..."  Well and good so far, but here heaven is not paired with the earth, for  "...if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there."  As ever, "hell" here is better translated as "Sheol."  That is not all – there are here issues deeper and darker.  As I explained elsewhere, to think that anyone can exist in Hell is close to blasphemy, for the simple reason that for you to be alive here, there, anywhere, even Hell, you must have the spirit/breath of Life in you, otherwise Hell is just kicking a dead horse, so to speak.  Since the Spirit of Life comes from God, and since it is one of the Seven Spirits of God, the Hell theory is saying that part of God must be condemned to Hell with the damned – millions, billions of parts of God, each one contained in a "lost soul."  God forbid!

However, back in Psalm 136 I just read (26 times!) this:  "...his mercy endureth for ever."  Compare this God of mercy to the Hell theory god, who grants us our precious Free Will, and then when we exercise it, even in ignorance, relegates us to Hell with no chance of reprieve.  Compare the real Jesus, Who prayed to His Father for the sinners who were killing Him, to the Jesus of Mary K. Baxter who tells the damned in so many words, "Too bad, you screwed up, and here you are."  (Yes I did read her book.)  For that matter, take a look at the behavior of Jesus' early followers, in the days when universal reconciliation (or whatever term they used at the time) was orthodoxy, versus the violence, torture, and bloodshed which later set in after the Hell theory became dominant.  I know that during this period, entire nations disappeared from history, and others nearly did, for what the Church considered heresy.  You see, gentle reader, either the Hell theory is correct, or God's mercy endures forever – both cannot be true at the same time.  If God's mercy does endure forever, and I believe it does, then people cannot be sent to eternal torture, whatever excuses some may make for it – burning the wicked to ashes is, in a way, merciful, but as we shall see, God has more mercy in store for us than that.  Let say it again, for it bears repeating:  universal reconciliation is mercy, annihilation is mercy (sort of), BUT eternal torture cannot be mercy.  Psalm 136 and Hell cannot both be true, and Psalm 136 is true.

Hell is not to be found in the Psalms.

[joeteekay]

Very good study Laz. I like your related comments to your main thesis (i.e. such as "documented"  screams from deep within the bowels of the earth of the damned - hell). Foolishness of course.

[Lazarus Short]

Thank you - I am using all the writing skills I've picked up during my life, including trying to keep the language fresh.  In doing so, I have come up with terms like "fire-forever crowd," "Damnationist," "Hellolater," and am thinking about epithets such as "Sheeple Dip," (compared with Sheep Dip), a term I thought up the other day.  Even if you are correct, if you can't write well enough to keep their attention, you lose them.  :sigh: 

[Lazarus Short]

Proverbs
At the end of Ecclesiastes (12:12), Solomon states "...of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh."  Job was tiring, but these Proverbs add a whole new dimension, as Solomon seems to use every possible permutation of:

pursue wisdom, understanding, prudence, favor with God, that-which-is-good; work hard, be diligent;

avoid the wicked, fools, the unwise, the angry, strange women, evil, sloth, and strong drink.

For all the wisdom presented, I dare say that Solomon here makes Shakespeare's Polonius seem taciturn.  The other two writers of Proverbs, Agur and Lemuel, are happily much less verbose.

I note here a new wrinkle on "hell."  In two places, Proverbs 15:11 and 27:20, we see the phrase "Hell and destruction."  Harking back to the Hebrew, it would read sheol and abaddon.  Looking up meanings, I see that abaddon is properly translated as "destruction," but instead of a proper translation of sheol as "grave," it is rendered as "Hell."  I suspect theological bias, so just think "The grave and destruction are never full," and leave it at that.

Here's a list of chapters and verses of Proverbs, with "sheol" mistranslated as "hell":  1:12, 5:5, 7:27, 9:18, 15:11 & 24, 23:14, 27:20, and 30:16.

This writer could not find Hell in the Proverbs.

[Lazarus Short]

Ecclesiastes
Solomon has much to say here about life, death, and futility, but what touches our subject is in Chapter 9, verses 5-10:  "...the living know that they shall die:  but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.  Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun...for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."

Do you see?  Do you grasp that there is no reward, good or ill – just non-existence?  Conscious survival after death is here excluded.  Further, Solomon tells us (12:6-7)  "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.  Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was:  and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."  He is, through poetic language, describing the moment of death and the fate of body and Spirit, the soul already having ceased in its existence.  That is why Solomon does not mention the soul here as such.  As I wrote elsewhere, when the living person (soul) dies, the body returns to dust, and the breath/spirit (one of the seven Spirits of God) returns to God.

An honest translator cannot let this perishing in the grave (and it can be found in other places as well) go by, and at the same time, use the word "hell" with its implication of the dead living in conscious torment.   To paraphrase Mark Twain, it's "Lies, damned lies, and bad translation."

Hell is not to be found, then, in Ecclesiastes.

[Lazarus Short]

Song of Solomon
We read of love, fruit, spices, fragrances, and so on, but not of Hell in this book.

[Lazarus Short]

Isaiah
The word "hell" first appears in this book in chapter 5, verse 14.  My KJV dutifully notes "Or Sheol."  We see hell/sheol again in 14:9 & 15, 28:15 & 18, and 57:9.

In Chapter six we read of Isaiah's vision of seeing God, where one of the Seraphim touches his lips with a live coal and declares "...thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged."  (6:7)  This is just another instance of fire serving as God's instrument to refine men, not to punish them.  We will see this theme again.

Chapter 14 is mostly about Israel, Babylon, Assyria, and God's judgment on each.  In the midst of all this are some verses about "Lucifer."  Now we met up with Satan in the book of Job, and my KJV noted there that the name means "the adversary," which strikes me as a title, not a name.  Yet here in Isaiah, most folks think it is the same person being referred to, but no this time it's Lucifer, and my KJV states that it literally means "Day Star."  Going from the Adversary to the Day Star is quite a leap, and it's not likely to be the same person.  Note that the context for this passage begins in verse 4:  "That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon..."  Then in verse 13, "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north."  Two verses later, however, judgment is given:  "Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell [sheol], to the sides of the pit [grave]."  In verse 16 the question is raised, "...is this the man...?"  Now most of us have been taught that Satan is a spirit being, but this passage shows this person to be mortal.  For this reason I believe the person referred to in this passage to be NOT Satan, but the king of Babylon.  I don't care to stretch every text I can find to promote my thesis, unlike some.  By the end of this essay, I think we will have found that Satan is a fairly minor character in the story, as he should be. 

Now for the serious Bible student, I'd like to add a note of caution, to stay alert for the sleight-of-hand we so often find.  First, as we saw above, is the bad translation:  Adversary to Satan and Day Star to Lucifer.  Then we get the bad interpretation, usually taken in a verse or two ripped from its proper context - in the present case, to point out the Devil wherever possible.  Often, a look at the surrounding text will support the given interpretation, or not.  If you understand the message and themes of the whole Word of God, you will tend to notice when "theo-illogical" tricks are being pulled.

After several chapters of the judgment of this nation or that, Isaiah tells us in 25:7 & 8, "And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.  He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away the tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it."  With death at that time swallowed up in victory, how can anyone be still dead, or for that matter, in Hell?  Now if we can think of the "covering" and the "vail" above in terms of graveclothes, I think we can see what God is trying to tell us here.  It all hinges on His intentions, and thus far He has not spoken of eternal torture in a fiery Hell.

Hope here, in 26:19, "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise.  Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead."  I see here no distinction between the righteous and the wicked dead.  On the other hand, in chapter 28, we see an early reference, if we read between the prophetic lines, to the first and second resurrections of the dead.  Isaiah writes of the planting of cumin, which is then threshed with a simple rod or staff.  It's just like the twenty-third Psalm, in which David is comforted by God's rod and staff.  The wheat, barley, and rye get a rougher treatment in the threshing here, needing a cart, an ox (Deuteronomy 25:4), or various threshing instruments to separate the grain (good) from the chaff (bad).  It may be a bit off topic, but it is worth mentioning, as long as we are covering other theories on Hell, to also offer another view of the parables God offers us concerning the afterlife and the resurrection.  You see, most folks are taught that the wheat and tares are good and bad people, as are the wheat and chaff, or the sheep and goats.  Others contend the good parts of the individual person are represented by wheat, barley, and rye grains; and also by the gold, silver, precious gems left by the refining fire of God.  The bad parts of us are typified by the chaff, blown away by the wind; by the tares, gathered together and burned; by the goats, culled from the sheep; or by the wood, hay, and stubble burned up by the same fire of God.

We arrive at 33:14 - "The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites.  Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?  who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?"  Now, this looks like a picture of Hell, but hold on, for remember that up to this point God has NOT ever threatened anyone with Hellfire.  Yes, we have seen some killed with fire from God, but it was always fire in the real world, not in an unknown Hell.  We today have an advantage over Isaiah, for we know of the Lake of Fire in the Revelation.  We also know that the wicked, including sinners and hypocrites, are thrown into it, and that it is the second death.  As I've said before, that is not the end of the story, and it all hinges on whether "everlasting burnings" is correct.  The YLT renders the Hebrew here as "of the age," For reasons I will go into more detail later, "of the age" or "age-long" are more correct than "everlasting" simply because eternity does not begin for a very long time.  The Lake of Fire itself takes place before the ages (as such) have expired, but that topic will have to wait until we cover the Revelation.  A hint of what lies ahead is at the end of chapter 33 – "...the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick:  the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity."  This is said of Zion, in a future time when no one is sick, and everyone in Zion, is given forgiveness, without conditions or exceptions.  It does look like universal reconciliation...

Moving forward, among God's complaints of His people, Israel, either being lax in their devotions to Him, or practicing idolatry, we find that He fails to threaten them with Hellfire for these things.  Many religious folks would relegate the wicked to Hell, but God continues to speak of forgiveness:  "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." (43:25)  "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee." (44:22)  "Drop down ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness:  let the earth open, and [not swallow up the wicked, but] let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the Lord have created it." (45:8)

God says of the House of Israel:  "Behold, I have refined thee, but not ... [as] ... silver; I have ... [tested] ... thee in the furnace of affliction." (48:10)  There is no point in God saving and forgiving His people unless He refines them, for He would just have the same pack of sinners.  He admits this much, "There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." (48:22)  No peace for them, yet no mention of Hell, either.

In 65:17, God foretells His re-creation:  "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind."  As in Genesis there is no mention of a new Hell, so we see it is excluded in the future as well as the past.  Again, in 66:22, He tells us: "...the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord..." 

The very last verse of the book pulls us up short: "And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases [sic] of the men that have transgressed against me:  for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring to all flesh."  This sounds very much like Jesus' warning to His listeners in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus actually quoted Isaiah.  I will treat this more fully later, but "Hell" in Mark 9 is footnoted as "Gehenna" in my KJV, and Gehenna is a place in the real world, so I question that Jesus could have been referring to Hell.  Isaiah 66:24 also seems to be relating something to happen in the real world.

Isaiah writes much of the wicked, the ruin of the Israel/Judah of his day, but also much of the glorious future of God's people, the city of Jerusalem, and the world in general.  Therefore, I think I can say with some confidence that Hell cannot be found in the book of Isaiah.

[micah7:9]

Your work is appreciated :dsunny:

[Lazarus Short]

Thank you!  :gimmefive:

[jabcat]

Your work is appreciated :dsunny:

amen..recognized!

[Lazarus Short]

Jeremiah
The word "hell" is not found at all in this book, so we can go directly to 7:31, as follows: "And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart."  Wow!  God is not only saying that this action was outside what He had laid down as worship, but the burning alive of children was something that had never entered His own Mind.  We now have more than a double witness that God did not create Hell, as we have read in Genesis 1:1, Deuteronomy 10:14, and Isaiah 65:17/66:22.  We know from John 1:3 that no one else created Hell either.  Now we know, too, that the concept of people suffering alive in a fire is foreign to Him.  You just can not have, at the same time, a fiery, eternal Hell, and a God who never though of such a place.  Given what we have so far, Hell is excluded, but we will keep looking, hopefully to be as exhaustive of this subject as a Strong's or Young's Concordance.

It's a bit off-topic, but chapter 10 has a short, but interesting, account of a practice called "vain or futile" – "For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.  They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (10:3-4)  I think this an early reference to what we today call a Christmas Tree.  God calls it vanity/futility.  I call it idolatry.

In 15:2, God indicates that no one can escape their fate:  "Thus saith the Lord; Such as are for death, to death; and such as are for the sword, to the sword; and such as are for the famine, to the famine; and such as are for captivity, to the captivity."  God does not lie, and He fails to say "Such as are for Hell, to Hell."  If Hell were so, He would have said so, just as Jesus stated in John 14:2  "In my Father's house are many mansions:  if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you."  As His Father did not, Jesus did not mention the existence of Hell, or any risk of going there.  If there were, He would have said so, but His silence is another witness to the non-existence of Hell, we will cover what Jesus says, and does not say, presently.

After many chapters of prophecy, personal troubles, and recording of God's coming destruction on  Israel, Judah, and the various nations in that part of the world, we find this gem in 51:5 – "...Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of Hosts; though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel."  Happily, we see here hope and a hint of forgiveness, not a hint of Hell.  In fact, in all the threats and promises of destruction, there is no threat or punishment beyond death, as ever.

Thus ends our brief coverage of the long book of Jeremiah, where hell, in word or concept, is not found.