The dead are not in hell

[marie glen]

In his N.T. writings Paul does not use the word hades, even once - https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_corinthians/15-55.htm is sometimes translated to read 'oh hades where is thy sting?' but the word is thanos "death".

Speaking of the Lord, Peter quotes  "you will not leave my body in hades" a direct quote of psalm 26:10 - "Not you shall leave my soul (nephesh: a soul, living being, life) in sheol, not will you allow Your holy One to see corruption"

This lets us know hades is meant to represent sheol (biblical sheol not talmud).

(imo) There are no living beings languishing either in (mythical) hell, nor in (mythical) hades. Nor in a gray place for centuries or millennia.. I believe Seal 5, Rev.6, where the martyrs cry out to God asking when vindicated, and He answers until the full number of martyrs.. is like the blood of Abel. Surely they are not languishing "under the altar" for centuries..?

I don't think we can understand God's doings/works/administration of ages, until we understand this issue of 'immortal soul'. It's only to His followers He said, "everyone living and believing in Me never  (ouk- not, no) not (mé: not) shall die to the age, believe you this?" [ https://biblehub.com/interlinear/john/11-26.htm ]

As to the not (yet!) believing there were two things said in Eden "dust you are and to dust shall you return" and "surely..? you won't ...die?"

1 Tim.6:16 says He alone is immortal, "He alone having immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no one of men has seen nor is able to see, to whom be honor and eternal dominion. Amen."

Eccles 9:5 - https://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/9-5.htm - "the dead know nothing" yes metaphor for human ignorance if you will but to insist man inherently has immortal life - without Jesus - is to contradict what God saith. No dead (lacking life) humans are in 'hell'.

[guest6667]

An alternative view on hell/Sheol:

1 Corinthians 3:9,  For we are God's coworkers. You are God's field, God's building.

Leviticus 19:9-10,23-25; "And you, when reaping the produce of your land, you will not finish your harvesting from the field completely, and you will not gather up what is left over of your harvest. And you will not glean your vineyard, nor will you gather up the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You will leave them for the needy and for the resident alien- I myself am the Lord your God...
"And whenever you enter into the land that the Lord God is granting to you and you plant any edible fruit tree, then  clean away its uncleanness. Its fruit will be impure to you for three years; it will not be eaten. But in the fourth year, all its fruit will be sacred, a praiseworthy thing  to the Lord. And in the fifth year, you will eat the fruit; its produce is your increase- I myself am the Lord your God.

Exodus 28:26;  And you shall place the Unveiling and the Truth into the oracle of judgement and it will be on Aaron's chest whenever he goes into the holy place, into the presence of the Lord, and Aaron will carry the judgements for the sons of Israel over his breast in the presence of the Lord always.

The Laws of the Father are written on the heart, the new robes of righteousness are the garments of the Son of God, who rolls up the old.

Genesis 28:10-17,  And Jacob came out from the Well of the Oath and went to Haran. And he came to a place and slept there, for the sun had set, and he took one of the stones of the place and put it at his head, and he laid down in that place. And he dreamed, and look, a ladder fixed upon the earth, whose top was reaching into the heavens, and the angels of God were ascending and descending upon it. The Lord rested upon it and said, "I am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. Do not fear! The land on which you are sleeping upon it, I will give it to you and your offspring. And your offspring will be like the sand of the sea, and it will spread to the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east, and all the tribes of the earth will be blessed in you and in your offspring. And look, I am with you, carefully guarding you in every way, wherever you go, and I will bring you back into this land, because I shall surely not leave you behind until I have done all the things, that I told you." And Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "The Lord is in this place, but I did not know it." And he was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is nothing other than a house of God, and this is the door of the heavens."

John 5:2-8,  By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. Within these lay a large number of the disabled--blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to get well?" "Sir," the disabled man answered, "I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I'm coming, someone goes down ahead of me." "Get up," Jesus told him, "pick up your mat and walk."

John 4:22-23,  Jesus told her, "Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews.

Luke 8:27-33,  When he got out on land, a demon-possessed man from the town met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes and did not stay in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before him, and said in a loud voice, "What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don't torment me! " For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was guarded, bound by chains and shackles, he would snap the restraints and be driven by the demon into deserted places.
"What is your name? " Jesus asked him.
"Legion," he said, because many demons had entered him. And they begged him not to banish them to the abyss.
A large herd of pigs was there, feeding on the hillside. The demons begged him to permit them to enter the pigs, and he gave them permission. The demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned.

In the Gospel of Mark, the demons fear of the abyss is expressed as fear of being expelled from the 'region'. So the abyss/deep is outside of the territory that he is currently in, perhaps outside of the nature of man. The demon is also said to have cut the body with stones, this makes me think of both circumcision and the heart of stone, since he was also 'on the mountains' (high places).

This passage implies that many spirits can be inside one body. I also think that the symbolic imagery for judgement is clear. Like one of the men who was given sight, who had to rub mud on his eyes and then wash it off so he could see. The land that these demons are inhabiting is earthen/ of Adam, then they are washed in a lake. A more apt description would be of the arc of Noah.

The demons are cast into a herd, (of about two thousand), and they descend into a lake (λίμνην) same word as 'lake of fire', or in Mark, they descend into the 'sea'. Like the pattern Peter describes of the flood in his second letter;

They deliberately overlook this: By the word of God the heavens came into being long ago and the earth was brought about from water and through water. Through these the world of that time perished when it was flooded. By the same word, the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

The heavens existed, then the water. The earth came from the water, which describes the life from below. The earth is then destroyed by the water, or the sea that the two thousand pigs fell into. There were two thieves who died with Jesus, the one who represented the spirit was saved, the other who represented the earth perished. So that we can see, we are born into Adam and then that nature has to be washed away.

I believe the demons are spirits of people who have died, they have comuned in a temple/ the body of a person, where they met Jesus and experienced the destruction that fell on everyone outside of the arc of Noah. If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is holy, and that is what you are.

Jacob slept (was in a spiritual state of death) on a stone (from that holy place). He was given life by a vision. He saw a ladder attached to earth/ Adam, and angels ascended and descended like they did on the Son of Man. The Lord is in this place, he is in you, you are a temple. So maybe it is in this temple that the nations of the earth will be blessed.

No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. But Jesus said "Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad."

John the Baptist was not Elijah, but he was in the spirit and power of Elijah. For the scriptures to be fulfilled Elijah had to come first. So if he was not reincarnated, which the gospel of John seems to oppose (in my opinion), then maybe he was in John as a spirit, in John's temple, who was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb.

'By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool...' The gate for the sheep is in the holy city, and there is a pool for washing there, so before people see God they can be made clean. 'Within these lay a large number of the disabled, blind, lame, and paralyzed.' Within these the blind hear the word of God and are healed.

Deuteronomy 30:11-14,  "Because this command that I am commanding you today is not excessive nor far from you. It is not in the heavens above, saying, 'Who will go up for us into the heavens and take it for us and upon hearing we will do it?' Nor is it across the sea, saying, 'Who will go over for us to the other side of the sea and take it for us and make it audible to us, and we will do it?' The Word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart and in your hands to do it.

Acts 16:31,  They said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved--you and your household."

Perhaps the darkness that people are cast into after the death of their body, (if someone believes this), is the world around us and even our bodies. The Gospels speak a lot about demons, which are not very common in the Tanakh. Jesus's flesh did not see corruption and so it is his flesh that we need to eat, the transformation of the body of sin into his temple would seem like an apt way to fulfil this. Or the living waters/holy spirit that is in you could be a pool of healing for spirit sojourners. Jesus sanctified himself so that his could be holy, like the high priest in the tabernacle, maybe we should also be holy so that others can be cleansed in us, if we are his temples? (accounting for the fact that it is only God who can make anyone holy).

Edit:  Matthew 12:43-45 & Luke 11:24-26, tell the storey of an unclean spirit's return to a person. I think it is very likely that the pigs that the demons are cast into, in the other examples, are representative of 'unclean people', who have not yet been washed by the word of God. So the demons seem to be entering destruction/ judgement/ second death through them. I still think it is possible that spirits are purified in the bodies of believers, but not ones bound in chains for the end of the age. Because Jesus preached to spirits in prison, and the scriptures imply a reaping what we sow, until we 'learn' mercy. Also the prostitutes and tax collectors will repent before the 'Pharisees', could just mean in the body, but maybe not exclusively, so maybe some get few lashes and some many on the other side of the body. The crux of all of this is that I think, at least some, unclean spirits are humans who have died and are 'waiting' for judgement/ purification- the Unveiling and the Truth in them.