06.03 Hell - The Hadean State

6 - Hell; Section 3 HELL - THE HADEAN STATE

There is one Hebrew word and three Greek words which have been translated "hell" in our commonly used King James or Authorized Version of the Bible. In the Old Testament we find the word SHEOL which according to our Hebrew dictionaries means "the place of the dead." The word always appears in the singular, never in its plural form. It is not the "places" of the dead, not the individual graves where reside their respective bodies, but the realm of the dead, the abode of the dead, or the state of the dead. The word is derived from the root SHAEL, which means, by implication, "to request, to demand." And this reminds us forcibly of the common and inevitable end of all flesh. There is a realm and a state beyond this life which inexorably beckons men onward through the fleeting years of earthly ambition and toil till at last it lays its demand upon them, drawing them into its inescapable embrace. In the New Testament there appears the word GEHENNA referring to the Valley of Hinnom, or Gehenna, which was the city dump outside the walls of Jerusalem, a place of constant burning of refuse. It is interesting to note that those who are pictured as going into Gehenna are, without exception, not the sinners of the world, but the SINNERS AMONG GOD’S PEOPLE. How precise the type! Gehenna was the city dump of Jerusalem, the Holy City, where every unclean and unnecessary thing was burned and consumed. The antitypical Gehenna to which our Lord alluded in His teaching is the process of PURIFICATION by which every unclean and unnecessary thing in the lives of His Holy People is purged and consumed by the fires of His judgment. "The Lord whom you seek, shall suddenly come to HIS TEMPLE ... but who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appears? for He is like a REFINER’S FIRE, and like fuller’s soap: and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and He shall PURIFY the sons of Levi (the Priesthood), and PURGE them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness" (Malachi 3:1-3). Gehenna stands as a type of the place or process of the PURIFICATION OF GOD’S PEOPLE. It is referred to in the Old Testament by the name of "Tophet," located in the Valley of Hinnom, a place where many sacrifices were made and dead bodies consumed.

Next we consider the Greek word TARTAROO - the English form is "Tartarus." The passage where this word is found is 2 Peter 2:4. "God spared not the angels (messengers) that sinned, but cast them down to hell (Tartarus), and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment." Jude also presents the same truth without mentioning the name as he writes, "And those angels (messengers) who kept not their first position of power and authority, but left their habitation, He has kept in chains under thick darkness, for the judgment of the great day" (Jude 1:6). The whole thought is of a restraint, a confinement, a prison, a condition in which apostates are held for a specific period of time, in the same manner as prisoners are often held in jail awaiting the day of trial. Tartarus is not the judgment itself, but a state or condition in which persons are inescapably held over unto a day of judgment. I see men today who are apostates, they have turned from the truth, they have usurped the gifts and anointing of God for their own advantage and to their own ends, making merchandise of God’s people; they have perverted the ways of the Lord and turned the truth of God into a lie, and have sunk into the blinding darkness of delusion, captivated by the fleshly ways and methods of this world, chained in the snare of the devil; they continue going through the motions of their "ministry," unable to escape from the devilish trap into which they have fallen, and are held there in their personal "Tartarus" reserved unto a day of judgment. This brings us to our fourth and final word, the one we wish to consider in this study - HADES. HADES is the Greek word most often translated "hell." Where do the dead go? They go into what has commonly been called "the unknown." Concerning the literal meaning of the word HADES there can be no doubt. It comes from the Greek A(I)DES. The "a" is a prefix which is equivalent to our "un-" and the stem "-id" means perceive. Thus we have UN-PERCEIVE or imperceptible; the unseen. That is Hades - the unseen world, the unknown realm. Our English word hell is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word "hillan" or "helan," meaning a cavern, anciently denoting a concealed or UNSEEN place. In parts of England men still say, "I plan to hell my potatoes," meaning to bury them in a hole or pit, that is, a covered place, out of sight. And in the old days a young couple seeking to be alone, sought a hell, a place where they could make love without being seen by prying eyes.

We know that the dead haven’t passed out of existence altogether, for man is not only a body and soul, but also spirit. And when the spirit of man" passes from this present tabernacle of flesh it goes into a realm unseen by the eyes of mortal man. David, in speaking of it at the time his first son by Bathsheba died, said, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." He knew there was a place where he would be able to join that infant child. And likewise the phrase often used in the Old Testament of their being "gathered unto their fathers" meant far more than having their bodies buried in the same grave. It bespoke a gathering in the unseen world. And our Lord spoke of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, linking their names together as all being in the same place, and also added that their God is "not a God of the dead, but of the living," thus affirming that they were alive at that time, even though they were in the Hadean state. Indeed, they were all in Hades - the invisible world of departed spirits.

Some have contended that hell (Sheol and Hades) is never associated with the idea of suffering, pain or torment. That is far from the truth! A careful examination of the Hebrew and Greek words in context reveals that there is both the positive and negative aspects of hell, and there are those passages which connect hell, either literally or metaphorically, to darkness, restraint, distress, sorrow, suffering, pain, and torment.

Hell is certainly a place, a realm, a dimension of consciousness and existence, yet more than a place - it is a state or condition - in its negative application the inner state of depravity, perverted desire, burning lust and ambition, devilish emotions, mental anguish and despair - and because it is so twisted and warped it cannot obtain lasting fulfillment, being tormented by the fires of its own unsatisfied passions. Heaven and hell both are states of the soul rather than the body, whether it be the natural or the spiritual body. The spirit possesses the qualities of soul apart from the body, for the soul is so closely united to the spirit that only the sharp two-edged sword of the Word of God can separate between them (Hebrews 4:12). These are realities transcending place and time. As the poet puts it:

"I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that after-life to spell, And by-and-bye my Soul returned to me, And whispered, ’I myself am Heaven and Hell;’ Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire, And Hell the shadow of a Soul on fire."

Heaven and hell may dwell in the same home, sit at the same table, sleep in the same bed, but between them there is a great gulf fixed. Here, for example, is a home in which one boy goes wrong, bears about with him a guilty secret he may not be able to tell the rest, and yet he must keep the dreaded company of his guilty, tortured self. Every time that boy hears the happy laughter of brothers and sisters rejoicing in the joy of the Lord, the fires of hell are burning in his heart. Every time he receives his father’s blessing or listens to his mother speaking of him in the language of maternal pride, he knows that between them and him there is a gulf fixed, and over it neither he nor they can pass. To the sinner abiding in his sin even the language of love is part of the torture of hell!

Here is another home in which an angry and unhappy man has power to inflict suffering on those who are weaker than himself. He has lived for wrong and vicious, devilish ideals all his life, and they have grown stronger as he has grown older. He has power to oppress and abuse and crush one faithful, beautiful woman, whose very presence and purity of character are a rebuke to him. The more nobly she lives, the better for him she cares, the fiercer seems to burn his anger and hostility, because he knows that he is not worthy of such devotion. He does not repent, but he suffers remorse, and inward self-hate, and between the two there is a great gulf fixed. The fires of hell are burning in that man’s experience now, for guilt is often made more devilish by the presence of holiness. And in our acquaintance with life have we never suspected that the fires are burning where the world sees not? There are people facing life today with a smile who are not to be counted heroes, merely because behind the smile is anguish. Some people can smile in the shadow of the cross, and they do well. They are God’s great ones! But there are others who wear the smile of dreadful joy, the smile of sin’s make believe. Down beneath are the fires of hell, kindled by the pollution and the corruption and the wickedness on which the soul has fed. We can meet with hell in the palace, in the halls of Congress, in the business establishment, in the world of entertainment, in the home, on the street, and salute it and pass it by, and never know, but hell knows, for it has seen heaven. Naked and open are we to Him with Whom we have to do, and, believe me, nothing but the tender mercies and the cleansing power of the blood of the Lamb can avail to save us from what we are in the great day of revelation, whether it come on this side of the grave or on the other, when delusions are gone, and we find ourselves in our heaven or our hell. We may eat, drink, and be merry; we may stifle the Voice within us, but some day it wakens and will be heard, and the wakening shall lead to brokenness and repentance, praise the name of the Lord! The truth is, nature is a mirror of the unseen world. Every form of death, all disease, decay, failure, pain, every fruitless seed, each ruined life, is the shadow of hell, and of the working of that spirit which destroys and mars God’s handiwork, as all beauty, purity, harmony, and enduring love is the reflection of heaven.