There's a difference between absorbing knowledge and comprehending knowledge. Many people today take in voluminous amounts of knowledge that they use to appear superior, but they don't actually comprehend what they know.Good point. It is understanding what “hell” actually is from the Jewish perspective that gives us the correct understanding.
There are several words translated “Hell” in our English Bibles, and it is the misinterpretation of these words that allowed Christendom (starting with the RCC) to use them as a fear mongering weapon to frighten ignorant people into submission. They kept them in ignorance by forbidding them to read the Creator’s instruction manual, and no one was allowed to question what “the church” taught to its hapless congregants who were herded like sheep into a maze of false and often frightening beliefs.
First we have “hades” which according to Jewish belief was “Sheol”...or simply the common grave. There was no one alive in Sheol (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10).....it was the place where the dead “slept” (figuratively speaking) until the promised “resurrection” (or restoration of life) which was to take place under Messiah’s Kingdom. Jesus demonstrated the resurrection on a number of occasions, by restoring the dead to life.
Another word Jesus used was “Gehenna” but it was also translated as “hell”....this is not a place of conscious torture either. The city of Jerusalem had a garbage dump outside it’s walls, where the city’s refuse was burned by fire that never went out; it was kept constantly burning by the addition of brimstone (Sulfur) so that whatever was thrown into the fire was completely destroyed. The carcasses of dead animals as well as the bodies of executed criminals were thrown into Gehenna for disposal. What the flames missed, the maggots finished off, hence the description of what happens to those in Gehenna.....‘the flames never cease and the maggots (worms) never die’.
To a Jew, no grave or tomb meant not being remembered by God in the resurrection. There was no tomb out of which to call them. (John 5:28-29)
Gehenna is also called “the lake of fire” in Revelation. It just means “the second death”.....eternal death. The first death is the one that overtakes us all, but Jesus promised that this death was not permanent. He showed his disciples what resurrection meant by restoring the dead to life. This was to take place under the rulership of his Kingdom.
The future resurrection will give the ignorant dead time to learn about their Creator and to decide for themselves if they wish to serve his interests here on this earth......their conduct will determine whether they will be allowed to remain or whether they will be dispatched to the “lake of fire” to be utterly destroyed....the “second death” holds no possibility of future life. Unlike Sheol, what goes into that figurative “lake”, never comes out.
So it is indeed good news that there is no “hell” where conscious souls are tormented forever. What kind of a loving God would do that?
As for the people on the streets, we can put the blame for their plight squarely on the shoulders of inept politicians. The commercial system is only one of the controlling elements of the devil’s world, which creates the circumstances in which people have to live.....driven by greed, it does not care about people, only the money to be made by exploiting them. Many of the homeless are victims of that system and it is a sad reflection on the priorities of worldly governments that they always have the means to take lives, ploughing endless funding into expensive weaponry and their military might, but not to save the lives that are already at immediate risk. The homeless problem is caused by the greedy minority exploiting the needy majority. No one works harder than the hungry....but it is so bad in many places now that homelessness is basically an epidemic, sweeping formerly wealthy nations whose citizens are forced to live in third world poverty. Can we blame them for giving up and turning to substance abuse to blot out their misery?
The powers that rule this world, know how we got here.....but they will not sacrifice their profits to save lives. They serve their own master. (1 John 5:19)
Then there's belief. With belief, people can appear to know something before they know it.
