HEAVEN

ALTERNATIVE VIEWS

About our Final Destination and the possibility of an intermediate state

 (Unrelated to or connected in any way to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory)

Every time you translate from one language to another you lose some of the meaning of what you are translating.  The philosophical and cultural underpinnings of one language are different from those of another.  Once you move from the first language to the second you have already partially obscured the real meaning of a concept.  If you then move to a third language from the second rather than going back to the original then the philosophical and cultural presuppositions of the language in the middle have imposed their own twist on the material and there is a high probability that the material no longer reflects the core of meaning in the original.  For this reason, you should never trust any translation of Old Testament material which relies solely or with greater weight on the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint to help with Biblical interpretation.  Greek philosophy has obscured the real message of God and the danger that you will go to Greek sources for Biblical doctrines becomes overwhelmingly powerful (especially if you have difficulty with the Hebrew language or were trained primarily in Biblical koine Greek).  This is the source of the Gnostic heresy which tried to overtake Christianity in the second and third centuries AD, as we read in our study of I, II, & III John.  Further add to that the obscuring influence of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate which used the Septuagint as its basis and you may come to understand the difficulty modern Roman Catholic scholars labor under (being required to use Jerome as a key to translate from the original languages).

KEY WORDS

1. Sheol: (translated as grave in KJV: Gen. 37:35; 42:38; 44:29,31; 50:5; I Sam. 2:6; I Kin. 2:6,9; Job 7:9; 14:13; 17:13; 21:13; 24:19; 33:22; Ps. 6:5; 30:3; 31:17; 49:14,15; 88:3; 89:48; Pr. 1:12; 30:16; Ecc. 9:10; Song 8:6; Is. 14:11; 38:10,18; Eze. 31:15; Ho. 13:14; translated as Hell in KJV: Deut. 32:22; II Sam. 22:6; Job 11:8; 26:6; Ps. 9:17; 16:10; 18:5; 55:15; 86:13; 116:3; 139:8; Pr. 5:5; 7:27; 9:18; 15:11,24; 23:14; 27:20; Is. 5:14; 14:9,15; 28:15,18; 57:9; Eze. 31:16,17; 32:21,27; Am. 9:2; Jon. 2:2; Hab. 2:5;) In early Hebrew thought Sheol was a place of unconsciousness where the dead, both the righteous and unrighteous, waited for the final judgment.  In later and especially post-exilic thought Sheol was separated into a place for the unrighteous dead and Abraham’s bosom where the righteous waited.  This is reflected in Jesus parable about Lazar (in Greek Lazarus) and the rich man.  In the Greek Septuagint this word was translated as Hades which was from Greek mythology both the place of the dead and the name of the god of the dead who ruled over it.  Thus Greek mythology had a coloring effect on Biblical theology.   In these later Greek incursions Hades became Hell and the god who ruled over it became the Devil, Satan, although this is not Biblically supportable. (See especially Dante’s Inferno.)

2. Gehenna: (translated as Hell in KJV: Mt. 5:22,29; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15,33; Mr. 9:43,45,47; Lk. 12:5; Jas. 3:6;) The Valley of the son of Hinnom, in Aramaic “Gehenna,” was the garbage heap of the city of Jerusalem from ancient times.  Before the Jews conquered Jerusalem it was the place where the statue of Moloch was set up to sacrifice babies.  The Jews considered it defiled ground because of this and threw the carcasses of dead animals and the contents of chamber pots and any other refuse into the valley.  There was always something burning there and the stench of death covered the place.  Of course, the rotting carcasses were worm eaten.  Thus it came to symbolize what happened to the wicked dead and was a very vivid and immediate picture of Hell to everyone from miles around the city.  Ezekiel may have been thinking of this valley when he had the vision of the dry bones.

3. Hades: (translated as Hell in KJV: Mt. 11:23; 16:18; Lk. 10:15; 16:23; Ac. 2:27,31; Rev. 1:18; 6:8; 20:13,14)  The oldest New Testament manuscripts we have today are in Greek.  Though only Luke was himself a Greek it is possible that since the main audience of the Christian writings by the time the Gospels were committed to paper was Gentile that the original manuscripts may also have been in Greek.  Nevertheless, it must be remembered that Christianity is not primarily a Greek religion or philosophy and that the majority of the New Testament writers were native Aramaic speakers, a Semitic language closely akin to Hebrew.  Hebrew thought prevailed throughout and if any discrepancy exists it is in trying to make the theology too Greek in nature.  Where Jesus or others are quoted as using the term Gehenna it must be assumed that Gehenna was the term they meant to use.  However, whenever they are quoted as using the term Hades it should be assumed that they were actually referring to the Hebrew term Sheol. Therefore, ignore Greek mythology and base your theology on the Hebrew concept of Sheol (see above.)

4. Hell: The English word Hell is derived from the Norse influence on the Anglo-Saxon language prior to the Norman invasion.  The word is Norse in origin and comes from Norse mythology.  Of the three kingdoms of the frost giants Hell was the coldest and most terrible.  Interestingly, this idea invades the Italian epic Inferno by the Italian poet Dante.  Though Inferno means the hottest form of uncontrollable and raging fire the lowest level of Dante’s hell is a frozen lake imprisoning the worst evil souls and in its center imprisoning the gigantic Satan himself.  Of course, none of this has any relationship to Biblical theology at all but many people think it is an accurate picture.  Don’t believe it.

5. Paradise: (Lk. 23:43; II Cor. 12:4; Rev. 2:7)  Paradise is, as you see, mentioned only three times in the New Testament and not at all in the Old Testament.  However, it is significant that every instance listed above shows Paradise to be where Jesus is after His resurrection and ascension.  It is also to be noted that Paradise is not equated with the final destination of the righteous in any of these passages.  In fact the Revelation passage taken in context indicates that it is a previous locale to the New Heaven and the New Earth of the last chapters of the same book. 

6. Heaven: In (Ps. 77:18) this once only in the KJV translation of the Hebrew word “galgal” which means a whirlwind and comes from the word meaning wheel.  (Ps. 89:6, 37) This word is in the KJV translating the Hebrew word “shachaq” which means a powder or a vapor i.e. a cloud.  (Ps. 68:4)  The Hebrew word “arabah” which is used in this passage usually means the Great Rift Valley that extends down the Jordan River and includes the Dead Sea and extends on to Ezion Geber and the Gulf of Aquba.  However, the context of this particular passage doesn’t lend itself to that reading so this once in all of the Old Testament the KJV translates this word as heavens.  (Is. 5:30) The Hebrew word “ariyph” is in this one passage translated heavens in the KJV from the Hebrew meaning of the word which is the sky as drooping at the horizon.  All of the other passages (amounting to more than four hundred fifty separate references) translated Heaven in KJV are actually from the Hebrew word “shamayim” which is a plural form properly translated heavens.  They refer to the three tier heavens of Hebrew theology: the heaven of the day where the birds and clouds fly, the heaven of the night where the stars are and the heaven of heavens where God has His dwelling. KJV translates this as heaven or heavens apparently arbitrarily based on how the usage in the passage will affect theological positions current in the Church of England at the time of their translation. (See the rules governing translation given to the committee of scholars who worked on the KJV.)

IMPLICATIONS

At no point in the entire Old Testament is it ever suggested that any human being living or dead entered into the Heaven of heavens where God is.  God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden which was on earth.  God walked with Enoch and took him but the Bible doesn’t say where He took him to.  God met with Moses and with the group of elders on top of the mountain where they experienced His glory.  Elijah went up in a chariot of fire and the Bible says “into the heavens.”  It is an argument from silence because the passage isn’t specific as to destination.  However, the argument that the two of them, Enoch and Elijah, were taken to the Heaven of heavens when all the rest of the dead went to Sheol is both strained and illogical.  In all probability the Hebrews believed that these men were carried to the part of Sheol later known as the bosom of Abraham rather than they had some special place near the throne of God where no other humans in all of history (up the coming of Christ) were allowed to go.  This still speaks of a temporary destination before the completion of God’s plan for the world.

We are left therefore with a few possibilities of explanation for what happens to you after you die, righteous or not.  These include:

      “No One Can Know” –This is the view that we are not supposed to know what happens after we die.  It is to be a mystery which we leave in God’s capable hands.  This view is most popular with groups whose theology includes salvation by works and with groups who believe that only their own partisans can be saved.  This view excuses those who believe in it from justifying their position or attempting to make it fit with scripture because they can simply claim “no one can know.”  This may satisfy a certain type of uninqusitive mind but it is hardly satisfying for most of us, especially when a loved one dies.

      “Soul Sleep” –This group has included some of the most well know of past theologians such as St. Augustine, Jean Calvin, and Martin Luther.  Basically it states that the body sleeps in the grave until the resurrection and that the soul sleeps with it.  We are unconscious of the passage of time between our death and the Day of Judgment.  Of course, this view has its theological problems.  When Moses and Elijah came down to the mount of Transfiguration were they temporarily waked up and then sent back to sleep afterward?  Or perhaps they were not really there at all except as figurative beings.  You see the problem.  To hold this view is to turn many passages of scripture into allegories or parables with no relation to reality.

There is a corollary to this view which one of my seminary professors talked about that I like to call the Science Fiction or Time Travel view.  Basically what he said was that at death the spirit skips over all the intervening time to arrive at the Last Judgment at exactly the same time as everyone else no matter when they died; sort of a soul time-travel option.  Personally I find this view only credible if taken with the Christo-platonist idea (to which this particular professor also ascribed) that Heaven is only for spirits and no bodies.  It also requires that you believe (as this professor did) that the End Times writings of the Bible were all figurative and would not be fulfilled literally.  I can’t ascribe to this view.

      “Spiritual” --This group believes that when you die your body rots and your spirit goes back to God.  Some of them are Universalists who don’t believe in Hell but either believe that everyone will go to Heaven or that the most terribly wicked only will be totally annihilated while the rest will exist as disembodied spirits in some cloudy never-world. Others believe in a judgment of some sort and a rudimentary Hell which they would rather not define too clearly but they picture the same cloudy never-world Heaven as the Universalists.  None of these “spiritual believers” want to take any of the passages literally that cause problems with their viewpoint   Thus most of them scoff at people who profess to believe and understand Revelation and other similar passages.

      “Figurative” –This group believes (somewhat similarly to the above spiritual group) that there is no intermediate place for the blessed dead.  That means that at death you go immediately to either the eternal Heaven or the eternal Hell.  They may believe in Heaven as a real physical place or not but they believe that the passages relating to the end times and the thousand year reign of Christ are figurative, told in order to illustrate some truth but not to be taken literally.  I knew many of these in seminary.  In fact, students and teachers who held this view far outnumbered those who opted for a more literal interpretation of the scripture.

      “Intuitive” –This group believes that although it is not specifically spelled out in the Bible the concept of an intermediate temporary destination for the dead is assumed by the related passages.  Strangely enough this is also true for other doctrines such as the Trinity and the Rapture.  Whether God intended it to be this way in order to require faith from us or it is simply symptomatic of our modern society’s compulsion to have everything spelled out to the letter that causes the problem you can decide for yourself.  Basically, this view is that the literal interpretation of other passages relating to the end times and to some of the teachings of Jesus require this interpretation, i.e. that there are several changes in state for the blessed dead before the final judgment: 

For Old Testament saints there was at first a place set apart in Sheol, the place of the dead, called Abraham’s bosom.  At Jesus’ crucifixion He emptied only Abraham’s bosom and took all of the Old Testament saints to a new place called by Him Paradise.  All of the saints who die in the Lord presently go to be with Him in Paradise.  At the Rapture all of the saints will be resurrected or raptured and will join Him in a Marriage Feast in their new glorified bodies.  During the Feast they will be joined by those martyred during the Tribulation.  After the Feast they will return to the earth for the Judgment seat of Christ and the 1000 years.  There will be living saints on the earth as well as the resurrected saints who will be reigning with Christ.  After the 1000 years the new crop of lost people will rebel against Jesus’ rule and God will declare the time fulfilled.  Then will come the final judgment and the restoration of the New Heaven and the New Earth.  This view allows the literal interpretation of all Old and New Testament passages including prophecy but requires you to intuit (conclude by logical thought from information implied but not given) the intermediate state.

      Other Possible views –If there are other ways of interpreting the Biblical data I have not heard them or come up with them.  I believe they would all be variations of one or another of the views already enumerated.  The names I have given to these views are of my own making except for Soul Sleep.  I don’t know if anyone has attempted to catalogue them before.  If so, I am not copying them since I haven’t heard of them.