In this captivating episode, our host delves into the profound messages found within ‘God’s Unbreakable Oath.’ The reading focuses on unraveling one of the most entrenched ideas in religious discourse: the concept of hell. Through a close examination of biblical contexts, particularly focusing on the terms ‘Gehenna’ and the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, the discussion sheds light on how historical mistranslations and misconceptions have shaped the modern understanding of eternal damnation.
During the rest of this week, I’m reading from my newly published book, God’s Unbreakable Oath, which you can get on Amazon, and I encourage you to get it because it is going to show you in a much larger picture the overall plan of God to rescue all humanity, and the book of Romans is at the core of my book. Let me read then. Our contexts have already shown hell to be baseless. If God sent his Lamb to take away the sin of the world , if the fiery furnace is a description of great trials that lead people to know that God is the Lord , If mankind’s universal imprisonment in sin leads to mercy for all, Romans 11, if God vowed that the tongue of every person that will ever live shall ultimately swear allegiance to the Creator Redeemer who made the heavens and formed the earth, Isaiah 45, And if the outcome of all this is the coming reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth through the blood of the cross, Colossians 1, then hell is a phantom. Worse, it is a gross disfigurement, an alien poisonous mass on the overall loving victorious plan of God for the salvation of his creation. Hell does not fit. Why then did Jesus say, whoever says to his brother, you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire, Matthew 5? Simply put, the phrase hellfire is a bad translation. It is so bad, in fact, that it is hard to imagine how the word hell, with all its mystical, medieval and pagan characterizations of endless torment for most of the world’s population, could honestly have been employed by those learned Reformation translators to describe another word that has no resemblance to it. the only charitable explanation seems to be that by the time of the translation of the king james version sixteen o four to sixteen eleven the idea of hell had become so entrenched in over a thousand years of church tradition and authority that even if any of the translators had questioned the word’s appropriateness, the cultural and religious sway would have seemed too powerful for them to redirect it. Here is where word usage does play an important role. Jesus was not talking about hell. He was talking about judgment and redemption. The word the Gospel writers use for what Jesus said was Gehenna. This word goes back to a Hebrew origin, Geben Hinnom, Valley of the Son of Hinnom. Yes, Ezekiel comes into play again. The word emerges, you will recall, in Volume 1, during that horrendous time just before the Babylonian captivity. In that valley, beyond the walls of Jerusalem, somewhere to the southwest, Israel set up those heartbreaking idols to Baal and Molech and high places or mounds to worship them there. that worship pushed on by king ahaz and king manasseh launched the practice in israel of sacrificing little children in the fire of the not gods molech and baal second chronicles twenty eight and jeremiah thirty two The dreadful ritual was a thing God never commanded, nor did it come into his heart, Jeremiah 7, and it filled that alien place with the blood of the innocents, Jeremiah 19. God told Jeremiah to rename it Valley of Slaughter, Jeremiah 19. He would bring such catastrophe on the place and the whole of Jerusalem that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle, Jeremiah 19. Some fifty years later, King Josiah, Manasseh’s grandson, though just a boy when he came to the throne, instigated reforms when he reached manhood. He defiled the valley where child sacrifices had been performed, 2 Kings 23. defiling it probably by breaking down its altars and throwing waste and unidentified human carcasses and dead animals into it, so that it presumably would have become a place of rottenness fit only for scavengers rather than worshippers. This defilement would ensure that ritual human sacrifices would never again be made there. But the reforms came too late to avert God’s judgment on Jerusalem’s decadence. Some years later, Babylon invaded Jerusalem, sacked the city, destroyed the temple of God, and took the people captive. But here history stops in the popular Christian telling of it. Why is it that we are more interested in facts than faith, in what humans do rather than in what God does? We are not naturally born to faith, and consequently the most dramatic and dazzling part of the story has been hollowed out, and we are left with the shell. At the heart of the story is not human sin, as hideously devastating as it was, but God’s astonishing, almost offensive mercy. His judgments were intended to seize Israel’s heart. The situation was so dire that he allowed them to sacrifice their children that he might make them desolate and that they might know that I am the Lord, Ezekiel 20. To further accomplish this knowing of him, he would provide, quote, an atonement, the death of Christ, for all they have done, end quote, so that they never open… their mouth any more because of their shame, Ezekiel 16. And when their cry rose up that their hope was gone and they were cut off, Ezekiel 37, God’s mercy poured forth a promise like a cooling stream that he would open their graves, the graves of the whole house of Israel, including those sacrificed little children, and put his spirit within them and that they would live. and they shall know that God is the Lord, and that he has spoken it and performed it. Ezekiel 37 This is the fuller story of the valley of Ben-Hinnom. And for Jesus to use a word that is directly related to the place, the word Gehenna, and at the time in Israel’s history when the circumstances of a coming invasion of the Romans were in many ways similar to those of the Babylonian invasion hundreds of years before— and that the one telling us about gehenna should be the very one whose sacrifice of himself would rescue us from the horrors of that place must mean that he is not talking about so-called hell but about God’s judgments to come, both historically and in the final judgments, judgments which would stun Israel and the world with the knowledge of the Lord and lead to God’s having mercy on them, just as he promised to Israel after the terrors of the valley of Hinnom. Gehenna is not about hell. It is about judgments covered by atonement that lead to salvation. This is the heart of the story. Yet what happened to its vibrant beat? It has been stilled, undeniably an assisted killing. There is a compulsion in humans to still the truth about mercy, to mercifully kill it because the contemplation of such hideous ending in hideousness—let me read that again—it has been stilled, undeniably an assisted killing. There is a compulsion in humans to still, in quotes, the truth about mercy, to, quote, mercifully, end quote, kill it, because the contemplation of such hideousness ending in mercy seems like a gross vulgarity. But that is what the vulgarity of Jesus is all about. The vulgarity, the offence of the cross, Galatians 5. If Gehenna is associated with Geben Hinnom, the valley of slaughter in the book of Ezekiel, which has to do with God seizing the heart of Israel and making them desolate, in quotes, so that people come to know that God is the Lord, Ezekiel 20, if it is about providing atonement so that mankind is humbled to the point of never opening their mouth again and Against God again for shame, Ezekiel 16, if it is about a merciful opening of their graves so that the human family comes to experience that God is the Lord through the gloriousness of eternal life, Ezekiel 37, then Gehenna is a judgment. so determinatively redemptive that its purpose is unquenchable in that nothing human will be able to stop it until it has done its complete work of permanently ending humanity’s corruption and restoring life to all as they go through it. Details of the nature of the judgment of Gehenna are not given to us, In highly figurative language, the prophets have already made us aware of the fire of God’s jealousy which will devour the earth and that all men who are on the face of the earth shake at his presence, Ezekiel 38. Yet that awesome divine manifestation of jealousy will also renew creation so that all humanity with one accord will serve the Lord with a pure language of love and devotion. Zephaniah 3. We have learned that God will invite the nations to state their case, Isaiah 45, as they will, but because God’s tongue is like a devouring fire, Isaiah 30, and the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone, As he pleads his case with all flesh, Jeremiah 25, it will be a plea so convincing that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world held accountable to God, Romans 3. Then, like Isaiah who saw the Lord, and the seraphim around him crying out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory, the world will see, that it is undone, and a people of unclean lips, Isaiah 6, and Gehenna will have done its devastatingly redemptive work. The arrogance of man will be brought low, and human pride humbled. The Lord alone will be exalted on that day, and the idols will totally disappear, Isaiah 2. And before him, all humanity, after their violent resistance, will finally bow in allegiance and relief and joy of soul. Almighty God’s oath will have been fulfilled. I have sworn by my own name, I have spoken the truth, and I will never go back on my word. Every knee will bend to me, and every tongue will declare allegiance to me. Isaiah 45 Contexts, then, make clear what hell is not, and contexts clearly make clear what the outcome of Gehenna is. Well, I hope I haven’t bored you with my reading. Colin Cook here. But I hope I’ve interested you in my book, The God’s Unbreakable Oath, which is available for you on Amazon. What I believe this book will do for you is get you into Bible study. It really is a Bible study. It’s pastoral. It’s not academic and theological, though it has deep and profound ideas that will make you think and ponder and pray. So I hope you will take advantage of this. It’s taken me years to write it, and I feel that it will lift your heart and it will make sense out of the book of Romans for you. because I personally have no doubts that the book of Romans is talking about the salvation of all. And you will have many questions like, yes, but what about faith? And don’t men choose to be saved? Well, faith is a gift from God, and no one chooses hell or rejects heaven, but simply is in oblivion and suppression until God reveals his glory in Christ. So I invite you to get it, God’s Unbreakable Oath, available on Amazon, and I’ll be reading one more excerpt tomorrow. So thanks for listening, and hopefully you’ll tune in tomorrow too. I’ll see you next time. Cheerio, and God bless.
