HELL – The Real Story
God’s Fire Isn’t What You Think — And That’s Very Good News
What if everything you’ve heard about hell isn’t exactly what the Bible says?
I know—that’s a loaded question.
Maybe you’re already thinking, “Oh great, another heretic trying to erase judgment and turn God into a cosmic teddy bear.”
I get it.
Honestly? I once thought the same thing.
But here’s the truth:
This isn’t about sugarcoating anything.
It’s about facing the most honest and necessary questions a person can ask:
If the Gospel is truly Good News, and if God is truly the person of Love… then how could endless torment ever fit into that story?
This isn’t heresy.
It’s the search for the heart of God.
And when you see it, I think you’ll realize something stunning:
The Good News is even better than you were ever told.
So if you’ve got questions about hell—if something deep inside you has wondered, “Could God really be that cruel? Or is there something more going on here?”—then you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
Let’s take a journey through the Bible, through history, through the very heart of God and let’s see where the fire actually leads.
Lost in Translation: How "Hell" Was Born
Before we can understand what hell is (or isn’t), we have to face a simple, awkward truth:
Most of what we think about hell comes from bad translations.
The word “hell” comes from the Old English hel or helle, rooted in Germanic mythology, and was the name of the Norse goddess Hel, who ruled the underworld—not a biblical concept, but a pagan one later adopted into Christian vocabulary.
What we call “hell” today was stitched together from four different words, each with very different meanings, and none of them describe the eternal torture chamber we were warned about.
Let’s pull back the curtain and meet the real words hiding behind the “hell” mask.
(Warning: you might never read your Bible the same way again.)
Sheol (שְׁאוֹל – Hebrew)
Proper Meaning:
The realm of the dead; the grave; the shadowy place where all the dead go — righteous or wicked. It does not imply fiery torment.
Wrong Translations:
KJV often rendered it “hell,” “grave,” or “pit”—inconsistently and misleadingly.
Examples of Misuse:
- Psalm 16:10 —
“For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell…” (KJV)
🡒 Properly: “in Sheol” — the grave, where everyone goes when we die. - Jonah 2:2 —
“Out of the belly of hell cried I…” (KJV)
🡒 Properly: “out of Sheol” — Jonah wasn’t in fiery torment; he was inside a fish (or symbolically, the realm of the dead).
Hades (ᾍδης – Greek)
Proper Meaning:
The Greek equivalent of Sheol.
Simply the grave, the place of the dead, NOT a place of punishment or fire by default.
In Greek mythology, Hades ruled the underworld, but the biblical usage borrowed only the neutral sense.
Wrong Translations:
KJV again often rendered Hades as “hell,” unnecessarily feeding the fiery narrative.
Examples of Misuse:
Matthew 16:18 —
“…the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (KJV)
🡒 Properly: “the gates of Hades” — meaning death will not overcome the Church.
Acts 2:27 (Peter quoting Psalm 16 about Jesus) —
“Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” (KJV)
🡒 Properly: “Because you will not abandon my soul to Hades.” — Yes! Because Jesus had just risen from the grave, defeating death and the power of the grave itself.
Gehenna (γέεννα – Greek)
Now things get a little more intense, as Jesus did use this word—Gehenna— 11 times.
No, it wasn’t His most-used word, but it carries a weight that, honestly, none of us can fully comprehend… Still, let’s try.
Proper Meaning:
Gehenna was a literal valley outside Jerusalem (the Valley of Hinnom), historically associated with child sacrifice to Molech.
After Israel’s return from Babylonian exile, the valley was said to have become the city’s garbage dump. According to ancient sources, Gehenna was said to be known as a fiery place where criminals’ remains were discarded.
Garbage, executed criminals, and dead animals were thrown in. The stench was unbearable—I know, ew! The fire rarely stopped smoldering, and worms constantly fed on the remains.
By Jesus’ day, Gehenna was a literal valley of filth, disgrace, and physical death—not a symbol of eternal conscious torment. While we can speculate on why Jesus used Gehenna to describe the consequences of sin, He often spoke in vivid hyperbole—like plucking out your eye—to shock His audience and leave a lasting impression.
Wrong Translations:
The KJV almost always translated Gehenna as “hell,” wrongly suggesting eternal torment and completely missing its historical and literal context.
Examples of Misuse:
- Matthew 5:29 —
“…for it is profitable for thee… that thy whole body should not be cast into hell.” (KJV)
🡒 Properly: “cast into Gehenna” — a warning, likely about physical death. - Matthew 10:28 —
“…fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (KJV)
🡒 Properly: “in Gehenna” — a warning about the complete ruin that sin brings to both body and soul, ending in death. -
Let’s not forget: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) NOT eternal torment.
And Jesus offered a better way: “This is eternal life: to know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” — John 17:3 (Reinforced by 2 Peter 1:2–3, Philippians 3:8–10, and 1 John 1:2-3)
Gehenna was a very familiar word to Jesus’ audience.
It carried deep emotional and cultural weight because of Israel’s long and tragic history with the valley.
In James 3:6, Gehenna is used metaphorically, describing the corruptive power of the human tongue—not an afterlife location.
In Jeremiah 19:2–15, the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) is cursed for the atrocities committed there,
Today, that same valley is no longer cursed or burning—It’s a green public park (Picture below). You can visit the Valley of Hinnom, sit under a tree, and have a picnic where fires once smoldered.
Gehenna was never a “forever fiery hell pit.”
It was a tragic, very real symbol of disgrace and destruction in this life—not a horror story about unending torment in the next.
Paul, Peter, and John never mention Gehenna.
Paul even said, “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27)—yet he never once warns anyone about Gehenna.
If Gehenna were truly the final destination of billions of lost souls, wouldn’t the apostles have made it their central warning?
Gehenna is not God’s eternal torture chamber. It’s a real-world warning—a tragic image of what happens when people reject truth, justice, and life, and allow corruption to turn their lives and communities into garbage heaps.
Jesus used the fire of Gehenna to warn of the real consequences of sin: destruction, disgrace, and death—not endless pain. And let’s not forget—Jesus overcame death for all.
The real “hell” that threatened His listeners wasn’t an afterlife inferno. It was their lawlessness, the collapse of their moral foundation, if they hardened their hearts and missed the way of righteousness.
Tartarus (τάρταρος – Greek)
Proper Meaning:
Tartarus is mentioned only once in the Bible.
In ancient Greek mythology, Tartarus was the deep abyss used as a dungeon for the rebellious Titans, according to Plato’s Gorgias (around 400 BC).
Wrong Translations:
The King James Version confusingly rendered Tartarus as “hell,” even though Peter clearly borrowed it to describe a temporary holding place for fallen angels.
Example of Misuse:
- 2 Peter 2:4 —
“For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;” (KJV)
🡒 Properly: “cast them into Tartarus” — a dungeon, a temporary prison, not an eternal conscious torment pit.
Tartarus wasused by Peter to describe a temporary place of confinement for rebellious spiritual beings, not a destination for humans.
And if Tartarus was the fiery eternal hell that people imagine,
then how do we explain this?
- 1 Peter 3:18-20 says that after His death, Jesus went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison:
“Jesus… being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.” - Jude 1:6 adds:
“And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling, He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.”
Notice carefully:
Even though Jude uses the word “eternal” for the chains [Peter called it chains of darkness], he immediately says “until the judgment of the great day.”
🡒 Meaning: the imprisonment was temporary, awaiting the fullness of God’s divine justice.
And considering that death itself will be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26), we can reasonably conclude that even every dark prison will meet its end too.
In short, Tartarus is not a hell of endless fiery punishment.
It was a word used to describe a temporary prison for rebellious angels awaiting judgment—
a holding cell where Jesus invaded, preached the Good News, and took the keys of Death and “Hell”. (Revelation 1:18).
And what do you think Jesus intends to do with those keys?
Hold a victory parade and then slam the doors shut forever?
No way.
I can only think of deliverance and restoration because His victory is a rescue mission, not a revenge story.
- Acts 3:21 affirms:
“whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things, about which God spoke by the mouths of His holy prophets from ancient times.”
It’s honestly unbelievable that Christians hijacked this term, ripped it from its mythological context, and stuffed it into a medieval pagan justice system of endless conscious torment.
Peter and Jude certainly didn’t imagine it that way. Neither did Jesus.
What About The Lake of Fire and Lazarus?
The idea that “hell” is the Lake of Fire—eternal, hopeless, merciless—quickly unravels when we read Scripture through honest eyes and an open heart.
The Bible actually tells a better story:
A story of purification, not punishment.
A story of love stronger than death.
A story where God’s fire restores, not destroys.
Still have questions? You should!
What about those intense verses in Revelation—“second death,” “torment,” “sulfur,” “eternal fire”?
And what about that parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man?
Spoiler: neither of those support eternal conscious torment once you understand the language, culture, and context.
👉 Click on the following for a deep dive into both: What the Lake of Fire Really Is — and Why Lazarus Wasn’t a Tour Guide for Hell.
And there’s more on dismantling the pagan view of eternal punishment: “Their Worm Will Not Die” — But What Does That Even Mean?
Why The Truth Matters?
Hell, as commonly understood today—a place of eternal conscious torment for the lost—is not what Scripture actually says.
These mistranslations—especially in the KJV—fueled the terrifying pagan and medieval doctrines of infernalism.
Correcting these translations reveals a far more hopeful and restorative view of divine justice.
As we’ve seen, the horrifying images of “hell” many of us grew up with were not rooted in the original words of Scripture, but in centuries of cultural assumptions, mistranslations, and fear-based theology.
Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus—none of them were meant to paint a picture of endless conscious torment.
Somewhere along the way, the message of God’s restorative love was buried beneath the rubble of human misunderstanding, or perhaps, it became a reflection of the human heart, not God’s.
But if hell as eternal torture was a mistranslation…
If the God revealed in Christ is not in the business of destruction but restoration…
Then it begs a bigger, bolder, life-changing question:
What else have I believed that isn’t true?
This is just the beginning.
There is a whole Gospel to reclaim—one that actually sounds like Good News.
Stay curious. Stay bold.
The Good News does not leave loose ends.
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