responsible for causing people to see or hear weird and frightening manifestations​—voices, rappings and shadowy figures for which there are no apparent causes—​is a major factor in safeguarding us from being deceived. This knowledge will free us from fearing the dead and from engaging in valueless rites in their behalf. It will also help to prevent our being victimized by wicked spirits.

But if we are to be protected from every aspect of the deception that Satan and his demons have perpetrated in connection with the dead, we must believe and act in harmony with the entire Bible. This is because all of it is the inspired Word of God.

Chapter 11

Is Hell Hot?

IS IT NOT a fact that many translations of the Bible refer to a place called “hell”? Yes, many translations of the Holy Scriptures use that expression. But the question is whether the things that the clergy have taught about the place called “hell” have come from the Holy Bible or from some other source.

Did you know that, not only members of Christendom’s churches, but many non-Christians as well, have been taught to believe in a hell of torment? It is revealing to read from a variety of sources what is said about the torments of those confined in hell.

A non-Christian “holy book” of the seventh century C.E. says the following:

“Hell!​—they will burn therein,—​an evil bed (indeed, to lie on)!​—Yea, such!​—Then shall they taste it,—​a boiling fluid, and a fluid dark, murky, intensely cold! . . . (They will be) in the midst of a fierce Blast of Fire and in Boiling Water, and in the shades of Black Smoke: Nothing (will there be) to refresh, nor to please.”

Buddhism, which got started in about the sixth century B.C.E. provides this description of one of the “hells” about which it teaches:

“Here there is no interval of cessation either of the flames or of the pain of the beings.”

A Roman Catholic Catechism of Christian Doctrine (published in 1949) states:

“They are deprived of the vision of God and suffer dreadful torments, especially that of fire, for all eternity. . . . The privation of the beatific vision is called the pain of loss; the torment inflicted by created means on the soul, and on the body after its resurrection, is called the pain of sense.”

Also among the Protestant clergy in some places there are those who paint vivid verbal pictures of the horrors of hell. Even their church members at times claim to have had visions of its torments. One man described what he envisioned as follows: ‘As far as my eyes could reach there were only burning fire and human beings to be seen. What pain and suffering! Some people screamed, others wailed and begged for water, water! Some rent their hair, others gnashed their teeth; still others bit themselves in the arms and hands.’

The claim is often made that the threatened punishments of hell are a strong force in moving people to do what is right. But do the facts of history bear this out? Have not some of the greatest cruelties been perpetrated by believers in the doctrine of hellfire? Are not the horrible inquisitions and blood-spilling crusades of Christendom examples of this?

So it should come as no surprise that a growing number of people do not really believe in the existence of a hell of torment nor do they view its punishments as a deterrent to wrongdoing. Though not having actually disproved this teaching, they are simply not inclined to believe what does not appeal to them as reasonable and true. Still they may be members of a church that teaches this doctrine and, by supporting it, share responsibility for propagating the teaching of hellfire.

But just what does the Bible say about torment after death? If you have read earlier chapters of this book, you know that many common beliefs about the dead are false. You know, according to the Bible, that no soul or spirit separates from the body at death and continues conscious existence. Hence, there is no Scriptural foundation for the doctrine of eternal torment after death, for nothing survives that can be subjected to literal torment. What, then, is the place that various Bible translations refer to as “hell”?

“SHEOL” IDENTIFIED

In the Catholic Douay Version, the first mention of “hell” is found at Genesis 37:35, which quotes the patriarch Jacob as saying respecting Joseph, whom he believed to be dead: “I will go down to my son into hell, mourning.” Clearly Jacob was not expressing the idea of joining his son in a place of torment. Even the footnote on this verse in the Douay Version (published by the Douay Bible House, New York, 1941) does not put such an interpretation on the text. It says:

“Into hell. That is, into limbo, the place where the souls of the just were received before the death of our Redeemer. . . . [It] certainly meant the place of rest where he believed his soul to be.”

However, nowhere does the Bible itself refer to such a place as “limbo.” Nor does it support the idea of a special resting-place for the soul as something distinctly separate from the body. As acknowledged in the glossary of a modern Catholic translation, The New American Bible (published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, 1970): “There is no opposition or difference between soul and body; they are merely different ways of describing the one, concrete reality.”

What, then, is the “hell” in which Jacob thought he would join his son? The correct answer to this question lies in getting the proper sense of the original-language word for “hell,” namely, sh^e’ohlʹ, which is transliterated “Sheol.” This term, also translated as “grave,” “pit,” “abode of the dead” and “nether world,” appears sixty-six timesa (in the New World Translation) in the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Scriptures (commonly called the “Old Testament”), but it is never associated with life, activity or torment. To the contrary, it is often linked with death and inactivity. A few examples are:

“For in death there is no mention of you [Jehovah]; in Sheol [the grave, Authorized Version; hell, Douay Version] who will laud you?”​—Psalm 6:5 (6:6, Douay Version).

“All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol [the grave, Authorized Version; hell, Douay Version], the place to which you are going.”​—Ecclesiastes 9:10.

“For it is not Sheol [the grave, Authorized Version; hell, Douay Version] that can laud you [Jehovah]; death itself cannot praise you. Those going down into the pit cannot look hopefully to your trueness. The living, the living, he is the one that can laud you, just as I can this day.”​—Isaiah 38:18, 19.

Hence, Sheol is obviously the place to which the dead go. It is not an individual grave but the common grave of dead mankind in general, where all conscious activity ceases. This is also what the New Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges to be the Biblical significance of Sheol, saying:

“In the Bible it designates the place of complete inertia that one goes down to when one dies whether one be just or wicked, rich or poor.”​—Vol. 13, p. 170.

That no place of fiery torment existed during the entire Hebrew Scripture period is also confirmed by the fact that torment is never set forth as the penalty for disobedience. The choice that was put before the nation of Israel was, not life or torment, but life or death. Moses told the nation: “I have put life and death before you, the blessing and the malediction; and you must choose life in order that you may keep alive, you and your offspring, by loving Jehovah your God, by listening to his voice and by sticking to him.”​—Deuteronomy 30:19, 20.

Similarly, God’s later appeals for unfaithful Israelites to repent served to encourage them to avoid experiencing, not torment, but an untimely death. Through his prophet Ezekiel, Jehovah