WHAT a horrible and disgusting subject! I do not want to discuss it. I have no desire to hear anything about that infernal place. We have plenty of hell here . Please do not start on such a subject!" In disgust so exclaimed a woman with whom one of Jehovah's witnesses was conversing .

Do you blame this woman for expressing herself in such a way? We do not . It would be natural for her to speak so, and also for all those who have been taught by Christendom to believe the Goddishonoring doctrine of a fiery hell for tormenting conscious human souls eternally. But as you are an honest person, endowed by your Creator with an intelligent, inquiring mind, you will want to know what hell is. What does it look like? When, by whom and for what purpose was it created or discovered? Who go there, and for how long?

In Old English versions the word hell is used to name the place, in German versions Hoelle, in Portuguese inferno, in Spanish infierno, and in French Enfer, and in Greek ha'des. In the old Hebrew Scriptures it is the word sheol that is translated by these words in the different languages .

Throughout those sacred Hebrew Scriptures this word sheol occurs 65 times. In the King James Version the English translators rendered it 31 times "hell", 31 times "grave", and only 3 times "pit" . 5 In the Catholic Douay Version the English translators rendered sheol 63 times as "hell", and once as "pit" (Job 17 :16), and once as "death" (Osee 13:14) . This Douay Version says "hell" at Psalms 93 :17 and 113:17, but the word sheol does not occur there, and in the corresponding places (Psalms 94 :17 and 115 :17) the King James Version says "silence" . At Proverbs 2 :18 and Ecclesiastes 9 :3 the Douay Version says "hell", but the King James Version says "the dead" . At Isaiah 7 :11 the Douay Version says "depth of hell", but the King James Version simply says "depth" . The Douay Version has the apocryphal books or writings, and in these the word hell occurs 19 times more and is translated from the Greek words taphos (burial place), ha'des, and abyssos (abyss) .

Even in the foreign languages the various translators do not agree among themselves in translating the Hebrew word sheol and its Greek equivalent ha'des. But the very fact that the King James Version renders the one Hebrew word sheol three different ways shows that hell, grave and pit mean one and the same thing. Since hell means mankind's common grave or the pit of burial, it could not at the same time mean a place of fiery torture or a place of two compartments, one of bliss and one of fiery torment . How do we know sheol means mankind's common grave and not a place of torture? Holy Scripture, God's Word, interprets it so . At Genesis 37 :35 and 42 :38 Jacob, one of Jesus' forefathers, when mourning for his son Joseph, whom he thought to be dead, said to his sons and daughters who came to comfort him : "I will go down into the grave [sheol] unto my son mourning . . . . then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave [sheol] ." In these verses the American Standard Version leaves sheol untranslated, the King James Version renders it "grave", but the Catholic Douay Version renders it "hell" .

Now, stop for a moment and think . Did Jacob believe that his son Joseph went to a place of torment to spend eternity there, and did he want himself to go there and meet him? Or rather was it that he merely thought his beloved son was dead and in the grave and he himself wanted to die? If he were to go to such hot and fiery place, his gray hairs would not last long. Whether Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or of other religion, stop! think! reason! "Do good people go to hell? Yes, if by hell you mean the Bible hell. Who does not know about Job? Who has not read in the Bible about his faithfulness and integrity toward God? Amidst his affliction and under pressure from Satan and from his supposed friends Job offered to God this prayer : "0 that thou wouldest hide me in the grave [sheol, AS; hell, Dy], that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!" (Job 14 :13) If sheol means a place of torment and fire, would Job wish to go there and spend his time until God remembered him? This question calls for the use of your reasoning faculties rather than blind credulity . Evidently Job's desire was to die and go to the grave, that his sufferings might cease. Psalm 139 :8 reads : "If I make my bed in hell [sheol, AS], behold, thou art there ."

WHERE HELL IS

But where is hell located? The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, under the word "Hell", states : "Holy Writ seems to indicate that hell is within the earth, for it describes hell as an abyss to which wicked descend." But read what the Bible says about the location of hell . When the prophet Jonah was swallowed by a big fish to save him from drowning he prayed from its belly in these words : "I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell [the grave, marginal reading] cried I, and thou heardest my voice ." (Jonah 2 :2) Where was Jonah? In the belly of the fish which God prepared to swallow him. That cramped dark place would have been the prophet's grave had not God `spoken to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land' . But until that time he was in hell ; he was as good as dead in sheol, the grave or tomb . Plainly, hell is not at the hot center of our earth, for it is no deeper than the grave .

"And how about the soldiers who die in carnal warfare? Do they go to heaven or to hell? Your true answer is at Ezekiel 32 :27 : "The mighty that are fallen [in the battle] of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war : and they have laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living ." So the soldiers who die in war are cast into hell, sheol or the grave, and their weapons too are laid with them in hell under their heads, in the land of the dead. Amos 9 :2 reads : "Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them." How can men dig into hell if it is a place of literal fire and sulphur in the bowels of the earth? It is so plain that the Bible hell is mankind's common grave that even an honest little child can understand it, but not the religious theologians .

At Numbers 16 :32, 33, about those who rebelled against Moses, it is written that the earth "opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and . . . they, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit [into hell, Dy]". Here is one instance where sheol is translated "pit" . It means the grave, down to which the earthquake brought those rebellious ones .

GETTING OUT OF HELL

Is there any example in Scripture of where a man went to hell and was delivered from it? Yes; Jonah was one. But the Bible gives another example, that of Jesus . He went to hell and stayed there for three days, and then by the power of the Almighty God he was resurrected . Hear what the apostle Peter states about the martyred Jesus Christ. Quoting from Psalm 16 :10, Peter says : "His soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption . This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses." (Acts 2 :31, 32) The Hebrew word at Psalm 16 :10 translated "hell" is sheol; but in Peter's Greek quotation it is ha'des. So we see that ha'des is the Greek equivalent for sheol . The original word in each language means mankind's common grave, a condition where the dead and buried ones are unseen . There is where the Son of God went for three days, like Jonah .

But are not Satan the Devil and his demons down in hell keeping the fires and making it hard for those who are in it? This is what is taught by Christendom's clergy, but you will be surprised to know the Devil never was in such a place . The Devil's human servant, the king of Babylon, was doomed to go to hell, the Bible hell. But Satan the Devil who made himself Lucifer in his organization is really the one spoken to under the figure of the "king of Babylon" in these words . "Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming : it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth ; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations." (Isaiah 14 :9) If the Devil had been there constantly, how could hell be moved to meet him? Only because, as verse 15 prophetically says to him, "thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." Clearly, then, Satan goes there for the first time at the battle of Armageddon to meet the dead. So hell here corresponds with the abyss where he is cast bound for a thousand years . -Revelation 20 :1-3, 7.

Many religious sects believe that for all those who have the misfortune to go to hell there is no hope whatever that they will ever come out from it . But Jesus got out of hell, and at Revelation 20:13 we read: "Death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them : and they were judged every man according to their works ." Here the record states that hell let out the dead who were in it and that those released ones were judged according to their works .

Now, it is a case of choosing who is true, God or the clergy? At verse 14 we read : "And death and hell [ha'des] were cast into the lake of fire . This is the second death ." This is highly symbolic language. Death and hell are things that cannot reasonably be cast into a literal "lake of fire". Death itself, Paul says, will be destroyed : "Death is swallowed up forever." (1 Corinthians 15 :54, 55, NW) None would be able to understand this symbolic language unless the Bible itself gave us the interpretation by saying : "This means the second death, the lake of fire." (Revelation 20 :14, NW) From the second death there is no recovery or resurrection .. At verse 10 the gladsome statement is made that the Devil himself is finally "hurled into the lake of fire and sulphur", which, according to the Bible, means "the second death". From this state the Devil will never return to molest the subjects of the King of the new world . The Devil's `torments' in the lake of fire mean he will stay in the second death forever .

GEHENNA

How, now, are we to explain Jesus' words at Mark 9 :47,48? Here the King James Version reads : "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out : it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire : where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." This text is seized upon by hell-fire screechers to prove there is a place of fiery torture where the wicked are suffering conscious pains . But close examination of the words of Jesus reveals that what dies not is the worms, not the creature man . So according to the clergy theory the worms are immortal . This is wholly unscriptural and unreasonable. Jesus said nothing about creatures being conscious there and suffering torment in fire .

What, then, did Jesus here mean? This : that it is better for a man to be deprived of anything that is as dear to him as an eye or a hand or a foot than to hold on to that and be destroyed in Gehenna. Here the Greek Bible text uses, not the word ha'des, but the word Gehenna. According to the Hebrew Scriptures this has reference, not to hell, but to the "Valley of Hinnom" . This valley lay outside of the south and west walls of Jerusalem. It was used as a crematory or incinerator where the Israelites dumped the city's offal and garbage as well as the dead bodies of animals and of vile criminals to be destroyed by burning . No live creatures, however, were cast there, as this was against the Jewish law. The fires were kept burning continually and, in order to increase their intensity, the Jews added brimstone or sulphur . Hence Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom, became a symbol, not of eternal torment, but of the condition of eternal condemnation. Its flames symbolized the complete, eternal destruction to which all the willful enemies of God and his kingdom will go and from which there is no recovery or resurrection .

Gehenna is otherwise spoken of as a "lake that burns with fire and sulphur" . (Revelation 21:8, NW) However, ha'des represents the death condition from which a resurrection is possible . If we were to take Jesus' words about Gehenna as meaning literal fire, then only the literally one-footed and one-eyed persons would ever get eternal life . See Matthew 23:33 where most translators mistranslate Gehenna as hell .

In all places where hell is translated from the Greek word Gehenna it means everlasting destruction. The New World Translation correctly ren ders Gehenna. So note Jesus' words at Matthew 10 :28: "Do not become fearful of those who kill the body but can not kill the soul ; but rather be in fear of him that can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna ." Since God destroys soul and body in Gehenna, this is conclusive proof that Gehenna, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, is a picture or symbol of complete annihilation, and not of eternal torment. This is the meaning of the "everlasting fire" mentioned in the parable of the sheep and goats . There, after Jesus pronounced judgment on the "goats", who do not support God's kingdom to which Christ's brothers are called, he declares respecting the "goats" : "These will depart into everlasting cutting-off [Greek, kolasis], but the righteous ones into everlasting life." (Matthew 25 :46, NW; ED) So the everlasting punishment of the "goats" is their everlastingly being cut off from all life .

The question may now well be asked, What have you to say about the rich man whom Jesus described as having gone to hell and Lazarus who "was carried off by the angels to the bosom position of Abraham"? (Luke 16 :19-31, NW) Does this not show there is a fiery hell with people conscious in it? Not at all ; for this is a parable . A parable is a symbolic and figurative statement which pictures some reality. It is unreasonable to suppose that one goes to hell because he is rich, wears good clothing and has plenty to eat ; for nothing is charged against the rich man . On the other hand, it would be ridiculous to believe that in order to go to heaven one must be a beggar, lie at some rich man's gate, eat crumbs falling from his table, be full of sores and have dogs come and lick them. How many Jews like Lazarus are there in the world today? Another thing, if the rich man were in a literal burning lake, how could Abraham send Lazarus to cool his tongue with just a drop of water on the tip of his finger?

By this parable Jesus uttered a prophecy which has been undergoing its modern fulfillment since A .D. 1919. It has its application to two classes existing on earth today. The rich man represents the ultraselfish class of the clergy of Christendom, who are now afar off from God and dead to his favor and service and tormented by the Kingdom truth proclaimed. Lazarus depicts the faithful remnant of the "body of Christ" . These, on being delivered from modern Babylon since 1919, receive God's favor, pictured by the "bosom position of Abraham", and are comforted through his Word. For a detailed discussion of this parable we refer the reader to the book What Has Religion Done for Mankind? pages 246-256, 302-312, and also The Watchtower, February 15 and March 1, 1951. These will give a satisfying answer and great consolation to all readers of them .

Who is responsible for this God-defaming doctrine of a hell of torment? The promulgator of it is Satan himself. His purpose in introducing it has been to frighten the people away from studying the Bible and to make them hate God . Imperfect man does not torture even a mad dog, but kills it. And yet the clergymen attribute to God, who is love, the wicked crime of torturing human creatures merely because they had the misfortune to be born sinners. (1 John 4 :16) The hell-fire doctrine was taught by pagans hundreds of years before Christ . It, as well as the doctrine of "purgatory", is based on another pagan false doctrine, that of the immortality of the human soul . To suffer eternal torment in consciousness after death the human soul would have to be immortal and indestructible .

The doctrine of a burning hell where the wicked are tortured eternally after death cannot be true, mainly for four reasons : (1) It is wholly unscriptural; (2) it is unreasonable ; (3) it is contrary to God's love, and (4) it is repugnant to justice . From this it is appreciated more that Gehenna is the condition of destruction where the Devil, his demons and all human opposers of Jehovah's theocratic government will go and from which condition there is no resurrection or recovery . But hell, sheol or ha'des means mankind's common grave, the condition where humans, good and bad, go and rest in hope of a resurrection under God's kingdom.