Matthew 7: 21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
Being children of Adam in the flesh, we are of them that are and were enemies of God and who must be redeemed by the faith only without our good works in the precious and sinless blood of the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour of them that believe. We are the broken egg since Adam fell. Only God's grace obtained by faith of Jesus Christ can redeem us from the fall and bring us unto God. We must all be at the cross of Christ and know and admit as the centurion did, " Truly, this was the Son of God ". All sinners, all who draw breath of mankind, were like him and responsible for His death as we are the children of them who did these things against God the Father's only begotten Son, who was He who both descended from Heaven to become Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, and He who ascended back up to heaven after His resurrection from the dead, the First Begotten from the dead, even Jesus Christ, the sinless perfect Lamb of God.
Romans 3: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:
16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:
17 And the way of peace have they not known:
18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Hence,
Ephesians2: 8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
11 Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;
12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
13 But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;
you forgot to use the word RIGHTEOUSNESS in the article :)
Do so-called “good people” go to Hell?
Depends on what your definition of “good” is, I suppose. Never met one, actually.
There is probably a special circle for ALLCAP folks.
couldn’t figure out, was the answer yes or no?
You forgot to ask the question "Why do we fall short?"
Joh 3:19-20 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
So, no, there are no good people and they like it that way. Only God can change the heart.
According to the ultimate Authority on the subject there is none good but God alone.
So the answer is no.
I believe it’s not my concern who goes where. I have no clue about that. I just try to stay out of trouble and be alert to the Lord.
James 2:14-26
14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,
16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;
23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?
26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead."
Not slamming anyone here, but it is, I think, one of the reasons at the root of the complaints some have about the hypocrisy in certain segments of Christianity.
I know of a specific example of a "born again" who preached to co-workers about "faith" (often turning them off because his behavior spoke otherwise in terms of how he dealt with people), honestly believed that once "born again" one had a golden ticket to heaven, and who also actively stole pricey equipment from the job site.
For the latter, one can point to Matthew 7:16, following the warning against false prophets, but equally applies to those who say one thing, but their actions say something quite another.
And on that, this should really be in the religion forum.
Of course good people don’t go to Hell.
To think otherwise is ridiculous.
The question is who is good? And the answer is none of us. That is why we need someone who is good and can give us His righteousness and take our sin on himself..
Deuteronomy 4:19 & Malachi 1:11.
Bottom line is that Jesus is the Savior and even bad sinners can go to Heaven if they repent and in faith receive the Christ into their hearts and minds. The wise God will know who to enter into Heaven or not.
One of Satan’s biggest lies is that “hell,” which most view as eternal conscious torment in the spirit realm, is a scriptural concept.
It’s generally thought that “hell” is a proper translation of the Greek word Gehenna. As the following short article shows, that is not the case at all.
Thanks for reading and considering.
“Hell” Not A Proper Translation for Gehenna
Samuel G. Dawson
Introduction
I read with interest my friend Ed Stevens’ article explaining the twelve New Testament Gehenna passages in the Fulfilled! Summer 2016 issue. He began by saying that those of us who don’t believe in the (Roman Catholic—SGD) concept of hell as eternal conscious torment of the lost, have overlooked the words Gehinnom in the OT and Gehenna in the NT that are commonly translated hell. Rather than overlooking these words, my study has led me inescapably to the conclusion that both these terms were proper names of a well-known valley just south of Jerusalem, and they shouldn’t have been translated at all, any more than Jerusalem or Bethlehem were. Actually, they weren’t translated as hell! The Catholic scholars in the Anglican Church (that part of the Roman Catholic church stolen by Henry VIII when the pope wouldn’t let him marry Anne Boleyn) who translated the KJV merely substituted the theologically-loaded word hell for Gehenna. This word was loaded with concepts entirely foreign to the word Gehenna.
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Those scholars had a bad habit of that sort of thing. They translated presbuteros (elders) as priests, pascha (Passover) as Easter (once), and baptizo (dip, plunge, immerse) as baptism (to slip their sprinkling and pouring for baptism into the Bible), and substituted the “divine pronouns” (thee, thou, and thine) for us rather than translating consistently. In each case, they substituted theologically-loaded words for the originals.
Ed’s analysis of the twelve instances of Gehenna in the NT displays the influence of such substitutions of hell (to him meaning eternal conscious torment in the spiritual realm) to those influenced by Roman Catholicism) for Gehenna, which never included such concepts. Had it not been for such substitutions, none of us would have concluded that Jesus taught anything about eternal conscious torment in a spiritual state.
To be fair, Catholics aren’t the only ones to pull such stunts. In Ac. 8.20, where Peter said to Simon the sorcerer, “thy silver perish with thee,” Today’s English Version has him telling Simon to “go to hell.” The word hell is not there in your Bible; the translators just substituted it, and that’s just the point. Hell’s not in any of them. It was just substituted for Gehenna in Bibles with Roman Catholic influence.
Contrary to this, it is said that “these twelve verses demonstrated that gehenna refers primarily (if not exclusively) to the place in the unseen spiritual realm where the souls of the unredeemed will be consciously punished forever.” It’s very easy to see if this claim is true. We’ll just read the twelve passages and see if we see eternal conscious torment in the spiritual realm in even a single one of them.
Matt. 5:22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever shall say to his brother, ‘Raca,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever shall say, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. (NAS)
Look carefully: do you see anything in that entire verse about eternal conscious torment in the spiritual realm? There’s not a hint of it, is there? Folks just read that into the word hell, just as Roman Catholic scholars intended! Jesus didn’t say what Gehenna was. He didn’t mention the spiritual realm or that anyone would be punished consciously forever. Jesus just said such were in danger of the Gehenna of fire, which is what the Jews and I understood: a fiery judgment coming on Jerusalem, whose rubble would end up in Gehenna. But it’s not Roman Catholic doctrine, which most just unconsciously plug into what Jesus said.
The next six passages noticed are the “eye, hand, and foot” passages, which we can deal with together:
Matt. 5:29, 30, 18:9, Mark 9:43, 45, 47 And if your right eye (or hand or foot) makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body (with two eyes, hands, or feet) to be thrown into hell. (NAS)
Does anyone believe people are going to have eyes, feet, and hands in a spiritual realm where there is eternal conscious torment? No one that I’m aware of!
Again, looking carefully at each of these passages, Jesus didn’t say hell – he said Gehenna, the nearby location the Jews were thoroughly familiar with. Impenitent Jews were going to end up with their whole bodies cast into Gehenna at the destruction of Jerusalem (the time element will be given in another of these passages, momentarily). Note carefully that Jesus didn’t mention souls punished consciously forever in a single one of them, did he? Yet Ed says “these twelve verses demonstrated that gehenna refers primarily (if not exclusively) to the place in the unseen spiritual realm where the souls of the unredeemed will be consciously punished forever.
In Mk. 9.43, “unquenchable fire” doesn’t mean eternal fire, but fire that you can’t quench or put out. It’s used of national judgment in Ezek. 20.47-48, on Israel in Amos 5.5-6, on Jerusalem in Isa. 66.15-16, and of Babylon’s burning of Jerusalem in Jer. 21:10-14. Of course, none of those fires were eternal; none of them are still burning!
Matt. 10:28 And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (NAS)
While we use this passage many times to prove that the soul of man cannot be destroyed, Jesus plainly affirms that God can (and imminently would, as we’re about to see) destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Note that he didn’t say, “I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who after He has killed the body, will punish your soul consciously eternally,” as many read it. The concepts of conscious, soul, eternal, and torment are not in this passage, either. I’m afraid they are just thinking of those things as they read these verses, which say no such thing!.
Readers of Fulfilled! can sympathize with such people, for as we studied I Corinthians 15 to see a first century fulfillment, just reading the chapter still flooded our minds with all the futurist sermons and illustrations we had heard on the resurrection. Our minds performed on that subject as theirs (and perhaps yours) does now on Jesus’ use of Gehenna, so you can be a good guy and do this! Please take a few moments and read Josh. 11.11, 10.35, 39, where the Jews conquering Canaan destroyed the souls of its inhabitants with the sword. This was national judgment, not eternal conscious torment in a spiritual realm as many imagine in Mt. 10.28. When Ed asserts, “The physical valley of Hinnom did not affect the soul,” surely he’s forgotten these occurrences of this very thing in Joshua, and therefore his conclusion that “therefore, gehenna must be a spiritual place in the unseen realm in which souls are brought to everlasting ruin in the afterlife” doesn’t follow at all. The Jews listening to Jesus in Mt. 10.28 would have understood such language. They knew from their Old Testament background that God could, and many times had, destroyed both bodies and souls in various national judgments. In Lk. 12.4-5, Luke’s account of Mt. 10.28, Jesus spoke of the fiery judgment coming on the Jews when he said in v49, “I came to cast fire upon the earth (Gr., ge, land); and what do I desire, if it is already kindled?”
Matt. 23:15. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel about on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. (NAS)
In this eleventh Gehenna passage, Jesus doesn’t mention eternal conscious torment in the spiritual realm - not in one syllable. With the help of our Roman Catholic substitution for Gehenna, many just read those things into these verses. It’s quite a testimony to the power of the human mind to do such a thing, isn’t it?
This passage gives us the time element of the punishment of Gehenna. In Mt. 23.36, Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.” Not only was Jesus’ generation of Jews going to experience the judgment of Gehenna, but in the next chapter, Jesus said it would happen in their generation: “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all these things be accomplished.” (Mt. 24.34)
I’m sure we’re agreed that Jesus is speaking of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem, but that’s precisely when the judgment of Gehenna took place, isn’t it?
We now come to the last Gehenna passage, the only one not spoken by Jesus.
James 3:6 And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. (NAS)
Like Jesus, James uses no words like eternal, conscious, torment, or spiritual realm. He merely used Gehenna, which his first century Jewish audience was familiar with. He’s addressing the misuse of the tongue just like Jesus did in the first Gehenna passage in inspired literature, Mt. 5.22. He says their tongue can set on fire the course of their lives, and their lives are going to be set on fire by Gehenna.
Conclusion
We’ve now read the twelve Gehenna passages closely. Again, it was asserted: “... these twelve verses demonstrated that gehenna refers primarily (if not exclusively) to the place in the unseen spiritual realm where the souls of the unredeemed will be consciously punished forever.” Did you see any evidence of that? Its author’s a mighty good man, but there’s not one syllable of eternal conscious torment in a spiritual state in a single one of them. Those concepts are included in the Roman Catholic concept of hell, but not at all in Gehenna.
False theories of eternal punishment of the wicked have done unfathomable damage in the religious realm. Untold millions of people have obeyed God purely out of fear of a false concept of hell. Other untold millions have turned their backs on God because of a false sense of hell, as described by Roman Catholic sources, and their followers in most denominations.
To sum up, Jesus threatened the Jews in the environs of Jerusalem (and no one else: not people in Ephesus, Rome, or people of our time) that they were headed for the valley named Gehenna. There would be unquenchable fire (Mk. 9.43) upon his generation (Mt. 23.36) in his generation (Mt. 24.34), when God threatened to destroy the souls of those of Jesus’ generation after killing their bodies (Lk. 12.5, Mt. 10.28).
None of these hell passages say that anyone of our day can go to hell. None of them associate hell with Satan. None of them say that Satan’s domain is hell. Though they speak of men being killed and destroyed in Gehenna, none of them speak of men being tormented there.
Ed is correct when he affirms that we shouldn’t overlook the words Gehinnom and Gehenna, but neither should we blatantly read into them concepts entirely foreign to them. I appreciate very much his challenging our thinking on this subject.
Thanks for reading, and considering,
Samuel G. Dawson
P. S. For further study on the subject of hell, please see http://sgdpress.com/Jesus__Teaching_on_Hell.html
There are no “good” people. Some people behave better than others, and that is relative. Relativism is not truth.
So this is somewhat of a trick question asked by a God resisting individual in order to argue. It is pointless except to make an argument, as the subject of the question does not exist, like asking if dry waves will wet a beach.
for later
“We Are a Broken Egg”
That sums up the depth and intelligence level of that ranting tirade.
Romans 3:10
Do forgiven sinners go to Heaven?
Do forgiven sinners who do good works go to Heaven?
Do forgiven sinners whose works do not match nor indicate their stated belief in Christ go to Heaven?
I don't know. Personally, I'm just happy that the job of reading hearts and judging people and their souls doesn't fall on me to do.
I hate to admit it, but living up to His Standards has been way beyond me and my understand so far.
My thoughts, my mouth and my acts continually testify against me.
Yes, if they commit the unforgiveable sin of rejecting the one path that YHWH has provided for them to go to heaven.
Ping