The Gates of Hell

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Short Summary

The discourse challenges the traditional Christian doctrine of eternal conscious torment, arguing that it is inconsistent with the character of a loving God and the biblical teachings about salvation and judgment. It emphasizes that Jesus’ sacrifice was made for all humanity, advocating for a view aligned with annihilationism—that the wicked are ultimately destroyed rather than eternally tormented—and highlights the hope of resurrection and restoration as central to Christian hope. The speaker critiques the fear-based gospel of eternal punishment and calls for a more compassionate and logical understanding of God’s justice and mercy.

Long Summary

Detailed Summary of the Discourse on “The Gates of Hell”

Topic Introduction and Personal Motivation 
– The discourse centers on the concept of “the gates of hell” and challenges the traditional Christian doctrine of eternal conscious torment (ECT). 
– The speaker openly admits an emotional and intellectual investment (“an axe to grind”) on this topic, influenced by a deep concern for truth and compassion. 
– The persistence of ECT belief is highlighted, despite claims that modern Christianity is moving away from it. A recent Pew survey is cited showing 82% of evangelical Christians in North America still hold to ECT.

Critique of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) 
– The speaker finds the idea of eternal punishment for finite sins (a lifetime of about 70 years) utterly disproportionate and unjust. 
– Comparison is made to human judicial systems: even serious felons receive limited prison terms, while ECT posits infinite suffering without relief. 
– This notion raises serious questions about God’s character, causing anger and grief for the speaker because it conflicts with a loving and just God.

Purpose of Christianity and Salvation 
– The discourse questions the popular framing of Christianity as merely a fire escape to avoid hell, calling this an insult to God. 
– Christianity’s purpose is presented as the revelation of a glorious Savior, Jesus Christ, and the calling out of a spiritual “seed of Abraham” (the true church), not the salvation of the entire world at once. 
– Scriptural references are used to support this: 
– *John 3:16* (“God so loved the world…”) affirms God’s love and promise of everlasting life to believers. 
– *Hebrews 5:4* emphasizes that no one takes the honor of priesthood unto themselves but must be called by God. 
– *John 6:44* (“No man can come to me except the Father draws him”) highlights divine election and the limitation of salvation’s availability. 
– *Acts 4:12* (“There is no other name…”) is discussed in context with historical and practical limitations on gospel access, questioning the fairness of eternal damnation for many who never heard.

Historical and Theological Issues 
– The speaker reflects on the delay of gospel spread (e.g., across continents) and millions who have died without hearing Christ’s message. 
– The plight of people in closed countries (e.g., Islamic nations) is mentioned to highlight the problem of exclusive salvation. 
– The example of Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust is used to question the logic of eternal torment for evil people, especially when millions of innocent victims could also be suffering eternal torment.

The “Gates of Hell” and Jesus’ Authority 
– *Matthew 16:18-19* is quoted: Jesus says to Peter, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” and gives Peter the keys of the kingdom. 
– The rhetorical question is posed: if hell is inescapable, why does it have gates, implying a way of exit or control? 
– Peter’s role is interpreted as one who holds authority over these gates, not as a mere bystander to eternal suffering.

Nature of Judgment and Divine Ownership 
– *John 5:22* and *Matthew 28:18* affirm that all judgment and authority in heaven and earth have been given to Jesus. 
– Jesus’ sacrifice is described as purchasing the entire human race; he owns it and judges it. 
– Despite this, entry into heaven is difficult and limited, creating a theological dilemma about God’s justice and love.

The Adversary and the Origin of Deception 
– The speaker identifies the devil as the source of the false doctrine of eternal torment, quoting Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees in *John 8:44*: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth.” 
– The serpent in Eden is described as a liar who deceived Eve with the false promise that eating the forbidden fruit would make her equal to God. 
– The devil is portrayed as a cold-blooded murderer bent on enslaving humanity, not a misunderstood or redeemable being.

Biblical Terms for Hell and Their Meanings 
– The discourse clarifies that the Bible uses three different Greek words translated as “hell”: 
Gehenna: Originally the Valley of Hinnom, a garbage dump outside Jerusalem where fires burned continuously; symbolizing destruction and disgrace, not eternal conscious torment of living people. 
Hades: The realm of the dead; appears only 10 times in the New Testament, with limited usage by Jesus and no usage by Paul (disputed references excluded). The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (*Luke 16:23*) is mentioned, indicating a temporary state, not eternal torment. 
Tartarus: Only used once by Peter (*2 Peter 2:4*); a term from Greek mythology meaning the lowest level of the underworld, where fallen angels are imprisoned, not referring to human souls.

Annihilationism as an Alternative View 
– The speaker advocates annihilationism: the belief that unrepentant humans will cease to exist (“dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”), rather than suffer eternally. 
– This view emphasizes the universality of Christ’s atonement: 
– *1 John 2:2* – Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. 
– *1 Timothy 2:4* – God “wills” or “desires” all men to be saved, with the speaker rejecting interpretations that diminish this meaning. 
– *2 Peter 3:9* – God is patient, “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 
– *Hebrews* (unspecified chapter) – Jesus tasted death for everyone.

Human Life and Divine Value 
– A personal testimony is shared about a murdered student to illustrate the pricelessness of human life. 
– The sacrifice of Jesus is seen as supremely valuable, paying the ransom price for Adam and all humanity to come.

Misconceptions and False Images of God 
– The speaker warns against making God in human image, especially attributing to Him a “murderous heart.” 
– The doctrine of eternal conscious torment is considered a barometer of the heart’s hardness and lack of mercy. 
– True biblical faith should embrace God’s justice and mercy without resorting to eternal torment as punishment.

Closing Hope and Encouragement 
– The resurrection and restoration of the earth are highlighted as future realities following Jesus’ sacrifice. 
– This marks the beginning of eternal glory for the church in Christ. 
– The speaker closes with a blessing and hopeful anticipation of God’s plan to save and restore humanity.

—

Key Bible Verses Mentioned:

– Acts 17:11 (implied re: salvation by Jesus’ name) 
– John 3:16 – God’s love and promise of eternal life 
– Hebrews 5:4 – Calling of priests by God 
– John 6:44, 6:40, 6:65 – No one can come to Jesus except drawn by the Father 
– Matthew 16:18-19 – Jesus on the church and the gates of hell 
– John 5:22 – All judgment given to the Son 
– Matthew 28:18 – All authority given to Jesus 
– John 8:44 – Jesus calls the devil a liar and murderer 
– Luke 16:23 – Parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Hades) 
– 2 Peter 2:4 – Tartarus and fallen angels 
– 1 John 2:2 – Jesus as atoning sacrifice for the whole world 
– 1 Timothy 2:4 – God desires all men to be saved 
– 2 Peter 3:9 – God’s patience and desire for repentance 

—

Summary Conclusion: 
The discourse challenges the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment, advocating instead for a biblical understanding of hell as destruction and the ultimate annihilation of the wicked. It emphasizes God’s love, justice, and the universality of Christ’s atonement, calling for a re-examination of scripture free from fear-based theology. The “gates of hell” imply that hell is not an inescapable prison but a defeated realm over which Christ and His church have authority, ensuring that eternal suffering is incompatible with God’s character and plan.

Transcript

The gates of hell.

The subject is the gates of hell.

And I admit that in it I have an axe to grind.

I’m serious.

I think about this, and it grieves me more than ever to see people professing the name of Christ and teaching and insisting on the concept of eternal conscious torment.

I may not speak for 45 minutes, but I hope I speak all that’s on my heart to say.

Some tell me. Well, the Christian church is more modern now. They don’t believe that so much anymore. Oh, yes, they do. They do.

The pool here at the Evergreen State College was closed.

Closed after we signed the contract. It was much to our surprise and to their regret. They’re good people. I think you’ve seen how good they are to us here.

And so Sister Janet got on the phone. She is a great helper, a great helpmate, and started placing phone calls all around the area here to find a place that would let us use their baptismal font.

What you’re hearing now is what she heard.

Crickets. Except one. The secretary from the church said. Well, our pastor said that he’s never heard of your group before. What is your name?

Were called the Bible Students, and we’re having a convention at the Evergreen State College. Okay, I’ll ask the pastor and we’ll get back to you.

Well, they sent her an email and an attachment, and the attachment was a statement of faith that we acknowledge the triune God and the fact of eternal conscious torment.

A recent Pew survey, and we know that that’s a highly respected survey Corporation, showed that 82% of evangelical Christians in North America today still believe in eternal conscious torment.

So we’re going to talk for a while about that.

Eternal conscious torment without possibility of relent.

Brother Peter Mora used a phrase in his discourse. It’s an eternal punishment for a very temporary offense or something that someone did even in their whole life, 70 years. To equate that with eons and eons of torture.

You know well from popular culture that when people are caught mistreating animals, I think there was a professional football player who was doing some very cruel things to dogs. To dogs? Not human beings. To dogs, and he was prosecuted, convicted of a felony, and imprisoned, I think for five years.

I think he got out on good behavior with three.

Do you see the disparity in that?

To say that God would take intelligent human beings and torture them without possibility of relief for all eternity?

They’re talking about my father.

And one of my dilemmas these days is how do I channel my anger properly?

Think about it. We’re told in Acts chapter 17 that there is no other name than Jesus given among men under heaven, whereby we must be saved.

And a lot of hay is made of that phrase. You must accept Jesus or there is no salvation. But we need to dial this back just a bit and ask the primary question. What is the purpose of Christianity?

Is Christianity the great fire escape to allow earth’s millions to avoid the prospect of eternal torture? Is that the glorious gospel? Is that the good news? I say not. I say it’s an insult to God.

What is God’s purpose in Christianity? It is to find a glorious Savior to provide for a glorious savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, but not him alone. He has a body, the mystical body of Christ, the seed of Abraham that would bless all the families of the earth, calling out one here and one there.

I’d like to read a few scriptures regarding that. The Lord never intended that Christianity would dominate the world, would be a world religion. Now we know in one perspective the parable of the wheat and the tares. The wheat, relatively speaking, were fewer in number than the tares. The tares were in the majority.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die for us that whosoever should believe in him should not perish, but have life everlasting. That’s great. That’s good news to me.

Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man.

Jesus gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

The universality of Christ’s atonement applies to all men. So let’s read a few scriptures. You know, God so loved the world that he gave this great treasure His Son Jesus, and he didn’t. At least in my understanding, my perception, God didn’t sit back and say, oh yeah, he’s suffering another day, a couple days from now he’s going to be on the cross.

He’s going to die. I’m God doesn’t affect me much. Oh, I disagree. I think the Father was powerfully moved, powerfully moved by His Son’s witness and pain and testimony.

So the price was paid, and then what do the scriptures seem to indicate? The price was paid.

So God didn’t tell everybody, have a big announcement, big billboards all over the earth all at once saying, accept Jesus to be saved from eternal conscious torment. That didn’t happen.

Instead, First Corinthians, first chapter. God chose the foolishness of preaching to save those that are saved.

Jesus Told us in John chapter 6, verse 44, and also in verse 40, John 6, 44, 65.

No man can come to the Son except the Father draw him. So here’s this great drama. Jesus Christ comes to the earth, crucified, dead, buried, raised from the dead.

All is in place, and then suddenly arbitrary restrictions are placed on it.

You can only come to the Son if the Father draws you.

The Apostle Paul in Hebrews 5, 4 says, no one takes this honor unto themselves.

No one takes this honor unto themselves, save he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So the window of opportunity, ability to become a Christian is greatly narrowed.

But Jesus died for all and all these restrictions are placed on it.

So let’s think about this.

No other name given among men whereby we must be saved. So Jesus was crucified, we believe, in AD 33.

How many centuries was it before able bodied seamen were able to cross the Atlantic Ocean, come to the North American continent and begin to spread the gospel to indigenous peoples? I think that began in the 15th century, maybe 16th centuries. 16th century.

How many millions died in that time without hearing the gospel?

Ignorance doesn’t save how many millions of people living in countries where the by law religion is Islam? Millions, if not billions.

Christianity is not permitted there, you know, you think, well, we need eternal torment for folks like Adolf Hitler. That’s right. Well, I would hardly base the existence or the necessity of eternal conscious torment on the misdeeds of one evil man. There’s got to be another way to deal with that, and so Christians hear Adolf Hitler, oh certainly he’s in hell suffering, but that’s not the worst part of it, is it?

One reason that they feel that he would be in hell suffering eternally is that he murdered 6 million people of the Jewish faith.

Those 6 million people at the hand of Hitler were sent to eternal conscious torment after they had suffered mercilessly in the concentration camps. Is that rational at all? Am I missing something here? I’m angered by it.

Righteous indignation.

Oh, by the way, in case you’re wondering, lest I forget, we didn’t sign the confession of faith so that we could have the immersion service for the convention. Not gonna. The Lord in his providence did open the pool for us at the hotel where we were staying and the service was conducted there.

So there’s no way out of this hell.

And yet, curiously, In Matthew chapter 16, Jesus was speaking to his disciples, speaking to them, asking them, who do you say that I am?

But Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus answered him, blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Now, if there’s no escape, why does it have gates?

Jesus goes further. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Heaven.

Peter was given the keys to the gate.

What’s he going to do, stand at the gate and listen for all eternity to the cries and agony of these people? You know, sometimes I kid around with my dear wife a bit and talk about an imaginary demon named Bragnot.

And he comes home from work, sits down, and his wife, Mrs. Demon Bragnott, says, you don’t look so happy today. What’s the matter? I don’t know. It’s been a billion years. I’m just not feeling a lot of job satisfaction.

Wow.

Continuing what was attained by Jesus in His sacrifice, he purchased the human race. He owns the human race. Don’t be shocked. But he owns you, and he owns me, too.

And as such, he tells us in John 5:22, all judgment has been given to the Son.

All judgment has been given to Jesus. He died for me. He suffered terribly for my sake. All judgments given to him, but he’s making it difficult to get into heaven.

Matthew 28:18. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

So we have a real dilemma here.

The God of love, that image of him is blurred by the mental dissonance, the illogic of Jesus dying for all and yet just very few people being saved.

Perhaps another influence in my experience was our next door neighbor. For many years. They were deeply committed evangelical Christians, and so Sister Janet sometimes would go on walks around the neighborhood with the wife, and they would walk by the Catholic church in the neighborhood a couple blocks up from our home.

And they had a place where the nuns who taught in the school resided, and as they walked by on a couple occasions, the woman that my wife was walking with said, isn’t it a shame? All that sacrifice and they’re still going to hell.

So.

You can’t be enough of a Christian or you have to be the right kind of a Christian in order to gain salvation. It keeps getting more and more absurd. I think that somebody’s been lying to us myself, and I’ll tell you exactly who it is. If you haven’t already guessed it.

He was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, telling them in John chapter eight that you are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of it a liar.

So let’s hop in, my little time machine. There’s plenty of room for all of you to come with me. We’re going to go back to the garden.

And dear mother Eve, perhaps day after day, night after night, watches this really pretty looking serpent climbing in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and he’s munching away and maybe deliberately smacking his lips and making sounds like mm, oh, mmm, yeah, that’s so good.

And mother Eve says we’re not supposed to eat of that.

Who told you that? God told me that.

God told you that you’ll die if you eat of the fruit? Yes. Let me tell you a secret. The only reason he doesn’t want you to eat of the fruit is because then you will come to know good and evil like he does and you’ll be equal to him. What a bald faced lie.

And when a lie is repeated often enough, people began to believe it, and she believed him. She was deceived. She ate of the fruit. Adam, seeing this, could not bear the thought of being alone without her again.

And so he disobeyed God and he ate also.

That serpent was the embodiment of the adversary.

And he, in doing this, usurped God’s creation.

I think of the innocence and the beauty of mother Eve.

She was very pure, never exposed to anything like this before.

The liar convinced her. But more than that, we should not think of the adversary as well. He’s just a bad guy, you know, maybe some therapy would straighten him out.

I want to say this, and I hope that I am not evil speaking, but just looking at his record through history, I am convinced that he is a cold blooded murderer. He does not care one bit about human life. He only wants to enslave the human family.

So let us never think that we could maybe straighten him out. He’s a cold blooded murderer, and the effects have followed the human family for the last 6,000 plus years.

Eternal conscious torment, and again, some say they really don’t preach it much anymore. They don’t teach it much anymore. Okay, go to YouTube, raise your hand if you’ve never used YouTube. No, don’t raise your hand.

I’m not a hand raising kind of guy. We’ll scratch that. But just think about this. Go to YouTube and type in sermons on on eternal conscious torment and you’ll get a flood of people who are presenting their powerful biblical views on the fact of eternal conscious torment.

Well, the word hell does occur in the Bible, doesn’t it? And I often hear people in our fellowship saying, we don’t believe in hell. Well, I do, but it’s the Bible. Hell there is the hell of the Bible and I believe in that. I don’t believe in eternal conscious torment.

So in the New Testament we have three words translated hell, and I’m just going to focus on that because that’s where a lot of the action is our theology occurs. The first is Gehenna and that’s the one that talks about hellfire. That’s translated hell fire, Gehenna, and Gehenna is the Greek form of the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem.

It was a garbage dump and they would put their garbage there and the fires would burn and the worms would come and eat the garbage, and never once would they throw a live, conscious human being into the Valley of Hinnom. Now think about it. Jesus came as an apocalyptic prophet to the nation of Israel.

And what better way to let them know that they were on the cusp of national destruction than to tell them that they were facing the Valley of Hinnom as a nation.

And to the Jewish mind of the time, when it heard of the Valley of Hinnom, if you were totally disgraced, if you were one of the criminals who were intolerable, rejected of society, and you were executed and they didn’t bury your body properly, they threw your body into the Valley of Hinnom. That was the ultimate disgrace, and so that’s what he was telling them. Not eternal conscious torment, but an everlasting, dishonorable, disgraceful shame.

More familiar to us is the word Hades. Hades. Interesting. In the King James Version it is translated hell, but modern translations now make it read Hades. Now this one surprised me a little bit.

You would think of hell as such a major doctrine guiding Christian thought through centuries, that there would be a lot of scriptures that use the word Hades in the New Testament.

I’m going to tell you how many times it occurs. When you’re ready, you look ready. It occurs 10 times.

10 times in the New Testament it occurs in Jesus words on three occasions. Now when you look it up in a concordance, you’ll see. It lists Matthew 11:23 and Luke 10:15, but those are the same incident. Those are the same. The records are the same event.

And so that only really counts as one use of this word Hades. He uses it again in Matthew 16 and again in Luke 16:23 in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. You know, it’s interesting. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus was around in some form or other for over a century before Jesus came. So he took a familiar parable lesson and applied it, refreshed it, and applied it in his teachings about the destruction of the Jewish nation.

The Apostle Paul. I was really surprised at this, you know, if any, if ever there was an apostle or a writer that contributed so much to our doctrinal understanding, it’s Paul.

Do you know how many times he uses the word Hades? I’ll tell you.

Zero.

Not once.

Not once. Oh, but if you get out your strong’s concordance, you look it up, you will see that in fact, Paul is credited with using the word Hades in First Corinthians 15:55.

But that does not occur in the Sinaitic manuscript.

That’s a spurious use of the word Hades.

The remainder, the other six occur in the book of Revelation.

So for such an important subject, there are ten references to the word ten, none by the apostle Paul.

And the last one is used once by the apostle Peter in his first Epistle. He speaks of Tartarus, and Tartarus is the lowest level of the underworld according to Greek mythology, and it was there that the Olympian pantheon banished the giant primordial gods to everlasting imprisonment.

That’s not talking about the human race.

Well, There are two competing concepts in. In the Christian world now vying for ascendancy. The first, of course, is eternal conscious torment.

And the other is one that I think most of us would agree with, and it’s called annihilationism.

We don’t go into anything other than a state of being. Dust, dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return, and if the Lord so chooses, he may raise that dust up, resurrect that person, bring them back to life and restore them.

The New Testament refers to Jesus death as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Remember, the concept is so important that we remember that Jesus bought the race. Jesus bought the race with his ransom price.

And not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world. First John, chapter two, verse two, and that God desires all to be saved, and we pause right there.

King James version of that text in First Timothy 2, 4 says, who will have all men to be saved? Now, if you’ve got an erroneous doctrine to defend, you need to watch the wordiology so that you can alter it a bit to make it say what you want it to say, and so they said, well, the Greek word translated will, there really should be translated desires. So it’s not that God will have all men to be saved, but that he desires them to be saved, and here I hear the voice of the adversary again, the liar.

He’s trying to make the Heavenly Father look ridiculous. The Father provides the means, the atonement for all mankind, and then he’s hapless as to how to get it done, that he desires that all men would be saved. But I don’t know how to do this. I wish they would. No, that’s not the God I serve.

The God I serve is all knowing, all powerful, all wise, always capable.

If he desires to have all saved, then I believe he is going to be successful in his desire. Jesus Christ gave himself a sacrifice for all people, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. So says Second Peter, chapter three, nine.

And in Hebrews we read that Jesus suffered death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.

Human life, in my estimation, is priceless. Some of you have heard my testimony about one of my students who was murdered.

And it broke my heart. She was one of the first in her family to go to college, was trying to uplift herself, uplift her family, and the mentally ill, very angry felon lived in the apartment below her, and he was fighting with his girlfriend. My student’s adult son went down to see if he could help out, and this man shot him and killed him, and she heard the commotion and she ran down to her son’s aid and he shot and killed her too.

Subsequent to that, I told my students, it teaches us the value of human life.

If we gathered every ounce of gold, every precious stone, every bit of silver, silver, platinum, all the things that are so valuable, we gathered them all together in one place that could not buy a human life back.

What is the value of a human life?

It’s a human life.

Adam died. Jesus paid the price for him.

That is how precious the sacrifice of Jesus is. Jesus for Adam and the billions of humanity that will come forth from the grave.

There’s a thrilling prospect. So there’s a text, I believe it’s in Psalm 51, and the Lord is rebuking Israel, saying to them, you did this and this and this. Those were not good things you did. Why did you do them?

Well, because you thought that I was one like yourselves.

They made God in their own image. We must be careful that we don’t do that. So they suppose that because they had a murderous heart, that God must also. But the Lord rebukes them for that.

We cannot make God in our image. So here’s the thing that troubles me.

At the root of my troubles with belief in eternal conscious torment.

It’s a barometer of the heart.

How can you pitilessly say that even one human being rightfully deserves an eternity of torture?

Okay, the nightmare has passed. We can wake up now. The truth is here. Jesus died for every human being in paying the price. For Father Adam, the resurrection of the dead is going to occur.

The restoration of the earth is going to occur, and when all that’s done, that’s not the end, that’s the beginning. Because from that point, the that’s when the ages of glory to follow will come, and God will show his riches in the Church, in Christ Jesus, for all eternity. That’s our hope.

May we realize it. God bless you, brethren.

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