No one goes immediately to hell when they die

I make a claim that is often jarring to the people I share it with. I see no basis for believing that people immediately go to hell when they die. Think about it. Where does it say anywhere in the Bible that people go to hell when they die? For that matter, where does it say anyone goes to heaven? That's another subject, but it deserves being acknowledged at the same time. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever explicitly say that anyone immediately goes to either place when you die. In the case of heaven, it never says anyone goes there at any point. In the case of hell, it only ever says people are sent there after they face judgment.

I plan to post more on the various geography and terminology of 'hell' in the future, but let's operate under the generally assumption of lumping all of them together for now except for one; Hades. The place called Hades, otherwise known as Sheol, or the grave, or the place of the dead, is not hell. For most occurrences in the new testament the word is translated into it's actually meaning, but historically it was been translated to 'hell' in at least two significant places. This was due to historical developments including the latin translation which only used one word for both hades and hell; 'Inferi'. English translations such as the King James Version and others continued in this tradition and although most modern translations have corrected this error, the conflation of the two terms remains.

The two main texts that are stubbornly held as teaching about hell are the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 and the quote of Jesus in Mt 16:18: "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." The NIV even has a footnote pointing out that the word 'Hades' is indeed a reference to the realm of the dead. I will do a full post on the story of the rich man and Lazarus, but the reference to the gates of Hades is also important. The gates of Hades is a reference to the dead being held in death and unable to return to the land of the living. It is not a reference to the gates of hell, satan, demons, the powers of darkness, etc. Although this has traditionally been used as a text in 'spiritual warfare' to claim authority over the devil there is no textual relevance to that subject. What Jesus is actually saying is that the church will not be held in death. The powers of death and hades will not overcome them, but they will be raised on the last day. It is the promise of the resurrection.

So does anyone go to hell when they die? No. They go to Hades; the grave; the realm of the dead. Those who are dead are 'asleep' and will 'awake' at the resurrection on last day at Christ's return and all will be judged. It is then, and only then, that anyone will go to hell. Those who believe that people go to hell when they die have a few problems to deal with, but the biggest problem (aside from there being absolutely no textual support) is that they are forced to believe in something called 'Particular Judgment'. This is the belief that those who die before Jesus' return are judged immediately at death and are sent to heaven or hell. The problem with this is that there are no texts that teach particular judgement, only the final judgement, or what is sometimes called 'general judgment' by those who hold to this peculiar particularist view. The only text in the new testament that seems to give any justification for this position is, once again, the story of the rich man and Lazarus. However, to the original point of this post, even if we concede that particular judgment occurs and the dead are divided into places of bliss or torment, they would still not be in hell. Luke 16:23:explicitly says that they would be in Hades. It seems clear to me that no one goes to hell when they die. What do you think?