Was Hell invented to scare unbelievers, who don’t believe in Christ but do believe in Hell? Does the good news even include Hell? Is Gehenna ever mentioned to the Gentiles? I thought the law of right and wrong was the schoolmaster that lead to Christ. Moses was being taught in every city: pre-evangelizing the Gentiles. But Gehenna is only mentioned to those who were coming into the new covenant by way of leaving the old covenant. Gentiles were never in the old covenant that was about to be destroyed by the Gehenna fire.

The law awakens or even creates the conscience, but the Holy Spirit opens the eyes to the gospel message; not fear of eternal hellfire. The inability to keep God’s law was the first eye opener even for Adam and Eve. It’s an eye opener that comes from first knowing and then breaking the law of God. They were now afraid of God’s presence in their unclothed condition. Jesus’ eyes never saw Himself that way.

Adam didn’t hide in fear to avoid eternal punishment in Hellfire. He hid because his eyes were opened to his own nakedness (depravity) in God’s presence. They were not suddenly attempting to cloth themselves to avoid Hell. They were not suddenly afraid of God’s future absence in an eternal fire. The fire of God that didn’t consume the bush was a picture of grace, not eternal torment. Adam’s fall didn’t even create his unclothed condition. He was brought into the garden that way. The fall revealed his natural animal condition, before he could grow up and be properly clothed by humanity in God’s presence; still under the law of the garden.

It was the righteousness (true humanity) of God’s presence Adam now feared, not His absence. Ironically God clothed Adam and Eve in animal skin to remind them of their crime. Animals never realize they’re unclothed. Humanity now had to face itself and God on it’s long road to redemption. Jesus finally arrived and reversed Adam’s curse and replaced the animal skin of disobedience with the white robe of righteousness. The martyrs under the alter are not given new animal skins to wear.

Pictures of Adam and Eve leaving the garden either have their whole body or just their animal procreation parts covered in animal skin. Humanity is all grown up now. The head of the body is no longer pictured as Adam leaving Eden in animal skin. John the baptist dressed in animal skin to remind them of their crimes, but Jesus is usually pictured in a seamless white robe, even before He was disrobed in order to take Adam’s place on the tree; between two common criminals. His was the transition tree in between the criminal who arrogantly stayed dead and the criminal who humbly believed in Him.

³⁹ One of the criminals hanging beside him scoffed, “So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!”

⁴⁰ But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? ⁴¹ We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.” ⁴² Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

⁴³ And Jesus replied, “I assure you today; you will be with me in paradise.”

Fear of Hell didn’t open Adam’s eyes. His disobedience to the law of the garden did. Adam was undone and he knew it. If anything, God’s presence to the uncovered law breaker is a consuming fire, not His absence. To the naked eschaton Adam on the cross, it was God’s absence that became most painful.

Jesus second appearance to His humanity would burn up the stubbornly uncovered humanity that remained in the o.c. land. The end of animal sacrifice left the unbelieving part of humanity uncovered at the time of AD 70 judgement. Gehenna was an in-land picture of the lake of fire judgement. The lake of fire is analogous to Gehenna but in the spirit realm. How else could Hades, second death and the devil that deceived them be thrown into it? Gehenna was specifically pictured as a warning or a promise of judgement to the old covenant people who were found uncovered in their disobedience. When animal sacrifice ended they remained in the fall of Adam and insisted on staying in the ‘garden’ naked. But transition time was up. It is the closest thing in the Bible to our modern day conception of people going to Hell.

Exodus 33:20

LITV ²⁰ And he said, You are not able to see My face; for no man can see Me and live.

Jesus didn’t go to a fiery Hell to overcome the death of Adam. He went to the place of the dead ones that God had created to graciously delay Adam’s second death. Hades was not made to punish Adam. Even the ancient Greeks desired to go to the realm of Hades. If the Greek’s mythology of Hades had included our modern mythology of Hell, they would have wanted to avoid Hades rather than hope to get into Hades. Part of our mythology of Hell was founded in the mistranslations of the KJV.

Matthew 10:28 (KJV) GAHENNA
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 16:18 (KJV) Hades
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Matthew 23:15 (KJV) Gehenna
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

Salvation arrived to save Adam from his second death (pictured as Gehenna or the lake of fire) before the Hadean delay came to an end. Hades was no longer needed. It was thrown into the lake of fire along with the first death of Adam. Do they now burn forever or have both death and Hades been annihilated in the all consuming fire of God that burns into the ages? This event was actually called the second death. There is no returning from the fire of second death. It is not a first death holding place like Hades was.

Ephesians 3:21

YLT ²¹ to Him is the glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus, to all the generations of the age of the ages. Amen. 

After the resurrection of Christ, all the generations of the old creation age gave glory to Christ in the new covenant church. The generation of the old covenant age that received salvation was the generation between AD 30 – 70. But salvation retroactively included all the generations even back to the very first generation of Adam. The generation between AD 30-70 lived on into the ages to come. It was the last generation in the old age that Christ lead into His new creation age. The typical age was the seminal age of all the present ages. All the generations of that age were saved in the generation Christ came to. Even people in this present day generation are saved as a result of what happened in that first century generation.

Matthew 24:34

KJV ³⁴ Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

Revelation 14:11

YLT ¹¹ and the smoke of their torment doth go up to ages of ages; and they have no rest day and night, who are bowing before the beast and his image, also if any doth receive the mark of his name.

Revelation 22:4-5

YLT ⁴ and they shall see His face, and His name is upon their foreheads, ⁵ and night shall not be there, and they have no need of a lamp and light of a sun, because the Lord God doth give them light, and they shall reign—to the ages of the ages. 

The typical ages have past. Salvation is here to stay. The first covenant death has been annihilated by the second death. There is no covenant death in the new covenant. Is there a tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the new Jerusalem that causes us or Jesus to die in the day we or He eats of it? Jesus transitioned the first born from the tree of death to the tree of life, when He took Adam’s place and obediently died on the tree. Then He went to Hades to release all His people who were in the tree of death body of Adam. Now they are in the tree of life body of Christ. Unless Jesus falls like Adam, death never enters the new covenant creation. How can the new covenant first born ever eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as an immature unclothed human and die again?

Deuteronomy 32:22

JuliaSmith ²² For a fire was kindled in mine anger. And it shall burn to the lowest hades, And it shall consume the land and its produce, And it shall burn the foundations of the mountains.

In Deuteronomy 32:22 Moses tells the 12 tribes how their old covenant would end; not their new covenant. Their old covenant ended when all of Hades was emptied and thrown into the fire. There is no Gehenna in the land today waiting to devour the o.c. unbelievers. There are no old covenant people to destroy in “Gehenna fire”. Hades has no use in the new creation either.

If you don’t have the new creation Holy Spirit, you are not His people. Claiming to be God’s people doesn’t make it so. New creation does. Obviously 70 AD proved that. Only the Holy Spirit can rebirth a person. The Jews were the first nation God claimed His people from, 2000 years ago on Pentecost.