What Does The Jewish Faith Believe About Hell Fire?

[Hawkins]

Hell and Paradise are conceptual terms, similar to the term 'warehouse'. A warehouse is a place for holding goods, not necessarily containing any physical location information. Hell is a place holding the souls of the wicked/unsaved. Paradise is a place holding the souls of the righteous/saved.

Hades is a physical location for everyone to go after physical death. hell/sheol sometimes are used as an equivalent of Hades to mean that physical location. It happens that concious wicked souls are in Hades that Hades is thus called Hell. While Hades can also be a paradise for the unconcious Christians. In a more broad sense, Paradise is where the souls are with God. Hell is where souls are not with God or in a separation from God.

Hebrews 3:11
So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.' "

Hebrews 3:18
And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed ?

Hebrews 4:3
Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, "So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.' "

Hebrews 4:5
And again in the passage above he says, "They shall never enter my rest."

Hebrews 4:6
It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their disobedience.

The wicked will have to stay in the darkness of Hades and wait for the final judgment to come. God refuses them to enter His rest. They are thus said to be in Hell.

Christians will be sleeping in Christ till the resurrection. They are in Christ and with God. They are thus said to be in Paradise.

 

[Vince]

In the story (not parable) of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man was conscious while in Hades.

 

[stovebolts]

I was wondering if anyone knew about the belief of the Jewish faith when it came to the Belief of eternal Hell Fire.

Since they don't except the New Testament. I was wondering what they actually believe the old testiment says concerning Hell?

Thanks
Zotah

I've always found that if you want to know what a Jew believes, ask a Jew ;)

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_c ... We-Die.htm

What is Heaven and Hell?

Heaven and hell is where the soul receives its punishment and reward after death. Yes, Judaism believes in, and Jewish traditional sources extensively discuss, punishment and reward in the afterlife (indeed, it is one of the "Thirteen Principles" of Judaism enumerated by Maimonides). But these are a very different "heaven" and "hell" than what one finds described in medieval Christian texts or New Yorker cartoons. Heaven is not a place of halos and harps, nor is hell populated by those red creatures with pitchforks depicted on the label of non-kosher canned meat.

After death, the soul returns to its Divine Source, together with all the G-dliness it has "extracted" from the physical world by using it for meaningful purposes. The soul now relives its experiences on another plane, and experiences the good it accomplished during its physical lifetime as incredible happiness and pleasure, and the negative as incredibly painful.

This pleasure and pain are not reward and punishment in the conventional sense--in the sense that we might punish a criminal by sending him to jail or reward a dedicated employee with a raise. It is rather that we experience our own life in its reality--a reality from which we were sheltered during our physical lifetimes. We experience the true import and effect of our actions. Turning up the volume on that TV set with that symphony orchestra can be intensely pleasurable or intensely painful,8--depending on how we played the music of our lives.

When the soul departs from the body, it stands before the Heavenly Court to give a "judgment and accounting" of its earthly life.9 But the Heavenly Court only does the "accounting" part; the "judgment" part--that only the soul itself can do.10 Only the soul can pass judgment on itself--only it can know and sense the true extent of what it accomplished, or neglected to accomplish, in the course of its physical life. Freed from the limitations and concealments of the physical state, it can now see G-dliness; it can now look back at its own life and experience what it truly was. The soul's experience of the G-dliness it brought into the world with its mitzvot and positive actions is the exquisite pleasure of Gan Eden (the "Garden of Eden"--i.e., Paradise); its experience of the destructiveness it wrought through its lapses and transgressions is the excruciating pain of Gehinom ("Gehenna" or "Purgatory").

The truth hurts. The truth also cleanses and heals. The spiritual pain of gehinom--the soul's pain in facing the truth of its life--cleanses and heals the soul of the spiritual stains and blemishes that its failings and misdeeds have attached to it. Freed of this husk of negativity, the soul is now able to fully enjoy the immeasurable good that its life engendered and "bask in the Divine radiance" emitted by the G-dliness it brought into the world.

For a G-dly soul spawns far more good in its lifetime than evil. The core of the soul is unadulterated goodness; the good we accomplish is infinite, the evil but shallow and superficial. So even the most wicked of souls, say our sages, experiences, at most, twelve months of gehinom, followed by an eternity of heaven. Furthermore, a soul's experience of gehinom can be mitigated by the action of his or her children and loved ones, here on earth. Reciting Kaddish and engaging in other good deeds "in merit of" and "for the elevation of" the departed soul means that the soul, in effect, is continuing to act positively upon the physical world, thereby adding to the goodness of its physical lifetime.11

The soul, on its part, remains involved in the lives of those it leaves behind when it departs physical life. The soul of a parent continues to watch over the lives of his/her children and grandchildren, to derive pride (or pain) from their deeds and accomplishments, and to intercede on their behalf before the Heavenly Throne; the same applies to those to whom a soul was connected with bonds of love, friendship and community. In fact, because the soul is no longer constricted by the limitations of the physical state, its relationship with its loved ones is, in many ways, even deeper and more meaningful than before.

However, while the departed soul is aware and cognizant of all that transpires in the lives of its loved ones, the souls remaining in the physical word are limited to what they can perceive via the five senses as facilitated by their physical bodies. We can impact the soul of a departed loved one through our positive actions, but we cannot communicate with it through conventional means (speech, sight, physical contact, etc.) that, prior to its passing, defined the way that we related to each other. (Indeed, the Torah expressly forbids the idolatrous practices of necromancy, mediumism and similar attempts to "make contact" with the world of the dead.) Hence the occurrence of death, while signifying an elevation for the soul of the departed, is experienced as a tragic loss for those it leaves behind.

 

[Vince]

I found that on one of the areas of this forum, discussion of the eternal fate of the wicked is forbidden, because of all the insults and fighting that it caused. It even stated that people had been banned from this forum over it.

When I was in college, I learned that when a fundamentalist believes something strongly, and is then shown from the Bible that it is wrong, his response is often to yell. Anger and accusations were substitutes for Scripture.

While studying the subject, I had found various sites and forums that had discussed eternal torment, and I found that its adherents would often rely on accusations when they ran out of Scripture.

 

[stovebolts]

Vince,
UR is not allowed except for in the 1 on 1 debate forum... and it wasn't just because of how only the 'fundamentalists' were responding. Almost everyone within the discussion was out of control.

 

[Vince]

Man, Steve, is there any way you can let me read the posts in that forum? I promise not to post anything.

I am a fundamentalist, and I make no apology for it. But I learned decades ago that most fundamentalists aren't fundamentalists. It isn't a matter of different interpretations. It is a matter of being shown from Scripture that you are wrong, realizing that you cannot defend your position from Scripture, and then relying on yelling and accusations to prove your point.

 

[justvisiting]

You might want to pose the question of what Jews believe to David Hockings. He is a Messianic Jew, (Christian).
This is what the Christian faith believes.
Rev 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Mat 25:45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
Mat 25:46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
Isa 66:24 And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.
Psa 55:15 Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.
Jud 1:22 And of some have compassion, making a difference:
Jud 1:23 And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

Isa 14:9 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.
Isa 14:10 All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?
Isa 14:11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.
Isa 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
Isa 14:13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
Isa 14:14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Isa 14:15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
Apparently, half the Jews don't know what they believe...but the believing faithful of the OT can tell you.

 

[justvisiting]

I guess for ever and ever is the same as how the saints reign with Him.
Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Exo 15:18 The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.
Isa 51:6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.