Hawaii 2010

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Thursday, May 7, 2009

Why not word for word?











The word Hell has a medieval dark ages feel to it. A pitchfork and fire connotation.
Why not use the word which was translated from the original language. Gehenna, which has the connotation of the place outside the city walls where trash was burned and in which some idolatrous sins were practiced. Let Hades be the realm of the dead, don't use hell to translate Hades, its very confusing. Let tartarus be the word for the prison house of the demons, not a third translation for hell. Then the King James 54 uses of Hell becomes 11 or so and fits in a wonderful framework of covenantal transformation. It's worth it to pull this thing out of its cell in our brain and declare it to be the crazy uncle that it is.

I am very thankful for the holiness and justice of God in Christ, and fully believe in the just and merciful judgment. Rethinking our traditional view of Hell does not mean anything goes.

But, you don't need me to be your teacher, the resources are there, think it through yourself, just don't continue to rehash a view that is inconsistent with the gospel in which Paul left the Gehenna teaching and painted word pictures of restoration, and reversal of the curse, a covenant in which God's desire for reconciliation was accomplished without our cooperation.

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