Bible 101- A Different Age

Gehenna

Jesus, the same loving Jesus we know as our Father and Savior of the World, told people they would rot in a corpse-ridden, maggot breeding garbage dump for eternity.

Let's take a look into a Different Age.

Have you ever seen a place so awful that "hell" is the only appropriate adjective for it? In some verses, the word our Bibles call "hell" is actually Gehenna, one of the worst places in Jewish history. It's story is very hellish, and one of the darkest pieces in the Biblical timeline.

Reader discretion advised. This isn't something you want to read in a good mood, or before you're about to eat. It is one of the saddest and grossest stories in the Bible.

But it's important in order to understand what Jesus was talking about in the afterlife. Jesus uses "Gehenna" often to explain the seriousness of hell, and why we need to be born again of water and spirit, (John 3:5, Acts 2:38), and live a holy life, (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) to avoid this awful, Gehenna-like afterworld!

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Matthew 5:29 KJV

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

Mark 9:47‭-‬48 KJV

The greek word used here for hell, and several other times Jesus talks about hell in the gospels, isn't the most literal use of the word "hell" (the not-good, not-bad afterlife for the wicked), which is "hades", but is actually a place the Jewish people would know pretty well, Gehenna.

Gehenna has some nasty history. Older names for it include Topheth. Some people believe Topheth comes from "Toph", a drum. Canaanites would sacrifice their children at Topheth.

And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.
Jeremiah 7:31 KJV

Topheth was a place known for burning children alive while banging on drums to drown out the noise of the children's screams. It's this kind of disgusting crap that makes me nervous to write about the Bible sometimes. Canaanites, and the Israelites who followed their practices, killed their children (mostly infants and toddlers) through setting them aflame in belief that their sacrifices would please the gods, and they would be rewarded.

Needless to say, it's got a pretty bad start.

In 2 Kings 23:10, the king, trying to turn the people away from evil Canaanite practices, orders people to "defile" Topheth so nobody goes there to burn their kids anymore. Most scholars believe that defiling the land meant that they threw a bunch of unclean stuff at it, leaving it a dump of trash and dead bodies.

It was a cursed place in Jewish culture, but also very close to home at Jerusalem. So they made use of the cursed place, and they set fires and threw trash there.

And they threw trash. And they threw trash. And they threw trash.

Fast forward to Jesus' times. They were still throwing trash in there. And now Topheth, known as Gehenna, was becoming a serious issue. There was always a fire burning in the dump to get rid of the smell, which wasn't appealing for the senses. In war times there would be rotting corpses there as well. People would go over there, probably plugging their noses, and toss their junk from a distance.

Where there's trash, there's flies. The trash was likely piled up in layers at this point, and flies landed and laid maggots in the junkyard. There were worms there, or maggots, that would "never die", as new ones were being born continually.

Jesus says that Hell is like Gehenna in that they both have worms that never die, and a fire that never ceases. This is the fate He died on the cross to save us from, if we choose to be born again of Water and Spirit through baptism and the infilling of the Holy Ghost (John 3:5, Acts 2:38) and have His blood wash over us!

What an awful description of hell! A festering, corpse-ridden waste dump on cursed land. Hell is real, and very awful, and to those who would tell you that Hell isn't really fire, that God wouldn't really send people to hell, or that we don't need to do everything in our power to avoid it, just remind them of Gehenna.