Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife: What the Bible Really Says

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INTRODUCTION

THE QUESTION OF the final destiny of individuals after death is one of the most important questions that can be asked. Is there life after death? What is it like? Is there a heaven and a hell? Is our destiny as human beings either heaven or hell? Or, is there another destiny taught in the Bible? How does one make sure that they will attain a good and happy final destiny after death? How inclusive is the hope for a good final destiny? What is heaven like? Is there an age to come on earth? What is it like? What is hell like?

Throughout history theologians have answered these questions but with very different answers. This is because the Bible gives many different slants on every one of these questions. These slants or pictures can be harmonized, but there are different ways of harmonizing. Which verses are primary, clear, and didactic; and which are of limited value in answering the questions?

I believe a survey of the Bible is the right way forward. This survey needs to look at every significant text in context. We need to weigh the question of just what the biblical writer under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is claiming to teach in every text.

Today the evangelical world is responding to new teachers who claim to be evangelicals whose views are close to universalism. This is the teaching that almost every human being will attain a positive postmortal final destiny. We have this view in the almost universalism of Rob Bell (Love Wins)¹ to the scholarly writing of Douglas Campbell of Duke Divinity School in The Deliverance of God.² The famous evangelical Anglican John Stott, in his last years, presented annihilation as the final destiny of the lost. Eternal suffering in hell, in his view, could not be squared with an ultimately redeemed universe and a God of love. Nor could he find evidence that all would be saved.³ Then there are purgatorial ideas of hell that it is temporary, terrible, and of varying durations depending on the level of sin committed and needed purification.

The classical church confessions that included the confession of an afterlife were much clearer than the profession of many followers of Jesus today. There is much confusion. Judaism taught that all Jews would be saved except those whose sin was such as to repudiate the covenant. In addition, people from all nations could attain a positive life in the age to come if they abandoned idolatry and followed the basic laws of morality explained in terms of the Noachide Laws (the moral laws that were given to Noah for all humanity). This may sound quite tolerant unless we realize that this excludes most human beings that have ever lived. Pre-Vatican II Catholics taught that there was no salvation outside of the Catholic Church. Orthodox Christian teaching was very similar. One had to affirm the classic creeds as the foundational teaching of the Church. Evangelicals from the Reformation on basically taught that one had to be born again, and have an explicit personal faith relationship with Jesus, to attain a final good end. Some required baptism in water for this and some did not. Some required a definite born-again experience, but others accepted that one could be raised from childhood to be always believing. These were more in the infant baptism streams of Protestantism, whether or not it was necessary for them to enter heaven.

There are numerous books where authors were given visions of the age to come, heaven, hell, and others who even claimed to actually visit. It is not wise to build doctrine on these visions. Some confirm biblical teaching and some do not. They are not consistent with one another. However, to give some sense of this literature, I have concluded chapters with such accounts and short introductory comments. This will provide an interesting aside that will bring another aspect to our primarily didactic presentation.

So let’s begin our survey of the Bible and evaluate the evidence.

PART I

THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES AND THE AFTERLIFE

Chapter 1

THE AFTERLIFE IN THE TORAH

GOD CREATED HUMAN beings, male and female, in His image. The first parents of the human race therefore had a human dignity that superseded all of the other sentient creatures. Being in the image of God was defined in terms of rule. Human beings have all the capacities like God’s that are needed for them to rule wisely in submitted partnership with the Father.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

—GENESIS 1:27–28

When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it, He commanded them that they must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die (Gen. 2:17).

In chapter 3 we read that there was also a tree of life.

He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever… So the Lord God … placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

—GENESIS 3:22–24

This combination of texts shows that human beings had such value that they were given a potential to live forever. Perhaps the way to the tree of life and eating its fruit was only an open opportunity had our first ancestors obeyed. The tree of life concept shows us that human beings at least had a possibility for everlasting life. Is this possibility now forever forfeited or can it be restored?

The promise of the seed to come from the woman who would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15) is a text of hope for restoration. The idea of a seed that will restore humanity continues throughout the biblical narrative and comes to fruition in Israel and then in the Messiah. The seed promise is passed to Noah and to his son Shem through Terah, Abraham’s father, and then to Abraham. Through Abraham we read that all peoples on earth will be blessed (12:3). Does this blessing include the restoration of everlasting life? We are not explicitly told, but Genesis may be implying that hope. Most scholars today see Genesis 1–3 as eschatological and think that the Creation accounts and Garden of Eden foreshadow the eschatological or last days’ fulfillment of the age to come. If so, that means that the tree of life opportunity can be offered to human beings again.

In Genesis 5:21–24 we find an intriguing and short passage about the pre-flood patriarch Enoch. We read:

After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

At least in this case, we have an example of a man who apparently did not die but was taken by God to a different realm. The text does not say he died as it notes for the other patriarchs. So a change to live in another realm with God is at least a possibility for human beings!

As a side note here I call your attention to 2 Kings 2. It gives us the second and only example in the Bible of a person being translated and not undergoing death. The passage begins with the words: When the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. The account of this translation is much more extensive than the translation of Enoch in Genesis 5:21ff. We read in 2 Kings, chapter 2, verses 11 and 12:

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel! And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two.

The vision of a chariot for the throne of God is found repeatedly in the Book of Ezekiel, but here it seems to be a divinely commissioned supernatural vehicle that takes Elijah to heaven or the abode of God. He is taken bodily! This is part of those passages of mysterious revelations such as the armies of God from heaven, angelic chariots and horses, and more. The prophet sees such things, but we cannot know how far to press the literal description.

In conclusion we have another passage which shows that not only can a person not die, but he can be bodily transformed and taken into heaven or the abode of God, a picture of the possibilities of the afterlife.

In Genesis 23 we read about the burial (entombment) of the body of Sarah. There is an extensive presentation of the purchase of the cave for the entombment. There is no explicit statement about the afterlife, but burial rites were important throughout the ancient world and no less so in the Middle East. Religious rituals emphasized assuring the dead a passage to a good afterlife. It is hard to believe that only Abraham and his descendants, the nation of Israel, would not have such beliefs about the afterlife. However, we shall see that this is not a primary emphasis in early sections of the Hebrew Bible.

In Genesis 25:8 we read that after Abraham died, an old man and full of years, he was gathered to his people. His body was then placed in the same cave as Sarah’s. Some Bible scholars believe that this phrase means more than just to have one’s bones next to the bones of other family members. Rather, they think it implies that the person in some sense is rejoined to family members. His people are more than just Sarah whose body was in that same tomb. His people included others that died and were not in the proximity.

In Genesis 35:28–29 we read the same phrase as above. We do not read this phrase for the wives of the patriarchs that died. Isaac lived a hundred and eighty years. Then he breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people.

In Genesis 42:38 Jacob protests the requirement to bring his son Benjamin to Egypt and states that if harm comes to him, You will bring my gray head down to the grave in sorrow. The word for grave here is