Evil Actions are Hell || What the…? || Part 7

Welcome back to the “What the…?” Bible study, a series designed to investigate the different and often misunderstood concepts of Hell. Using the Old and New Testaments, we dive into three journeys to examine Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna (different descriptors of Hell) to see if what the Bible says and what we’re taught align.

We’ve looked at Sheol – a place of isolation and nothingness; Hades – a place of reflection; the Lake of Fire – a place of eternal separation. Now it’s time to learn about Gehenna. It refers to how God’s justice deals with the world’s evil. It comes from the Hebrew phrase “’gey’ hinnom,” meaning the “valley of wailing.” This is an actual place in southwest Jerusalem. In this city, the kings offered children as burnt offering sacrifices. The prophets said, in response, that God would send enemy nations to them, and their leaders would be killed, and dead bodies would be thrown in the valley to be burned. Jesus used this imagery of fires and Hell (Gehenna) to describe God’s response to the horrible evils of the work. The fire of God’s justice will one day consume evil and remove it from his creation.

(Information taken, adapted, paraphrased from: https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/vocab-insight-gehenna-valley-wailing/#:~:text=The%20New%20Testament%20Greek%20word,the%20southwest%20side%20of%20Jerusalem.)

Gehenna represents similar imagery to what the Lake of Fire is about. Instead of it being a place of eternal separation for those who commit the worst evils, it’s about God’s divine justice returning the evil done to his creation. It sounds like an intentional rebellion against God. The critical thing to remember is that this is imagery. This isn’t a literal place that we have to worry about – again, I feel like we have this place shown in the lake of fire. Yet this imagery is the consistent imagery that we face in most church and secular teachings of what Hell represents. We may get a more profound idea of what the Lake of Fire represents. Let’s get into it and see. Our focus for today is on 2 Chronicles 28:3.

2 Chronicles 28:3

AMP	NLT	VOICE
3 And he burned incense in the Valley of Ben-hinnom and burned his sons [as an offering], in accordance with the replusive acts of the [pagan] nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons (descendants) of Israel.	3 He offered sacrifices in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, even sacrificing his own sons in the fire. In this way, he followed the detestable practice of the pagan nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites	3 burned incense in the valley of Ben-hinnom (Jerusalem’s refuse pit), and sacrificed his own children. Such evil things had not happened throughout the land,

Imagine the evil of a region that offers young children as sacrifices. God allowed the nation to be conquered in response to Ahaz’s evil practice. My study Bible connects the severe evil shown in this verse to abortions, stating: “If we’re to allow children to come to Christ, we must first allow them to come into the world.” Abortion is not evil, but a medical practice that can be life-saving at times and prevention of suffering for unborn babies. We never know why someone would go through this, but their reasons are theirs alone. If they want to share their story, they will. It’s not ours to share. It’s not ours to judge, either. From a Christian perspective, we must leave the judgment up to God. What we are called to do as Christians is to talk to them, meet them where they are, meet their needs, listen to them, and love them. The physical and mental toll the procedure takes on a person is nothing I can compare to.

Also, using this verse to talk about abortion is a false road. We do not know the age of the king’s kids. His kids could be teenagers, pre-teens, adult kids, etc. The idea of just the willingness to perform this level of sacrifice of human life just to appease a false God. Every one of us in today’s culture would be so violently opposed to even thinking of going through with this evil, which makes God’s response to burn them the way they burned the kids all more rational. It’s a response we have with child predators – you harm our kids, we’ll harm your life. The energy and motivation is the safe some 2500 years later. This is one of the evilest acts committed, and more about it is said later in 2 Chronicles 33:6

2 Chronicles 33:6

AMP	NLT	VOICE
6 He made his sons pass through the fire [as an offering to his gods] in the Valley of Ben-hinnom; and he practiced sorcery, and dealt with medium and spirits. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger.	6 Manasseh also sacrificed his own sons in the fire in the valley of Ben-Hinnom. He practiced sorcery, divination, and witchcraft, and he consulted with mediums and psychics. He did much that was evil in the Lord’s sight, arousing his anger.	6 In the valley of Ben-hinnom, Manasseh offered his children burnt offerings to those false gods and used every form of magic: witchcraft, divination, sorcery, and necromancy. Manasseh’s evil actions infuriated the Eternal, but the worst of his actions was (his installation of an image of a statue in the True God’s temple – verse 7a added for context)

Sorcery is using power gained from evil spirits. Divination is predicting the future through signs and omens. The evil continued with sorcery, divination, and witchraft, plus the usage of mediums and psychics. They were held to the same standard of evil as child sacrifice. The idea of why these were considered evil acts is that people were using them in place of God and committing to following them rather than God himself. I’m not here to tell you not to use tarot cards, psychics, horoscopes, etc. Each of them is useful, and God speaks through everyone, but we just need to use our gift of discernment to see if it’s true. Submit it through the Jesus filter, as I call it, to see if valuable information pertains to the plans set before. How you use them is up to judgment from God, not me. The idea is that we must, in this case, watch how we use these tools. Child sacrifice is an obvious no-no, but the others can be beneficial when used correctly.

Gehenna is a place of retribution and revenge. A place where people burned children, and God would burn them from the world to purge it of its evil. It’s the common idea of how we see Hell today, but we must see this place as the Lake of Fire. The evil is as intense as child sacrifice and using mediums and psychics instead of speaking to God directly. In the next one, we learn more about Gehenna’s place from the book of Jeremiah. Until then, stay blessed.