well i have read that there punished but how long for i don't know, im sort of on the fence with This one.
This talk about hell in the new testement i think is to harsh (and one of the reason i struggle to understand the entire context, passages like if you call your brother a fool you willl be sent to hell mathew 5:22 and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. (This i believe is Jesuses words) but Moses murdered and he was made high priest. that makes no sense to me
I found an interesting article that needs time to be studied but have a look
Does this Old Testament verse point to hell? Isaiah 66:24 is quoted by Jesus in Mark 9:44, and this is what is?
The English word ‘hell’ comes from a 4th century Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘to conceal’ or ‘to cover’. In the Authorised Version, first published in 1611, the Hebrew word Sheol is translated ‘hell’ 31 times, ‘grave’ 31 times and ‘the pit’ 3 times in the Old Testament. The New International Version, first published in 1979, has ‘grave’ 55 times, ‘death’ 6 times plus 3 other phrases.
In many instances the Old Testament gives no indication that Sheol has anything to do with reward or punishment. Everyone goes there, from the best of men to the worst. However, there are some places in which Sheol is seen as a place of punishment for the wicked (Job 21:13; 24:19; Psalm 9:17; Proverbs 5:5; Ecclesiastes 12:14; Deuteronomy 32:22). Interestingly, the Old Testament teaches that for God’s people there was to be deliverance from Sheol (Psalm 49:15; 73:23). Old Testament believers were able to break through the natural fear of death and rejoice in the assurance that they would ‘dwell in the house of the Lord for ever’ (Psalm 23:6).
The first translation of the Old Testament into Greek, the Septuagint, dates from around 250 B.C. In 61 cases out of 65 the Old Testament word Sheol is translated by the Greek word Hades, regardless of the context in which it was originally used. However, the word Hades occurs only 10 times in the New Testament, and only in Matthew, Luke, Acts and Revelation. The Authorised Version always translates it as ‘hell’, the New International Version retains Hades in 5 places and renders it as ‘grave’ twice, ‘depths’ twice and ‘hell’ once.
What did the New Testament writers mean when they used the word Hades? During the 400 years that elapsed between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New there were some very significant developments. In particular, the Jews came to believe that Sheol was divided into two sections, one in which the wicked were punished for their sins and the other, often called ‘paradise’ or ‘Abraham’s bosom’ in which the righteous experienced great joy. This is the background to the story Jesus told about a poor but good man who died and went to ‘Abraham’s side’ and a rich but wicked man who also died and went to Hades. What was the point of Jesus’ story (in Luke 16:19-31)? Jesus was familiar with current teaching about Sheol, and with the way in which religious teachers of that time used parables to get their message across, so it was natural for him to weave Sheol into a parable in order to make two major points:
The eternal destinies of the righteous and the unrighteous are vastly different
Their destinies are settled while they are here on earth.
In Matthew 11:23-24 when Jesus said the people of Capernaum would not be ‘lifted up to the skies’ (a biblical phrase for heaven) but ‘go down to Hades’, it is obvious that Hades is in direct contrast to heaven; in other words that it means hell, a place of punishment for the ungodly. The only other time when Jesus used the word was when he told Peter that he would build his church and ‘the gates of Hades will not overcome it’ (Matthew 16:18). The meaning is clear: Hades is the headquarters of evil, none of whose attacks would ever be able to destroy the Christian church. That promise has already held good for 2,000 years! In Revelation 1:18, Jesus tells John ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.’ What this tells us is that Jesus Christ, who conquered death, has absolute authority over both death and the entire unseen world beyond it. The fact that he holds the keys of death means that he and he alone determines when people die – it is Christ who unlocks the gate of death to let man in.
But he also unlocks the gate of Hades to let men out. ‘The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire’ (Revelation 20:13-14). This shows us that Hades is not eternal. It is an intermediate state, and the souls of all who enter it at death will be forced to leave it in preparation for the Day of Judgement. Just as death and Hades were joined together in their power over men, so they are both discarded when they can serve no further purpose in God’s plan. ‘If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire’ (Revelation 20:15). Being thrown into this death beyond death, the ‘lake of fire’, is virtually the last thing the Bible has to say about the fate of the ungodly. John calls it ‘the fiery lake of burning sulphur’ (Revelation 21:8) – his language leaves a terrible impression of finality.
Gehenna was a literal place – the valley of Ben Hinnom. Josiah turned it from a place of idol worship into a public rubbish dump in which all the offal and filth of Jerusalem was poured. Later, the bodies of animals and even the corpses of criminals were flung there and left to rot or to be consumed by the fire that was kept constantly burning to dispose of the stinking mass of garbage.
Gehenna appears 12 times in the New Testament and 11 times out of the 12 that it occurs, it is Jesus who uses it. Nor does he mince his words. He speaks about a person’s whole body being ‘thrown into hell’ (Matthew 5:29), of those who will be ‘thrown into the fire of hell’ (Matthew 18:9), and of hypocrites being ‘condemned to hell’ (Matthew 23:33). When sending out his 12 apostles on their first mission he warned them of the persecution they would face and added, ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell’ (Matthew 10:28). Whatever ‘hell’ means, Jesus taught that going there is a worse fate than being murdered. Elsewhere he spoke of it as being a place ‘where the fire never goes out’ (Mark 9:43) and where ‘their worm does not die’ (Mark 9:48).
Sheol is sometimes used to refer to death or the grave, mainly to the place to which all the dead go and occasionally to the place of punishment for the wicked. Hades refers to a temporary place of punishment for the wicked. Gehenna is by far the clearest and most vivid of the three ‘hell’ words and includes (as none of the others does) the punishment of both body and soul after the final Day of Judgement. Jesus, when quoting Isaiah, was talking about Gehenna, so the answer to your question is yes.
