Wow. Thank You. The masters of deceit.

The Bible basically describes the second death as a final destruction; the end of all existence. If you add up all of the references to Hell, Hades, Sheol, the Pit, Death, the Valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, Tartarus, etc...(all of these are mentioned in the Bible)... you may see that they are mostly figurative references to three different states beyond life:

1. Dead (described as ‘sleeping’), but awaiting resurrection (and judgement). When I try to understand this, I think of it as remaining in God’s memory, to be brought back later, in paradise or judgement. There are many scripture to support this, including the stories of all of the various resurrections.

2. 2nd Death. The punishment for people that are judged to be bad. The Bible clearly states that this real over and over. Sometimes it is described as a punishment of being consumed in a burning fire, like in Matthew 13:30 “Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the harvest season, I will tell the reapers: First collect the weeds and bind them in bundles to burn them up; then gather the wheat into my storehouse.’” Here, good and bad people grow together until the end, where they are sorted and the evil get burned up.

3. The abasement of the evil spirits. This is the tough one to understand. The Bible seems to tell us, in a few places, that the rebellious angels are severely punished or abased. After the flood, they are imprisoned somewhere. Wherever, or whatever it is, Jesus went there; 1 Peter 2:18-20 “For Christ died once for all time for sins, a righteous person for unrighteous ones, in order to lead you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. And in this state he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who had formerly been disobedient when God was patiently waiting in Noah’s day, while the ark was being constructed, in which a few people, that is, eight souls, were carried safely through the water.”

Later, they were thrown out of the spirit realm, back down to the earth: Revelation 12:12 “On this account be glad, you heavens and you who reside in them! Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing that he has a short period of time.” And Revelation 9:9 “So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him.” This is interesting to reason on: were these bad spirits in heaven before, but powerless/imprisoned? Did they have the privileges of physical bodies taken away? Are they on the earth like this now? Maybe that’s where all the wild theories about CERN being demon portal are all about (half lol).

The final predicted destination for The Devil is clear.

Revelation 20:10 “And the Devil who was misleading them was hurled into the lake of fire and sulfur, where both the wild beast and the false prophet already were; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

I think early church doctrines conflated this final one and the others. Maybe it was convenient. Maybe by controlling the afterlife dogma, early church leaders held sway over the masses. The Bible is clear and the stories are consistent as regards the end for humans, though. There’s one reason that the church outlawed Bible reading among the serfs.

What does that last one mean? Is it saying that an evil prophet will get thrown into an eternal pit of fire? I don’t think it’s a person. I think it is a reference to a spirit that influences humans to take that role.

As to actual hell, I just ask this: why would a loving God take punish His children by burning them forever? Why would He place His enemy, who despises Him deeply, in charge of such a place?

Now, the Pope isn’t telling it like that. He is erasing punishment for willful misdeeds, lowering God’s standards and erasing the significance of Jesus’ sacrifice. Terrible.

@carmencita