Eternal hell or second death?
One of the paradigms that have been most detrimental to mankind and keeping it away from understanding the nature of God, as well as averting it from genuine love for God, is the concept of hell. Many have rejected God and embraced atheism and agnosticism for having been told that such God would have created an eternal hell for the transgressors of the divine law.
In the case of the Qur’an, hell is one of the foundations of the Islamic revelation. This is understandable and suits the character of Allah and Muhammad, further reinforcing the notion that the Qur’an is not a divine revelation but human expression, and, as I said in the previous chapter, I believe it is indeed a tool of the fallen angels in the conspiracy against Jesus and the divine cause. There are few pages of the Qur’an that make no mention of condemnation to hell. The Koranic verses repeat to exhaustion how unbelievers are destined to hell.
We see a phenomenon worthy of anthropological study and very revealing of human nature when we observe any Muslim or Christian at the moment when they defend the concept that unbelievers are condemned to a hell of eternal suffering. Usually these statements are followed by triumphant smiles, or by the expression of an apparently justified and sanctified rage before the altar of the one true belief. I am using irony, but the truth is that these are some of the feelings that accompany the statements of believers abiding to the concept of a hell of eternal suffering. No one speaks lukewarmly or technically about hell. Either they speak of it triumphantly or they fling it with all their anger at their religious foes. This is quite revealing of how the concept of condemnation to a hell of eternal suffering is something purely of the human ego, something that satisfies the human craving for revenge and retribution, something that in its core is revealing a complex of superiority, whether it is religious, moral, spiritual superiority or another.
It does not require a genius of spirituality or a holy character to realize that the concept of condemnation to a hell of eternal suffering has nothing to do with the nature of God or the divine law. Is it possible for God to grab a human being who sinned for a few tens of years and to “fry” him in the eternal fire, feeling every second of an inexhaustible eternity the untold pains of physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual suffering? Any one of us, adults in the least, has a good perception of acute suffering, whether physical or emotional. This pain that you experience acutely for seconds, days, months, or years, can you imagine that your divine Father would make you feel it forever, day after day, second after second, without ever coming to an end? What degree of pathetic perversion would lead God, the Perfect Judge, to such a sentence? How could it be possible that our Loving Father, the absolute model of all goodness, compassion, and mercy, when the time comes for Him to apply His equally perfect justice, would behave in a way inferior to the lowest among the sickest, most perverse and sadistic psychopath human beings?
Something in this equation does not work, does it?
And if we had doubts, here Jesus came to show what the nature of God is like. Whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father. Do you know of something that Jesus did at some point that would show he would accept that someone would suffer forever? Quite the opposite of everything he has shown us, right?
Of course, I am well aware that proponents of the concept of condemnation to a hell of eternal suffering rely on a number of biblical passages. But since this concept is clearly an insult and an abomination to the perfectly righteous and merciful nature of God, then something was misunderstood in Scripture.
There could be only two sources for the origin of this misunderstanding and deviation. One would be when the author of some biblical text believed in the concept of a hell of eternal suffering, which might have occurred when portions of Scripture were recorded adjusted with the chronicler’s personal beliefs. The other, which is the most essential cause of this situation, was due to inadequate translations and interpretations of the Scriptures.
In the Old Testament there was no concept of a hell of eternal suffering. There was the Sheol, which was the place where the dead went, regardless of being righteous or not, but there they did not stay in eternal suffering. And the reference Jesus made was not to eternal hell, but to “Gehenna.” Gehenna was the dumpsite that existed outside of Jerusalem and burned uninterruptedly in the burning of debris unloaded every day there. Here too the corpses of criminals and indigents were thrown, left there to burn in the midst of the debris. The fire there burned on and on, and the worms feeding on rot were the dominant wildlife. Now this represented the most ignominious condemnation to a Jew, to have his corpse unburied was an appalling fate for a people who believed in the erroneous idea that their body would be physically resurrected at the end of time. Jesus referred Gehenna to impress upon the Jewish minds of his hearers with strong symbolism, he was not referring to anything factual.
A passage from Isaiah reveals this:
"And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind."[1]
This burning was for the bodies, not the souls. Let us look at what the Bible says about the second death:
Ezekiel 18:4 and 20:
“The soul who sins shall die.”
Revelation 20:14-15:
"Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.
Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire."
Revelation 21:8
"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
That is, the Bible says that the lake of fire means “the second death.”
Indeed, the concept of hell condemnation of eternal suffering was a later invention for the enjoyment of priests and pastors in a strategy of psychological and spiritual control of their flocks of believers.
What actually happens to human beings who do not want to pursue the career of eternity or who have not graduated spiritually to be resurrected is what is called the second death. The Bible speaks of the second death and The Urantia Book assures us that this is the merciful and just way stipulated in the divine law to free the human being or angel from an eternity that he does not desire. And when it is not a question of the will of the creature, in the use of free will that the Creator has given them, but a decision of God, then it is because this creature has attained such an abject iniquity that it has erased all light and all the possibility of God’s Spirit for indwelling his or her mind and heart. From there it is as if the creature had lost all bond with reality, and consequently ceases to exist in the reality created and sustained by God, is simply obliterated from the cosmos and from existence.
In order to get an idea of how the creature falls into the unreality inherent to the practice of iniquity, see the example of Caligastia, the former Planetary Prince who we now know as the devil:
"In all the administrative work of a local universe no high trust is deemed more sacred than that reposed in a Planetary Prince who assumes responsibility for the welfare and guidance of the evolving mortals on a newly inhabited world. And of all forms of evil, none are more destructive of personality status than betrayal of trust and disloyalty to one’s confiding friends. In committing this deliberate sin, Caligastia so completely distorted his personality that his mind has never since been able fully to regain its equilibrium.
There are many ways of looking at sin, but from the universe philosophic viewpoint sin is the attitude of a personality who is knowingly resisting cosmic reality. Error might be regarded as a misconception or distortion of reality. Evil is a partial realization of, or maladjustment to, universe realities. But sin is a purposeful resistance to divine reality—a conscious choosing to oppose spiritual progress—while iniquity consists in an open and persistent defiance of recognized reality and signifies such a degree of personality disintegration as to border on cosmic insanity.
Error suggests lack of intellectual keenness; evil, deficiency of wisdom; sin, abject spiritual poverty; but iniquity is indicative of vanishing personality control.
And when sin has so many times been chosen and so often been repeated, it may become habitual. Habitual sinners can easily become iniquitous, become wholehearted rebels against the universe and all of its divine realities. While all manner of sins may be forgiven, we doubt whether the established iniquiter would ever sincerely experience sorrow for his misdeeds or accept forgiveness for his sins."[2]
If Caligastia does not repent, not a hell of eternal suffering, but the plain and simple annihilation of his existence is expecting him:
"[…] We believe that all rebels who will ever accept mercy have done so. We await the flashing broadcast that will deprive these traitors of personality existence. We anticipate the verdict of Uversa [A. N.- Planet-capital of the Superuniverse of a trillion inhabited worlds] will be announced by the executionary broadcast which will effect the annihilation of these interned rebels. Then will you look for their places, but they shall not be found. “And they who know you among the worlds will be astonished at you; you have been a terror, but never shall you be any more.” And thus shall all of these unworthy traitors “become as though they had not been.”"[3]
Another typical complaint of people who believe in a hell of eternal suffering is this: so, sinners get away with their crimes? Instead of burning in hell, as they deserve, they are simply erased from existence and shall not suffer from the suffering they have inflicted on others? Are they not properly punished by God’s righteousness?
These people are forgetting what Jesus clearly showed. God does everything to save their children. God does not take revenge, God forgives. God is the Father of the prodigal son, always. And if the child arrives at a point of “cosmic insanity” in which he loses all capacity for mental rehabilitation to voluntarily seek the embrace of the divine Father, then why the divine Father, besides suffering from having lost a child, would yet have to stay torturing this same son, and for an entire eternity? Neither human parents would have the stomach for that. And do we want our perfect, absolutely righteous Father to condemn Himself to eternally torture His creatures whom He so dearly loves? Remember, God hates sin and loves the sinner. And even if He did not love the sinner, how could we imagine that God would institute a condition of eternal revenge against someone? What God of such vicious and vindictive nature is this that some believe in? This god is not the God who Jesus revealed to us.
One thing is certain: in the judgment of the soul, God uses perfect and absolute equity, sublime goodness and mercy, as well as perfect justice, and does not act by arbitrary whims peculiar to human emotion alone.
In The Urantia Book, the revealing angels not only show us that there is no hell of eternal suffering, but also inform us that after death we will be resurrected as souls in worlds specially prepared for this purpose, through which we will make the long journey to the Island of Paradise, the center of universes. These worlds are called morontia worlds, just as our bodies will not be physical but of a subtle substance, which is a morontia body. Morontia is an intermediate state between the material plane and the purely spiritual levels, which transcend time and space.
As the heavenly revelators explain:
"The Gods [A. N.- The Three Persons of Trinity] cannot—at least they do not—transform a creature of gross animal nature into a perfected spirit by some mysterious act of creative magic. When the Creators desire to produce perfect beings, they do so by direct and original creation, but they never undertake to convert animal-origin and material creatures into beings of perfection in a single step.
The morontia life, extending as it does over the various stages of the local universe career, is the only possible approach whereby material mortals could attain the threshold of the spirit world. What magic could death, the natural dissolution of the material body, hold that such a simple step should instantly transform the mortal and material mind into an immortal and perfected spirit? Such beliefs are but ignorant superstitions and pleasing fables.
Always this morontia transition intervenes between the mortal estate and the subsequent spirit status of surviving human beings. This intermediate state of universe progress differs markedly in the various local creations, but in intent and purpose they are all quite similar […]."[4]
We only go through a single physical life, the first one. After the resurrection we will have morontia bodies, soul bodies, subtle, non-material, glorious bodies like the one with which Jesus appeared to his apostles and followers after his resurrection.
Have you ever wondered why the women who first saw the resurrected Jesus recognized him only when he spoke? And the two disciples with whom Jesus walked the road of Emmaus, talking for hours, they also did not recognize him. The thing is that Jesus looked totally different. His body was a body that envelops the soul, it was not of physical matter.
In this morontia plane, where we go after physical death, we will advance sequentially through 570 worlds. As we progress from one sphere to the other more advanced, our morontia bodies will also be more subtle. Until at the end of this stage we are finally perfected to the point of totally dismissing a morontia body. Then we will become pure spirits, and we will be able to advance to the Central Universe of Havona, where we will journey through a billion perfect spheres, maturing spiritually, until we can finally enter the Paradise Island, the center of universes, for being face to face with the Person of our Universal Father.
The first seven morontia worlds, where we first go after death, are called Mansion Worlds. As a general rule, when we have covered all these first seven worlds, we have definitely chosen immortality. Before that, a human being may decide not to want to continue on to Paradise and thus give up on eternity. This is a prerogative that the Universal Father grants to His children, by the law of free will.
"When the more spiritually and cosmically advanced mortals die, they proceed immediately to the mansion worlds [A. N.- This is the resurrection on the third day after death]; in general, this provision operates with those who have had assigned to them personal seraphic guardians [A. N.- The traditionally so-called Guardian Angels]. Other mortals may be detained until such time as the adjudication of their affairs has been completed, after which they may proceed to the mansion worlds, or they may be assigned to the ranks of the sleeping survivors who will be repersonalized en masse at the end of the current planetary dispensation."[5]
It is here that we can finally understand that somewhat bewildering setting in the Book of Revelation about occurring a “first resurrection” (which presupposes a later resurrection) and the “second death.”
4 I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
5 (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) […] [A. N.- This is the millennial resurrection, at the end of the dispensation.]
6 Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection [A. N.- This is the resurrection on the third day after death]. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.[6]
The most spiritually advanced humans from Earth are resurrected on the third day, as Jesus was. This is the first resurrection. The “rest of the dead” will only be awakened at the end of an age-old dispensation. The Urantia Book and the Bible reveal that with the resurrection of Jesus the end of a dispensation was also decreed, and then all the dead of the previous age, which lasted for millennia, were resurrected on the mansion worlds. The same will happen in this next dispensation. But I shall get back with more details on this later.
Let us continue, for now, to receive some light from the heavenly revelation about the eternal path, the second death, and the nonexistence of the eternal suffering hell of human myths.
"That which comes from the Father is like the Father eternal, and this is just as true of personality, which God gives by his own freewill choice, as it is of the divine Thought Adjuster [A. N.- The divine fragment, the Spirit indwelling the mind and heart of each human], an actual fragment of God. Man’s personality is eternal but with regard to identity a conditioned eternal reality. Having appeared in response to the Father’s will, personality will attain Deity destiny, but man must choose whether or not he will be present at the attainment of such destiny. In default of such choice, personality attains experiential Deity directly, becoming a part of the Supreme Being. The cycle is foreordained, but man’s participation therein is optional, personal, and experiential.
Mortal identity is a transient time-life condition in the universe; it is real only in so far as the personality elects to become a continuing universe phenomenon. This is the essential difference between man and an energy system: The energy system must continue, it has no choice; but man has everything to do with determining his own destiny. The Adjuster [A. N.- The divine fragment, the Spirit indwelling the mind and heart of each human] is truly the path to Paradise, but man himself must pursue that path by his own deciding, his freewill choosing."[7]
"Though the cosmic circles of personality growth must eventually be attained, if, through no fault of your own, the accidents of time and the handicaps of material existence prevent your mastering these levels on your native planet, if your intentions and desires are of survival value, there are issued the decrees of probation extension. You will be afforded additional time in which to prove yourself.
If ever there is doubt as to the advisability of advancing a human identity to the mansion worlds, the universe governments invariably rule in the personal interests of that individual; they unhesitatingly advance such a soul to the status of a transitional being, while they continue their observations of the emerging morontia intent and spiritual purpose. Thus divine justice is certain of achievement, and divine mercy is accorded further opportunity for extending its ministry.
The governments of Orvonton [A. N.- Seventh superuniverse with a trillion inhabited worlds] and Nebadon [A. N.- Local Universe of ten million inhabited worlds] do not claim absolute perfection for the detail working of the universal plan of mortal repersonalization, but they do claim to, and actually do, manifest patience, tolerance, understanding, and merciful sympathy. We had rather assume the risk of a system rebellion [A. N.- Like the rebellion promoted by Lucifer] than to court the hazard of depriving one struggling mortal from any evolutionary world of the eternal joy of pursuing the ascending career.
This does not mean that human beings are to enjoy a second opportunity in the face of the rejection of a first, not at all. But it does signify that all will creatures are to experience one true opportunity to make one undoubted, self-conscious, and final choice. The sovereign Judges of the universes will not deprive any being of personality status who has not finally and fully made the eternal choice; the soul of man must and will be given full and ample opportunity to reveal its true intent and real purpose."[8]
It is thus clear how, through the gate of death, the human being, if he thus wishes, is just beginning his cosmic adventure towards the perfection and glory of God, inspired and indwelled in his heart and mind by a divine spark (the so-called Thought Adjuster) of that same invisible God, the Father Creator of all. I leave to you one more selection of the heavenly revelation, among the hundreds of pages and information related to this subject:
The phenomenon of death
"Urantians [A. N.- The inhabitants of Earth] generally recognize only one kind of death, the physical cessation of life energies; but concerning personality survival there are really three kinds:
1. Spiritual (soul) death. If and when mortal man has finally rejected survival, when he has been pronounced spiritually insolvent, morontially bankrupt, in the conjoint opinion of the Adjuster [A. N.- The divine fragment, the Spirit indwelling the mind and heart of each human] and the surviving seraphim [A. N.- The traditionally so-called Guardian Angel], when such co-ordinate advice has been recorded on Uversa [A. N.- Planet-capital of the Superuniverse of Orvonton comprising a trillion inhabited worlds], and after the Censors and their reflective associates have verified these findings, thereupon do the rulers of Orvonton order the immediate release of the indwelling Monitor [A. N.- Monitor is another word for the Thought Adjuster, the divine fragment, the Spirit indwelling the mind and heart of each human]. But this release of the Adjuster in no way affects the duties of the personal or group seraphim concerned with that Adjuster-abandoned individual. This kind of death is final in its significance irrespective of the temporary continuation of the living energies of the physical and mind mechanisms. From the cosmic standpoint the mortal is already dead; the continuing life merely indicates the persistence of the material momentum of cosmic energies.
2. Intellectual (mind) death. When the vital circuits of higher adjutant ministry are disrupted through the aberrations of intellect or because of the partial destruction of the mechanism of the brain, and if these conditions pass a certain critical point of irreparability, the indwelling Adjuster is immediately released to depart for Divinington [A. N.- World of the Adjusters. It is one of the seven worlds of the Father, orbiting around the Isle of Paradise, the center of universes].[9] On the universe records a mortal personality is considered to have met with death whenever the essential mind circuits of human will-action have been destroyed. And again, this is death, irrespective of the continuing function of the living mechanism of the physical body. The body minus the volitional mind is no longer human, but according to the prior choosing of the human will, the soul of such an individual may survive.
3. Physical (body and mind) death. When death overtakes a human being, the Adjuster remains in the citadel of the mind until it ceases to function as an intelligent mechanism, about the time that the measurable brain energies cease their rhythmic vital pulsations. Following this dissolution the Adjuster takes leave of the vanishing mind, just as unceremoniously as entry was made years before, and proceeds to Divinington by way of Uversa.
After death the material body returns to the elemental world from which it was derived, but two nonmaterial factors of surviving personality persist: The pre-existent Thought Adjuster, with the memory transcription of the mortal career, proceeds to Divinington; and there also remains, in the custody of the destiny guardian, the immortal morontia soul of the deceased human. These phases and forms of soul, these once kinetic but now static formulas of identity, are essential to repersonalization on the morontia worlds; and it is the reunion of the Adjuster and the soul that reassembles the surviving personality, that reconsciousizes you at the time of the morontia awakening [A. N.- The moment of resurrection]."[10]
What a magnificent journey awaits us, instead of the naive and puerile prospect of falling into a hell of a sadistic god or ascending to a heaven of pleasure and idleness made to the measure of human self-centered desires! Instead we will ascend to the growing revelation of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit walking and evolving side by side with humans and angels in perfected societies where the trinomial of constant and balanced work, study, and useful entertaining reigns. There is no empty idleness in eternity. The Universal Father does not stop, and the children must imitate the Father. As Jesus said, “Be you perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect”, that is the universal mandate.
"True it is, you mortals are of earthly, animal origin; your frame is indeed dust. But if you actually will, if you really desire, surely the heritage of the ages is yours, and you shall someday serve throughout the universes in your true characters—children of the Supreme God of experience and divine sons of the Paradise Father of all personalities."[11]
[1] Isaiah 66:24.
[2] The Urantia Book, “The Caligastia Betrayal”, 67:1.3-6.
[3] The Urantia Book, “Present status of the Rebellion”, 53:9.7.
[4] The Urantia Book, “The Morontia Life”, 48:0.1-3.
[5] The Urantia Book, “Survival of the human self”, 112:5.10.
[6] Revelation 20:4-6.
[7] The Urantia Book, “Survival of the Human Self”, 112:5.2-3.
[8] The Urantia Book, “Survival of human self”, 112:5.6-9.
[9] “DIVININGTON. This world is, in a unique sense, the “bosom of the Father,” the personal-communion sphere of the Universal Father, and thereon is a special manifestation of his divinity. Divinington is the Paradise rendezvous of the Thought Adjusters, but it is also the home of numerous other entities, personalities, and other beings taking origin in the Universal Father. Many personalities besides the Eternal Son are of direct origin by the solitary acts of the Universal Father. Only the Father fragments and those personalities and other beings of direct and exclusive origin in the Universal Father fraternize and function on this abode.” In: The Urantia Book, “The Seven Sacred Worlds of the Father”, 13:1.4.
[10] The Urantia Book, “The phenomenon of death”, 112:3.1-5.
[11] The Urantia Book, “Adjuster Fusion”, 112:7.19.