I WROTE a paper some years ago for the Gospel Messenger, which was afterward printed separately and circulated as a booklet. The title was― “How often would I!” and its burden was the sorrow of Christ as He wept over Jerusalem, the city of such infinite privilege, but, alas, of such desperate unbelief, until, with tears, He had to say that its day was over, and its judgment and desolation come!
Often as He would have blessed, so often was His grace repelled, and, alas, once too often! This exquisite picture of patience on the part of Christ toward Israel, I used, in my paper, as illustrative of His patience today with the sinful sons of men to whom He tenderly calls in the gospel, adding the warning of doom in the event of the heart being finally closed.
Now all this was, I think, right enough, for the parallel was plain. If Jerusalem furnished an example of hard-hearted unbelief and consequent punishment, it is only honest to warn the sinner of to-day, whether Jew or Gentile, of the judgment that must overtake him if he persist in sin and unbelief. To fail in so doing were faithless on the part of a servant of Christ.
Well, I yesterday received, from the hand of a friend, a copy of the said booklet, which had been handed for perusal to a gentleman at a Welsh watering-place in the past summer, who was good enough to read it through, but also to write in pencil on its first page:― “Too much Hell, too little Heaven; see the Revised Edition of the N. T., where Hell has its proper translation―Hades.”
“Too much Hell.” On reading the booklet I saw that that word was used only once, but once too often, I fear, for the conscience of the gentleman in question; and in turning to the original of the New Testament I find that the word Hell occurs twenty times, ten of which in the original are Gehenna, nine Hades, and one Tartarus. Hence, the proper translation of Hell is not always Hades.
Take note of that, my reader! Hell may mean Hades, and it may mean Gehenna, or the Lake of Fire. The Lake of Fire is the eternal doom of the wicked dead, after the judgment of the Great White Throne (see Rev. 20). Was this gentleman deceived, and did he seek to deceive others on such an awful point? It is well to be undeceived.
“Hell has its proper translation―Hades,” and where can we find Hades, this easier Hell, described? We turn to Luke 16 only to read: “And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments... and he cried and said, I am tormented in this flame ... I have five brethren... testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.”
Here the word Hell should undoubtedly be translated Hades. The Welsh critic was quite right in this case. Could he have known all this? Could he have ever learned that the Hades to which he sprang, so exultingly, meant the awful agony that is described by our Lord as attaching to it?
If this be Hades, what must Gehenna be? Reader, never speak lightly of Hell. To escape its certain doom turn to Calvary, and Christ’s cross and blood, and see the perfect substitution of the Holy Son of God for a poor guilty sinner. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)).
J. W. S.