Chapter 21

Hades and Gehenna — The Crucial Distinction

A. Introduction: The Confusion That Changed Everything

Here is one of the biggest mix-ups in the history of the Christian church. For centuries, pastors and theologians and everyday Bible readers have taken two very different words—Hades and Gehenna—and treated them as though they mean the same thing. They don’t. Not even close. And the failure to tell them apart has caused an enormous amount of confusion about what the Bible actually teaches about the afterlife, about judgment, and about hell.

If you grew up in a church that talked about hell, you probably heard something like this: “When a person dies without Christ, they go to hell.” Period. End of story. One event. One destination. But the Bible tells a very different story. It describes a process—a sequence of events that unfolds in stages. There is the intermediate state, the period between a person’s death and the final resurrection. And there is the final state, the condition that follows the great white throne judgment described in Revelation 20. These are not the same thing. Not at all.

Hades is the waiting room. Gehenna—and the lake of fire—is the final destination. When we collapse these into a single idea called “hell,” we lose the ability to understand what Scripture is actually saying. We lose the timeline. We lose the distinction between a temporary holding place and a final state. And we end up with a picture of the afterlife that is far simpler—and far less accurate—than the one the Bible paints.

This confusion matters for the divine presence model. If we are going to understand what the Bible teaches about God’s presence in judgment—if we are going to understand the fire of God’s love and what it means for the wicked—then we need to be very precise about which stage of the afterlife we are discussing. The experience of the dead in Hades, before the resurrection, may be very different from their experience when they stand before the unveiled glory of God at the final judgment. We need to keep these things straight.

In this chapter, we are going to define the key terms carefully. We will look at four major biblical passages that hinge on this distinction. And by the end, I think you will see that this one piece of clarity—the difference between Hades and Gehenna—unlocks an enormous amount of the Bible’s teaching on judgment and the final state.

Before we begin, I want to acknowledge something. If you grew up hearing that the rich man in Luke 16 was in “hell”—that his suffering was a preview of what the lost will experience forever—this chapter may feel unsettling. You may feel like I am taking something away from you. I understand that feeling. But what I am actually doing is giving something back: the Bible’s own categories. The Bible distinguishes between Hades and Gehenna for a reason. When we honor that distinction, we do not weaken the Bible’s teaching on judgment. We sharpen it. We see the full picture—a picture that is richer, more dramatic, and more deeply rooted in the character of God than the flat, one-dimensional “hell” that most of us were taught.

B. Defining the Terms: A Map of the Afterlife

Before we dig into the passages, we need to lay out a clear vocabulary. The Bible uses several different words for the realm of the dead and the place of final judgment. Each one has a specific meaning, and each one points to a different reality. Mixing them up is like confusing a hospital waiting room with an operating theater. Both are in the same building. But very different things happen in each.

Sheol — The Old Testament Realm of the Dead

The Hebrew word Sheol (pronounced sheh-OHL) appears sixty-five times in the Old Testament.¹ The King James Version translated it three different ways: “grave” thirty-one times, “hell” thirty-one times, and “pit” three times.² That inconsistency in translation has caused enormous confusion. In many passages, Sheol simply means the grave—the place where the dead body is laid to rest. But in other passages, it clearly refers to something more: the realm where the dead exist in some kind of conscious but diminished state, waiting for whatever comes next.

Job describes Sheol as “the land of gloom and deep shadow” and “the land of deepest night” (Job 10:21–22). The Psalmist calls it “the place of darkness” and “the land of oblivion” (Psalm 88:12). It is a shadowy, quiet, dim place. In Isaiah 14, the dead are pictured as “shades”—shadows of the people they once were, weak echoes of their former selves.³ The Old Testament does not give us a lot of detail about what Sheol is like, but it consistently presents it as a place of diminished existence—not the final destination, but a kind of holding place for the dead.

The important thing to see is this: in the Old Testament, both the righteous and the unrighteous go to Sheol. It is not a place of punishment reserved for the wicked. It is the common destination of all the dead, at least in the earliest layers of Old Testament thought.⁴ The righteous may experience it differently from the wicked—some passages hint at this—but both end up there. Jacob, mourning the apparent death of his son Joseph, says he will “go down to Sheol” in grief (Genesis 37:35). The Psalmist asks, “Who can live and not see death, or who can escape the power of Sheol?” (Psalm 89:48). Sheol was the universal human destination after death.

Some Old Testament scholars, however, have seen more in Sheol than just the grave. Charles Hodge, the great Princeton theologian, believed that Sheol had two compartments—one for the righteous and one for the wicked—much like the picture we see in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. William Shedd, another influential theologian, argued that when Sheol is used for the righteous, it refers only to the grave, but when used for the wicked, it sometimes refers to a place of punishment and judgment after death.⁶⁷ The debate is complex, but the key point for our purposes is simple: Sheol is not Gehenna. It is not the lake of fire. It is not the final state. Whatever Sheol is, it is a temporary condition, not an eternal one. This is a crucial point. Sheol is not hell. It is the realm of the dead.

Hades — The Greek Equivalent

When the Old Testament was translated into Greek (a translation called the Septuagint), the translators chose the Greek word Hades (HAY-deez) to render the Hebrew Sheol.⁵ The word literally means “the unseen place.” In the New Testament, Hades appears about eleven times.⁶ Like Sheol, it refers to the realm of the dead—specifically, the intermediate state between a person’s death and the final resurrection and judgment.

This is what makes Hades so different from what most people mean when they say “hell.” Hades is temporary. It is a waiting place. The souls in Hades are conscious—they are aware, they experience something—but they have not yet faced the final judgment. They have not yet been raised from the dead. They have not yet encountered the fully unveiled presence of God. They are waiting.

We know Hades is temporary because Revelation 20:13–14 tells us that at the end of the age, “death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them,” and then “death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.” Hades itself is destroyed. A permanent place cannot be destroyed. Hades is a holding cell, and on the day of judgment, the holding cell is emptied and then demolished.

Gehenna — The Final Judgment

Now we come to the word that Jesus used most when he warned about final judgment: Gehenna (geh-HEN-ah). This word appears twelve times in the New Testament, eleven of them from the lips of Jesus himself.⁷ It comes from the Hebrew ge-Hinnom, meaning “the Valley of Hinnom.” This was a real valley just south and west of Jerusalem. It had a horrific history. In the days of the wicked king Ahaz, Israelites burned their children alive there as sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (2 Chronicles 28:2–4).⁸ King Josiah later put an end to these abominations and declared the valley cursed (2 Kings 23:10). In later centuries, the valley became Jerusalem’s garbage dump—a place where refuse, animal carcasses, and even the bodies of executed criminals were thrown into fires that smoldered continuously.⁹

The smoke. The stench. The worms feeding on rotting flesh. The fire that never quite went out. You can see why this valley became the go-to image for divine judgment. By the time between the Old and New Testaments, Gehenna had become a standard Jewish term for the fiery place of final punishment—the place where the wicked would meet their ultimate doom.¹⁰

Here is the crucial point: when Jesus used the word Gehenna, he was not talking about the intermediate state. He was talking about the final state—the ultimate outcome for those who refuse God. Gehenna is what happens after the resurrection and the final judgment. It is connected to the lake of fire in Revelation. It is permanent and irreversible in a way that Hades is not.

It is worth noting something surprising about Gehenna: outside of Jesus’ own words, it barely appears in the New Testament. Paul never uses the word. Neither does Peter, John, or Jude. James mentions it once, in passing, to describe the destructive power of the tongue (James 3:6). The book of Acts never mentions it. The book of Hebrews never mentions it. The book of Revelation, though it describes the lake of fire in detail, never uses the word Gehenna.⁶⁸ This is striking. If Gehenna were the all-consuming topic of the New Testament that some preachers make it out to be, you would expect it to show up everywhere. Instead, it is concentrated almost entirely in the teachings of Jesus—and even there, Jesus uses it as a warning, not as a detailed description of the afterlife. His interest, as Baker rightly notes, lies not in hell but in salvation into the kingdom of God.⁶⁹

Tartarus — A Special Case

One more term deserves a brief mention. The Greek word Tartarus (TAR-tar-us) appears only once in the entire New Testament, in 2 Peter 2:4: “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to Tartarus, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment.”¹¹ This is a holding place for fallen angels, not for human beings. It is temporary—these angels are being “held for judgment,” not already in their final state. Think of it as a specialized prison for spiritual beings, distinct from Hades and distinct from Gehenna.

The Lake of Fire — Revelation’s Image for the Final State

The final term we need to understand is the “lake of fire” from the book of Revelation. This image appears in Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 14–15; and 21:8. It is Revelation’s equivalent of Gehenna—the final state of judgment after the resurrection and the great white throne.¹² It is where “death and Hades” are finally destroyed (Revelation 20:14). It is called “the second death”—a phrase that, as we will see, is loaded with meaning for the divine presence model.

The word “brimstone” (or “sulfur” in some translations) that is associated with the lake of fire is also significant. The Greek noun theion (THAY-on) means “sulfur,” but it is spelled exactly the same as the Greek adjective meaning “divine.”¹³ The ancient Greeks used sulfur in purification rituals—to cleanse temples and dedicate spaces to the gods. Sharon Baker points out that early readers of Revelation would have understood the lake of fire and brimstone not as a torture chamber, but as a lake of divine purification.¹⁴ We will come back to this later.

C. The Passages

1. Luke 16:19–31 — The Rich Man and Lazarus

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.” (Luke 16:19–23)

This is probably the most famous “hell” passage in the Bible. And it is also one of the most misunderstood. The very first thing we need to notice is the word the text uses. It does not say Gehenna. It says Hades. The rich man is in Hades—the intermediate state, the waiting place of the dead—not in the lake of fire, not in Gehenna, not in the final state of judgment.¹⁵

This matters more than I can say. For centuries, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus has been used to describe what “hell” will be like forever. Paintings have been inspired by it. Sermons have terrified people with it. Entire theologies of eternal conscious torment have leaned heavily on it. But the passage is not about the final state at all. It is about the intermediate state—the period between death and resurrection.¹⁶ Edward Fudge, a leading scholar in the conditionalist movement, rightly notes that this passage, even taken at face value, tells us about Hades, not Gehenna. It cannot be used to determine the final destiny of the wicked, because it is not describing that final destiny.¹⁷

Now, there is a further debate about whether this is a parable or a literal account of something that actually happened. Scholars disagree. But even those who take it as a parable—a story Jesus told to make a point—recognize that Jesus is drawing on imagery that his Jewish audience would have instantly recognized. The two-compartment picture of the afterlife, with the righteous resting in “Abraham’s bosom” and the unrighteous suffering in a lower region, was common in Jewish thought at the time.¹⁸ Jesus is using familiar cultural imagery to make his point.

And what is his point? If you read the context carefully, you will see that the parable comes right after Jesus’ teaching on covetousness and faithful stewardship of money (Luke 16:1–13). The Pharisees, who loved money, sneered at him (16:14). Jesus told this parable to confront their self-righteousness and their refusal to listen to Moses and the prophets. The “punch line” of the story is not about the mechanics of the afterlife. It is about the danger of ignoring God’s word while you still have the chance: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31).¹⁹

Few serious interpreters try to take every detail of this story literally. If we did, we would have to imagine the saved and the lost conversing with each other across a visible gap, with literal tongues burning in literal fire, and literal water that somehow does not cool them off.²⁰ The story uses vivid imagery to make its point, as parables always do. We should draw from it what Jesus intended: a warning about the danger of hard-heartedness, the reality of a conscious intermediate state, and the urgency of responding to God’s revelation now.

What the story does confirm is the reality of a conscious intermediate state. The rich man is aware. He feels. He remembers his brothers. He communicates with Abraham. This is not soul sleep. This is not extinction. This is a real, conscious existence in Hades—the waiting place of the dead.²¹ For those of us who hold to substance dualism—the view that humans have an immaterial soul that can exist apart from the body—this passage fits perfectly. The soul survives physical death and enters a conscious state of waiting, either in comfort (like Lazarus) or in distress (like the rich man). But neither has yet faced the final judgment. Neither is in the lake of fire. Neither is in Gehenna.

R. Zachary Manis, whose philosophical work on the divine presence model is the foundation for much of our argument, notes that the rich man’s experience in Hades is one of relative separation from the divine presence. The mercy of Hades, Manis suggests, is that it postpones the full encounter with God that will come at the final judgment. In Hades, the unrighteous dead experience a degree of divine absence comparable to their earthly lives—they are not yet fully exposed to the unveiled glory of God.²² The worst is yet to come, but it is also possible that the best is yet to come, if there is any capacity for repentance remaining. This is why the distinction between Hades and the final state matters so much for the divine presence model.

On the traditional ECT reading, the rich man is already in “hell,” and his experience there is basically the same as what he will experience forever. On the divine presence model, the rich man is in the waiting room. The full unveiling of God’s presence—the moment when every heart is laid bare before the consuming fire of divine love—has not happened yet. Hades is not the final word. Judgment day is.

Think about how this changes the entire emotional weight of the passage. On the traditional view, the rich man’s suffering has already begun in its full, eternal intensity. There is no further reckoning coming. There is no process. The gavel fell the moment he died. But on the divine presence model, the rich man’s suffering in Hades is the suffering of a soul that is aware of its condition but has not yet faced the final truth. He knows something is deeply wrong. He feels the weight of his wasted life. He remembers his brothers and wants to warn them. But he has not yet stood before the great white throne. He has not yet been raised from the dead to face the fully unveiled presence of God. The worst—or perhaps the best, if he can still respond to grace—is still ahead of him.

This is why the intermediate state matters so much for the divine presence model. Manis’s three-unveiling framework, which we will explore more fully in Chapter 23, distinguishes between the first unveiling (when a person opens their heart to God in this life), the second unveiling (the return of Christ in glory at the end of the age), and the third unveiling (the judgment of transparency, when every heart is fully revealed).⁵⁷ The rich man in Hades has not experienced any of these unveilings in their full force. He is in a holding pattern. The great drama of the final judgment has not yet begun.

Robert Peterson, who affirms the intermediate state, notes that in the parable Jesus affirms that death involves a separation of soul from body, with the righteous and wicked immediately experiencing bliss or pain, respectively. Craig Blomberg, in his important study of the parables, draws three points from the story: the righteous will be borne into God’s presence, the unrepentant will experience irreversible consequences, and through Moses and the Prophets, God has given humanity all the revelation it needs.⁵⁸ What neither of these scholars does is equate the intermediate state described in this parable with the final state described in Revelation 20. And that restraint is exactly right. The parable tells us about Hades. It tells us nothing about Gehenna.

2. Revelation 20:13–14 — Death and Hades Thrown into the Lake of Fire

“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 they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.” (Revelation 20:13–14)

This passage is one of the most important in the entire Bible for understanding the afterlife, and it is also one of the most neglected. Pay close attention to the sequence of events here. First, the dead are raised. The sea gives up its dead. Death and Hades give up their dead. Everyone who has ever lived is now standing before the great white throne of God. They are judged “according to what they had done.” And then—after the judgment—death and Hades themselves are thrown into the lake of fire.

Do you see what that means? Hades is destroyed. The waiting room is demolished. The intermediate state comes to an end. Everyone who was in Hades has been emptied out of it, raised from the dead, and brought before the judgment seat. And then Hades itself is consumed. It ceases to exist. This confirms what we said earlier: Hades is not permanent. It is not “hell” in the sense that most people use that word. It is a temporary state that is finally swallowed up by the lake of fire—which is itself called “the second death.”²³

Now, what does it mean that death and Hades are “thrown into the lake of fire”? Neither death nor Hades is a person. Neither can suffer or be punished. So what is going on here? Manis offers a compelling reading. On the divine presence model, the lake of fire is the presence of God. God is depicted as fire throughout Scripture—as a burning bush, a pillar of fire, a fiery figure in Ezekiel’s vision, a river of fire in Daniel’s vision.²⁴ When Revelation says that death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire, it means that death and Hades are destroyed by the presence of God. God’s presence is inherently life-giving. Death, which is a form of separation from God, cannot survive the full unveiling of God’s presence. When Christ returns in glory and his presence fills all things, death itself is consumed. The last enemy is destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26).²⁵

This is what Paul was talking about when he wrote, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). And it is what he was celebrating when he wrote, “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). Death is swallowed up. Hades is emptied and then demolished. The grave does not get the last word. God’s life-giving presence does.

Manis develops this beautifully. He argues that Hades, on the divine presence model, is a place of separation from the divine presence. It exists as a kind of mercy—a postponement of the full encounter with God that the unrighteous are not yet ready to face.²⁶ But at the return of Christ, the separation ends. God’s presence fully “invades” Hades. When God’s presence becomes inescapable, Hades is swallowed up in the being of God. The waiting room is gone. And with it, the separation of body and soul that death brought about is also undone. If Hades is the abode of disembodied souls, then its destruction means that those souls must now either be annihilated or re-embodied. Since—on Manis’s view—the presence of God is inherently life-giving, all are embodied. All are raised. All are brought into the full light of God’s presence.²⁷

For the righteous, this is glory. For the wicked, this is judgment.

The phrase “the second death” is profound. If death is a separation—a separation from God, a separation of body and soul—then the second death is the death of death itself. It is the end of separation. As Manis and Talbott both agree, “the second death” represents the destruction of Death with a capital D—the final defeat of everything that separates human beings from the living God.²⁸ Where they disagree is on what this means for those whose names are not written in the book of life. Talbott, who is a universalist, takes the “death of death” to mean that eventually all separation will end for everyone—even the wicked will be restored. Manis allows for the possibility that for those who have hardened their hearts beyond repair, the destruction of Hades is not liberating but devastating: they are now locked into an embodied existence in the full, inescapable presence of God, with no relief and no escape.²⁹

Either way, the divine presence model reads this passage far more naturally than the ECT reading. On the ECT reading, the lake of fire is a separate place from God—a cosmic torture chamber. But if that were the case, why would death and Hades be “thrown into” it? How can you torture death? The passage makes far more sense if the lake of fire is the consuming presence of God, which destroys everything that is opposed to life: death is destroyed, Hades is destroyed, and sin-hardened souls are either purified or consumed by the fire of divine love.

Manis draws a stunning connection here between Daniel’s vision and the closing chapters of Revelation. In Daniel 7:9–10, the Ancient of Days sits on a throne of fire, and “a river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him.” In Revelation 22:1–5, we read about another river flowing from the throne of God: “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Two rivers. One of fire. One of water. Both flowing from the same throne.⁵⁹

On the divine presence model, these two rivers are the same river. They are the same reality—the overwhelming presence of God—experienced in radically different ways depending on the condition of the person who encounters it. For those who are in Christ, God’s presence is experienced as living water: refreshing, life-giving, healing. The leaves of the tree beside the river are “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2). For those who are not in Christ, the same presence is experienced as fire: burning, consuming, devastating. The river of fire and the river of life are not two different things. They are two experiences of the same God.⁶⁰

This is the heart of the divine presence model, and it is beautifully confirmed in this passage. The lake of fire is not some distant torture chamber far removed from God. It is the very presence of God—the same presence that is paradise for the righteous. Revelation 14:10 confirms this: those who receive the mark of the beast “will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.” In the presence of the Lamb. Not far from him. Not hidden from him. Right in front of him. The torment happens in God’s presence, not in God’s absence.⁶¹

Beauchemin, writing from a universalist perspective, also picks up on this connection. He points to Daniel 7:9–10 and Revelation 14:10 and Psalm 139:8 (“If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there”) as evidence that God is present everywhere—including in the midst of his fiery judgment. Whether the image is a river, a lake, or hell itself, God is there. His consuming and refining fire flows from the One who is Love.⁶²

3. Matthew 10:28 — The One Who Can Destroy Both Soul and Body in Gehenna

“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 Gehenna.” (Matthew 10:28)

This is one of the most theologically important verses in the entire debate about hell. Notice three things right away.

First, the word Jesus uses here is Gehenna, not Hades. He is talking about the final state, not the intermediate state. Whatever this verse means, it is describing what happens after the final judgment—not what happens the moment someone dies.³⁰

Second, the verse strongly implies that the soul can exist apart from the body. Human beings who kill can only destroy the body. But God can destroy “both soul and body.” This makes no sense if humans do not have an immaterial soul. If we were purely physical beings, there would be nothing left to destroy after the body is gone. The verse assumes—as does the divine presence model—that human beings are composed of a material body and an immaterial soul that can survive physical death.³¹

Third, the key verb is destroy. The Greek word is apollymi (ah-POLL-oo-mee), which means to ruin, to destroy, to bring to nothing.³² Jesus does not say God will “torment” both soul and body in Gehenna. He says God can “destroy” them. Edward Fudge, one of the most thorough defenders of conditional immortality, rightly points out that the words “kill” and “destroy” are parallel and interchangeable in this passage. Human beings can kill the body. God can destroy both soul and body. The language points toward destruction, not unending conscious torment.³³

This verse is a serious problem for the traditional ECT view. If hell is eternal conscious torment, you would expect Jesus to say, “Be afraid of the One who can torment both soul and body in Gehenna forever.” But he doesn’t. He says “destroy.” And “destroy” means “destroy.” Chaff does not burn forever. Bodies thrown into the Valley of Hinnom did not burn forever. They were consumed. The fire did its work and what was thrown into it was gone.³⁴

Now, how does the divine presence model read this passage? Very naturally. On the divine presence model, Gehenna—the final judgment—is the experience of God’s fully unveiled presence. The fire of Gehenna is the fire of God himself (remember Hebrews 12:29: “Our God is a consuming fire”). When a person whose heart is irrevocably hardened against God stands in that fire, the fire does its work. It destroys. It consumes. As Baker puts it in her illustration of Otto: if, after the fire of God’s presence has burned away everything impure, nothing good remains in the person, the fire will burn all of him. He will be completely destroyed. Nothing will be left. This is conditional immortality within the divine presence framework.³⁵

This verse also tells us something crucial about the soul. The soul is not inherently immortal. God can destroy it. This stands against the Platonic view—the ancient Greek idea that the soul is by nature indestructible and lives forever no matter what.³⁶ The Bible teaches something different. The soul is real. It is immaterial. It can survive the death of the body. But it is not self-sustaining. It exists because God sustains it. And God has the power to let it perish—to withdraw the sustaining power that keeps it in existence. As Paul puts it, immortality is not something humans naturally possess; it is something God gives as a gift to those who are in Christ (2 Timothy 1:10; 1 Timothy 6:16).³⁷

Matthew 10:28 is a sober warning. It tells us that what God can do in Gehenna is far worse than anything a human torturer can do to your body. It tells us that the stakes of the final judgment are total—not just the death of the body, but the destruction of the entire person, body and soul. And it confirms that the final state is not Hades but Gehenna—not the waiting room but the final destination.

I want to say something here about the pastoral weight of this verse. Some people think that conditional immortality—the view that the wicked are ultimately destroyed rather than tormented forever—somehow makes hell less serious. Matthew 10:28 explodes that idea. Jesus says, “Be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” That is not a soft warning. That is not a gentle nudge. That is an appeal to terror. The destruction of body and soul is the most final, the most total, the most irreversible outcome imaginable. You don’t just lose your life. You lose your self. Everything you ever were, everything you could have become—gone. Consumed by the fire of a holy God. That is not “soft on hell.” That is the most serious warning in the Bible.⁷⁰

4. Matthew 5:22, 29–30 — Jesus’ Gehenna Warnings

“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of Gehenna.” (Matthew 5:22)

“If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into Gehenna.” (Matthew 5:29–30)

These warnings come in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most important speeches Jesus ever gave. He is teaching his disciples about the kingdom of God, about what it means to live as citizens of God’s new creation. And right in the middle of this teaching about love, mercy, and righteousness, Jesus drops these bone-rattling warnings about Gehenna.

Again, the word is Gehenna, not Hades. Jesus is talking about the final state, the ultimate consequence of refusing to deal with sin. And notice what he’s saying: the danger of Gehenna is not reserved for serial killers and war criminals. It is connected to something as common as anger. As everyday as contempt. As familiar as looking down on another human being and calling them a fool. Jesus is saying that the same attitudes of the heart that lead to murder, if left unchecked and unrepented, can harden a person to the point where Gehenna becomes their destination.³⁸

This is deeply consistent with the divine presence model’s understanding of how people end up in hell. Remember what we said in earlier chapters about self-deception and the hardening of the heart (see Chapter 18). Sin does not start with dramatic acts of evil. It starts small. Anger. Contempt. A little bitterness. A habit of looking down on others. And over time, these small attitudes calcify into something hard and permanent—a heart that is so turned in on itself that it can no longer respond to love. That is the road to Gehenna. Not a single dramatic choice, but a thousand small ones.³⁹

The language Jesus uses in verses 29–30 is extreme on purpose. He is not literally telling people to mutilate themselves. He is using hyperbole—deliberate exaggeration for effect—to communicate the seriousness of what is at stake. “It is better to lose a part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into Gehenna.” In other words: whatever sin is doing to your heart, deal with it now, no matter how painful the surgery. The alternative is far worse.⁴⁰

Notice the verbs again. Jesus says people will be “thrown into Gehenna.” The picture is one of total loss—like garbage being tossed into the burning dump outside Jerusalem. Fudge rightly notes that Jesus’ verbs emphasize rejection, banishment, and destruction. The picture is consistent with the language of Matthew 10:28: “destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” The fire of Gehenna does not preserve. It consumes.⁴¹

The parallel passage in Mark 9:43–48 adds the haunting image from Isaiah 66:24: “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” The ECT reading takes this as a picture of unending conscious suffering. But look at what the original text in Isaiah is actually describing: it is a picture of dead bodies being consumed by worms and fire. The worms and the fire are agents of destruction, not instruments of ongoing torment. As Fudge points out, the worms and fire in this image are doing what worms and fire always do—consuming dead matter until nothing is left. The emphasis is on the relentlessness of the destruction, not on the survival of the victim.⁴²

For the divine presence model, these Gehenna warnings reinforce the core argument. The fire of Gehenna is the fire of God himself. It is consuming fire. And what it does to the wicked depends on the state of their hearts. For those who are hardened beyond repair, the fire destroys. For those who still have something redeemable in them, the fire purifies. But the fire is always the same. It is always the fire of divine love. The difference is not in the fire. The difference is in what the fire touches.

D. Synthesis: What the Hades-Gehenna Distinction Means for the Divine Presence Model

When we step back and look at these passages together, a clear and coherent picture begins to emerge. It is a picture that the traditional ECT reading struggles to produce, because ECT tends to flatten everything into a single, undifferentiated “hell.” The divine presence model, by contrast, can handle the full range of biblical data because it respects the timeline that Scripture itself provides.

Here is that timeline. When a person dies, their soul enters the intermediate state. For believers, this means being with the Lord in a state of comfort and rest (Luke 23:43; Philippians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 5:8). For unbelievers, this means Hades—a conscious state of waiting, not yet the final judgment.⁴³ The rich man’s experience in Luke 16 belongs here. It is real. It is conscious. But it is not final.

Then comes the resurrection. All the dead are raised—both the righteous and the unrighteous (John 5:28–29). Hades gives up its dead. The sea gives up its dead. Every person who has ever lived stands before the throne of God.

Then comes the judgment. The books are opened. Every life is laid bare before the penetrating light of God’s truth and love. This is what Manis calls the “judgment of transparency”—the moment when the contents of every heart are fully revealed in the light of Christ’s unveiled presence.⁴⁴ We will explore this judgment in detail in Chapter 23.

Then comes the final state. Death and Hades are destroyed—consumed by the fire of God’s presence. Those whose names are in the book of life enter the new creation, where they dwell in the full, joyful, unmediated presence of God forever. Those whose names are not in the book of life enter the lake of fire—which, on the divine presence model, is the same consuming presence of God, experienced as torment rather than joy because of the condition of their hearts.⁴⁵

This sequence matters because it tells us that the intermediate state and the final state are fundamentally different experiences. In Hades, the unrighteous dead experience a degree of separation from God—painful, but not the full intensity of what is coming. Manis suggests that Hades is, in a sense, an act of divine mercy: it postpones the full unveiling of God’s presence for those who are not ready to face it.⁴⁶ But when Christ returns and Hades is destroyed, the separation ends. God’s presence becomes inescapable. And the response to that presence—whether it brings joy or torment, purification or destruction—depends entirely on the state of the human heart.

Manis develops this powerfully in his discussion of the “destruction of Hades.” When Christ’s presence fully invades Hades, the disembodied souls there must be re-embodied, since the presence of God is life-giving and does not permit the separation of body and soul that death brings about. Each person receives a resurrection body—a body that somehow reveals, in the light of Christ’s presence, the true contents of the soul. It is in this manner, Manis writes, that “eternity will nail him to himself,” borrowing Kierkegaard’s memorable phrase.⁴⁷ The resurrection is simultaneously the restoration of life and the beginning of the final judgment. For the wicked, it is a resurrection to judgment—an embodied existence in the inescapable presence of God, marked by gnawing guilt, shame, anger, and resentment.

On the traditional ECT view, Hades and the lake of fire are basically the same kind of experience—conscious torment, just in a different location. The final judgment does not really change anything for the wicked; it just moves them from one torture chamber to another. But on the divine presence model, the difference between Hades and the lake of fire is enormous. In Hades, God’s presence is partially hidden. In the lake of fire, God’s presence is fully revealed. In Hades, there may still be some protection, some mercy, some buffer between the sinful soul and the full blaze of divine love. In the lake of fire, there is none.⁴⁸

I want to push on this point a little further, because it exposes a real problem in the traditional view. If the ECT view is correct—if the wicked are already suffering eternal conscious torment the moment they die—then why does the Bible bother with a final judgment at all? What is the point of raising the dead, opening the books, and conducting a judgment if the verdict was already delivered at the moment of death? On the traditional view, the great white throne judgment is redundant. It changes nothing for the wicked. They were already in torment and they will continue to be in torment. The only thing that changes is the zip code.⁶³

The divine presence model, by contrast, gives the final judgment its full weight. On this model, the judgment is not a formality. It is the turning point. It is the moment when God’s presence, which was partially hidden throughout the intermediate state, is fully and finally unveiled. It is the moment when every truth is revealed, every self-deception is stripped away, every pretense is demolished. The dead are not simply moved from one location to another. They are brought face to face with the living God. And that encounter changes everything.

This is what Manis means by the “second unveiling.” In his framework, the first unveiling happens in this life, when a person voluntarily opens their heart to God under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The second unveiling happens at the end of the age, when Christ returns in glory. This second unveiling is not optional. It is not a matter of individual choice. It is a cosmic event that affects every person who has ever lived. The return of Christ in glory is itself the source of the resurrection: his presence is so inherently life-giving that it raises the dead. And it is the return of Christ in glory that constitutes the final judgment. His appearing is the judgment. His presence is the fire.⁶⁴

As Paul puts it, the destruction of the wicked comes “from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:9, NKJV). Not away from his presence. From his presence. The judgment is not exile from God. It is exposure to God. And for those who have spent their lives hiding from truth, running from love, and hardening their hearts against grace, that exposure is the most terrible thing they can imagine.⁶⁵

This also means something important for the question of whether repentance is possible in Hades. If the intermediate state is a conscious waiting period—a time when the soul still exists in a state of relative separation from God—then the possibility of a postmortem encounter with Christ cannot be ruled out. We explored this in detail in Chapter 16 when we discussed the Descensus and the preaching to the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:18–20; 4:6). The rich man in Hades is in agony, but he is also aware, communicative, and even concerned for his brothers. Could such a person, in Hades, still respond to an offer of grace? The divine presence model leaves this question open—and that is theologically important.⁴⁹

But once the final judgment comes and Hades is destroyed, the time for waiting is over. The encounter with God is no longer partial but total. The books are open. The truth is fully revealed. And the response to that truth determines the final outcome: life in the joy of God’s presence, or destruction in the consuming fire of God’s love.

Baker’s treatment of the lake of fire in Razing Hell is helpful here. She suggests that the lake of fire is not a separate place from God but is the fire of God’s very presence.⁵⁰ Remember the word theion—“brimstone” or “sulfur,” which is also the Greek word for “divine.” The lake of fire and brimstone is the lake of divine fire. It is the fire that flows from God’s throne (Daniel 7:9–10). It is the same fire that purifies gold and consumes stubble. Baker points out that the ancients used sulfur for purification, not punishment. A first-century reader would have understood the lake of fire not as an eternal torture chamber but as a lake of divine purification—a fire that destroys death and evil and leaves only what is pure and good.⁵¹

In Baker’s retelling, the lake of fire “puts death and evil to death and leaves life.”⁵² If death is destroyed, what’s left? Life. If evil is consumed, what remains? Goodness. The lake of fire is not a place where God tortures people forever. It is the fire of God’s love, burning away everything that is not of God. For those who yield to the fire, it is salvation through fire, “as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15). For those who are nothing but sin and rebellion, the fire leaves nothing behind. This is the second death.

E. Pastoral Implications: Why This Distinction Matters for the Church

I realize that all of this might feel very technical. Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, Tartarus, the lake of fire, the second death—it’s a lot of terms, a lot of distinctions. You might be tempted to ask, “Does it really matter? Can’t we just call it all ‘hell’ and move on?”

I don’t think we can. And here is why.

When we flatten the Bible’s careful distinctions into a single word—“hell”—we lose the story the Bible is trying to tell. We lose the sequence. We lose the stages. We lose the drama. We end up with a picture of the afterlife that is static and one-dimensional: you die, you go to hell, the end. But the Bible paints a far richer picture. There is a waiting period. There is a resurrection. There is a judgment. There is a final reckoning in the unveiled presence of God. The whole thing unfolds like a great story, moving toward a climax—and the climax is not torture. The climax is truth. The climax is the moment when every heart stands naked before the consuming fire of divine love and is either purified or consumed.⁵³

This distinction also matters pastorally. When a grieving parent asks, “Is my child in hell right now?”—the answer, on the biblical model, is not the same as the answer to the question, “What will happen to my child at the final judgment?” We can honestly say that the dead are in God’s hands, that the intermediate state is not the final state, and that the God who is love has not yet spoken his last word over anyone.⁵⁴ That is not a cheap comfort. It is a biblical one.

It matters for how we preach. If we want to be faithful to what Scripture actually says, we cannot use the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as a description of the eternal state. It is not that. It is a picture of the intermediate state, and it was told to make a point about the danger of ignoring God’s word. We need to let the text say what it says—no more, no less.⁵⁵

It also matters for how we think about evangelism and urgency. Some people worry that the divine presence model, with its distinction between the intermediate and final states, somehow softens the urgency of the gospel. Not at all. If anything, it sharpens it. The divine presence model tells us that the stakes of the final judgment are even higher than the traditional view suggests. It is not just a matter of being sent to a different location. It is a matter of standing before the full, unveiled glory of God with a heart that is either ready to receive his love or irrevocably hardened against it. The urgency is not “you might go to a bad place.” The urgency is “you will one day stand in the presence of infinite Love, and your whole life has been shaping how you will experience that moment.”⁶⁶

The Hades-Gehenna distinction also protects us from a pastoral temptation that plagues the church: the temptation to play God. When someone we love dies without an obvious profession of faith, the traditional view tempts us to pronounce a final verdict: “They are in hell now.” But who are we to say that? The Bible teaches that the dead are in God’s hands, that the intermediate state is not the final state, and that the Judge of all the earth will do right (Genesis 18:25). We can trust God with the dead. We do not have to pretend we know the outcome of a judgment that has not yet occurred.

And it matters for how we understand God. The traditional picture of hell—where sinners are sent to a burning place forever the instant they die—makes God look hasty, vindictive, and merciless. The biblical picture is different. God holds the dead in a state of waiting. He gives time. He provides a process. He raises the dead, opens the books, and reveals the truth. And only then, after every opportunity has been given and every truth has been laid bare, does the fire of his love do its final work. That is not a God who is eager to punish. That is a God who is thorough in his love.⁵⁶

The distinction between Hades and Gehenna is not a minor footnote in biblical theology. It is the key that unlocks the whole structure of the Bible’s teaching on judgment. And it is the foundation on which the divine presence model builds its case: that hell is not separation from God, but the experience of God’s inescapable love by those whose hearts have been hardened against him. The waiting room is over. The fire is here. And the fire is love.

In the next chapter, we will turn to the fire passages themselves—Hebrews 12:29, 1 Corinthians 3:12–15, Malachi 3:2–3, Isaiah 33:14–15, and others—and we will see that fire in Scripture is never about torture. It is always about the presence of God.