The Truth About Hell

A REPORT by the Church of England’s doctrine commission states that hell is not a fiery furnace after all; rather, it is an abstract place of nothingness. “There are many reasons for this change,” the report explains. “But amongst them have been the moral protest from both within and without the Christian faith against a religion of fear, and a growing sense that the picture of God who consigned millions to eternal torment was far removed from the revelation of God’s love in Christ.”

This discomfort with the traditional view of hell is not exclusive to the Church of England. People from various denominations find it difficult to worship a vengeful God who incinerates sinners. “People want a God who’s warm and fuzzy,” says Jackson Carroll, professor of religion and society at Duke University’s Divinity School. “It’s counter to the culture of today to talk about sin and guilt.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses have long held that hell, as the Bible teaches it, is simply the common grave of dead mankind—not a place of fiery torment. They hold this view, not because it is popular, but because of what the Bible says: “As for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all . . . There is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol [“hell,” Catholic Douay Version].”—Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10.

With this clear understanding regarding the condition of the dead, Charles Taze Russell, first president of the Watch Tower Society, wrote back in 1896: “We find [in the Bible] no such place of everlasting torture as the creeds and hymn-books, and many pulpits, erroneously teach. Yet we have found a ‘hell,’ sheol, hades, to which all our race were condemned on account of Adam’s sin, and from which all are redeemed by our Lord’s death; and that ‘hell’ is the tomb—the death condition.”

Thus for more than a century, Jehovah’s Witnesses have taught the Biblical truth about hell.

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Charles T. Russell