Unity Church of Castro Valley
Sunday Message for March 16, 2008
Heaven & Hell
Today we will be discussing Heaven & Hell. These are grossly misunderstood concepts.
Merriam Webster defines heaven as "the dwelling place of the Deity and the blessed dead". This is how many people think of heaven. They have come to define it as being up in the clouds, with golden gates, angels, harps, and streets of gold. They think of it as the place where God lives and where they are afraid they won't go because they haven't been good enough.
Merriam Webster defines hell as "a nether world in which the dead continue to exist" or "the nether realm of the devil and the demons in which the damned suffer everlasting punishment". Many people fear hell and fear that they will burn forever in hell because they haven't been perfect in life.
But intelligent individuals have given up that old myth. Unfortunately, a lot of them have also given up on religion because it just doesn't make sense to them anymore. We have to find these people and introduce them to Unity.
Charles Fillmore defines heaven as "the Christ consciousness; the realm of Divine Mind; a state of consciousness in harmony with the thoughts of God. Heaven is everywhere present. It is the orderly, lawful adjustment of God's kingdom in man's mind, body, and affairs."
Charles Fillmore says that "hell represents a corrective state of mind. When error has reached its limit, the retroactive law asserts itself, and judgment, being part of that law, brings the penalty, called hell, upon the transgressor. This penalty is not punishment, but discipline."
GEHENNA
The people who translated the Bible used their best discretion as to what it meant. But at that time there were only a couple of manuscripts to which they could refer. We now have many, many manuscripts and can make better translations. I use the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible which has a pretty good current translation. It is the New Oxford Annotated Bible.
But if you use the older versions, you will see words translated differently. In the King James Version in I Samuel, chapter 2, verse 6 it says, "The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up." The Hebrew word 'Sheol' here was translated as 'the grave.'
In Numbers, chapter 16, verse 30 it says, "But if the Lord creates a new thing, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the pit, then you will understand that these men have rejected the Lord" The word 'Sheol' in this verse was translated as 'the pit.'
In Job, chapter 11, verse 8 it says, "It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" In this verse 'Sheol' was translated as 'hell.'
In the Old Testament they used the Hebrew word 'Sheol' and in the New Testament it was the Greek word 'Hades.' It meant 'not to be seen' or 'not to be looked upon.' It was translated as 'hell' but it is supposed to refer to the unseen world, or the abode of the dead. It is a reference to the grave or the 'pit.' The old Hebrews didn't have a concept of life after death as we do now.
In the New Testament Hades and Gehenna are translated as hell.
In Matthew, chapter 5, verse 22 it reads, "But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, `Raca!' shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, `You fool!' shall be in danger of hell fire."
In Matthew, chapter 5, verse 29 it reads, "And if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell." In these two verses 'Gehenna' was translated as 'hell' and 'hell fire.'
But Gehenna or Hinnom was a valley south of Jerusalem where the refuse of the city was burned. The fires there were kept going continually. See how concepts get a little sideways?
Formerly it was in this valley that some idolatrous kings of Israel celebrated the terrible religious rites of Moloch in which their children were burned in the fire. The children were sacrificed. Later this valley was used to burn refuse and filth from Jerusalem.
It tells about one of those kings in (2 Chronicles 28:3) "King Ahaz made offerings in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and made his sons pass through fire, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel."
But this practice was stopped (2 Kings 23:10) "King Josiah defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of Gehenna, so that no one would make a son or a daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech."
So Gehenna was a concept of fire and suffering – but it wasn't in the afterlife – it was a physical place where human sacrifices were made. And later, where the garbage was burned.
So, we don't have to die in order to go to hell, any more than we have to die to go to heaven. Both are merely states of mind. They are conditions which people experience as a direct outworking of their thoughts, beliefs, words, and acts.
If our mental processes are out of harmony with the law of our being, they result in trouble and sorrow. Mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual anguish overtakes us, and this is hell.
Charles Fillmore writes about Gehenna as a positive fire. He says it is the purifying fires of the soul and that our God is a consuming fire. When we are negative in our consciousness, the error is utterly consumed by the love and perfection and Truth of Spirit. This cleansing, purifying process will continue until there is no more refuse to be burned. Then this fire of God will express in us as eternal life.
(Malachi 3:1-3) "See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi."
(Isaiah 33:14-15) "Who among us can live with the devouring fire? Who among us can live with everlasting flames?" Not the wicked, but "those who walk righteously and speak uprightly."
HEAVEN
Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "Sin makes its own hell, and goodness makes its own heaven. The sinner makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right."
Wrong thinking makes its own hell, and right thinking makes its own heaven. We have to follow Jesus' sayings and his actions which then rule our life. The perfect and infinite Mind of God within our own consciousness is heaven.
But the evil beliefs which man thinks up are hell. We are the idea of Spirit. We reflect the image and likeness of God and should be illuminating the universe with our light. We are deathless and spiritual. We are above sin or frailty. We coexist with God and the universe.
Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind. It is a state of Mind in which all ideas are harmonious and immortal. You cannot be in negative thinking when you (Philippians 2:5) "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus."
Once we believed in the mythology of pagan Rome – but now we have a more spiritual idea of God. We also need to let our material theories yield to our spiritual ideas. Then the finite gives place to the infinite, sickness to health, sin to holiness, and God's kingdom comes (Matthew 6:10) "on earth as it is in heaven."
The basis of all health, prosperity, and immortality is the fact that God is the only Mind. To get rid of error thinking we need to get rid of the idea that sin has any reality. Negative thinking cannot have any intelligence or power. You conquer it by denying its reality. We need to lose our faith in sickness, pain, lack, and evil and make our life its own proof of harmony with God.
It says in (Revelation 21:1) "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more." The heaven and earth stand for spiritual ideas. The sea is a symbol of tempest-tossed human concepts advancing and receding – but this has passed away. Divine understanding reigns and there is no other consciousness. This is heaven.
There is a story of a monk that was excommunicated by the Pope. At his death he was sent in charge of an angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell. But the monk was so eloquent and of such good humor that wherever he went he was received gladly and treated well, even by the most uncivil angels. And when he came to talk with them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his part, and adopted his manners. Even good angels came from far to see him and to stay with him.
The angel that was sent to find a place of torment for him, attempted to put him in a worse pit, but with no better success. Such was the contented spirit of the monk that he found something to praise in every place and every person. Even though he was in hell, he made a kind of heaven of it.
At last the escorting angel returned with his prisoner to them that sent him, saying that no place could be found that would burn him in whatever condition.
The monk remained incorrigibly himself. The legend says, his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go into heaven, and was canonized as a saint.
ABOVE LIFE'S TURMOIL
The mortal man lives in the time or world state of consciousness which begins and ends. The immortal man lives in the cosmic or heaven state of consciousness, in which there is neither beginning nor end, but an eternal now. When we accept this state of consciousness we are poised under all changes and the death of our body does not interrupt the eternal consciousness in which we live. Jesus said, (John 8:52) "Whoever keeps my word will never taste death." This is because we have stepped out of the stream of mortality and established ourselves in Truth.
Bodies, personalities, nations, and worlds pass away, but Truth remains and is undimmed by time. The immortal man, then, is he who has conquered himself; who no longer identifies with ego, but who has trained himself to direct his forces in harmony with the source of all things.
Temptation to negative thinking is not a lasting condition, but it is a passing phase, an experience through which the soul must pass. We have a choice whether we will pass through that condition in this present life and realize holiness and heavenly rest here and now. It depends on the strength of our intellectual and spiritual effort and on the intensity with which we search for Truth.
We remain ignorant because we love ignorance and choose ignorant thoughts. We become wise when we love wisdom and choose wise thoughts. We aren't held back by any other person; we are only held back by ourselves. We don't suffer because of another; we suffer only because of our self. Through thinking at the highest level we can enter into the highest Heaven; but by thinking at the basest level we can descend into the lowest hell.
There is no more painful bondage than to be at the mercy of our inclinations. And there is no greater liberty than the utmost obedience to the Laws of the Universe. The Law is that our heart will be purified, our mind regenerated, and our whole being brought in subjection to Love until the ego is dead and Love is all in all. The reign of Law is the reign of Love. And Love waits for all. It rejects no one. Love may be claimed and entered into now, because it is our heritage.
The absolute Truth is that we can accept our divine heritage and enter the Kingdom of Heaven now.
If you have not recognized the spiritual center within yourself, and have not acknowledged allegiance to it, you are drifting in the darkness. You are allowing your thinking faculty to draw its thoughts (which are its food) from the chaos of ignorance, and you suffer the consequences in the world it creates for you. Don't forget that everything that appears in your life and affairs, physically, mentally, or otherwise, has sometime been sent forth from your thinking. It is only through the power vested in it that you can come into consciousness of anything. Consciousness makes your heaven and it makes your hell.
SCRIPTURE: I Samuel 2:6; Numbers 16:30; Job 11:8; Matthew 5:22,29; 2 Chronicles 28:3; 2 Kings 23:10; Malachi 3:1-3; Isaiah 33:14-15; Philippians 2:5; Matthew 6:10; Revelation 21:1; John 8:52
REFERENCE: Metaphysical Bible Dictionary Charles Fillmore; Science & Health & the Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy; Above Life's Turmoil Raymond Charles Barker
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Last updated
March 17, 2008
