Not only does the common perception of Hell fail the biblical test, but so does the western mythology of Heaven.
As previously noted, the Hebrew imagery of a transcendent realm was based on the common Ancient Near Eastern concept of the sky. It was “up” for them and became the parable everyone used. Thus, we have the language of stars representing deities. Instead of simply popping in and out of this world, Jesus pointedly rose into the sky at the end of His time with His disciples. The literal meaning of such things was never the point; it was what it represented to them in the language of their own minds — the language God built for them.
God made us for Eden. The biblical language about Eden includes imagery of both garden and mountain. Trees and mountains have both served as parables for critical concepts of how God works in this realm of existence. Any attempt to wring out of such language a clinical description would fail almost immediately.
However, reading between the lines, we can certainly characterize things just a little bit: Eden was God’s private reserve away from His divine courts. It bore the imprint of His divine character. It wasn’t the place to do business, but to show His private familial side. The people He created to manage the garden on His behalf were capable of reading His character as personal servants who saw Him in a relaxed state. They were His imagers, ensuring the garden reflected His character.
We don’t quite know how, but Eden was connected to the natural world before the Fall. The people were commanded to reproduce so that the imaging mission could be spread across the world. They were not elohim but something lesser. Second Temple literature offers a lot of embellished detail about these things and we must take it with a grain of salt. Still, the general idea is that the Devil (God’s Chief Bodyguard) objected to the whole idea that he and the rest of God’s staff would be required to honor these people who were so obviously beneath their rank as eternal beings.
God censured His Bodyguard for rejecting His plans. The punishment was to confine this eternal creature in a time-space continuum, which happened to include access to the natural world God intended his humans to modify and manage, extending His garden. The whole thing is characterized in terms of the courts of an eastern potentate. God permitted a certain amount of debate and some kind of testing and proof. As part of this arrangement, the Devil was commissioned to take as his domain the unimproved portion of the natural world, but not the Garden itself. Not so much to control the natural world, but to inhabit it and use some aspects of it. He was granted the role of jailer, but confined to his own jail.
The Devil was permitted to tempt and imprison the humans. It would serve as a test case in the central debate with God. We can’t really comprehend the crux of the matter, but there are characterizations of it in the Second Temple literature. This is sort of the mental image Jesus and His disciples had in their minds in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament.
The natural world is not only unimproved, but subjected to the serious mishandling of humans deceived about what matters. The world in which we live is increasingly abused and poisoned. But it’s not inert; it cries out to God for the redemption of His people so that the original purpose of imaging God can be restored to Creation.
The point here is that some of us humans will be redeemed out of this prison existence. When Jesus returns, He will wipe away the mess humans have made under Satan’s dominion and return it to a primal condition. The Devil will lose his domain; he and his allies will be destroyed in the Lake of Fire.
We get the feeling God will retire to His garden estates. He will dissolve His courts and commission His human family to take over the residual roles that are still needed in His retirement. In the process, the rebellious staff will be destroyed. Their duties will be passed to God’s family.
Humans will not enter God’s courts at any point in this narrative. We weren’t made for that. Surely, those who die before Christ’s return will see paradise, but that is conceptually a part of the afterlife separate from God’s courts. Strictly speaking, “Heaven” should be a term for God’s courts, but in English it has taken on the meaning of “paradise” as Jesus used the word. This has something to do with Paul’s use of the terms for a multi-layered “heaven”. Our place in that realm for now is a holding area “in Abraham’s bosom” waiting for the Second Coming.
When Christ returns, we shall be restored to our native form, not in mortal flesh. We’ll meet Him in the sky as He restores the world to what it was before the Fall. Then, we shall return to our original purpose of imaging God’s private character in the natural world.
