[Ohio-Communities-of-Faith] AmazingFacts devotion: WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN CHRIST SAYS OF THOSE WHO GO TO HELL, “THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE”?

[Shelly Duffy]

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN CHRIST SAYS OF THOSE WHO GO TO HELL, “THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE”?
October 11, 2021 

Average reading time is about 5 minutes


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In this passage, the word “hell” is translated from the Greek word “gehenna,” which is another name for the valley of Hinnom, located just outside the walls of Jerusalem. There refuse and the bodies of animals were cast into an ever-smoldering fire to be consumed. What might escape the flames was constantly being destroyed by maggots, which fed on the dead bodies. Gehenna symbolized a place of total destruction. 

Jesus taught here that the fires of hell could not be quenched or put out by anyone. Isaiah said, “Behold, they shall be as stubble, the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame” (Isaiah 47:14). So the unquenchable fire will go out after it has consumed the wicked as stubble. Jerusalem burned with “unquenchable fire” according to Jeremiah 17:27 when it was totally destroyed. “It shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem.” 

The flames and worms of gehenna represented the eradication of sin and sinners. Earlier apostasy and idol worship in the valley of Hinnom (Jeremiah 32:35), and God’s judgments on Israel as a consequence, marked it as a symbol of punishment and judgment. God warned in Jeremiah 7:31–33 that it would become the “Valley of Slaughter,” where the “corpses of this people will be food for the birds of heaven.” With the fires of “gehenna” burning before their eyes, Jesus could not have spoken a more graphic word to the Pharisees to describe the final, total destruction of sinners. 

This text cannot support the idea of the immortal soul since the “worms” do not work on “disembodied souls.” According to Jesus, those who are cast into the lake of fire will go in bodily form. In Matthew 5:30, Christ said “It is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” (my emphasis). 



KEY BIBLE TEXTS 
"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:"
"Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."
Mark 9:47-48



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Shelley Duffy