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Is Hell a Joke?
This is a book about Hell. Who are the residents in Hell? Will your friends be there? Is Hell part of a mythological fable? Why is Hell compared to, "Dante's Inferno?" Will untold numbers of people, who never heard of Christ, go to Hell? Did God predestine some for Hell and some for Heaven?Larry Zoro literally interprets the Bible and shows the truth about Hell. More important than believing in Hell, is learning how to escape it. Everyone should read this book based on the Bible and answer this question, "Is Hell a Joke?"
105 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 21, 2012
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August 3, 2018
This relatively short entry into the corpus on hell has more than a few problems, especially in regards to the main focus.
For starters, the author uses the King James Version of the Bible, and as a result, cites several Old Testament passages about “hell” most of us would agree are not actually about the place of final punishment in the world to come. This is because the King James, unlike modern translations, often (though not always) translates the Hebrew word Sheol as “hell.” And Zoro is aware of this, but makes a short and unconvincing case that he is doing it right.
This in part includes the misunderstanding and related strawman that people who speak of Sheol being “the grave” mean a literal, physical grave that is six feet under the earth: “The Hebrew word Sheol not only refers to the grave but to the subterranean abode of the dead where souls dwell after death. Hell is deeper than a mere grave in the earth.” But the claim is not the Sheol simply means a physical tomb. The position is that it broadly means the place of the dead, which is colloquially called “the grave.” It isn’t meant so literally as to just mean a hole in the ground. It need not even be a fixed location, but simply describing the state of death – which is how people use “the grave” all the time in English. Thus, saved people speak of going there in the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis 37:35, Psalm 89.48, Job 14:13).
The author’s reasoning is at times quite flawed. For example, he argues that if Sheol is not the fiery place of final punishment called hell, why would Psalms speak of godly people trying to avoid it? “If Hell or Sheol is just the restful grave and nothing more, then why worry and pray for mercy and deliverance?”
The answer is simple: death is bad. That’s why Christians who have cancer pray to God to be cured. They aren’t afraid of going to hell, but death a curse to be avoided – not at all costs, of course, but generally speaking. In many Psalms it is quite clear that the Psalmist is trying to avoid earthly death (or was rescued from it by God). So this argument is just not well thought out at all – especially since we know from above that God’s people expected to go to Sheol themselves – albeit not forever.
At times, the author advocates some questionable positions. His position is that the resurrected bodies of the unsaved in hell are dead, like corpses: “The resurrection of the dead will entombed them inside a decaying and lifeless body, forever abhorrent.” Except they are also conscious and can feel pain. And the soul is dead, but also feels and can suffer...
Honestly, I don’t know if this is a unique weakness, or if I am actually pleased that he is so upfront about it. Normally, those who believe in eternal conscious punishment try to argue that in the Bible, “dead” has a special, Bible-only meaning that means separated from God but conscious – even though in any normal context we would say that one can be alive while (temporarily) unconscious but one has to be alive to be conscious. Here, he just goes full hog. Your body is a literal dead corpse...except it can feel pain. They all believe that somehow you can be “dead” but conscious. He just doesn’t beat around the bush.
But surely one should see a problem with the idea that a dead body is conscious and feels pain.
It’s not as though the book has no redeeming value. It encourages people to follow Jesus, it even occasionally has decent insight about non-hell matters. For example, Zoro points to Cornelius in Acts 10 to show that God can and will reveal Himself and His salvation to those who seek Him to the extent they know how to, and for this reason the unevangelized do not pose a problem to the Christian religion. But it’s a book focused on hell, and it gets a lot very wrong.
For starters, the author uses the King James Version of the Bible, and as a result, cites several Old Testament passages about “hell” most of us would agree are not actually about the place of final punishment in the world to come. This is because the King James, unlike modern translations, often (though not always) translates the Hebrew word Sheol as “hell.” And Zoro is aware of this, but makes a short and unconvincing case that he is doing it right.
This in part includes the misunderstanding and related strawman that people who speak of Sheol being “the grave” mean a literal, physical grave that is six feet under the earth: “The Hebrew word Sheol not only refers to the grave but to the subterranean abode of the dead where souls dwell after death. Hell is deeper than a mere grave in the earth.” But the claim is not the Sheol simply means a physical tomb. The position is that it broadly means the place of the dead, which is colloquially called “the grave.” It isn’t meant so literally as to just mean a hole in the ground. It need not even be a fixed location, but simply describing the state of death – which is how people use “the grave” all the time in English. Thus, saved people speak of going there in the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis 37:35, Psalm 89.48, Job 14:13).
The author’s reasoning is at times quite flawed. For example, he argues that if Sheol is not the fiery place of final punishment called hell, why would Psalms speak of godly people trying to avoid it? “If Hell or Sheol is just the restful grave and nothing more, then why worry and pray for mercy and deliverance?”
The answer is simple: death is bad. That’s why Christians who have cancer pray to God to be cured. They aren’t afraid of going to hell, but death a curse to be avoided – not at all costs, of course, but generally speaking. In many Psalms it is quite clear that the Psalmist is trying to avoid earthly death (or was rescued from it by God). So this argument is just not well thought out at all – especially since we know from above that God’s people expected to go to Sheol themselves – albeit not forever.
At times, the author advocates some questionable positions. His position is that the resurrected bodies of the unsaved in hell are dead, like corpses: “The resurrection of the dead will entombed them inside a decaying and lifeless body, forever abhorrent.” Except they are also conscious and can feel pain. And the soul is dead, but also feels and can suffer...
Honestly, I don’t know if this is a unique weakness, or if I am actually pleased that he is so upfront about it. Normally, those who believe in eternal conscious punishment try to argue that in the Bible, “dead” has a special, Bible-only meaning that means separated from God but conscious – even though in any normal context we would say that one can be alive while (temporarily) unconscious but one has to be alive to be conscious. Here, he just goes full hog. Your body is a literal dead corpse...except it can feel pain. They all believe that somehow you can be “dead” but conscious. He just doesn’t beat around the bush.
But surely one should see a problem with the idea that a dead body is conscious and feels pain.
It’s not as though the book has no redeeming value. It encourages people to follow Jesus, it even occasionally has decent insight about non-hell matters. For example, Zoro points to Cornelius in Acts 10 to show that God can and will reveal Himself and His salvation to those who seek Him to the extent they know how to, and for this reason the unevangelized do not pose a problem to the Christian religion. But it’s a book focused on hell, and it gets a lot very wrong.
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