One of the concepts which has been with us since the very beginning is the concept of hell. The dictionary defines hell as a nether world in which the dead continue to exist. It is said to be the realm of the devil and the demons in which condemned people suffer everlasting punishment. A second definition describes it as a place or state of misery, torment, or wickedness and there are other definitions for it such as a place of turmoil or destruction. Do any of these definitions sound familiar to you? Apparently they do to some people, because they believe the earth is hell. They cite the fact humans always seem to be in turmoil and there is certainly enough destruction to go around for everyone and there is that final individual destruction in which we are all eventually destroyed. Not all races of people believed hell was a place of torture, some believed it was just a place where you went to when you died. Interesting enough the word hell can trace its roots back to words which mean hide and other words which mean punishment.

While it is believed the Mesopotamians, the Hittites and the Canaanites may have been the earliest races to believe in a nether world, we can’t really be sure of this. There are some who say that belief may have started when the first person dreamt of a deceased ancestor suffering. It is believed they thought they could have been receiving a message from this deceased ancestor telling them he or she was in pain. This is all conjecture of course since we have no way of knowing what went on that far back, but we do suspect our ancient ancestors were very superstitious and it wouldn’t have taken much for them to develop these beliefs. The ancient Egyptians believed religion was for everyone and each person would be rewarded or punished depending on the life they lived on earth. This concept has continued through many major religions today.

Perhaps we should examine the religious beliefs of the aboriginal people of Australia. The reason this is important is they are the oldest race of people on the earth. Their belief states good or evil has nothing to do with entering the land of the dead. They believe whether or not you are allowed to enter is based upon certain rituals which you have performed all during your life. They believe in birth, death as a transition and rebirth. They do believe in the land of the dead, but they believe it is in the sky in a particular place and even a particular direction and they believe a person’s spirit might even be with the great Creator. There doesn’t seem to be a particular belief in hell. Could this mean other races which were around forty thousand years or so ago had much the same beliefs as the aborigines do today?

There are some people today, including scientists, who believe the world doesn’t really exist and we are sort of in a dream. The dream is said to be controlled by higher life forms who also are fooling us by making us believe there is a universe. Some of this group are also part of the group who believe the universe is nothing more than a giant simulation. In other words we are looking out into a hologram. A few believe depending on what we do in our life, we will be put into other simulations which will either be pleasurable or punishment. Thus we would have a heaven simulation or a hell simulation. Some of this stuff is so far out it is hard to even talk about. It is interesting to note however what some other people are thinking. Some of these people are the same ones who believe all the other people we see in our life do not really exist and things we look at disappear when we are not there looking at them.

In the Middle Ages and before, the concept of hell was taken very seriously and people would actually make donations to the church in order to get guarantees they would go to heaven. As preposterous as this sounds these people thought it no longer mattered what they did since they already had their ticket to paradise.

A lot of thought was given to what hell might be like. One of the most famous works about hell was the poem by John Milton titled Paradise Lost. The first version was published in 1667. It was bound in ten books and had ten thousand lines of verse. Clearly Milton had a lot of thoughts on the subject. It was published again in the year of Milton’s death, but this time it was in twelve volumes. Milton said he wrote Paradise Lost to justify the ways of God to men. In the poem Satan a powerful angel rebels against God and enters into a war with his angels, but loses it. This begins his reign in hell.

There are those who claim they have actually seen hell when they had near death experiences. One woman who attempted suicide recalls after dying what happened. Her whole life unfolded in front of her in a series of images and she relived all the events and felt the way others felt about her when she interacted with them. After her life was reviewed she remembers being surrounded in darkness and remembers barely being able to make out another nearby group and she remembers saying oh we must be the suicides. She realized she could communicate by thought, but never received an answer from anyone around her. Later she was banished to an open field where souls roamed about but there was no human interaction. A twentieth century Spanish nun had said God allowed her to visit hell to see it and she described the same field.

One man who had been shot by mistake said he had died three times on the way to the hospital. He said he saw things that were completely terrifying. He said he was shackled at his wrists and ankles and suspended in midair over a deep glowing red pit. He said inside the pit four-legged creatures were roaming the floor while smoke billowed up from the magma below. In each puff of smoke was one tortured soul. He went on to say even though he could hear the sounds of soul screaming he still felt completely isolated and understood if he stayed there he would’ve been by himself for eternity.

Is there a hell? I hope we never find out there is.