Hello Ron,

Let’s begin with the fact that the books compiled into the Christian Bible are just books written by ordinary people. They weren’t written by or even inspired by an old white guy living in the sky. The first book of Yeshua’s sayings wasn’t written down until decades after Yeshua died, and that book hasn’t survived. We have only the common elements in Matthew and Mark to show us they used a single, earlier source. The earliest Gospel of the New Testament was Mark, who didn’t use that earlier source, so the source could have been written after even Mark was written. Mark was written down around 70 CE, about 40 years after Yeshua’s death. For that entire time before Mark’s Gospel was written, the sayings attributed to Yeshua were passed around by word of mouth. That was going on while many other sayings from many other teachers were also being passed around by word of mouth. And the stories were changing as they were told, thousands of times by different people and passed along as the years went by.

Then, the scribes and church fathers of the early church made their own deliberate changes in the books that were put into the canon to fit their beliefs. They added and deleted text. Even the church fathers themselves acknowledged that.

And the earliest manuscript of the New Testament is from around 300 CE, so between around 70 CE and 300 CE, lots of changes were being made. Every Christian should read Bart Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted.

We don’t know what Yeshua really said. We do know, however, what his general message was. That comes through because it was repeated and is in the tone of the writings. Anything in conflict with that tone certainly was added later.

So let’s look at what was written. It would be remarkable if a central message of judgment and condemnation were true that he wouldn’t have said it repeatedly, over and over again. He would have been seen as "Yeshua of the Judgment." The cliche would have been "That put the fear of Yeshua into him." Yeshua would have been a man to fear as unforgiving and vengeful. Every time he gave a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven, you would see judgment and condemnation. All the writers and speakers, including Peter and Paul, would have pounded home the judgment and condemnation message. That just doesn’t happen. You don’t see judgment, condemnation, and hell in Yeshua’s teachings or in Acts or in Paul’s letters!

You would also expect to see events and parables involving judgment. The Samarian woman at the well would be warned that she was going to roast in hell if she didn’t change her ways. The adulterer would have been warned about hell fire. The Pharisees would have been threatened with hell. But they weren’t. It’s impossible to suggest that Yeshua believed in a judgment and hell when he leaves it out of every statement about sin and the Kingdom of Heaven! If the Bible were penned by God, it certainly is a bad contract that leaves out the most important clause between God and man.

So then there’s a single passage that is completely out of character for Yeshua. Yeshua was very clearly a man who taught forgiveness and non-judgment. That comes out over and over again. Why would we believe that a gruesome, vein-popping, angry, vengeful portrayal of him is the correct one when it comes in just one text? Who in the world is this man with a scowl on his face and angry fire in his eyes? It certainly isn’t the Yeshua described in the rest of the Gospels. It's like Yeshua was a Jeckyl and Hyde or a multiple personality. "He walks with me and he talks with me" today, but on judgment day, he's going to be ranting and raving with blood on his hands.

It’s no coincidence that you’ll see millions of portraits of the smiling Yeshua, the Yeshua with the lambs, the Yeshua with the children, the Yeshua healing the sick, but you’ll never, not once, not anywhere see a single portrayal of a Yeshua standing on a mountain with uplifted arms, shouting angrily to his angels to hurl men, women, and children into a fiery furnace. Why? Because that’s clearly not the character of the Yeshua of the whole New Testament. It’s an addition by a church that itself was angry, condemning, and vengeful.

Yeshua just never taught about a hell. The church created hell.

Love and peace, Craig