"Fool" will put you in the dock at the Old Bailey.

Here the progression is regular, but if we were to say that while anger placed one in danger of being tried

before a magistrate, and saying "Raca" betrayed a spirit that might lead to the Assizes, to say "Thou fool"

would be punished by never-ending torment, it would be so patently wrong that its statement would be its

own refutation. It is because tradition has twisted gehenna to mean "hell" that the perversion has obtained

a hearing.

When we pursue the subject in the same chapter we find another context that must not be ignored:

"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy

members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell" (Matt. 5:29).

If "hell" here is literal, then the command to pluck out the eye must be literal, but if the plucking out of

the eye is to be taken in any spiritual or figurative sense, then the reference to gehenna must be taken

figuratively also. We must not omit to draw attention to the fact that the Lord speaks of the "perishing" of

one member, in contrast to the whole body being cast into hell. If He knew that the body that was cast

into hell would never perish, how can we explain this apparently misleading word? Then again, those

who teach eternal torment stress that hell is the place to which the never-dying souls of men go, whereas

the Lord unhesitatingly speaks of the body. Nor is this all; the next reference reveals the utterly wrong

conception that is held by orthodoxy, for in Matthew 10:28 we read:

"Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able

to destroy both soul and body in hell".

For believing and for teaching this as truth, men of God have been branded as heretics of the deepest die.

Here it is taught that the soul as well as the body can be destroyed in gehenna, and if that truth were held

by the church of God this booklet would be unnecessary.

Matthew 10:28 does not teach that the soul is immortal, but affirms, with the rest of Scripture, that "the

soul that sinneth it shall die". It teaches that destruction and not torment is the punishment of hell, and its

presence in the Scriptures is a standing witness against those who virtually make void the Word of God

that they may keep their traditions, however honestly those traditions may be held.

It may be objected that until we have included the teaching of Matthew 25, we, too, are exposed to the

charge of bias. Now it cannot be that one can hold Matthew 10:28 and deny Matthew 25, any more than

one can hold Matthew 25 to the exclusion of Matthew 10:28. Both passages must be held as truth, and

held together, destruction of soul and body not being understood in such a way that "everlasting

punishment" be denied, and everlasting punishment must not be so understood that it makes one single

word of Matthew 10 untrue, unnecessary, or even undesirable.

We found that ignorance of and the ignoring of the context was responsible for a good deal of untenable

teaching being fathered upon Matthew 5, and we shall surely find that a survey of the whole passage that

contains the one and only reference to everlasting punishment in the Scriptures will illuminate the passage

with true and certain light. Matthew 24 and 25 form one section, and must be read together. Three

questions were asked, and three answers were given.

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