Are you still afraid of going to hell? Read this and relax. (2023)

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The fear of going to Hell, or Hell as a place, is something that has caused me years of depression and anxiety. Fortunately, thanks to advances in modern medicine, I was able to combat some of these feelings with a daily dose of anxiolytics. However, that would not solve the problem that had consumed my life for years. The pain and the endless sleepless nights made me lose so many joys in my life, which irritate me to this day. It seemed like it would never end, the lingering fear and constant thoughts were dragging me down.

When I finally got up the courage to start asking questions and peeling back the layers of the Christian fear cult, I felt I was on the right track for something huge and very important. All those pastors and youth group leaders over the years had lied to me and I knew it, but now I had to prove it. As I would do it?

Simply, the apostle Paul.

It has not been an easy journey to the great place I am today, but I am proud to say that I no longer have those feelings of guilt and anxiety. She would investigate one topic and debunk it, only for something else to emerge and take its place as she went from one rabbit hole to another. Reading books by Bart D. Ehrman and watching endless hours of Dan Barker's YouTube debates taking on Christian apologists helped, but it still wasn't enough. Why couldn't he just snap out of it? It was exhausting and frustrating. I was getting discouraged and wanted this irrational fear to go away forever and FAST!

The more I searched, the more the pain ached, but it was what I had to do. I would stay up in the middle of the night trying to see how some Hebrew word had been mistranslated for thousands of years to make sure that the Bible was not the true word of God. It was overwhelming, and also embarrassing for me personally, to email professors in divinity schools to make sure I was getting all the information I could to help me overcome my fear.

One day, however, I finally got the lightbulb moment I had been waiting for. I was driving and thought, "If Jesus was foretold so clearly in the Old Testament, as Christians claim, why did the Apostle Paul persecute his followers?" Something didn't fit logically in my head and I had to figure out why. This moment finally set me on the path to discovery and finally set me free from my fear of going to Hell, all thanks to two simple verses from the Apostle Paul. I explain it in detail below:

The Apostle Paul was a very well educated Jew. Any Christian will agree with you on this issue. He knew these Old Testament "prophecies" like the back of his hand. The greatest "prophecy" that Paul writes about, and which is the cornerstone of the Christian faith, is found in Paul's own letter to the Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 15:3-4
"For what I received, I transmitted to you first of all, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures."

Paul is explicit that the risen Jesus comes to him in a vision and says that he was the promised messiah to die for the sins of the world and would be raised on the third day by God. (Shouldn't Jesus resurrect himself because he's God? Whatever. Move on.)

This is the biggest thing Christians claim Jesus did when it comes to fulfilling Old Testament "Bible prophecy." Not being a king, not born in Bethlehem, not riding a donkey. His resurrection. Course of time!

There is only one big problem with this statement by Paul. Nowhere in the Old Testament does it say that the Messiah, the King, the Son of God, the Anointed, the Redeemer of Israel, the Servant (Isaiah 53), He or He, will one day die for the sins of the world. and be raised by God on the third day. Absolutely nowhere! There is not a single story of a single person dying and coming back to life three days later in the Old Testament; so you can't even claim the double prophecy argument.

The only reference to a single person undergoing some sort of 3-day trial is Jonah and the giant fish; and we all know that never happened. Furthermore, Jonah never died in the belly of a whale. He was also atoning for his own sins, not the sins of others, as Jesus is said to have done on the cross. Regardless, another crazy ridiculous story when you take a step back and honestly think about it.

The whole notion of a suffering messiah was completely foreign to the Jews themselves, as Paul even writes in 1 Corinthians 1:23: "But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews." A stumble? It just adds to the point that there wasn't a Jew on the planet who thought his messiah was going to die, let alone come back to life 3 days later.

Another thing is, if this "prophecy" was spoken so clearly in the Old Testament (which it is not at all), why was Paul so irritated by this message when he first heard it? Why was he violently persecuting these Christians? He wasn't chasing them because they said feed the poor or love each other. It was because they claimed that a crucified criminal had come back to life and was the promised messiah of the Jews. This angered Paul. It was blasphemy to him.

So one has to wonder: if Jesus were the promised messiah as Paul says he is in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, wouldn't Paul have recognized this fulfillment of prophecy and celebrated it on the streets of Jerusalem? Why the persecution?

It's like someone promised you that your favorite political candidate would win the election, and when he won, you got irritated by the news and started going after the people who spread the message. Or, your favorite baseball team was promised a messiah to lead their team to World Series victory, and when that happened, you wished the other team had won and started throwing peanuts at your own fans.

Yes… that makes a lot of sense, NO!

Of course, in the Hebrew oral exam, they were supposed to state what the Jewish messiah would do when he became a Pharisee. Dying and coming back to life 3 days later was not on the test. If it was, they would have been hopeful and excited about the news, not angry.

I've always said that Paul's story is the definition of irony. Your past writings and actions completely undermine the Christian faith. You weaken your own argument while trying to spread it at the same time. That was what finally freed me from the Christian cult of fear. There were other things like contradictions about how to achieve salvation, and what day Jesus was actually crucified, etc., but that's what ultimately happened. If all of this is the word of God, wouldn't God have declared it clearly through the many "prophets" of him in the Old Testament?

"Make no mistake about it, the messiah of the Jewish people will die on a cross for the sins of the world and I (God) will raise him to life 3 days later, and just so you know, this is the word of God, the gases that make up our atmosphere are 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 0.93% argon”. Now that's a prophecy. But that didn't happen because the Bible is not the word of God.

The great awakening of my brain that has been injected with lies and irrational thoughts for so many years has finally started to think rationally. It was an incredible feeling. We must also remember that Paul is risking his life and the lives of his members by spreading this message. A message and an idea that is not found anywhere in the Old Testament. He is 100% making this up. Why did he do it? Scholars still debate this today, but still, he died for a lie. It's that easy. Paul is just another religious freak who had a vision.

Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, said that Jesus appeared to him and told him to write things on tables of gold. He was arrested and beaten as was Paul.39 Heaven's Gate cult members confidently drank poisonous Kool-Aid, and countless suicide bombers died in the name of Islamic extremism. The idea that "no one would die for a lie" is demonstrably false by religious fanatics of many different religions.

I want everyone to know that you will overcome your fear of Hell. I never thought it would, but that's what finally did it for me. It was so liberating for me and it still is. The difficult thing now is realizing that I may never see my loved ones again and that one day I'll die and that's it. End of story.

However, at the end of the day, I don't think anyone has the slightest idea why we're here. If someone tells you that he just knows and has all the answers, guess what, he doesn't. It's like trying to determine where space ends and begins. Something impossible if you ask me. There may never be an answer to all of this, but luckily we don't have to worry about the Antichrist coming and microchipping our brains, the Rapture, or eternal torment. I gladly accept the uncertainty about the future rather than believe in some psychotic monster looming over me in the clouds, fanning the fire of all the Jews who died in Auschwitz because they did not accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

By the way, if you were an 8-year-old Jewish boy, you wouldn't have believed in Jesus either; I'm sorry evangelicals, but it's true. Why? Because an 8 year old will believe almost anything in a room full of adults. When I was 8 years old, I was told at Bible camp that if I didn't accept Christ, I would burn forever. Most of the children in the world are not raised that way.

I hope this helps anyone who is fighting child abuse which is religious indoctrination. It is a long and painful journey. I walked for years. To my beautiful wife and sister, friends I have met along the way, I will be eternally grateful for her support in getting me through this episode in my life. I hope this at least helps one person with problems. I promise you that everything will be fine. You are not going to Hell, because that place does not exist. You will feel scared, alone and honestly depressed during this trip, but you will get through it. Trust me.

Oh, and I almost forgot to say, thanks again Paul for your blatant lies and lack of critical thinking on this matter. It really helped me relax and see the light.