Is Hell a

Black Hole?

Hubble Space Telescope Image of an elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Virgo. It is believed that many such galaxies have a black hole at the center.

Many years ago, when I was a typical smart-aleck kid in college, I had a verbal encounter with one of the most well-known and influential Assemblies of God prophecy teachers, who shall remain nameless. We were studying in Revelation, and came across the first mention of "the abyss," translated "the bottomless pit." Now I had just enough Greek to make myself annoying, so I understood why the scholars translated the term "abuthos" as "bottomless pit." The alpha prefix "a" meant without, and the "buthos" was literally "depth," so we had the word, a seemingly endless depth. The teacher said that this referred to a very deep pit, but that a "bottomless" pit was an impossibility. I didn't need any other authority than the KJV, so I argued fiercely for my view that God could make a pit without a bottom!

I don't give up easily. Over the years, my brain stretched a bit as I continued my studies, but somehow I maintained that this description of hell was conformable to reason, and that we just had not discovered any way to prove it.

Way back when - actually in the 70's, I began to hear descriptions of black holes (first called "black holes" in 1969, though propounded in the 20's). Since astronomy and cosmology are subjects of great interest to me, I read all I could get (and far more than I understood) on black holes. Here was my bottomless pit!

I was teaching Pauline Epistles at Liberty Bible College, and as teachers are wont to do, sometimes a wandered afar in the broad fields of speculative thinking - always advising my students as to where we were, and inviting them to loose the constraints of ordinary thinking, and come along with me.

You may not see the connection between Pauline Epistles and the Bottomless Pit. As you well know, if one wants to badly enough, you can start anywhere in Scripture and end up wherever you wish. Using this method of exegesis (or was it hermeneutics), starting somewhere in 2 Thessalonians probably, we ended up in the bottomless pit.

Flaunting my newfound knowledge about Black Holes, I raised (not as a point of instruction, but as a question) whether or not Black Holes fit the description of hell.

Briefly:

1) They are essentially bottomless. Once past the "event horizon" (don't ask me. Read Stephen Hawking) one would essentially "fall forever."

2) Time inside the black hole is essentially "eternity."

3) The event horizon acts as a sort of one-way membrane over the black hole (see Hawking, A Brief History of Time page 89). Interestingly, Hawking says here "One could well say of the event horizon what the poet Dante said of the entrance to hell: all hope abandon, ye who enter here'."

4) It gets kind of sticky here. Are black holes black or are they merely invisible? They are called "black holes" because the gravity of this collapsed star is so great that even light cannot escape. Where does the light go? If anyone has explained it, I haven't caught on yet, though Hawking says that "Black holes ain't so black." (an actual chapter title).Though they do not emit light, something about quantum mechanics causes emissions just past the surface. What I gather is that it must be something like a "lake of fire" and "outer darkness" at the same time.

Of course there are many problems. This isn't even a theory - it is pure speculation, probably falling into the category of "foolish and unlearned questions."

For one thing; do human bodies go to hell, or human souls? A body would be stretched into spaghetti (or worse) upon "falling into" a black hole, but a soul, being non-material, may fall "intact" into it.

If human "natural" bodies go to hell , how are they transported? Nothing in the realm of the physical can, according to the laws of physics, travel faster than the speed of light. But - we have no idea of the speed of spiritual realities!

Maybe hell isn't really that far away. Nor heaven. Either (or both) may exist in dimensions other than ours, and physically (?) co-exist with our present universe.

Sure, as I said, this is all "mere" speculation (though based on some present knowledge).

But it does show one thing. It isn't a good idea to dismiss something found in Scripture just because it is contrary to human reason and our present knowledge; the Trinity, for example. Or eternity. Or ... well, just any number of things. From our vantage point ofa four-dimensional universe (three dimensions of space and one dimension of time), we see the universe with a gnats eye view, if that much. Let us humbly accept our ignorance (and that of our fellow men) and get on with life until IT ends!

J. Gene Adkins © 1998

Comments? Do you think this is a harebrained waste of time? Want to correct me, challenge me, or simply say how brilliant I am. I welcome your email.

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