Hell or the Valley of Gehenna or Place of Waste

I was blessed in February to visit Israel and spend several days in Jerusalem. As we left the hotel and went up to the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, our tour guide pointed out a valley on the south side of the Temple Mount that was the valley of  Hinnom or Gehenna, a term that Jesus uses when he describes what our Bibles commonly call hell. It had been a place of child sacrifices in the Old Testament and was in New Testament times a place of waste where the copious amounts of blood and other waste material from the temple were drained and discarded. There are other ideas about this valley including the idea that there were continual fires to burn the waste and so on, but what struck me was that this was a place of waste.

I am of the conviction that we are meant to live eternally and that the choices that we make in this life will determine our existence and fate forever. Those who believe and trust in Jesus (those whose names are written in The Book) will awake from death according to Daniel 12.1-2 to 'everlasting life', but some (who do not believe) will awake to everlasting shame or reproach. What strikes me about this passage is the term 'everlasting' or eternal. I realize that there is debate about this with some thinking that ultimately unbelievers face annihilation. but traditionally the Christian Church has believed in our eternal existence. I obviously do not have a complete view of what this everlasting shame or reproach is, but it seems to have something to do with waste. Here is what I mean. God has some kind of eternal plan and destiny for his children. Scripture seems to indicate that this means ruling and heavenly responsibilities highlighted by an eternally growing relationship with God. We will also reflect forever the incredible grace that came through the love and sacrifice of Christ (trophies of Grace dwelling forever on his heavenly mantle piece as it were). God has some incredible plans for us, BUT what if we refuse those plans? What if we don't want to go with God? Or accept his grace and forgiveness through Christ? We still go on into eternity but (I say this carefully) our living in eternity will really be an everlasting waste, We will be outside the heavenly plans and purposes of God, There cannot be any meaning to this existence, because ultimate meaning and purpose will only be found in God's eternal purposes and plans. There will be no hope because we will outside of any meaning that would give us a future and a hope. There will not be any spiritual growth because we will be without the Spirit of God forever. It seems to me that it will be eternal 'waste' just as Gehenna was the place of waste in the New Testament. Alfred Edersheim in his Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (p.379) seems to agree and catches this well. In writing about hell being the place of outer darkness, he describes it as being 'a place of hopeless, endless night'. I am not sure about the torments of hell or what they entail, but Edersheim seems to think that the weeping and gnashing of teeth recorded in scripture will be everlasting tears and anger/anguish that go on eternally as the hopeless nature of hell forever sinks in

We tend to shy away from teaching about eternal judgment and we do so (partly) because of possibly extreme views about hellfire and brimstone and hell being the domain of the devil and his angels. Again I freely confess that I do not understand all of the aspects of this, but I do think it is an existence of everlasting waste. This adds so infinitely much to what Jesus states in John that he has come to give life and that abundantly! We need to warn people that outside of the gift of eternal life through Jesus there is no 'life'. There is only the prospect of an everlasting wasted existence.