ARE HELL & HEAVEN ETERNAL?
Jahannam is not eternal according to the Quran. But teachings of Muslim, influenced by earlier religions, made it so. It doesn't reflect the justice of God to torment anyone for eternity for a sin of a lifetime that is mere 100 years at maximum.
God says Q11:106-7 “Those who are damned shall be in the fire…they will dwell therein as long as the heavens and the earth shall last, unless your God ordained otherwise”
Thus the time frame for punishing the wrongdoers (at maximum) is the time equivalent to, from the big bang to the big crunch (the life span of the present universe). Thus Hell is not eternal but has its time frame or lifespan too like anything else. Another important aspect we should consider is that God uses parables in explaining to us the life to come, which is unlike anything we have experienced here on earth. When God wanted to explain something unknown to us he used parables, which are examples or similarities with those things we know. It is through such parables that the message he is sending to us will be clear. It is part of our nature to visualize things that we don’t know or cannot understand to those that we know. Fire is the greatest element when it comes to destruction and the pain it cause in a physical body is one of the most excruciating you can imagine, that is why God uses it to warn people. On the other hand Heavens parables depicted the highest form of pleasure and joy we experienced here on earth, thus food, women, wine and all kinds of exhilarating pleasures were used to personify the promised heaven. In our dreams God had given us an inking to pleasure and pain without the physical body. You could have a scary dream that made you woke up screaming, or of pleasure that made you release sperm while you did not participate physically but spiritually. That is an inkling of a life to come.
In another depiction God says Qur’an 7:9 “…As for those whose weights are light, they will be the ones who lost their souls”….
Therefore the wrongdoers will lose their souls, which was the greatest gift of life which every creature receives at creation from the spirit of God, thus the wrong doers, instead of evolving into higher beings as dwellers of paradise in the next life, will lose their souls and devolve to inanimate matter and become fuel of the next generation of stars from the 2nd Big Bang as the Qur’an says in 2:24 “then beware of the Hellfire, whose fuel is people and rocks…”
The next verse says Q11:108 “As for those who are blessed, they shall be in the paradise. They will dwell therein as long as the heavens and the earth shall last, unless your lord ordained otherwise”
Both heavens and hell are not eternal but have a duration of existence equivalent to what God described in these verses that it is as long as “The heavens and Earth shall last” That is from Big Bang to Big Crunch. There is also a Hadith reported by Bukhari No 6571 Narrated by `Abdullah: The Prophet said, I know the person who will be the last to come out of the (Hell) Fire, and the last to enter Paradise” which emphasize the fact that Hell isn’t eternal” Therefore the prophet also believe that hell is not eternal because as he claimed, he knows the last person to crawl out of it.
Heaven and Hell are not eternal according to the Quran.
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