The Sky is Falling

The pagan invention of the conscious dead may be a candidate for the 'Original Oxymoron'.

Conscious eternal torment of those who misbehaved in this life was an early tool used to manage populations. Conjuring pandemics and climate catastrophies are examples in a contemporary genre. Those who rule (or wish to) find that a fearful people are easily manipulated.

The Hebrew scriptures do not so much as whisper the idea of conscious thought in the grave. In fact, they confirm the opposite.

"His breath will go out, he returns to the earth; his thoughts perish in that day." [Psa 146:4]"
"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until your return to the ground. For you have been taken out of it; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." [Gen 3:19]
"... then the dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it." [Ecc 12:7]

One will find no such concept of an "immortal soul" in the Hebrew Scriptures. The dead 'sleep', and like Job, await their change.

Enter Augustine

Most translations of the Greek scriptures groan under the ponderous weight of Augustine's Manichaean machinations. He brought to Christianity some of the syncretic system ascribed to the pagan Assyrian Mani. One of those was a form of eternal conscious torment of the unbelieving. And so this became a motivational tenet of the organized church and severely cambered the early translators work. Scared parishoners are motivated parishoners.

Enter Toto

Yet Paul clearly explains, "... this mortal must put on immortality ...". The real Good News is that, while being mortal is our present condition, and death a present reality, One has transcended the grave, for it could not hold Him. He has been given the keys to death and the grave and He has every intention of using them. Death's days are numbered. Father is exposing the farce like Toto discovering the real wizard of Oz. All that fear-mongering is just smoke and mirrors. He is moving the Ecclesia out of the shadows of church traditions into the full light of the glorious gospel of Christ.

"For the Love of Christ constrains us ..." not the fear of hell.