Counter-point: Hell is a place on Earth.

It is a fun exercise, to take the bare-bones of an ancient and fading belief, and attempt to reconstruct a personal belief regarding the afterlife. Being things beyond any confirmation, they are not central to the matter of faith, but the exercise is fruitful nonetheless.

I believe that the Bible is explicitly metaphorical when it comes to Creation by the holy words: These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

I believe that "Paradise" is the unmitigated communion and fellowship with God. Paradise is separate, holy, and pure.

The Heavens, (or Heaven) are the domain of the Divine. People can't go there. We're people. There is a clear and uncrossable divide between the Divine and the mundane, the physical and the profane. God rules from Heaven, angels go hither and thither, and Man never sets foot there. It isn't possible. It is a metaphysical impossibility.

Sheol is the place of Death. When we die, we die and rest in the ground as the beasts, as spoken by King David: "You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince." and illustrated by Torah: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

I believe that this polluted place is our place of waiting, torment and trial. That there are those by example who have led the way to Paradise, those being: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah and so forth. I do not believe in endings, for endings are a particularly human concept. The preceding verse also demonstrates my next belief. Like others before me, I hold to the concept of limited reincarnation, wherein those who fail to achieve proper holiness and purity, and are so denied entry into Paradise, return to Earthly existence.

There God, speaking to Man in Paradise, decrees that unto "dust" (Earth) thou shalt return. Speaking from a position in Paradise, God is addressing Man as to where he is going. The Land of Nod, for one term. And so Man surely died, as told by God. If death here is a matter of passing into the ground, death from Paradise is a matter of passing into "the sweat of thy face". Besides, the banal explanation of the introduction of mortality is too trite, simple and limited.

In the sweat of thy face- this existence on Earth;

shalt thou eat bread- life,

till thou return to the ground- death;

for out of it wast thou taken- death (non-existence, coming into being):

for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Earth).

Or something like that. "Limited" reincarnation is such that the "sweat of thy face" is effectively gone forever. Your personality, person-hood, and all that makes you uniquely you dies, however the breath of life continues, for who would say that the breath of God can end? And so the words of Solomon say: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. and, For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward; but the memory of them is lost.

In short, Hell isn't so much a place where you go. Hell is where we are. And so the question is: can you preserve the holiness of the breath of life within you, so that you may pass beneath the ever-turning sword, and gain passage to Eden? Remember the duty of a guard, the angel standing watch. Not only is it the job of a sentry to block, but the allow passage as well. For those with the password.