But do we value our own prospects for eternal life highly enough so as to guard against stumbling our own selves? What​—stumbling ourselves? Yes, indeed. How?

14. According to Jesus’ added words of caution, how could we stumble ourselves to a fall?

¹⁴ After speaking about stumbling “one of these little ones that believe,” Jesus added the caution: “And if ever your hand makes you stumble, cut it off; it is finer for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go off into Gehenna, into the fire that cannot be put out.

Mark 9:43, 45, 47-49.

15. What was the Gehenna of which Jesus spoke, and of what did he use it as a symbol?

¹⁵ In the cases just given, Jesus points to destruction by fire. In Jesus’ day the Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnom, that he mentioned lay to the south and southwest of Jerusalem. His words confirm the fact that this Gehenna was used as an incinerator for the rubbish of the city and that the corpses of criminals considered unworthy of honorable burial with a resurrection hope were pitched into it. If a corpse failed to land in the fire but fell upon a slope or ledge that was warmed by the Gehenna fire, it would decompose and be consumed by the maggots that bred. The fire was kept burning continuously, day and night, in order to consume completely what was pitched into the city’s dumping ground. So Gehenna became a symbol of everlasting destruction, as when Jesus said to the Jewish scribes and Pharisees: “Serpents, offspring of vipers, how are you to flee from the judgment of Gehenna?”​—Matt. 23:33.

16. In what way do those pitched into Gehenna neither enter into life nor into the kingdom of God?

¹⁶ Those who are sentenced to Gehenna do not enter into the kingdom of God, either the heavenly rule with Christ or its earthly realm during the millennial reign of Christ. Those whom God sentences to Gehenna do not enter into life at all, even though having all their body members. Hence, Gehenna pictures the state of nonexistence, annihilation, destruction by the adverse judgment of God. Just as the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day stumbled themselves into Gehenna, so a dedicated, baptized Christian of today can stumble himself into being sentenced by God to Gehenna, everlasting destruction.

20. In order to safeguard ourselves from being “salted with fire,” how do we remove the offending hand, foot and eye?

²⁰ As a safeguard against our being “salted with fire,” how shall we cut off our offending hand or foot or throw away our offending eye? Our doing so literally would not correct or remove the wrong impulses that have expressed themselves through the natural hand, foot or eye. The removal process must be carried out in a figurative way. The apostle Paul showed how to follow Jesus’ counsel, saying: “Deaden, therefore, [what?] your body members that are upon the earth as respects fornication, uncleanness, sexual appetite, hurtful desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of those things the wrath of God is coming.”​—Col. 3:5, 6.

21. How do we carry out this ‘deadening’ process?

²¹ To do such a ‘deadening,’ we really have to exercise self-control over our literal bodily members that are upon the earth. For instance, we must restrain our eyes from reading pornographic literature or looking at filthy motion pictures or television presentations, or using our hands in thievery or immoral practices, or gratifying the urge of our feet to dance suggestive dances or to walk companionably with a ‘friend of this world’ into areas of temptation. We must spiritually kill our love for “the things in the world,” that is, “the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the showy display of one’s means of life.”​—1 John 2:15-17; Prov. 6:16-19.