Did Jesus Speak More about Hell than He did about Heaven ?

HereIStand said:

I would recommend the book Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment by Robert Peterson. It's good refutation of annihilationism and universalism.

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Yes, it is. So is this - from the other side: https://www.amazon.com/Fire-That-Consumes-Historical-Punishment/dp/1504029348

Almost there said:

I've found the opposite to be true in the southern baptist churches here in central KY. Virtually every message mentions, or is centered on, hellfire.

If you have to scare people into church, you're doing it wrong.

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That hasn't been my experience. I don't think hell needs to be the focus of every sermon or mentioned every Sunday. My experience though is that the topic is avoided.

Take this statement from Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Life. "Unity in the church is so important that the New Testament gives more attention to it than to either heaven or hell." Unity must be based on the right understanding of heaven and hell though.

HereIStand said:

That hasn't been my experience. I don't think hell needs to be the focus of every sermon or mentioned every Sunday. My experience though is that the topic is avoided.

Take this statement from Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Life. "Unity in the church is so important that the New Testament gives more attention to it than to either heaven or hell." Unity must be based on the right understanding of heaven and hell though.

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My experience in Seattle (I lived there for 46 years) was that it was rarely discussed, but it was discussed. I called it the "turn or burn" message. I believed it, but had a hard time reconciling it to the personality of my Creator. And the more I studied and prayed, the harder time I had with it.

Then I was exposed to this about 8 years ago and it changed EVERYTHING: Hell: Eternal Torment or Complete Annihilation? - By Jeremy K. Moritz

And as I continued to study on my own, I realized that all those scriptures that never really made sense without doing "vocabulary gymnastics" suddenly fit right into place as written and interpreted from the original texts. And, more importantly, it is completely harmonious with the God of both the old and new testaments.

What does God do to his enemies? He annihilates them. It's all over the bible.

A_Thinker said:

I have heard ministers state that Jesus spoke more of Hell than He did of Heaven.

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What might be more important is why they say this, not only what is the correct score.

And no matter how many times Jesus talks about Hell, what is His reason for saying things He says? The number of times is not the main thing; but, in each mentioning of Hell, what does Jesus want us to get and to do about what He says??

First . . . technically . . . I would say Jesus is almost always talking about the kingdom of heaven, more or less indirectly. Even when He says things about Hell, even what He says about Hell can be meant to tell us something about the kingdom of heaven. Because, among other things, Hell represents how God of heaven does judge what is wrong and will win over evil and is in absolute control of it.

And, of course, Jesus on earth was Heaven's very own; so whatever Jesus says about Himself is somehow talking about the kingdom of heaven.

But I suspect that why ones say so much about Hell can be because they are trying to scare and control people. But Jesus, I believe, does not use threats to get people to do what He wants. So, I understand He never talks about Hell as a threat. He has much better means to get us to do what He desires.

A_Thinker said:

For more than 50 years, I have heard ministers state that Jesus spoke more of Hell than He did of Heaven. I heard it so consistently, and heard no contradiction of the statement, so I imagined that it must be true.

But after I read through the scriptures for the first time, ... the statement seemed less and less plausible, ... though I continued to hear it. I thought of all of the times Jesus described the kingdom of Heaven in a parable ... and couldn't hardly remember that He ever spoke of Hell as much.

So ... with the advent of electronic texts which could be searched for terms and topics, I did my own analysis. And I found that Jesus spoke of Hell on 60 or so occasions in the scriptures (including desciptive term such as of "outer darkness", "everlasting punishment", etc.), ... BUT, as one might expect, He spoke of Heaven (His home) more than three times as much.

On the one hand, I was relieved, because that accorded much better with my sense of scripture.

But, on the other hand, I wondered HOW it was that such a misfact had been propagated down through the years ... seemingly without challenge ... or honest evaluation by Christian leaders ? Why are Christian leaders so consistent in their proclamation of this mis-truth, ... and why did it require my own lay efforts to uncover the truth ?

Did Jesus speak more about Hell than about Heaven?

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Probably no , because i don't believe that Jesus during his ministry spoke only these words seen in Bible .

But Jesus talked alot about hell compared to other things as seen in Bible .

HereIStand said:

I would recommend the book Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment by Robert Peterson. It's good refutation of annihilationism and universalism.

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I just added this to my "to get" list. Thank you

Cat Loaf You said:

Probably no , because i don't believe that Jesus during his ministry spoke only these words seen in Bible .

But Jesus talked alot about hell compared to other things as seen in Bible .

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He talked about those that do not follow him being destroyed. That is what the whole Gehenna analogy was about. At the time he was speaking you destroyed living things by burning them or letting worms consume them. The analogy is clear. He drives the point home by saying the fire is not quenched. i.e. you will not be "partially destroyed" as often happened in these fires. The lost will be utterly consumed and gone. Just like Sodom.

A_Thinker said:

For more than 50 years, I have heard ministers state that Jesus spoke more of Hell than He did of Heaven. I heard it so consistently, and heard no contradiction of the statement, so I imagined that it must be true.

But after I read through the scriptures for the first time, ... the statement seemed less and less plausible, ... though I continued to hear it. I thought of all of the times Jesus described the kingdom of Heaven in a parable ... and couldn't hardly remember that He ever spoke of Hell as much.

So ... with the advent of electronic texts which could be searched for terms and topics, I did my own analysis. And I found that Jesus spoke of Hell on 60 or so occasions in the scriptures (including desciptive term such as of "outer darkness", "everlasting punishment", etc.), ... BUT, as one might expect, He spoke of Heaven (His home) more than three times as much.

On the one hand, I was relieved, because that accorded much better with my sense of scripture.

But, on the other hand, I wondered HOW it was that such a misfact had been propagated down through the years ... seemingly without challenge ... or honest evaluation by Christian leaders ? Why are Christian leaders so consistent in their proclamation of this mis-truth, ... and why did it require my own lay efforts to uncover the truth ?

Did Jesus speak more about Hell than about Heaven?

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Heaven and Hell are often contrasted together rather than isolated. I know this is not a numbers game but a search in blueletterbible for "hell" in the gospels using the KJV (because it uses the universal translation "hell") reveals 15 results. The same result using the NASB for "hell" OR "hades" has the same 15 results. Using the search criteria "heaven" the word occurs 128 times (NASB) in the gospels alone. This certainly doesn't prove anything but a cursory search would seem to indication Heaven is more talked about than Hell.

There are many verses that don't use these words like John 3:16 for example where "perish" is contrasted with "eternal life" or "...upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it." in this passage "church" is contrasted with "Hades" and this should not be regarded as Jesus teaching about Hell but rather teaching how how the Church will overcome Hell. There is also the parable about Lazarus and the Rich man where a place called "Abraham's bosom" is contrasted with Hades. This parable is not about teaching about heaven and hell and we miss the point when that's what we see. It's about the expected be rejected as a son of Abraham and the unexpected being embraced as the son of Abraham. There is no place "Abraham's bosom" this is figuratively show us who is a son of Abraham and who is not. Jesus also speaks of Paradise on the cross to the thief. So it's not so cut and dry as comparing the words "hell" and "heaven"

We may not like it but the message of the gospel shows us the the things we believe and the things we do contribute to our eternal destination. Rather then call this a works vs faith argument I call these both sides of the same coin which is Faith in Christ. Christ of course is the saviour which the gospel declare but we have a role in it as well.

DamianWarS said:

Heaven and Hell are often contrasted together rather than isolated.

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I don't think so. I think what are contrasted are eternal life and death. John 3:16 comes to mind as does Romans 6:23.

There are many others.

To believe in ECT, one has to redefine the word, "death", and, furthermore, when one fate is juxtaposed against eternal life, one needs to redifine it as "bad eternal life" of some sort.

I would replace the OP's question about Jesus' apparent deemphasis of heaven with these 2 related questions:

(1) Why does the Bible nowhere explicitly tell us that when the righteous die, they will go to heaven? We are often told we will enter the kingdom of heaven. But here "kingdom" means "reign," often in the sense of a taste of heaven on Earth. In a vision, John sees "a new heaven and a new Earth with no sea, which replace the former heaven and Earth (Revelation 22:1). Presumably, the righteous dead will inhabit this new Earth. So what about the new heaven? Our preferred postmortem destination is Paradise, which Paul locates in the 3rd Heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2-3; cp. Luke 23:42-43). But who inhabits the first 2 heavens and the heavens, if any, beyond the third heaven? Paul's location of Paradise in the 3rd heaven is an idea borrowed from intertestamental Judaism, which depicts the 2 lower heavens in imagery reminiscent of Purgatory. Does Paul have those 2 lower heavens in mind when he claims that those whose works cannot survive close divine scrutiny "will be saved, yet so as by fire (1 Corinthians 3:15)?"

(2) Why doesn't the Bible ever explicitly identify the purpose of heaven? Most Christians act like this Earth is our career and Heaven is a kind of static eternal nursing home or Disney World in which we enjoy the sites and continually worship God. In fact, this life is our school and heaven is our true eternal career, for which Earth life is a preparation. But the Bible teaches very little about specifically how our performance in the Earth school prepares us for our eternal postmortem "career." Jesus parabolically tells us that after death we will have various levels of jurisdiction over "cities (Luke 19:17-19)," but does not tell us whether we will exercise that jurisdiction in heaven, Paradise, or the new Earth. Paul reminds us that we will have jurisdiction over the cosmos and angels (1 Corinthians 6:2-3), but tells us nothing about what this jurisdiction means or where it is exercised.

Evangelicals like to stress the divine inspiration of Scripture, but generally overlook how incomplete biblical revelation is in the questions it answers.

I don't have an answer for the original question of this thread, but I just wanted to point out how awesome the idea of the afterlife is.

never heard anyone say that, though I have heard people say that Jesus spoke more about hell than any other prophet, which is true.

A_Thinker said:

For more than 50 years, I have heard ministers state that Jesus spoke more of Hell than He did of Heaven. I heard it so consistently, and heard no contradiction of the statement, so I imagined that it must be true.

But after I read through the scriptures for the first time, ... the statement seemed less and less plausible, ... though I continued to hear it. I thought of all of the times Jesus described the kingdom of Heaven in a parable ... and couldn't hardly remember that He ever spoke of Hell as much.

So ... with the advent of electronic texts which could be searched for terms and topics, I did my own analysis. And I found that Jesus spoke of Hell on 60 or so occasions in the scriptures (including desciptive term such as of "outer darkness", "everlasting punishment", etc.), ... BUT, as one might expect, He spoke of Heaven (His home) more than three times as much.

On the one hand, I was relieved, because that accorded much better with my sense of scripture.

But, on the other hand, I wondered HOW it was that such a misfact had been propagated down through the years ... seemingly without challenge ... or honest evaluation by Christian leaders ? Why are Christian leaders so consistent in their proclamation of this mis-truth, ... and why did it require my own lay efforts to uncover the truth ?

Did Jesus speak more about Hell than about Heaven?

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I did a search for "hell" in the Gospels and Acts and it comes up in 17 verses in the KJV while heaven comes up in 152 verses in the KJV. I think that means that Jesus spoke about heaven much more than he did about hell.

A_Thinker said:

For more than 50 years, I have heard ministers state that Jesus spoke more of Hell than He did of Heaven. I heard it so consistently, and heard no contradiction of the statement, so I imagined that it must be true.

But after I read through the scriptures for the first time, ... the statement seemed less and less plausible, ... though I continued to hear it. I thought of all of the times Jesus described the kingdom of Heaven in a parable ... and couldn't hardly remember that He ever spoke of Hell as much.

So ... with the advent of electronic texts which could be searched for terms and topics, I did my own analysis. And I found that Jesus spoke of Hell on 60 or so occasions in the scriptures (including desciptive term such as of "outer darkness", "everlasting punishment", etc.), ... BUT, as one might expect, He spoke of Heaven (His home) more than three times as much.

On the one hand, I was relieved, because that accorded much better with my sense of scripture.

But, on the other hand, I wondered HOW it was that such a misfact had been propagated down through the years ... seemingly without challenge ... or honest evaluation by Christian leaders ? Why are Christian leaders so consistent in their proclamation of this mis-truth, ... and why did it require my own lay efforts to uncover the truth ?

Did Jesus speak more about Hell than about Heaven?

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I was reading the Bible looking for a way towards salvation. I read it over and over, reading the Gospels dozens of times. I started to forgot, then had to read over again. I was already aware my sins had caused myself and others suffering.

I remember reading Matthew 10:42 (WEB)
42 "Whoever gives one of these little ones just a cup of cold water to drink in the name of a disciple, most certainly I tell you he will in no way lose his reward."

Luke 14:12-14 (WEB)
12 He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, or perhaps they might also return the favor, and pay you back. 13 But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; 14 and you will be blessed, because they don’t have the resources to repay you. For you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous.”

Jesus was teaching me I might be rewarded for good behavior. This message appealed to me more than threats of hell fire. When I heard other people had committed grievous sins that some never recover from and they had repented and were forgiven, I did not give up hope. To learn sinners were receiving forgiveness gave me more hope than realizing sinners would perish without a chance. I am supposed to forgive people too.

Almost there said:

I don't think so. I think what are contrasted are eternal life and death. John 3:16 comes to mind as does Romans 6:23.

There are many others.

To believe in ECT, one has to redefine the word, "death", and, furthermore, when one fate is juxtaposed against eternal life, one needs to redefine it as "bad eternal life" of some sort.

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If we are talking about what Jesus spoke about then we should limit our examples to the red letters, and are we limiting the concept of Heaven and Hell to only those passages that mention those words? However you wish to redefine "perish" in John 3:16 you may but it is still contrasted with "eternal life". The latter is the product of belief and a rescue from "perish". Other examples like "I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it" Hades is shown as the antithesis of the Church but it's not really a comment on Hell but rather the enemy.

DamianWarS said:

However you wish to redefine "perish" in John 3:16 you may but it is still contrasted with "eternal life". The latter is the product of belief and a rescue from "perish".

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We seem to be in agreement. I'm not redefining "perish". I completely agree with what you stated above. In fact, the key is that it is made clear that one receives eternal life, vs the other that, obviously, does not. What the other receives is "perish." And yes, a lot of people try to redefine it to mean all sorts of "non-eliminated" meanings.

If it were not so serious it would be comical.

Almost there said:

We seem to be in agreement. I'm not redefining "perish". I completely agree with what you stated above. In fact, the key is that it is made clear that one receives eternal life, vs the other that, obviously, does not. What the other receives is "perish." And yes, a lot of people try to redefine it to mean all sorts of "non-eliminated" meanings.

If it were not so serious it would be comical.

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if we dichotomize the biblical presentation of the afterlife there is Heaven and Hell. Now I don't mean Dante's Inferno Hell I mean whatever the Bible is referring to when it speaks of this anthesis to the eternal reward in whatever verbiage it uses. To me this is sufficient enough to label "Hell" to answer the OP without needing to define what Hell is. The word can invoke a lot of images more based on myth then biblical insight but the same can be said for Heaven. If the words Heaven and Hell are too misleading then by all means replace them with X and Y so as to establish what Jesus speaks of more as per the OP, for example "whoever believes in him shall not Y but have X" or "I will build my X, and the gates of Y shall not prevail against it"

A_Thinker said:

For more than 50 years, I have heard ministers state that Jesus spoke more of Hell than He did of Heaven. I heard it so consistently, and heard no contradiction of the statement, so I imagined that it must be true.

But after I read through the scriptures for the first time, ... the statement seemed less and less plausible, ... though I continued to hear it. I thought of all of the times Jesus described the kingdom of Heaven in a parable ... and couldn't hardly remember that He ever spoke of Hell as much.

So ... with the advent of electronic texts which could be searched for terms and topics, I did my own analysis. And I found that Jesus spoke of Hell on 60 or so occasions in the scriptures (including desciptive term such as of "outer darkness", "everlasting punishment", etc.), ... BUT, as one might expect, He spoke of Heaven (His home) more than three times as much.

On the one hand, I was relieved, because that accorded much better with my sense of scripture.

But, on the other hand, I wondered HOW it was that such a misfact had been propagated down through the years ... seemingly without challenge ... or honest evaluation by Christian leaders ? Why are Christian leaders so consistent in their proclamation of this mis-truth, ... and why did it require my own lay efforts to uncover the truth ?

Did Jesus speak more about Hell than about Heaven?

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Preachers are just men, and in my experience, many of them are mentally and spiritually sick people where crave the center of attention!

I don’t believe Jesus ever taught hell!

DamianWarS said:

if we dichotomize the biblical presentation of the afterlife there is Heaven and Hell. Now I don't mean Dante's Inferno Hell I mean whatever the Bible is referring to when it speaks of this anthesis to the eternal reward in whatever verbiage it uses. To me this is sufficient enough to label "Hell" to answer the OP without needing to define what Hell is. The word can invoke a lot of images more based on myth then biblical insight but the same can be said for Heaven. If the words Heaven and Hell are too misleading then by all means replace them with X and Y so as to establish what Jesus speaks of more as per the OP, for example "whoever believes in him shall not Y but have X" or "I will build my X, and the gates of Y shall not prevail against it"

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Hell is a "catch all" phrase in our English speaking world. For some people, it is synonymous with hades or Sheol, or death. One thing for sure, it's not permanent since it is thrown into the lake of fire.

Almost there said:

Hell is a "catch all" phrase in our English speaking world. For some people, it is synonymous with hades or Sheol, or death. One thing for sure, it's not permanent since it is thrown into the lake of fire.

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Neither is heaven