Friday, October 9, 2015

Jesus talked about Hell more then Heaven???

This is a claim often made by Hellfire preachers.  One that has me thinking there must be a Fifth Gospel I'm not familiar with.  I've never seen them give a mathematical breakdown of how that claim is accurate.

Part of the problem here may of course come from people forgetting contemporary Heaven is NOT the paradise we're looking forward to, we're looking forward to the New Heaven and New Earth.

Jesus talked about the Kingdom constantly, it's in mind in almost every speech He gave, including the ones about Hell.  He definitely talked about it way more then Hell, even if we include the Outer Darkness references that I disagree with interpreting as about Hell.

Now a simple word search can be misleading.  But still the three different words translated Hell appear in only 24 verses of the entire New Testament.  15 verses in the KJV use some word form of Damn, and only 7 refer to "weeping and gnashing of teeth", among those 7 are every reference to "outer darkness".  And only 5 verses mention the Lake of Fire.  Again that's the entire New Testament.  Also Perdition appears in the KJV only 8 times and only one of those is by Jesus being a unique statement about Judas.

Heaven appears 141 times in the Four Gospels alone.  Kingdom appears 121 times in the Four Gospels alone.  Among those are 32 verses in Matthew's gospel that use Kingdom of Heaven.

Some people like to say everything you need to know to be saved is in John's Gospel.  That seems to be based on some of what's said at the end.  I know the Pastor I do not like to name uses this argument against saying repentance is necessary for Salvation, he is one of the vilest of all Hellfire preachers.  However the word Hell is never used in John's Gospel.  But there are three verses in John where Jesus talks about His Kingdom, 3:3-5 and 18:36.  And Heaven appears 17 times.  The couple times Jesus says negative things about Judas are dwarfed by His promises to the other disciples.

Protestants and Evangelicals like Chuck Missler love to call Romans the definitive statement of Christian Doctrine.  But Hell isn't mentioned in Romans.  In fact the only time any of the three words translated Hell is ever uttered by Paul (in his Epistles or speeches recorded in Acts) is in 1 Corinthians 15:55, which is also the only time any of the three words in question is NOT translated Hell by the KJV, because I suspect the organized Anglican Church didn't like this being part of the Hell doctrine.  So it's instead translated Grave.  But it's not majorly distinct from other uses of Hades in the Greek, in fact the specific spelling is identical to the parable in Luke 16.
"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"
The opposite of trying to tell us to be afraid of it.