This is a real common assertion, so I've had a couple of blog entries on my computer for years that address this.....
According to some well-known pastors, Jesus’ teachings are primarily about fire and brimstone. For example:
“… he [Jesus] himself speaks twice as often of hell as of heaven.”
— D.A. Carson, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World
“He [Jesus] spoke more often about hell than he did about heaven. We cannot get around this fact.”
— Leon Morris, “The Dreadful Harvest,” Christianity Today, May 27, 1991
“Jesus talked more about hell than He did about heaven in order to warn men of its reality.”
— John MacArthur, “The Ultimate Religious Decision”
“Jesus said more about Hell than Heaven.”
— Jerry Falwell, “Heaven and Hell”
“Obviously I do believe in hell. Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven.”
— Rick Warren, interview with John Piper
“Jesus said more about hell than about any other topic. Amazingly, 13 percent of his sayings are about hell and judgment …”
— Mark Driscoll, “6 Questions on Hell”
“Of the 1,850 verses in the New Testament that record Jesus’ words, 13 percent of them deal with the subject of eternal judgment and hell. In fact, Jesus spoke more frequently about hell than He did about heaven.”
— Robert Jeffress, How Can I Know?
Those are some very bold and very specific quantitative assessments of Jesus’ message. But are they true?
By my count[1] (with the help of some BibleWorks magic), there are 1,944 verses in the four gospels that contain Jesus’ words.
Surprisingly, only about 60 of those verses–or an unwhopping three percent of them—might be construed as either directly or indirectly referring to hell.
On the other hand, there are more than three times as many verses in the gospels in which Jesus references heaven, eternal life, or his coming kingdom: 192 verses in all, or almost 10%.
So Jesus did not, in fact, speak more about hell than heaven. But many people who should know better still seem hell-bent on insisting that He did.
How do they arrive at a conclusion so contrary to the facts? By reading hell into any and every possible passage in the Bible.
D.A. Carson, for example, who is one of the first purveyors of the “Jesus talked more about hell than heaven” myth, finds hell into the story of the wise and foolish builders (
Matthew 7:24-27). In the words “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell — and great was its fall!” Carson somehow construes a clear depiction of eternal damnation:
The sermon ends with what has been implicit throughout it—the demand for radical submission to the exclusive lordship of Jesus, who fulfills the Law and the Prophets and warns the disobedient that the alternative to total obedience, true righteousness, and life in the kingdom is rebellion, self-centeredness, and eternal damnation.
— D.A. Carson, Matthew, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary
Given that interpretation, it’s no wonder that Carson thinks Jesus spoke of hell twice as much as heaven!
Yes, throughout the gospels Jesus did speak about judgement, and yes, he also spoke a handful of times about places such as Gehenna and Hades, words often translated as “hell.” But those instances do not stand as justification for the promulgation of the myth that Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about heaven. Continuing the promote that falsehood severely undermines Christ’s true message—which is the love of God and neighbor that Jesus himself called The Greatest Commandment.
Turning Jesus’ gospel of love into a “gospel” of fear, damnation and punishment is either alarmingly ignorant or intentionally manipulative. Either way, it’s very bad news indeed, and needs to stop.
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1. ^ By request, here is a list of verses I used for my numbers: jesus-heaven-hell.pdf
Does Jesus talk about Hell more than Heaven?
By Jeremy Myers
102 Comments
I sometimes hear pastors and teachers say that Jesus talked about hell more than heaven, and so we should do the same in our evangelism.
In other words, it is is often suggested that Jesus “scared” people into the kingdom. He threatened people with hell if they didn’t believe in Him, and so in our evangelism, we are perfectly justified in using threats of burning forever in hell and other similar scare tactics to get people into the Kingdom of God as well.
And it isn’t just the wacko fringe Christians who say this. I have heard it preached from the pulpits of some relatively “sane” evangelical churches. This sort of approach is also quite common in some of the leading evangelistic approaches of our day. People are trained to tell others that God is holy, righteous, and good, and since one sin is enough to condemn us to hell, God is justified in sending us there if we don’t believe in Jesus for eternal life.
And rather than shying away from hell, we are told to use it as a way to invite people into heaven. After all, we are told, Jesus preached about hell more than heaven, and so should we.
But is this true?
Is it true that Jesus talks about hell more than heaven?
In my book I am currently writing on the violence of God in the Bible, I will be including a full chapter on what the Bible says about hell, and the vast majority of that chapter will find its way here to this blog.
But by way of preview (and because the topic of this month’s synchroblog is hell), here are some of the main points I will be writing about in that chapter:
References to “fire” are usually not references to hell.
Jesus does speak about “fire” several times in the Gospels (e.g.,
Matt 3:10-12;
7:19;
13:40-50;
John 15:6). But these references to fire are not references to a place of eternal torture for the unredeemed, but are simply symbols of temporal discipline and destruction that come upon some people as a result of straying from God’s instructions. Fire can even be for purification of believers (the Greek word for fire is pur) as seen in
1 Corinthians 3:15.
Sometimes Jesus refers to “hell fire” (e.g.,
Matt 5:22), but these are actually references to “Gehenna,” which I discuss in a later point.
The few references where fire may refer to the everlasting flames of hell are places like
Matthew 25:41, and are used in reference to a place created for Satan and his angels. Do some humans end up there? It appears so, but again, this will not be for torture and torment. To explain why will have to wait for the book…
References to “the outer darkness” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth” are not references to hell.
There are several instances in Matthew where Jesus refers to “the outer darkness” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (
Matt 8:12;
13:42-50;
22:13;
24:51;
25:30). These terms are sometimes used in connection with fire and so most people think they also refer to hell.
But they don’t.
A careful contextual study of most of these texts reveal that the image of “outer darkness” is a symbol of exclusion from blessing and honor, and the image of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” is a vivid symbol of deep and profound regret. The events discussed in these places are typically events that will take place at the Judgment Seat of Christ (which is only for believers) and the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (which is also only for believers).
Again, I need full studies to show this, and these will have to wait for my book…
References to “hades” and “gehenna” are not references to hell.
There are numerous references in the Greek New Testament to hades and gehenna, and regrettably, most English translations translate these words as “hell.” But a place of eternal, conscious torment is what modern people think of when they think of hell, this is not what first century Jewish people would have thought of when they heard the words hades and gehenna.
Hades, of course, is the ancient Greek god of the underworld, the god of death. In biblical usage, it is often a Greek translation from the Hebrew sheol, which means “the pit” or “the grave.” Neither of these are references to hell, but simply refer to the hole in the earth in which dead people are laid (cf.
Acts 2:27, 31;
Rev 20:13).
There is, of course, the story about the rich man and Lazarus in
Luke 16:19-31, which seems to equate hades with torturous flames in a pit of hell. But there are numerous problems with understanding this text as referring to what really happens to people after they die (for example, Lazarus is there with the rich man and they can communicate), and so it is dangerous to take this text to literally.
Finally, Gehenna refers to an actual place that existed outside the gates of Jerusalem. It was a little valley in which trash was thrown to be burned. This imagery must be understood wherever Jesus talks about “hell fire” and uses Gehenna (cf.
Matt 5:22).
And do I need to say it? … Yes, I know a fuller explanation is wanted on all these terms and texts, but it will have to wait for the book…
When all of this is considered, we see that Jesus didn’t talk about hell more than heaven. He rarely mentions hell at all. As such, I think there is absolutely no place for threatening people with hell if they don’t believe in Jesus for eternal life. Yes, we can warn people (as Jesus did) about the disastrous temporal consequences of their sin, but threatening people with eternal torment in flames is neither Christlike nor theologically correct.
To say that Jesus warned people of hell and so should we is just plain wrong.
Jesus Really Didn’t Talk about Heaven that Much Either
Having said all this, Jesus really didn’t talk that much about heaven either.
Just as we don’t really want to scare people into believing Jesus, we shouldn’t try to bribe them either. While Jesus talks about heaven more than hell, neither have a big emphasis in His teaching.
Instead, Jesus frequently talks about everlasting life, and life in the kingdom of God. Eternal life, of course, begins the moment we believe in Jesus for it, but the longer we live in Him, the great the experience of eternal life gets.
And the Kingdom of God (or the Kingdom of Heaven) is not a synonym for heaven, but simply refers to the rule and reign of God in our lives.
If you want to evangelize, and you want follow the way of Jesus and the apostles, you don’t need to threaten or bribe. Simply lay out the grand vision of what life is like when we live it God’s way. Life under the rule and reign of God is a life of joy, freedom, contentment, fulfillment, and satisfaction. It is a life of laughter and delight. It is a life free from bondage and slavery and addiction. It is life as it was truly meant to be lived.
This is the life Jesus lived, and this is the life Jesus invited people into. If we want to evangelize others like Jesus, we don’t need to threaten them with hell or bribe them with heaven, but can simply invite them into a way of life is that is better than anything else the world has to offer.
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This post is part of the May Synchroblog on the topic of hell
