HELL FIRE!!!

My pastor preaches hell all the time, hot and heavy, and he names sin...we only number eight~hmmm

 

The man thing about "hellfire and brimstone" preaching is that in the culture of today, many people do not believe in hell. You could preach to some about hell until you're blue in the face, and their reply would be, "we don't believe in hell." Congrats, you've just wasted your time. Also, people do not like to be "scared into church." Our faith is more than fire insurance; you can preach on the love of Christ, the serious nature of sin, and the necessity of judgment without going overboard about hell. If all you do is preach on hell, the Christians get nothing significant because they already believe in it, and the non-Christians just think you're trying to scare them into your religion.

The Bible doesn't spend a whole of paper on hell, so it may do us well to make it a secondary emphasis.

 

Oh, but when the church completely ceases to preach about sin; it is not fulfilling its proper role.

 

Every once in a while you need to blow the soot out! Just ask an out of town visiting preacher to do it, when you're on vacation.
Funny thing, that happened to me just four months ago. I must not have been from far enough out of town!

 

I think every preacher ought to preach a little hellfire and brimstone every once in a while.

Maybe just to wake people up and let them know it's still there!

If churches care more about nickels noses and numbers than they do about getting people saved, I womder if they do any good at all.

Tam,

 

No, he did not. At least, not in what is recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Although word counts don't tell the full story, "heaven" appears over nine times more often in the four canonical gospels than "hell".

 

Should we? Sure. Must we? Not all the time. No matter how much one preaches on Hell, someone's gonna say "that guy doesn't preach on Hell enough", and no matter how little we preach on Hell, someone's gonna say "that guy preaches on Hell too much". My advice: Preach on it as you feel moved.

Not "never", but I think there are a a number of folks who think you need to preach on Hell "at least this much" as some sort of litmus test. Hell is not the sole sctiptural topic. Actually, Jesus doesn't mention it much.

You're being saved from the wages of sin, which is eternal death.

Again, I think this issue is one of subjectivity. If you don't talk enough about Hell for someone's personal satisfaction, you get accused ot leaving part of the bible out. But if you talk very little about feeding the hungry and similar acts, few will accuse you of leaving part of the Bible out.

Like I said, preach on Hell as you'r moved to, no more, no less

 

It should never be avoided... but should be taught with the same dilligence and attention given to the rest of scripture.

It is a real place that real people will go to unless they are born again. Moreover, the current governor of that location actively seeks to kill steal and destroy in our physical realm... so it must be addressed.

 

If the Creator's act of creation "is optional"...

If the literal fall of mankind as described in the Bible is "optional"...

Then why isnt hell "optional"??

In fact - what does "sin" mean if all this was "Created" using the "methods of sin" -- disease, carnage, predation, extinction, and survival of the fittest?

The idea of calling into question the very fact of sin and of hell fire makes perfect sense once the majority of the church started down that road.

Or do you think that would be "inconsistent" with that path?

In Christ,

Bob

 

Reading that article tells the whole story. Hell was used as a fear tactic to scare people into both belief and submission, and as society changed, it was basically jettisoned, with orthodox evangelical preachers still belivein gin it, but mentioning it much less, and some, such as Billy Graham reconsidering whether it is really literal fire, ir just "Separation". (I would generally say it was both, though it is possible the fire could be symbolic of some sort of excruciating non-physical pain, but that makes me want to avoid it no less).
Recently, someone on the music forum (The context, as is common in that subject, was whether we should make the Gospel more appealing) cited Edwards' preaching making people clench their seats afraid they were going to fall into the pit. This was believed to have created some great "revival", and then of course, when preachers stopped preaching on Hell again, we were left with this modern world of rebellion and Church of compromise. But perhaps that was not as much of a true, spiritual revival as was thought. People obeying out of fear may create an appearance of regeneration, and resulting morality and holy living on the surface, but if it is purely out of fear of hell, that is actually a man-centered orientation, rather than God-centered, (and man-centeredness is one of the very things we complain about regarding the world's rejection of God's righteous judgment for His offended holiness!) and when it wears off and people rebel, it is not simply the fault of some preachers ceasing to preach it, or enlightenment rationalism, or whatever other scapegoat as we hear so often from many fundamentalist/revivalists today.
The purpose of loving God is because "He first loved us" (1 John 4:19), and "perfect love casts out fear. He that fears is not made perfect in love" (v.18)Right there we could see the cracks underlying that old paradigm people romanticized so much. How could we expect generations of people clenching their seats in fear to lead to a modern Christian culture when they were not made perfect in love? Of course, the outward fear and awe and respect for the preachers, and obedience (including the ever stressed financial giving), and the morality of course, would please the leaders, and those in the present looking back would see it as a great revival. But the fact that such manipulation was used, and that control (epecially in the financial realm) was involved: something was obviously "in it" for the preachers using those means; became the main issue that led to the mass revolt against the Church that led to the present. Imagine generations of people sitting there in fear, and then when it becomes obvious that the preachers themselves are living hypocritically (failing to be loving, as in racism, overbearing male dominance, and the war mentality of the Korea and Vietnam eras; then getting caught in "sin" themselves), and through/on top of all of this, the preachers prospering materially. They would come to see the Church as a huge racket!

Of course the opposite extreme people took, of practically eliminating the doctrine, is not right either. We teach on it to motivate belivers to reach the lost. We do of course warn those among us about faking a walk with God, (though I would say, we should have some legitimate reason to think that there are people in the fellowship who are unsaved before doing that). But just preaching Hellfire to scare people is a human method, and will fail in the end.

 

The gospel REQUIRES that we REALLY believe that

1. God's WORD CAN be trusted.

2. The Creator CAME here - MADE earth as a perfect peaceful eternal paradise -

3. HE MADE us perfect, sinless and holy (and informed) -- and complete His work in 7 days giving us that MEMORIAL of this VERY FACT -- a memorial given "for mankind".

4. MADE us in HIS image

5. Made JUST TWO.

6. That those TWO sinned

7. That DEATH entered the world at that point.

8. That MANKIND also became subject to death THEN

9. That not only did we BECOME subject to the first death but ALSO we became subject to the SECOND death - torment in the lake of FIRE and Brimstone!

And it is in THAT context that God sends His only begotten Son to redeem mankind AND to restore earth - with the ultimate Goal of A NEW heavens and a NEW earth where once again they do not hurt or destroy.

However - it is now "popular" to contradict almost EVERY part of that Gospel scenario - from the very start - to the very end.

How much will you be willing to compromise?

In Christ,

Bob

 

Well there may be some (notice this is not advised for all), who are living in sin and are obstinate and take it all lightly, etc., and perhaps need to be instilled with fear of judgment. But it was the thundering of hell to all indiscrimintely (including those Jude tells us should be handled with "compassion") that I was getting at. As even this passage shows, it was not biblical, and therefore caused more problems.

 

Last I checked the KJV of the Holy Bible mentions Hell 54 times. You might want to make it more of a "secondary emphasis".

 

Last I checked the KJV of the Holy Bible mentiones Hell 54 times. You might want to make it more of a "secondary emphasis". </font>[/QUOTE]Hell in the KJV isn't always the hellfire of which we speak. Most of the time it isn't. I'm not counting the ones translated from Hades or Sheol.

 

In the same version, "heaven" shows up 521 times (not counting "heavens" or other similar words). Does that mean pastors should preach on heaven over nine times more often than they preach on hell?

Also, the word "poor" shows up 190 times. I guess we should have over three sermons about our duty to the poor for every one sermon on hell.

 

As I stated earlier, not all 54 entries of "Hell" refer to Gehenna, which is Hell as we know it. Many references refer to Sheol (in Greek, Hades). It would be bad interpretation to assert that all 54 references are to the same place. This is one of the shortcomings of translating Greek/Hebrew to English.