HELLFIRE & DAMNATION PREACHING

KINGDOM BUILDERS

“BUILDING THE KINGDOM THROUGH THE WORD OF GOD”

PIERCING THE VEIL

HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION PREACHING

Did Jesus come preaching Hellfire and Damnation or did he come preaching The Good News?  Or was it both?  A cursory examination of the scriptures would cause one to think he preached both, and according to some, he preached more about Hell than he did about Heaven.  They cite that he used the word Hell more than he used the word Heaven.  But, that is not true.  Jesus used the word Hell personally 15 times, and he used the word Heaven over 100 times.  So, I have no idea where they got their information.  It really is not important how many times he used a word or how many times one of those words were used in the scriptures, but what is important is the significance  of the words. 

When Jesus taught and preached, he always used parables.  These were earthly realities to explain heavenly truths, or a pithy maxim, usually of metaphorical nature, or symbolism.  How do I know this?   WITHOUT A PARABLE, HE SPOKE TO THEM NOT.  (MARK 4:34). 

Some examples of Christ using the word Hell are:

But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of Hell fire.  (Matthew 5:22).

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell.  (Matthew 5:29,30).

And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to Hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.  (Matthew 11:23).

Now, we could cite more scriptures from the four Gospels where Jesus used the word Hell,  but the point being made is that they were all parables.  For instance, when he said it is better for one of your members should perish and not that your whole body be cast into Hell, do you get the idea you could cut off your arm, or take out your brain, cast it into Hell rather than your whole body go to Hell?  You get the message.  I’ve never known anyone doing that in the history of the world, have you?  He had to be talking in parables.  These pithy sayings had nothing to do with reality in the afterlife. 

Clarence Larkin, an engineer who later left the Episcopal Church and became a Baptist Pastor lived from 1850 to 1924.  He wrote books on Dispensationalism and the Gap Theory and prepared many charts depicting the course of events from Adam into the future.  His Gap Theory is easily disproved because one can actually count 490 years from the time the edict was given to rebuild Jerusalem to Christ has no Gap.  Nevertheless, his books were in such demand that he had to leave the ministry to write.  Most of his theories are easily disprovable.  Men like Scofield and Darby (who was considered to be the father of Pre-Tribulation Rapture) arose a little before and during that same time frame also taught doctrines on Dispensationalism and Futurism and put their opinions in their writings. Hal Lindsay was greatly influenced by Larkin and his charts.

Larkin made 2 statements that greatly discredit his spiritual foundation.  First, he spoke of the Pentecostal experience, “the conduct of those possessed, in which they fall to the ground and writhe in contortions, causing disarrangements of the clothing and disgraceful scenes, is more a characteristic of demon possession, than a work of the Holy Spirit.”  Having received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit myself with the manifestation of speaking in tongues, I can readily attest that when the Holy Ghost descends on you, you will be moved and sometimes very unbecoming a gentleman or a lady.  Have I seen fakes?  Sure!  But, there are hypocrites sitting in churches all over the world who are fakes pretending to be believers.  Attributing the works of God to demon possession is as near to Blasphemy as one can get.  For this main reason, I ceased to ascribe to Larkin’s works, and decided I needed to study the scriptures myself.  But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.  (1 John 2:27).  And, believers every where would do well to do the same.

The second thing Larkin said was that the scripture in Luke 16 about the Rich Man and Lazarus was the only thing that Jesus said that was not a parable, but an actual scene about Heaven and Hell.  That thought has to be discarded immediately for it was written about Christ that he did not speak to the people without a parable, remember.  The only time he disclosed the meanings of the parables was in private moments with the disciples.  In this instance, he was speaking to Pharisees.  You might could argue that the Rich Man and Lazarus like Larkin thought was a real depiction of what it was like in Hell.  But, the truth is that it too was a parable.  That it was a scene in the pit could greatly distort the Word of God and cause some to believe in this place of eternal torments.  When Jesus spoke of Hell, it was the word Gehenna in the Greek. It means valley of (the son of) Hinnom; ge-henna (or Ge-Hinnom), a valley of Jerusalem, used (FIGURATIVELY) as a name for the place (or state) of everlasting punishment:—hell.  (End Greek Definition).  There was an actual place outside of the gates in Jerusalem where trash, refuse, dead dogs, and even criminals were burned with fire perpetually.  It was a real place Jesus used in depicting a heavenly principal, not an actual afterlife projection.  It was symbolic and metamorphic. 

The doctrine of hell is an evil doctrine that originated from pagan mythology which the Roman Catholic church used to put fear in to the minds of people only for control. The church commissioned Michalangelo to paint pictures of Hell, Angels with wings, Heaven, and even what God looked like back in the Renaissance Age. These depictions have become the so called spiritual understanding of even the Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal Churches today.  It is documented that many Roman Catholic officials would charge fees for the forgiveness of sins and for the indulgence of certain sins.  Furthermore, the concept of a soul within us that cannot die first became a ‘Christian’ doctrine at the end of the second century AD. Hell had been taught in Greek philosophy long before the time of Jesus, with Plato, a philospher as the important leader in this thinking.  Who can say if Plato was a born again believer with spiritual insight? He was a philosopher for sure.

At the end of the 2nd century, Christianity had begun to blend Greek philosophy —human speculative reasoning, with the teachings of God’s Word. It was taught that everlasting punishment of the immortal soul is how God made us. There was no end to this continuance of punishment even if we commit suicide to end it.  This idea derives from philosophy, not divine inspiration. There are no such words in the Bible. These concepts came a hundred years and more after the time of the apostles, and came straight from popular philosophy.

From the third century the darkness of the infiltration of man-made beliefs into Christianity deepened until the Dark Ages had smothered almost all the light of God’s Word. At the beginning of this time, the first attempts were made to create a systematic set of beliefs. It is not surprising that an ever-burning hell and the immortality of the soul were prominently included.

It is at this time that such beliefs, held by most Christians today, had their origin. An ever-burning hell has remained a commonly taught doctrine of the Christian religion to this day. It was not based on the Bible but on philosophy. Bible verses were later sought to uphold the ancient philosophies of the Greeks, and added to the teaching.

Eventually under the influence of Augustine, AD 430, the concept of endless conscious torment was brought into general acceptance by the Catholic Church in the Western world. He taught that all souls were deathless and consequently the lost would experience endless fires of punishment, immediately upon the end of this life.

It is also taught that life ends with death and one has no more chance to redeem himself as if he ever could.  If you remember, Jesus after his crucifixion descended into the lower parts of earth (an allegory meaning to step down from the air or heavens to earth), preached to the prisoners who had been held captive for 4,000 years, and led captivity captive.  In other words, he preached the Gospel to all men prior to his advent and set them free after they had been dead up to 4,000 years prior.  We have been given a mandate to preach the Gospel to every creature.  IT DOESN’T END AT DEATH. 

Apparently, after reading this, you should realize I don’t believe in Hell and torment for those who have not accepted Christ in this lifetime.  No one has ever been able to tell or prove to me where Hell is except to say, “It is down there” or to tell me where the Planet Heaven is except to say, “It is up there”.  It is quite possible that out of 100 billion people who have lived on this planet in the last 6,000 years, that multitudes have not heard the Gospel.  If we are to preach the Gospel to every creature, then there are multitudes who are not doing their job.  Who, then, is responsible for those souls?  If you have not preached to them, is the blood on your head or theirs?  You see my point, right?  If this is the case, no man could be saved.  This is not a blame game.  Just because you got saved does not make you holy and righteous in your own eyes and the next man an evil sinner without hope.  We all were sinners.  It is by God’s Grace that we are saved, not of ANY works we have done.  Christ did it all.  Think of this, we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the World.  We were written in His Lamb’s Book of Life.  He gave us Repentance. He gave us Faith. He gave us His love, He died for us, and He was resurrected for our justification.  We were predestinated in Him to be Sons of God. He would that ALL MEN BE SAVED.  We had nothing to do with what He has already done.  The 10% of those who believe they are saved cannot look down their  self-righteous nose and mock the 90% who they believe are not saved, and wish them all to live in torment forever and ever.  We must have compassion and empathy for those who live outside of Christ and desire they all come to the knowledge of the truth.  We must not condemn them for whom Christ has given his life no matter how wicked and evil they are.  

There were some great evangelists in the Great Awakenings.  I say great because they were, but that does not mean they preached the Gospel correctly. I’m certainly not blasting great men for their contribution of spiritual teachings, but we have learned so much more from the scriptures from their day till now.  For instance, Jonathan Edwards preached the message, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 1741”.  His sermon has been immortalized.  Here it is in part: 

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

Jonathan Edwards presided over the "Great Awakening" in America beginning in 1734 in Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards, through his fire and brimstone messages, brought a GREAT FEELING OF SINFULNESS AND FEAR. When he preached the sermon that follows, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," the congregation screamed and wept. It was reported that they reached for building columns and chair rails to keep from SLIPPING INTO HELL. People were to be drawn to conversion and righteous behavior through FEAR. Maturing spiritually and learning to love had no place in the church of the Great Awakening. The concept of hell had grown far beyond Yeshua's symbolic reference to the garbage dump named Gehenna outside of Jerusalem.

So, is the Gospel about saving one from the eternal fires of Hell?  Or, is it Good News meaning something else altogether?  Just because we’ve preached Hell for the last 200 years doesn’t make it right.  What should Good News preaching consist of?  Does it consist of scaring people to make a commitment for Christ and threatening them with Hellfire if they don’t get saved right now?  Or, should we show them the love of God who died for us while we were yet sinners?  Since I don’t believe in a literal place in the center of the earth burning with unbearable fire of 12,600 degrees Fahrenheit nor do I believe in a far off planet called Heaven where we are supposed to go for seven years that has been taught for years and years, then poses the question, “What is the reality of Heaven and Hell”?  Here is what Jesus taught:  The Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is within you!  How simple is that?  It is not a place we attain or travel to, it is a state of being.  Paul taught that the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.  It stands to reason that Hell is the anti-thesis of that which is ungodliness, torment, and sadness.  Many have these consequences dwelling in them along with much more creating great affliction to the soul.  Jesus never said he wanted us to go to Heaven, but rather he taught us to attain to ETERNAL LIFE.  How is that brought about?  By being born again!  Except you be born again, you shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.  It’s that easy. 

Paul asked the Corinthian Church how they wanted him to come to them.  What will ye? shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness?   (1 Corinthians 4:21).  So, who amongst you in the modern day church want to be beat up?  Let me answer that for you.  NONE!  I respond much better to encouragement, love, gentleness, and kind instruction.  Don’t beat me up.  Life has a way of doing that already.  Show me how to live a victorious life, teach me principles that will make me an overcomer, reveal to me how faith causes me to achieve the promises of God, and you have made a convert out of me. 

Here is the message, But, God COMMENDETH HIS LOVE toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  (Romans 5:8).  Even God himself showed LOVE to us, not fear.  Even the wisest of men, King Solomon wrote, As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is GOOD NEWS from a far country. ( Proverbs 25:25).  You know yourself how a good word in the time of trouble will slake the dry parched soul.  That is Good News. 

GOOD means beautiful, best, better, bountiful, cheerful, pleasure, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, wealth among some of its definition.  NEWS means something heard, an announcement,  doctrine, news, report, tidings.  So, the GOOD NEWS is a joyful and pleasant report or tidings sent from God. The word Gospel is a GOOD MESSAGE.  The word Tidings means news and the word Glad Tidings means GOOD NEWS.  Didn’t the angel say unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you Good Tidings of great joy, which shall be to ALL PEOPLE.  Luke 2:10. Now, this is hardly the definition of what folks believe today.  They say they think we need to hear a message on Hellfire and Damnation to be saved.  God is not mad at us.  He loves us, but you might not believe that if you hear some of the modern day preachers.  Even Moses, a wise and humble man assumed God was angry at Israel and struck the rock in anger.  But God was not angry and did not allow Moses to cross into the promised land.  Some believe they need a hard word to change their mind or the sinners mind.  In reality, they have no clue what they are saying.  If someone preaches an encouraging message on faith, hope, or love, they want to condemn that person because he didn’t use the word Hell to scare the poor sinner.  They think they are leaving the full Gospel out, or that they are a feel good preacher or simply someone who just builds people up without the reality of Hell nipping at their heels waiting to blast them to an eternity of torment. Jesus never threatened anyone with Hell, nor did Paul or any of the disciples.  NEVER!

In fact, Jesus preached, Repent (change your mind) and believe the Gospel (Good News), or Repent, for the Kingdom of God is come.  This was not a message for the hereafter, rather it was a message to receive the Kingdom of God or the Gospel in THIS lifetime.  The Kingdom of God according to Paul is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.  A lot of folks miss out on enjoying the presence of God and his Gospel of Peace now simply because they are fearful of death and burning in Hell.  As an example, Jesus had Joy above his fellows. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath ANOINTED THEE WITH THE OIL OF GLADNESS ABOVE THY FELLOWS.  (Hebrews 1:9). God, himself wants us to live a joyful life, not one of fear. 

 Christ came to exemplify what the Good News was by displaying to all who would look and behold what it was like to live the personality of God in bodily form.  Jesus had all the attributes of his heavenly father that was readily available to all who believed on him.  It’s not about going to heaven to live a mere seven years then coming back here where he ruled and reigned.  It was all about living in this lifetime where God rules and reigns in your heart through all of your life.  The Kingdom of God is NOW!

Here is an example of the Good News:  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the GOSPEL to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.  (Luke 4:18).  And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of THEM THAT PREACH THE GOSPEL OF PEACE, AND BRING GLAD TIDINGS OF GOOD THINGS!  (Romans 10:15). 

So, my Dear Friends, go and preach the love of God.  One of the greatest things one can hear are those three words.  “God loves you!”  He is ready to save ALL to the utmost and give His precious Kingdom to ALL who will believe and simply ask. 

It’s the Gospel of Good News!

Glory to God!

Kingdom Builders is dedicated to ministering the Word of God freely to anyone upon request.  It is my desire to build up the body of Christ to become powerful, functional, mature Sons of God to make a difference in the World and the affairs of men.  I trust God to put it upon the hearts of those who are ministered to here by this word to help support the publishing, postage and mailing of these wonderful revelations of our King and Savior Jesus Christ.  I am not in the marketing business nor do I have anything to sell.  Should you or your friends desire to receive these articles, please write to the address above, and they will be freely sent to you.  All donations are gratefully appreciated. 

Phillip S. Smith III

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