The Many Faces
of Hell
from Michelangelo's Last
Judgment
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What do you
think of when you hear the word Hell?
1. A place
under the surface of the earth
2. A bottomless
pit
3. A place of
darkness
4. A lake of
fire
5. A place
where the Devil and demons dwell
6. A place of
torture for the souls of humans
7. Several or
all of the above
Is the picture
in your head of Hell one with numerous details, including
perhaps visions of grotesque demonic figures frolicking among
suffering sinners?
According to
the entries in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance:
The word "hell"
appears in the King James Bible 54 times,
31 times in the
Old Testament and 23 times in the New.
That may not
seem significant until you realize that:
The word
"heaven" is in the Bible over 500 times,
over 300 times in the
Old Testament and over 200 times in the New.
Yet the picture
people have in their mind when you say Hell is every bit as
vivid--in fact, often far more vivid and far more detailed--as when you say
Heaven, with less than 10% of the same
amount of scriptural evidence! In fact, for most people the
biblical evidence is far more scant for both Heaven and
Hell--because the average person has read little or none of the
Bible, let alone read it all the way through to do a systematic
study of the doctrine of Hell. Not only is this true of
atheists, agnostics, and non-church-goers, but it is
surprisingly true for a large percentage of individuals who
attend church regularly.
The average Christian has not developed
his or her beliefs about this topic, nor most other biblical
topics, from personal Bible study. Most have absorbed the
majority of their beliefs from listening to sermons or Sunday
School teachings, watching religious TV, and reading short
religious tracts and popular inspirational magazines or books.
Mixed in with those influences may even be a significant amount
of secular influence from books, movies, TV shows, magazines,
and more. Even non-religious people often have a strikingly
vivid mental picture of a version of Hell that their mind has
constructed from bits and pieces of information from similar
secular sources.
Where are these
vivid and detailed pictures coming from? Throughout history
since long before the first century, societies and religions
have speculated about the nature of the Afterlife, and on a
place of confinement or punishment for some "souls" after death.
These various strains of thought have entwined down through the
centuries and yielded the common versions of Hell that are
envisioned by the "man on the street" and the "man in the pews"
in the twenty-first century.
The following
articles on this website examine the sources of much of the
detail in the minds of the masses regarding Hell, and contrast
it to the information that is actually in the Bible.
Harmless Hell
Hell: The Devil’s Playground?
Old Testament
View of Hell
New Testament
View of Hell
Revelation’s Hell
The
King James Version of Hell
Hellish Words
Body, Soul, Spirit, Heart,
Mind
Dante’s Hell
Medieval Hell
Pagan Hell
Jewish View of Hell
Jewish Fables
Purgatory
This site contains a collection
of articles, on the topic of Hell and the Afterlife, that may
each be used independently for research purposes. But it also is
designed as a systematic, sequential overview of the whole
topic, which can be read like a book.
For those who would like to take
advantage of this perspective of the content, the articles are
arranged in the
Reading Guide as they would appear as chapters in a book, along
with a few reference chapters at the end such as would appear in
a book Appendix.
Use the
links below to go to the next article, previous article, or
first article
in the Reading Guide sequence.
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All of the articles on this
Is it true what they say about Hell? website were written by Pam Dewey, with
the support and sponsorship of Common Ground Christian
Ministries. For more of Pam's inspirational and educational
writings, visit her Oasis
website.
All website content
© 2007, Pam
Dewey and Common Ground Christian Ministries
All rights reserved. Material may
be copied for personal use of the site visitor. For permission
to copy for any other purposes, please contact the author at
oasis7@gmail.com
