Did Jesus Talk More About Heaven Than Hell?

I recently came across a good post and discussion on Verum Serum about how much Jesus spoke of hell. Apparently someone made the statement that Jesus spoke about hell more than heaven, so John at Verum Serum checked it out to see if it was true and he came to the conclusion, just be doing a word count that Jesus speaks more about heaven than hell.

John's interlocutor fired back with some evidence to the contrary and a good discussion ensued.  Said interlocutor quoted Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Theology as saying that Jesus spoke of hell more than any other biblical figure.  That's a good point, but the issue is "did Jesus speak of hell more than Jesus spoke of heaven."

So, using my handy-dandy Logos software I decided to do a little search to see what I could find out.  Before I tell you the results I need to explain a bit about Logos searching.  I have a bunch of bibles in my Logos collection and the word "hell" was found in 20 of them.  When Logos searches it gives you the number of places the search term was found, so if the word is found in 6 versions, it's six hits, if it is in 20 versions it's 20 hits.  Also, Logos will often include variants of the search terms in their results.  So that's my qualifier to say that this is not exactly a scientific study.  Still, the results are interesting.

Logos found the word "heaven" 4742 times in the gospels in 20 translations.

Logos found the word "hell" 286 times.

Since it seems to be a proven fact in some circles that Jesus spoke of hell more than heaven it occurred to me that Logos was obviously off here so I did a search for the word "hades" and came up with 86 hits. 

That was still a little short so I did a search on the world "fire" and came up with  936 hits.

I'm not good at math, but I think 4742 is a slightly larger number than whatever 286 + 86 + 936 adds up to, like it might even be somewhere around 4 times larger.

In all honesty, my little survey here proves little.  To really understand Jesus on heaven and hell you would have to read each and every verse in its context, but I'm lazy and that just sounds too much like work.

A number count doesn't determine the truthfulness or the importance of a concept.  If Jesus had only spoke of hell once that would enough to establish its reality and the fearfulness of it.

I think pointing out these numbers has greater value in addressing the way we use rhetoric.  In the Verum Serum post the discussion of how often Jesus spoke about heaven and hell was used in service to a bigger debate about man-centered vs. God-centered ministry.  Saying "Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven" is a rhetorical device designed to offer greater weight to criticisms of "man-centered" theology and ministry.  It's a way of finding a bigger hammer with which to swat the fly.

In a proper zeal to combat error sometimes our rhetoric can outstretch the factual basis of that  rhetoric and we have to be careful.

 

I would suggest that it is more fruitful to admit that heaven and hell are equal realities that have equal bearing on our ministry, and that both issues can be used in service to a man-centered or a God-centered agenda.

To motivate by fear of hell can be just as much an appeal to self-interest as is enticement to heaven. 

I don't have time to develop the thought here, maybe later, but I think we need to be careful about using the man-centered vs. God-centered dichotomy as a paradigm for ministry and theology. I understand what the God-centered advocates are getting at and am firmly on their side in many ways.  Yet, I would say to the "God-centered" folks the same thing Inigo Montoya said to Vizzinni in The Princess Bride - "you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means."

Yes, our life is to be fully-centered on God, to glorify and enjoy Him forever.  Yet, how did God accomplish and enable sinful men to re-center their lives on Him? He did this by moving in a man-ward direction, by becoming man Himself.  The incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection are very man-centered things in many senses.  Jesus set aside His own glory out of a concern for the welfare of His human children. It doesn't get much more man-centered than that.

Yet, whatever "man-centeredness" we find in the ministry of Jesus it was a means, not an end in itself.  God went "man-ward" in Jesus to send man back "God-ward."  This is where the "God-centered" folks get it right, too many never make that turn back toward God.  I am particularly thinking of self-esteem and health and wealth preachers in this regard.

So, my concern here is more with terminology and the use of rhetoric than anything else.  Good motives don't justify bad rhetoric.  Also, to call all appeals to self-interest "man-centered" and therefore to be written off, paints with too broad a brush and misses some important nuances in the biblical writings.  Even John Piper, the modern king of God-centeredness offers a paradigm where self-interest can be used in service to the glory of God in his writings on Christian hedonism.

I am also afraid our anti-man-centered rhetoric can cause us to miss some important theological concepts.  I don't want us to be so afraid of being labeled "man-centered" that we fear to use valid theological words like "condescension" when speaking of God's activity toward man in redemption or "humiliation" when speaking of the earthly sojourn of Jesus.  Though we must always call men to center their lives upon God, Jesus Christ, and the gospel, let's not lose a sense of the stunning way in which God leans toward man in redemption.

Comments

[pgepps]

Thanks for addressing that! Incarnation must surely be seen as a "man-centered" thing in some way, albeit in a "God loves humans enough to seek and save them" and not a "what worthy creatures are humans" sort of way.

I wonder how many of your 4000+ hits are the phrase "kingdom of heaven," which doesn't seem to have any direct reference to the place/state of the dead between mortal life and the New Earth.

Certainly, it is interesting and useful to point out to those who decry the "judgmentalism" of Paul that all our most striking and strongly-worded teaching about the state of the damned after this mortal life comes from Christ Himself, who gets falsely recast as Mr. Sweetness-and-Light (He was, but not in that sense).

Cheers,
PGE

[Jeremy Pierce]

I was just going to ask if you had removed all the Matthew references to the kingdom of heaven, which are not references to heaven at all but to the reign of God on earth currently. I'm sure that's a huge percentage right there. Of course I'm being redundant now, but it really was the first thing I thought of.

Also, counting the number of times the words are used doesn't tell you how much Jesus spoke about them. He could use the word 'heaven' three times in one verse, and he could use the word 'hell' once but then spend a whole chapter continuing to talk about it. I'd say the latter counts as talking about it a lot more than the former, but the former would count three times as much by your method. Several times when Jesus talks about hell, he spends a long time on it.

[David Wayne]

PGE and Jeremy - this is going to sound like a cop out but I actually had a paragraph in the original post addressing that very issue (yeah right, I am sure you are saying). I took it out because I didn't think it served the point I wanted to make very well, but maybe it did.

I was mainly wanting to address some of the sloppy rhetoric I see and hear thrown around. I hear and read people say that Jesus spoke more of heaven than of hell and I am just not sure that can be proven.

[pgepps]

No criticism intended, just musing, much as you did, about how you'd go about sorting these.

Much of this falls under the "the whole world could not contain the scrolls" veil, anyway, doesn't it?

Cheers,
PGE

[Jim from OldTruth.com]

Since I am the "interlocutor" that you reference, I thought I'd comment, even though I'll need a dictionary to know what an interlocutor is. Perhaps I could help you with your math, and you could help me with my vocabulary :-)

Actually, the "Jesus mentioned hell more than heaven" statement was a quotation that I posted by Nathan Busenitz. He says it in his review of the Purpose Driven Life on this page:
http://www.biblebb.com/files/pdl.htm

There are some other interesting folks who also say the same thing. John MacArthur uses this argumentation on both of these pages, saying the same identical thing:
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/42-44.htm
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/42-90.htm

And . . . drum roll please . . . David Wayne says it himself on this page:
http://jollyblogger.typepad.com/jollyblogger/2004/03/califiornia_tri.html

I tell ya, two things happen as we get older:
1) You start to loose your memory
2) . . . I forgot the other thing :-)

--Jim

[Jeremy Pierce]

I think it's highly plausible that Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven. Jesus said quite a lot about hell and very little about heaven. He said a lot about the kingdom of God, but that's not heaven since it's already present. He said some things about how to qualify for heaven, but that's just as much about hell since it's about how not to get to hell. Many occurrences of one are accompanied by the other. On the other hand, there's a lot about what hell is like, including several extended discussions of how bad it is. I know of almost nothing in the gospels about what heaven is like except as a contrast with hell or to say that there won't be any marriage there.

[Dan McGowan]

This is all very interesting - but the MOST important question for us to consider is... "Do We (I) talk more about JESUS than I do about, say, my favorite sports team, or money, or techy-toys, etc." I usually try to bring any discussion like this into my own life - cuz I find it very easy to point the finger at the rights and wrongs of others... and then, as one poster suggested, having a weak memory in terms of my own ungodly thoughts and behavior...

Next up for discussion: Did Jesus talk more about men or about women?

[David Wayne]

Props to Jim for hoisting me on my own petard. I stand down having now been convicted by my own words. Well, I stand down a little.

BTW - you are not the only one I have heard say that and since I have followed MacArthur for many years it may be that I have heard him say this also.

I do stand with you in many ways - as I mentioned, I do think the health and wealth and self-esteem preachers are the worst examples of what goes by the terminology "man-centered." My main concern here is that our rhetoric sometimes overstretches the evidence.

For me, I don't think I'll be using the Jesus spoke more about hell thing anymore just because I don't think you can establish that from the gospels. At the same time, I won't be saying "Jesus spoke more about heaven" either because most people think eternal state when they are talking about heaven. And I don't see Jesus enticing people much, if at all, with promises of the eternal state. He does some, but not much.

I think it is obvious that Jesus spoke more about heaven than about hell, but his speaking about heaven dealt with the present reality of the present existence of the kingdom of heaven on earth, not the eternal state. So, I do think it is more likely that Jesus enticed people with heaven more than with fear of hell, but the way He enticed with heaven is very different from the way we often entice with heaven. But that opens up a whole 'nuther discussion.

I also hope I haven't conveyed that we shouldn't talk about hell. We absolutely should, I'm just saying we ought to watch our rhetoric.

Anyway, thanks for the comments, and thanks Jim for catching me in my own inconsistency.

[cavman]

Well, Jeremy said my thoughts first.

This is sorta like Edwards' bad rap for always preaching about hell & wrath, when the idea of sweetness and light, the excellence of Jesus is far more prevelant.

[John]

David,

Your post reads like a wonderfully clear distillation of all the things I was thinking at the time this discussion was going on. In fact, I think you probably said it better than I, which is a bit embarrasing.

In any case, you're exactly right that the whole point about heaven and hell was in service of something else, a certain view of how to do ministry and outreach. It was this issue which motivated me to write. I find the message coming from certain individuals and blogs about how to present the gospel counterproductive, to put it mildly.

As I believe I said at some point, it's easier to be Moses, threatening sinners with plagues, than Jesus, offering God's peace to a sometimes hateful audience. Easier, yes, but Moses is not our model for ministry; Jesus is.

[Brendt]

Catching up on my reading again. I've already been rewarded several times today by this blog, but it heartens me significantly to see the greatest movie ever made quoted here. ;-)

[Sarah]

Do you believe in the Seventh Day Bible Based Sabbath?
Please answer at,
[email protected]

[Sarah]

Do you believe in the Seventh Day Bible Based Sabbath?
Please answer at,
[email protected]

[Greg the Explorer]

I have done a check by conducting a key word search on bible gateway and these are the figures from the NIV bible: Heaven is mentioned 137 times in the gospels, 269 times in the New Testament, and 606 times in the entire bible. Hell on the otherhand is mentioned only 14 times in the entire bible and they are all in the New Testament - hades as well was only found 5 times and that was also only in the New Testament.

[Nathan]

Hey David,
Well done!
I used to hear that "Jesus preached more about hell than heaven" all the time when I was a Protestant. That never sounded right- maybe because I thought I knew the Gospels better than I actually did, but anyway... About a year ago, I went through all four Gospels to see for myself. The reality is that Jesus spoke very little about hell, even taking into account his warnings concerning Judas, the Pharisees/Saducees, Tyre/Sidon, his eschatological parables, etc. in which he talks about hell in a- perhaps- less explicit way than just coming right out with the word "hell", "hades", or "gehenna". The Good News is that Jesus revealed by his preaching that man is made for communion with the Trinity and that he is the Son of God who came to bring us to heaven by his holy Cross and Resurrection.
Thanks for setting the record straight!
But what strikes me most of all is not the false claim about Jesus' preaching, but rather what you see as the dichotomy of centerednesses (if that's a word).
To the point: your insight there is further evidence in support of my assertion that Protestantism- and I mean specifically Protestantism's origin in Luther's pathos- comes out of a lack, in some way, of real Faith in the Incarnation.
Bottom Line Up Front: in my experience, I never really believed in the Incarnation until I became a Catholic. It's only in the real communion of the Catholic Church that I really encounter the real Christ, the only-begotten Son of God Incarnate from the ever-Virgin Mother of God and crucified for love of us.

Be careful, David... Christianity is a thinking man's religion. Keep thinking with what is clearly that great mind you have and you might find yourself a Papist. Until that day of great joy for us, well done on defending the historical truth about Jesus, which the Gospels give us!

[pgepps]

Heh. Between the SDA and the 'Papist' we have a hilarious level of thread-hijacking going on here. :-)

I'm with Jeremy on the matter of *substantive* teaching.

I think, however, that the catchphrase actually is a misstatement of a more accurate claim which is designed to rebut the Jesus/Paul inclusive/exclusive sort of claims:

"Jesus talks more about Hell than Paul [or other NT author]"

Cheers,
PGE

[AC]

Interesting question: did you take into account all the different words that refer to hell? Such as condemnation, damnation, destruction, outer darkness, death, wrath, perish etc? I would be interested to see what you come up with.

[Joshua Avenell]

Hello all,
I was doing some research on this old preachers quote, but I couldn't find anything that satisfied me so I had to do my own research by skimming through the Gospels with a Red Letter KJV. What I found contradicted most blogs claiming that Christ preached more about Heaven, so I thought I'd post my answer on these blogs for anyone else looking for some info.

Many people have already mentioned it here, but this way of "disproving the rhetoric" is fatally flawed.

Hundreds of times Jesus makes a reference to heaven, but is clearly not talking about nor preaching directly on the literal heaven that Christians will go to when they die (the New Jerusalem). For instance, throughout the book of Matthew Jesus constantly refers to "The Kingdom of Heaven", yet this is not talking about a literal heaven.

If it is, then we have a lot of explaining to do: Mt 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

Jesus constantly refers to heaven by saying things like "My Father in Heaven", yet this is not preaching on heaven.

Jesus sometimes preached directly on heaven without even mentioning the word. For example, he talks of going to prepare many mansions for us, which talks of the dwellings Christian's will enjoy in heaven, yet he never uses the word heaven.

However, after going through all the gospels with a red letter Bible, I can tell you that whenever Jesus is preaching on the afterlife, the vast majority of times He preached on Hell and he was repetitive about it. If you don't believe me, grab a Bible and get skimming. It wont take you more than an hour and a half, and you can see for yourself without having to take the word of an internet random.

Unfortunately, it is true. The modern church is very comfortable preaching on the afterlife, so long as they keep it all about how wonderful it will be in Heaven, yet this was never Christs' focus.

The old saying is true: Jesus preached more on Hell than Heaven. If you want to argue that their is more indirect references to heaven than hell, be my guest, a broad wordsearch will help you there. But to answer the quote directly - what part of the afterlife did Jesus preach the most on, the winner hands down is Hell.

[Justin]

I would have to agree with Josh in that doing a key word search is flawed. There is another flawed assumption that people might be making as well. That the more times Jesus said something, the more important it must be. If Jesus says something once, it is just as important as something He said 100 times. For me, the number is more representative of our thick heads as humans then it is of the weight we should give something. Preaching about heaven is very important, as is teaching about hell. Using the line, "Jesus talked more about hell then He did heaven" should be more a commentary of our safe, comfortable Christian church. When the church should be more about the person of Jesus.