The problem with hellfire and brimstone preaching

Note: this post is primarily intended for my Christian friends. This is draft 1.0. I may revise over time as I think of additions

As of late, I have been thinking a lot about the way that we share the good news of faith with others. As I’ve spent a good bit of time in the book of Acts and thinking about the way that the early church shared their message and grew. The more I’ve pondered this period, the more I’ve become uncomfortable with some of the ways American churches share the gospel, especially the hellfire approach to preaching.

In this blog I want to explain why I believe the approach represents a break from the pattern of the early church as well as a misinterpretation of the language of the Old Testament. In doing so, I will first explain the approach itself, where I see it coming from, and its fundamental flaws. After that I want to turn to what I see as the more scripturally grounded approach modeled by the early Christians in Acts. Hopefully, by the time we’re through, you’ll understand my worries with the approach and the rationale behind my disagreement with in light of the model of the early church. And, perhaps most importantly, I want to wrap by showing what I think is the proper way to approach the question of sharing the good news, based on the New Testament church’s model.

You can break the discussion down into the following: * Defining the hellfire approach * Identifying the problem with the hellfire approach * Looking at the example of the early church * Framing a scripturally-grounded sharing of the gospel

I hope you enjoy the read and find it helpful.

Defining the hellfire approach to preaching

There is a tragic irony that one of the most culturally present caricatures of preaching and teaching the good news is the hellfire and brimstone approach to sharing the gospel. The irony of course comes from the literal meaning of gospel (the good news) and compared to the harsh and often angry message of hellfire preaching that you’d best repent or God is going to burn you in Hell and enjoy the process.

Worryingly, I think all too many people consider the approach to be a high and noble approach to sharing the good news, a proper message for the faith. Why is this worrying? Simply put, because it doesn’t align with the message of the early church, the message of the New Testament, or anything else of that kind.

Accurate or not as an approach to teaching about the good news of Jesus, hellfire and brimstone preaching is a cultural touchstone, especially in American Christian culture, and, to be honest there are several reasons for that going back a long way. If you take a course in early American literature, you are going to spend a good bit of time reading Christian writers and their thoughts. The identity of American front early in the colonial/colonizing period was one of religious immigrants escaping persecution to build a new Christian space in the Americas. And, for better or for worse, they had some particular views of God and their relationship with God.

One of the more iconic readings you’ll run into is one Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The text reads exactly like the title would lead you to think: > If you cry to God to pity you, he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard or favor, that instead of that, he will only tread you under foot. And though he will know that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you, yet he will not regard that, but he will crush you under his feet without mercy; he will crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments, so as to stain all his raiment. He will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt: no place shall be thought fit for you, but under his feet to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.

The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ.—That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up. … 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 were 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.

It’s a lot, and it’s not a very happy message.

The hellfire approach to the gospel message is fairly simple—God is mad at you and your sins, and if you don’t take the lifeline that is offered by Jesus, God is going to utterly destroy you because He hates you.

The approach is the rhetorical equivalent to holding a gun to someone’s head and asking them if they’ll agree to something. The entire interaction is tainted by the threat. It is a conversation under duress and fear of punishment.

Exploring what hellfire preaching gets wrong

I think the case can be clearly made that hellfire and brimstone preaching is not a sound scriptural practice or model, though many that practice it would argue the exact opposite. At issue, I argue, is a misunderstanding and misapplication of the Old Testament in particular as well as a good bit of misuse of the New Testament’s relevant scriptures.

Now, if you are a proponent of the approach, likely the very first thing you would say when hearing that I’m calling it out as not being scripturally sound is to object strenuously, noting that even my example, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, is riddled with Bible quotes. That’s a fair point, but as I want to show in this section, it misunderstands the texts being used. Though, perhaps a better way to look at the situation is to say that the approach misapplies the texts out of context.

Looking at (mis)use of the Old Testament

Let’s start our dive into how the approach misses the mark with its use of Scripture in the Old Testament. To do so, we have to appeal to context. The Sinners discussion draws heavily on sections of the Old Testament such as Isaiah 63 or Deuteronomy 32. In these two sections, we need to understand what context is being laid out and used. These two sections, while specific to Edwards’s work, match up with larger patterns of misuse that you’ll find in a lot of hellfire preaching. Let’s start with Deuteronomy.

In Deuteronomy 32, there is the quote that starts off Sinners, is verse 35: > “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”” ‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭32‬:‭35‬ ‭NIV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/111/deu.32.35.NIV

Sounds fairly harsh, but let’s get a bit more of the verses: > “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.” The Lord will vindicate his people and relent concerning his servants when he sees their strength is gone and no one is left, slave or free.” ‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭32‬:‭35‬-‭36‬ ‭NIV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/111/deu.32.35-36.NIV

These verses are talking about Israel, the people who have entered into a covenant relationship with God that has clear boundaries. They are being told about what is going to happen because they have give up on their God.

This distinction is vitally important—this is not about unbaptized believers. This is a verse about people who are already in relationship with God. Applying them otherwise is problematic.

Now, let’s move on to Isaiah. In the context that Edwards’s is using the verses about God where the prophet is talking about how the Lord will deliver His people from their enemies. This is about how God saves His people, not about how God treats sinners. The enemies of Israel are not sinners writ large—they are those nations and peoples who have opposed Israel, as a nation and a chosen people. Applying that language to a generic sinner seems a bit odd.

Generally, I think you will find most if not all Old Testament scriptures drug out in service of hellfire preaching work about the same. The curses that are being hurled are either 1) originally intended for a people already in relationship with God or 2) describing how God will deliver that people from their enemies. Neither makes much sense applied to unbaptized folks in the days of God’s church.

New Testament (mis)use

Now, when you shift to the New Testament, you are going to run into a fairly similar issue that we saw in the Old Testament. We can see similar patterns to above in both the gospels and the epistles.

First up are the gospels. Now, when you appeal to the preaching of Jesus, you are going to find that His message is entirely focused on Israel—which makes sense as Jesus is their Messiah they have been waiting for. So, if you are looking at Jesus providing warnings, He is warning Israel about what will happen if the Messiah is rejected in favor of violent self-serving rebellion or allegiance to other powers such as Rome. Second, when you look for the folks that really get it hard in Jesus’s own teachings, you are going to find that the harshest words are held out for those who are supposed to be religious guides and leaders, such as the woes to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23.

If we look to the epistles, you are going to see something similar. One of the starkest and darkest descriptions of punishments that stand out in the epistles to me are the words of Peter in 2 Peter 3. Now, we first have to acknowledge that Peter does note that God will deal with the unrighteous, and has done so, but he does so in the context of making a point about how God does so to rescue the godly and hold the unrighteous for punishment. The harshest words though, the focus of the whole chapter, is on false teachers. These are who Peter explains: > “These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”” ‭‭2 Peter‬ ‭2‬:‭17‬-‭18‬, ‭20‬-‭22‬ ‭NIV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/111/2pe.2.17-18.NIV

Just as we see in the Old Testament examples, the words of Peter either 1) provide comfort to the righteous or 2) provide a clear punishment for those who abandon the faith after entering into it. They are not expository/evangelical messages to recruit sinners to be saved. (And I don’t think you can make them work that way without violence to the text.)

Moving from misuse to use

Having looked at the Scriptures to see what is wrong with many of the uses of God’s word by hellfire preachers and having seen that they often misapply the words of the Bible out of context to create a scene of terror, I want to make a break from misuse. Let us now turn to looking at how the church of the New Testament actually talked to the lost.

To find a pattern for what talking to those outside of the church looks like, I suggest we turn to the Book of Acts, the sole dedicated history of the first days of the church. From looking at Acts, I believe we can look for a more authentic and scripturally-driven model for sharing the gospel (you know, the good news).

From early on, we see a different message than hellfire preaching from the early church. We’re told in Acts 5 that from the temple courts to the houses of Jerusalem the church “never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.” We see the good news, the news that Jesus is the Messiah across the gospel messages in Acts, such as in Acts 8, Acts 9, Acts 10, 11, 13, 14, etc. Across the book of Acts, we see the good news as the focus of preaching, good news about Jesus. What you don’t see is hellfire preaching or threats.

The closest that we see any movement towards hellfire would be a few places where Paul mentions judgement coming through Christ. The most expansive place we see this first would be Paul’s talk in Athens where he notes in Acts 17 that: > From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

We see a similar message, and a response of fear from Felix later in Acts 24: > And as he discussed justice, self-control, and the coming judgment, Felix became frightened and said, “Go away for the present; when I have an opportunity, I will send for you.”

When Paul discusses judgement, however, he is speaking in terms of God through Christ judging the world and the deeds of mankind. The gospel message in this paradigm is a chance for individuals to recognize they are living away from the Creator and to come to serve Him instead of themselves or idols off their creation. Paul explains this to Agrippa in Acts 26: > After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance.

The gospel is at its core a message that God has made things right and now offers a way for all of us to come to know Him, the God that has always never been far away from us (as Paul notes in Athens). That is the message we see in Acts.

Now, with that said there are consequences for ignoring the good news, hearing and scorning it. There will be as Paul notes a judgement. God will judge the works of all.

As messengers, the most we can do is offer the message and let God provide the increase. Thanks our duty and why Paul made clear to everyone as he saw his travels taking him to Rome in Acts that he was innocent of their blood because he had proclaimed the good news to them. If the failed to act, that was not laid on him.

Like Paul, we are to offer good news and tell of what is to come. But like the Acts examples, that does not include evangelizing at metaphorical gunpoint. The whole goal is to share the good news of reconciliation and love. ## Framing the message right Having looked at the example of the church in Acts, I think we have a clear picture for what the preaching of the good news should look like. The message of the church is not that of a God that holds us over a fire and hates us. That is utter and complete nonsense. Could such a God exist that the apostle Peter would right as he does in 2 Peter 3:9 when he says “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance”? I don’t see how you can square the raging God who sneers at the lost from Edwards’s hellfire preaching with the God of Peter.

We are not here to threaten. We are not God’s bullies or footpads. We are, in the words of Paul, ambassadors: “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). Ambassadors of reconciliation is our title and calling.

So, I ask that we put aside the hellfire of it all and look to sharing good news. Hellfire and torture is not the message of the church of Acts. At best, it is a warning to those who would turn away from the message after being saved or a message of comfort (God is in control and will make sure those who act in evil ways will one day be made to account for their actions). It is not the good news and it is not the message of the New Testament church.

We are here to excitedly share about the age of God coming to His creation and allowing them to know Him and reconcile away from our self-seeking. We aren’t here to threaten people into a baptistry. We are here to excited invite them into the love and knowledge of God. ## Shifting the paradigm If we acknowledge that threatening folks into correct living is not a great strategy, I would also caution that litigating or legislating souls into salvation isn’t either. Hand in hand with the concept of hellfire preaching is often the idea of creating a governmental system that is “Christian” in the sense that it punishes sin and wrong behavior (seldom do I see folks want a Christian government and in saying that mean a government that cares for the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the alien.) But, what does that do? It creates a conflict with an angry church at its head trying to force conversion by yet another means. Or at least push sin out of sight and mind. It is more than I have space for here but it also strikes me as wrong for the same reasons.

We should be see in the world as sharing the good news. We should be messengers of hope, empathy, love, and kindness. We don’t have to condone sin, but we can offer the good news message to anyone who wants to hear it as Jesus did. (Do remember, He offered news and then asked folks to change how they live if the message resonated).

I hope this blog and discussion has been fruitful for you. May God bless you and watch over you.