No, Jesus Did Not Preach More About Hell, Than Heaven

G3772-heaven (?)

G86 hades (4)

G1067 Gehenna (11)

There is the very popular (and completely incorrect) saying that hellfire and brimstone preachers have used for years, saying, "Jesus talked more about Hell than He ever talked about Heaven."

Let's see.

The gospel accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are where we will find the words of Christ Jesus.  Now, even allowing for the horrible translation of a word (hades) which means "grave" into the word "hell", and the word "Gehenna" which is a valley, south of Jerusalem (not a place, 9 miles under the ground), we'll see the tale of the tape.

Jesus Christ used the two different words that were translated as "Hell", a grand total of 15 times!  Wow!  That is a LOT of times.  Surely, the Lord didn't mention "heaven" that many times.  I mean, a preacher SHOULD know, right?

Well, after the book of Matthew, I ceased my count.  That means that I didn't bother counting the number of times Jesus talked about heaven in the books of Mark, Luke, and John.  The Lord had used the word for Heaven, over 70 TIMES, JUST in the book of Matthew.

So, if any teacher says, "Jesus talked more about hell than he talked about heaven", you now can verify; that is utter nonsense...and you might just want to check behind that teacher on other things too.

By-the-way, the word "Ge-henna" which Jesus Christ said 11 times means "Ge" (Valley/ravine/ditch) of "Hinnom" (a proper noun/a man's name) and no occurrence of this word in the Old Testament is ever translated as "Hell".  When the Hebrew characters for "valley" and "Hinnom" are used in the Old Testament, it turns out that it is translated as "valley of Hinnom".

"Hades" which He said 4 times, is "the grave/the unseen/".  

When one is dead and in the grave, one is unseen because they are covered up and buried.  Did you know that the Old English word "hel" (which is part of the word "helmet") means "to cover".

"And, I also, unto thee, say—Thou, art Peter,—and, upon this rock, will I build my assembly, and, the gates of hades, shall not prevail against it." (Matt. 16:18) ROTHERHAM

Given that Christ Jesus is the Firstborn from among the dead and the firstfruits of resurrection to immortality, it makes sense that "Hades" means "the grave" and not some subterranean torture chamber.

There is only one verse in the New Testament in which "Hades" appears and the KJV translators, correctly rendered it as "grave".

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Cor.15:55)

I am convinced that they only rendered it as "grave" in this single verse because to render it as "hell" in THIS verse would wreck their theology.