Quotes About Hell
May God literally bless the hell out of you . Gary Amirault
"God had to kill himself
to appease himself
so that he did not have to roast us
(His beloved Creation)
alive for all eternity.
He loves us more than we can comprehend,
but if we don't love him back,
He will send us to HELL
to suffer for ever and ever.
That really is AMAZING GRACE!"
God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That's not free will. It's like a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath. When god says the same we call him "loving" and build churches in his honor.- William C. Easttom II
The traditional church doctrine of Hell makes Christ's work on the cross appear inefficacious for the vast majority of mankind. In the light of the parable of the Good Shepherd leaving the 99 to find the one lost sheep not giving up until He finds it, perhaps we should reexamine the traditional teaching of Hell. After all, the "traditions of men" oft make the "word of God of no effect." Gary Amirault
According to Christianity, eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, believe or die. "Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options." --Bill Hicks
(The difficulty over the question of eternal torments lies in) how it is irreconcilable with the Goodness of God, to put any Persons at all upon a necessity of making such an Option, wherein if they choose amiss, the Misery they incur must be irrevocable. –Samuel Clarke, A Letter
So revolting to my moral nature is the creed of eternal punishment that it, more than any other cause, produces the most widespread unbelief. Compared with this, all objections to Christianity fade to insignificance. --Loren Anderson
I have lately taken to read the New Testament which I assure you is a very good book; but there is one article to which I cannot accede; it is that of the eternity of punishment. I cannot comprehend how this eternity is compatible with the goodness of God! –La Fontaine (1621-1695)
"Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven." Paradise Lost, John Milton, English poet (1608 - 1674)
It serves no purpose to man if there is no room for repentance, and he who is tormented can never grow better…let this punishment be severe, let it be bitter, nay let it be lasting, but let it at length have an end… --Thomas Burnet, “A Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls"
When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of God as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong.-- Lewis Carroll (author of Alice in Wonderland), "Eternal Punishment," Diversions and Digressions of Lewis Carrol
Almost no one who has ever studied the near-death experience (NDE) comes away thinking that Hell is eternal.--Dr. Ken Vincent
Why were a few, or a single one, made at all, if only to exist in order to be made eternally miserable, which is infinitely worse than non-existence? –Immanuel Kant, “End of All Things”
A civilized society looks with horror upon the abuse and torture of children or adults. Even where capital punishment is practiced, the aim is to implement it as mercifully as possible. Are we to believe then that a holy God—our heavenly Father—is less just than the courts of men? -- Sidney Hatch
Salvation is universal because the love of God encompasses all. If God is God and if God is love, nothing is outside the love of God. A place like hell is thus inconceivable. --Jacques Ellul
Imagine such a doctrine, you may; but seriously believe in it you never can. The thought is too shocking even to human nature; how much more abhorrent, then, must it be from divine perfection. The Creator must have made all his creatures finally to be happy; and could never form any one whose end he foreknew would be misery everlasting. We can be sure of nothing if we are not sure of this. –Bishop Newton (1704-1782)
The degree and duration of the torment of these degenerate and anti-Christian people, should be no other than would be approved of by those angels who had ever labored for their salvation, and that Lamb who had redeemed them with his most precious blood. –Sir Isaac Newton in his paraphrase of Rev 14:10-11, (1642-1727)
That any should suffer forever, lingering on in hopeless despair, and rolling amidst infinite torments without the possibility of alleviation and without end; that since God can save men and will save a part, he has not proposed to save all-these are real, not imaginary, difficulties. . . . My whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me why sin came into the world; why the earth is strewn with the dying and the dead; and why man must suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured min. . . . I confess, when I look on a world of sinners and sufferers-upon death-beds and grave-yards-upon the world of woe filled with hosts to suffer for ever: when I see my friends, my family, my people, my fellow citizens when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger-and when I see the great mass of them wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he does not do so, I am stuck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it.-- Albert Barnes
"Father of Mercies! why from silent earth Didst thou awake and curse me into birth, Tear me from quiet, banish me from night, And make a thankless present of Thy light, Push into being a reverse of Thee And animate a clod with misery?” --Young (Night Thoughts)
They say that when god was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing with him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as he asks us to be. - Robert Ingersoll
An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?" --Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
One of the things that most pains and torments these Japanese is that we teach them that the prison of hell is irrevocably shut. For they grieve over the fate of their departed children, of their parents and relatives; and they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there is any hope….and I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none. The grief at this affects and torments them wonderfully; they almost pine away with sorrow….I can hardly restrain my tears sometimes at seeing many so dear to my heart suffer such intense pain about a thing which is already done with and can never be undone.-- St. Francis Xavier, a Roman Catholic missionary to Japan, 1552
Again I ask whence it happened that the fall of Adam involved, without remedy, in eternal death so many nations, together with their infant children, except because it so seemed good to God? A decree horrible, I confess, and yet true. – John Calvin
The whole point of Christianity is that everyone in the world, from Charles Manson to Mother Teresa, deserves to go to hell. --Sean Ningen
God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race. - Robert G. Ingersoll
Who would dare so much as to smile, if he really believed endless torments were certain to be the portion of some members of his household--it may be of himself? Marriage would be a crime; each birth the occasion of an awful dread. The shadow of a possible Hell would darken every home, sadden every family hearth. All this becomes evident when we reflect, that to perpetuate the race would be to help on the perpetuation of moral evil. For if this creed be true, out of all the yearly births a stady current is flowing on to help fill the abyss of hell, to make larger and vaster the total moral evil which is to endure forever. 'The world would be one vast madhouse' says the American scholar Hallsted, 'if realizing and continued pressure of such a doctrine was present.'" --Thomas Allin, Christ Triumphant, p. 57
I would not for my life destroy one star of human hope, but I want it so that when a poor woman rocks the cradle and sings a lullaby to the dimpled darling, she will not be compelled to believe that ninety-nine chances in a hundred she is raising kindling wood for hell. --Robert Ingersoll
Some conservative Christians argue in favor of hell by calling it "God's great compliment." "Compliment?" If hell is such a "compliment" then what does God do when he wants to "insult" somebody?--Ed Babinski
If the Lord of the Flies and the Bible are true, then all people are evil and all who are evil go to hell. Does anyone else think God WANTS to be alone? --Unknown
The fear of hell is the basis for the Christian faith.--Madalyn Murray O'Hare
Speaking on the teaching of Hell, if there is anything consistent among orthodox and traditional teachers on the subject, it would be their inconsistencies and contradictions. --Gary Amirault
Given headaches, backaches, toothaches, strains, scrapes, breaks, cuts, rashes, burns, bruises, PMS, fatigue, hunger, odors, molds, colds, yeast, parasites, viruses, cancers, genetic defects, blindness, deafness, paralysis, mental illness, ugliness, ignorance, miscommunications, embarrassments, unrequited love, dashed hopes, boredom, hard labor, repetitious labor, accidents, old age, senility, fires, floods, earthquakes, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes and volcanoes, I can not see how anyone, after they are dead, deserves "eternal punishment" as well. --Ed Babinski
People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal punishment after death. Wouldn't it be better to depend on blind matter (...) than a god who puts out traps for people, invites them to sin, and allows them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent. Only to finally get the barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others from committing crimes.--Baron d'Holbach
(I find it difficult to believe) that God who is the father of Mercies, that doth in heaven and Earth all that hee will; that hath the hearts of all men in his disposing; that worketh in men both to doe, and to will; and without whose free gift a man hath neither inclination to good, nor repentance of evill, should punish mens transgressions without any end of time and with all the extremity of torture, that men can imagine and more. –Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Seldom, I suppose, do we find ourselves brooding over the awesome doctrine of eternal punishment. Only on rarest occasions and then fleetingly is our mood that of Roden's famous statue, The Thinker, who sits in mute amazement watching lost souls enter hell. What William Gladstone wrote about eternal punishment in the late 19th century is equally true today: it 'seems to be relegated at present to the far off corners of the Christian mind, and there to sleep in deep shadow. --Dr. Vernon Grounds
Punishments of unreasonable severity, especially where indiscriminately afflicted, have less effect in preventing crimes, and amending the manners of a people, than such as are more merciful in general, yet properly intermixed with due distinctions of severity. –William Blackstone, on whether the doctrine of Hell was an effective deterrent to crime, 1769
Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. --Albert Einstein
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you! --George Carlin
Think of Jonathan Edwards who thundered the terrors of God and what Hell was like until men grasped their seats and hung on to them, fearing they were falling into Hell itself. Men were moved by fear to escape damnation. That was believed to be Christianity. Why any coward wanted to keep out of Hell. He might not have had one idea in his soul of what was the real true earmark of Christianity. –John G. Lake
Regarding Michaelangelo’s “Last Judgment” painting: “…Look at the lower parts of the picture, where with pitchforks men are by devils being cast into cauldrons and into burning fires, where hateful fiends are gnawing at the skulls of suffering sinners, and where there is hellish cannibalism going on. Let a man look at that picture and the scenes which it depicts , and he sees what were the ideas which men once had of Hell and of divine justice. It was a nightmare a hideous as was ever begotten by the hellish brood itself; and it was an atrocious slander on God…I do not wonder that men have reacted from these horrors—I honor them for it. --Henry Ward Beecher.
As a tot I was given the usual terrifying mixed message: a) God is love; and b) If you don't believe how much he loves you, you will stand in the corner for eternity.- James Lileks
Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell? --Richard Dawkins
I read in the Gospels that Jesus forgave the men who nailed him to the cross. He even promised "this day you shall be with me in paradise" to a thief crucified next to him -- a thief who addressed Jesus simply as a "man" rather than as "the son of God." Yet, today, this same Jesus cannot forgive my kindly old aunt and allow her to dwell in paradise, simply because her "beliefs" do not match Reverend So-and-So's?- Arthur Silver
When I see what the old rocking continents are doing, and have been doing from the creation, from the days of the flood, through all the treacheries and pitfalls wherein the human race has been reeling and staggering down to modern times; when I look at Asia and Africa and Europe and America and both continents of it and see what the actual condition of the neglected, the stripped, the peeled, the despoiled, the downtrodden races of men has been; if I thought that in addition to all this there was a God that was clothed in thunder, and whose business it was to stand at the door where men go out of life and crush them downward into eternal hell—every instinct of charity, of sympathy and of love that is born in me by Christ, would stand crying, “Annihilate him! Annihilate him!” It would be the sorrow of the universe that would raise this cry. –Henry Ward Beecher
Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being. - Dan Barker
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. --Albert Einstein
Made in the image of God, all humans have a moral sense, a judicial sentiment. Even the unredeemed cringe when the Holocaust is reviewed. Our moral intuition rejects the idea that anyone, human or divine, who endlessly inflicted pain on another could be called "good." --Randy Klassen, "What Does the Bible Really Say About Hell?"
Few people, if they really had the authority, would condemn anyone anyone, even their worst enemy, to a burning, scorching, tormenting, eternal hell. Yet, they expect God to do it! --J. Preston Eby
(Those who) impute such actions to God, as make Him resemble the worst of beings, and so run into downright Demonism. –Matthew Tindal, on eternal punishment/torture “Christianity as Old as Creation” 1730
I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains. --Lord Byron
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.—Thomas Paine
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. --Voltaire
For me it is inexplainable how a person who holds the orthodox view [of eternal torment] can at any time have a glad moment in this life. He is constantly mingling with people whose final destiny will be to be tormented eternally without end…To me it is even more inexplainable that such an ‘orthodox’ person can expect even a happy moment in eternity, when he knows that contemporaneously with his blessed estate continues the endless torment and agony of innumerable millions of the accursed. Can he, if he loves his neighbors as himself, yes, even if he has just a little bit of human love and is not solely a selfish wretch, have even a single happy moment? -- John Persone Swedish Lutheran Bishop
The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing that we are not to have in the other world. We are to be so taken up with Jesus and angels, that we shall care nothing about our brothers and sisters that have been damned. We shall be so carried away with the music of the harp that we shall not even hear the wail of father and mother. Such a religion is a disgrace to human nature. –Robert Ingersoll
And yet this same Deity says to me, "resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine." It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach. --Robert Ingersoll
Men have ascribed to God imperfections that they would deplore in themselves. --W. Somerset Maugham
Listening to her father preach a hellfire sermon, the pastor’s daughter said, “I wish Jesus was as loving as my father.”
"If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." Psalm 139:8, The Bible
Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.-- Robert Ingersoll
How anyone can believe in eternal punishment, or in any soul which God has made being “lost” and also believes in the love, nay, even in the justice of God is a mystery indeed. ---C.G. Montefiore
I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil. -- Clarence Darrow
An idea, which has terrified millions, claims that some of us will go to a place called Hell, where we will suffer eternal torture. This does not scare me because, when I try to imagine a Mind behind this universe, I cannot conceive that Mind, usually called "God," as totally mad. I mean, guys, compare that "God" with the worst monsters you can think of -- Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, that sort of guy. None of them ever inflicted more than finite pain on their victims. Even de Sade, in his sado-masochistic fantasy novels, never devised an unlimited torture. The idea that the Mind of Creation (if such exists) wants to torture some of its critters for endless infinities of infinities seems too absurd to take seriously. Such a deranged Mind could not create a mud hut, much less the exquisitely mathematical universe around us. - Robert Anton Wilson
God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep company with such a god. –Robert Ingersoll
I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not. --Heinrich Hein
There were days when the Church could club men into obedience by preaching Hell to them, but that day has long passed. The world has outgrown it. –John G. Lake
I cannot believe in an eternity of hell. I hope God will forgive me if I err; but in this matter I cannot say, "Lord help my unbelief." --Robert Southey, 1826
I see the doctrine of hell as being probably the major stumbling block to the return of a de-Christianized world to Christ. The doctrine of eternal damnation, more than any other teaching of the church, produces atheism. If you examine closely all the big name atheists—like Feuerback and Nietzsche—it is this teaching more than any other that offended them and turned them away. Out of these famous atheists came all the movements that have caused so much hell here and now. If God is to practice what He preaches, then it makes it hard to believe in eternal damnation.--Unknown
Your heart will not accept what your mind rejects. --Unknown
Hell is believing in Hell. --Unknown
Of the 5.5 billion people on the earth, who has the worst life—the one who is tortured day and night, or starved, or chained, or beaten? Who has the worst life in all the world? Well, the person who has the best place in hell would change places in a heartbeat with the person who has the worst life on earth. Don Whitney, "The Reality of Hell" (This is an example of how hell-fire preachers scare hell INTO people.)
Any decent dictionary or encyclopedia makes it plain the English word "Hell" etymologically comes from Germanic/Teutonic pagan mythology. What is not so plain is how this heathen concept got into our Bible translations and the negative effect it has had on those who have come under its influence. Gary Amirault, Tentmaker Ministries
Some people will fight like hell to defend Hell. Ivan A. Rogers
Click Here for quotes describing Hell from various Christian leaders