Fire and brimstone

Fire and Brimstone (also called hellfire and damnation, typically by Christians) is an appeal to listeners' emotions using frightening stories of demons, hellfire, and damnation:

The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow.

-- from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, a Christian sermon preached by Jonathan Edwards in 1741

Brimstone is an Old English word for sulfur.

Denominations using

"Fire and brimstone" appeals appear to be primarily a Christian message (at least in the United States), though they are characteristic to a certain extent of certain groups of other Abrahamic religions such as Judaism and Islam; indeed, the Christian roots trace to Jewish writings. A less literalistic view of an afterlife is more characteristic of such Jews as believe in an afterlife, however.

Many non-Abrahamic religions, including those of Asia such as Buddhism, teach no such ideas. Some Abrahamic religious traditions, such as the Society of Friends (or Quakers) have few, if any, members who support such notions; indeed many mainline churches have a significant number of followers who would deny the existence of hell in any literal sense.

Biblical references

In the Book of Genesis 19:24, God rains fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. Fire and brimstone come up elsewhere in the Christian Bible, for instance, Psalms 11:6, Ezekiel 38:22, the Luke 17:29, and the Book of Revelation, 20:10. Also, Deuteronomy 29:23 and Isaiah 34:9 speak of punishment where the land is covered with fire and brimstone.

Isaiah 34:9 and 34:10 follow (King James Version):

9: And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch.

10: It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.

Revelation, 20:10 (King James Version):

And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

The Gospel of Mark warns five times of the unquenchable fires of hell. The Gospel of John warns of the "lake of fire and brimstone." The overall message of fire and brimstone is often summed up as, "You better mend your ways, or you're going to burn for all eternity".

Recent history

In the Christian faith at least, fire and brimstone preaching has declined in popularity in recent years, as Christianity often tries to present more positive images. Fire and brimstone is now characteristic only of the more conservative branches of Christianity; the fundamentalist cartoonist Jack Chick of Chick Publications keeps the tradition alive in print. Many Baptists, Pentacostal preachers, and Church of Christ ministers, especially older ones, frequently still deliver messages and sermons in the fire and brimstone traditon.

See also

• Afterlife
• Annihilationism
• Christian demonology (Has a wealth of links)
• Devil
• Jonathan Edwards
• Gehenna
• Hell house
• Satan
• Sheol
• Billy Sunday

External link

• The Straight Dope on Fire and Brimstone