Okay, must be a dark day to read a book about Hell. Gosh, I'm living in Barack Obama's America so I feel as if we are already getting an advanced view of the fire and brimstone --and John Kerry has been right! Global warming is a reality: it is just around the corner in God's special place!

So this book (actually closer to an extended tome) sets out to clear up the clutter of what many (most) of us have been taught in American Catholic, Protestant, or Evangelical traditions and set forth an enlightened picture of the Hell God has designed for us. Yet the author's introduction is illustrative for he writes in his first paragraph that " I was literally dumbfounded therefore to find out the majority of conservative evangelical thinkers still believe in an orthodox hell. They all wish it were not true, and their preachers do not talk about it..."

I hoped that he would provide some evidence for these opinions in his otherwise interesting examination on a subject that I, for one, have floating in the back of my mind but prefer not to put forth front-and-center. The author concentrates the majority of this book on the argument of an "everlasting torment" hell or an "eternal destruction" of our soul is the Biblical view. I shan't walk the reader down the same trails as the author, nor give away his conclusion, but I will say that I read the book with interest, and have been thinking about his arguments since completing the book. And that says a lot for the author and for his subject matter.

Don't know whether there will be a sequel --or what that would look like! -- but grateful for having read this book. Thanks to Net Galley for making this available at no charge.

Anything like this is left to personal belief and interpretation, but I liked the ideas of it and it was very informative.

This book tries to explain the concept of Hell in the traditional sense (everlasting torment for the wicked) as being eternal, and the pain is felt physically and psychologically. The author claims that the fear of Hell is a poor philosophy to teach unbelievers and that the love of God should be emphasized.

The differing beliefs about Hell are discussed:
1. Purgatory- a place that is not Heaven but it is a place where people who are not good enough for Heaven but not bad enough for Hell go upon death. This is mainly a Catholic belief, they also believe that the living can help the dead by praying and by being charitable.
2. Universalism - it is a belief that everyone will go to Heaven and there is no Hell.
3. Traditional Bible believing Christian - The wicked dead are annihilated and face eternal punishment for not accepting Jesus and being born again.


The author examines the Bible's use of terms to describe Hell and punishment and examines them in context and what their original meanings are to see what they mean.

If you believe in what the Bible says literally about Hell you will find some of the ideas in this book to be against your beliefs.