#394 | What Is Hell?

In 2016, a 21-year-old American student was arrested in North Korea after allegedly stealing a political poster. Weeks later, he appeared in a strange public confession and was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour. Seventeen months on, he returned home in a coma, raising dis ...  Show more

From The Vault 🔐 — normally a member-only episode, unlocked this month for everyone.--In 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed high in the Andes. Stranded in freezing mountains, the young survivors faced hunger, avalanches, and a terrible moral choice. It would b ...  Show more

Inferno is the 14th century epic that tells the story of Dante Alighieri’s imaginary journey through the underworld. It is the first part of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, and is widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest poems. “Abandon all hope you who enter here” is the f ...  Show more

Are there levels of reward (or punishment) in eternity? In Dante’s Inferno, the poet described Hell as having ‘nine circles.’ Each circle corresponded with a different sin and degree of punishment. But is this a Biblical understanding? Does the Bible teach that different sins mer ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dante’s ‘Inferno’ - a medieval journey through the nine circles of Hell. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. This famous phrase is written above the gate of Hell in a 14th century poem by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The poem is called the ...  Show more

Did Jesus go to Hell? Did Jesus go to Sheol? The doctrine of Christ’s “descent” is confessed in the Apostles’s and Athanasian Creeds and celebrated by Eastern and Roman Catholic churches, but evangelical churches rarely give it much attention. Even where the Apostles’s Creed i ...