[madnak]

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And it's not even a good nut. He basically said: Be kind or I'll put your ass into hellfire [censored]!

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Right. This isn't compassion, it's a pretense of compassion based on fear. And it would have been an effective control tactic for a cult leader.

Even today, Christianity gets credit for being a compassionate religion because Jesus said "be nice or I will [censored] you!" People love to quote the palatable "be nice" part and ignore the "or ELSE" part. Hell, look how often people quote "judge not" as if it's an independent statement. Jesus never presents the idea of being compassionate as an end in itself. Only, act compassionate or suffer!

More relevant to the OP, the Bible includes all kinds of statements about who will go where. It's true that many of these statements emphasize the importance of acts - but others emphasize the importance of faith. I'll dig up chapter and verse if the Bible thumpers don't get to it first.

The point is that if you don't act correctly, you go to hell. But if you don't have faith, you also go to hell. And there are other criteria that will put you in hell (even being born in a certain nation seems to work, and Jesus never explicitly drops the "sins of the father" part of the Old Testament, though many will claim that the New Covenant erases it). Also, there are a few quotes (the wide and narrow paths, etc) that indicate (as we would expect given the tight criteria) that many more people will end up in hell than in heaven.