EPTI used to believe that Hell was a place you went to after you died if you didn't go to Heaven. This was how educated I was after attending a Pentecostal Church for two years and thought I was ready to go out into the world (i.e. move out of home and go to university) and preach the Good Word as a man of God.
Unfortunately it wasn't until I went to Bible College years later did I realise how much of what I thought I knew was bullshit.
Yet today Pentecostal Churches have gotten away with this, and worse have monopolised Christianity to the point where non-Christians view Christians (and rightly so) as people who believe in an actual Hell where the Devil tortures God's lost children. This detracts from the message of Jesus, which was to look after the poor and be selfless. Christianity today and the sermons in Church are often just about getting 'saved' and so little of the teaching is of any substance. I often sit in Church and ask myself - if Jesus was up there preaching on stage, would He be saying what the pastor is talking about?
Belief in the power of language was the foundation on which rested the efficacy of blessings and curses as practiced in the OT. The nearly blind Isaac, having been tricked into blessing the wrong son, could not reverse what he had done - such was the power of the words he had uttered.
According to the story of the Tower of Babel, all humans spoke the same language Adam and Eve spoke until as an act of Divine punishment God drove them to confusion and they found themselves speaking many languages. The story implies that God had created these languages also, and then miraculously forced human tongues to speak them. This is similar to the idea of speaking in tongues as in Acts and charismatic Pentecostal Churches today.
Of course anybody who has studied anthropology or has a very basic understanding of it would be able to tell you that if you truly believe languages and culture was formed in this way then well you might as well believe Creationism over evolution.
