Visions of Hell

Is God really like this? Please don’t leave this article without reading the final statement at the end, describing the effect these beliefs have had on people.

“That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly, they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.” Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE), Summa Theologica.

“If you are a [born-again] Christian, you will go to heaven; If you're following another religion, then by default you will go to Hell.” — Radio program “Life on the Edge,” sponsored by Focus on the Family, and directed to teens, May 5, 2001

“How will you spend eternity — Smoking or Nonsmoking?” — Sign in front of an American church.

Purgatory is believed by Roman Catholics to be a place where the souls of most individuals go at the time of death. It has traditionally been viewed as a place of torment, where “nearly all of us shall...have to pass a period more or less long in the excruciating fires of Purgatory after death.” Fr. Paul O'Sullivan, How to avoid Purgatory

“The purpose of this pain is to purify the individual. Eventually, the person will be cleansed and be eligible to be transferred to Heaven.” —The Catholic Encyclopedia, Purgatory (1911)

Most Christians denounce the doctrine of Purgatory as unbiblical. No, they assure us—the torture and pain in the hereafter for the lost is to be unending! For all eternity, they shall suffer.

Read the following “poetic” descriptions of the torments of the damned:

“Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all, but torture without end.”

—John Milton, Paradise Lost

“I see a brimstone sea of boiling fire,

And fiends, with knotted whips of flaming wire,

Torturing poor souls, that gnash their teeth in vain,

And gnaw their flame—tormented tongues in pain.”

—Francis Quarles, Emblems

Pollok penned the following lurid description:

Wide was the place,
And deep as wide, and ruinous as deep.
Beneath I saw a lake of burning fire,
With tempest tost perpetually, and still
The waves of fiery darkness, gainst the rocks
Of dark damnation broke, and music made
Of melancholy sort; and over head,
And all around, wind warred with wind, storm howled
To storm, and lightning forked lightning, crossed,
And thunder answered thunder, muttering sound
Of sullen wrath; and far as sight could pierce,
Or down descend in caves of hopeless depth,
Thro' all that dungeon of unfading fire,
I saw most miserable beings walk,
Burning continually, yet unconsumed;
Forever wasting, yet enduring still;
Dying perpetually, yet never dead.
Some wandered lonely in the desert flames,
And some in fell encounter fiercely met,
With curses loud, and blasphemies, that made
The cheek of darkness pale; and as they fought,
And cursed, and gnashed their teeth, and wished to die
Their hollow eyes did utter streams of woe.
And there were groans that ended not, and sighs
That always sighed, and tears that ever wept,
And ever fell, but not in Mercy's sight
And Sorrow, and Repentance, and Despair,
Among them walked, and to their thirsty lips
Presented frequent cups of burning gall.
And as I listened, I heard these being curse
Almighty God, and curse the Lamb, and curse
The Earth, the Resurrection morn, and seek,
And ever vainly seek for utter death.
And to their everlasting anguish still,
The thunders from above responding spoke
These words, which thro' the caverns of perdition
Forlornly echoing, fell on every ear—
“Ye knew your duty but ye did it not”
The place thou saw'st was Hell; the groans thou heard'st
The wailings of the damned—of those who would
Not be redeemed—and at the judgment day,
Long past for unrepented sins were damned.
The seven loud thunders which thou heard'st, declare
The eternal wrath of the Almighty God.
There in utter darkness, far
Remote, I beings saw forlorn in woe.
Burning, continually yet unconsumed.
And there were groans that ended not, and sighs
That always sighed, and tears that ever wept
And ever fell, but not in Mercy's sight;
And still I heard these wretched beings curse
Almighty God, and curse the Lamb, and curse
The Earth, the Resurrection morn, and seek,
And ever vainly seek for utter death;
And from above the thunders answered still,
“Ye know your duty, but ye did it not.”

Such descriptions are not confined to poetry. Plain prose has sought to set forth the doctrine in words equally repulsive and graphic. Rutherford, in his “Religious Letters,” declares that hereafter:

“Tongue, lungs and liver, bones and all shall boil and fry in a torturing fire,—a river of fire and brimstone, broader than the earth!”

Boston, in his Fourfold State, says:

“There will be universal torments, every part of the creature being tormented in that flame. When one is cast into a fiery furnace, the fire makes its way into the very bowels, and leaves no member untouched; what part then can have ease when the damned sinner is in a lake of fire, burning with brimstone?”

Buckle, in his “Civilization in England,” thus sums up the popular doctrine:

“In the pictures which they drew, they reproduced and heightened the barbarous imagery of a barbarous age. They delighted in telling their hearers that they would be roasted in great fires and hung up by their tongues. They were to be lashed with scorpions, and see their companions writhing and howling around them. They were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead. A river of brimstone broader than the earth was prepared for them; in that they were to be immersed. . . Such were the first stages of suffering, and they were only the first. For the torture besides being unceasing, was to become gradually worse. So refined was the cruelty, that one Hell was succeeded by another; and, lest the sufferer should grow callous, he was, after a time, moved on, that he might undergo fresh agonies in fresh places, provision being made that the torment should not pall on the sense, but should be varied in its character as well as eternal in its duration.

“All this was the work of the God of the Scotch clergy. It was not only his work, it was his joy and his pride. For, according to them, Hell was created before man came into the word; the Almighty, they did not scruple to say, having spent his previous leisure in preparing and completing this place of torture, so that when the human race appeared, it might be ready for their reception. Ample, however, as the arrangements were, they were insufficient; and Hell not being big enough to contain the countless victims incessantly poured into it, had, in these latter days, been enlarged. But in that vast expanse there was no void, for the whole of it reverberated with the shrieks and yells of undying agony. Both children and fathers made Hell echo with their piercing screams, writhing in convulsive agony at the torments which they suffered, and knowing that other torments more grievous still were reserved for them.” And it was not the Devil, but a just and merciful God who is accused of committing all this infernal cruelty!

Michael Angelo's Last Judgment is an attempt to describe in paint what was believed then and has been for centuries since. Henry Ward Beecher thus refers to that great painting in the Plymouth Pulpit, Oct. 29, 1870:

“Let any one look at that; let any one see the enormous gigantic coils of fiends and men; let any one look at the defiant Christ that stands like a superb athlete at the front, hurling his enemies from him and calling his friends toward him as Hercules might have done; let any one look upon that hideous wriggling mass that goes plunging down through the air-serpents and men and beasts of every nauseous kind, mixed together; let him look at the lower parts of the picture, where with the pitchforks men are by devils being cast into caldrons and into burning fires, where hateful fiends are gnawing the skulls of suffering sinners, and where there is hellish cannibalism going on—let a man look at that picture and the scenes which it depicts, and he sees what were the ideas which men once had of Hell and of divine justice. It was a night-mare as hideous as was ever begotten by the hellish brood it-self; and it was an atrocious slander on God. . . . I do not wonder that men have reacted from these horrors—I honor them for it.”

Since you become like the person you worship and admire, it us understandable how Tertullian could say the following:

“How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates liquifying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from applause.”

Jeremy Taylor, of the English Church, says:

“The bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in hell, like grapes in a wine-press, which press one another till they burst; every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and most exquisite sufferings.”

Even the reformation hero Calvin describes it:

“Forever harassed with a dreadful tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder by an angry God, and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of this hand, so that to sink into any gulf would be more tolerable than to stand for a moment in these terrors.”

Jonathan Edwards, notorious for his descriptions of a cold, harsh, unloving God, said:

“The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in which they shall be tossed to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves and billows of fire continually rolling over their heads, of which they shall forever be full of a quick sense within and without; their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins and their vitals, shall forever be full of a flowing, melting fire, fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements; and, also, they shall eternally be full of the most quick and lively sense to feel the torments; not for one minute, not for one day, not for one age, not for two ages, not for a hundred ages, nor for ten thousand millions of ages, one after another, but forever and ever, without any end at all, and never to be delivered.”

It is no wonder he could so vividly describe hell, as his picture of God was frightening:

“The God who holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.... He will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy...” —Jonathan Edwards, Sermon: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Charles Spurgeon embellished the descriptions further:

“When thou diest, thy soul will be tormented alone: that will be a hell for it, but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie, asbestos-like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall forever play his diabolical tun of Hell's Unutterable Lament.”

In another sermon designed to frighten people into serving God, he described further:

“Conscience, judgement, memory, all tortured.... Thine heart beating high with fever, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, thy limbs cracking like the martyrs in the fire and yet unburnt, thyself put in a vessel of hot oil, pained yet coming out undestroyed, all thy veins becoming a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall ever play his diabolical tune...” --Charles Spurgeon, Sermon No. 66.

A Catholic Book for Children says:

“The fifth dungeon is a red-hot oven in which is a little child. Hear how it screams to come out! see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. To this child God was very good. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much worse in Hell. So God, in his mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood.”

The following “spiritual” tract is likewise designed to burn horrific images into innocent young minds:

“Look into this prison. In the middle of it there is a boy, a young man. He is silent; despair is upon him. He stands straight up. His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two long flames come out of his ears. His breathing is difficult. Sometimes he opens his mouth and breath of a blazing fire rolls out of it. But listen! there is a sound just like that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle which is boiling? No; then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones! —J. Furniss, Tracts for Spiritual Reading

It is beyond the power of the human mind to estimate the evil which has been wrought by the heresy of eternal torment. The religion of the Bible, full of love and goodness, and abounding in compassion, is darkened by superstition and clothed with terror. When we consider in what false colors Satan has painted the character of God, can we wonder that our merciful Creator is feared, dreaded, and even hated? The appalling views of God which have spread over the world from the teachings of the pulpit have made thousands, yes, millions, of skeptics and infidels.

—Ellen White, Great Controversy 536