TRADITION SHOWS THE HELL DOCTRINE AND THAT PEOPLE GO THERE IS BASIC CORE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
For about two thousand years, the whole Church had no disputes at all over the doctrine of unceasing suffering for those condemned to Hell who die in serious sin. This doctrine is definitely part of the Christian faith.
Jesus Christ - according to the Bible, Luke 16 In Hell, where he was in
torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he
called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip
of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire’.
But Abraham replied, ‘Son remember that in your lifetime you received your good
things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you
are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been
fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone else
cross over from there to us.’
Comment: Abraham gives him no pity at all and expresses no wish that he could
help. Indeed he rubs his nose in it.
We are looking at those scholars on the ground who spoke for the people and showed what everybody believed. In a sense that has more authority than what comes from a top leader in the Church.
QUOTES FROM CHRISTIAN WEBSITE
http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/hell-fire.htm
Andrew Welwood
(speaks of the saints as being) “overjoyed in beholding the vengeance of God ,”
and their beholding of the smoke of the torment of the wicked as “a passing
delectation.”
Samuel Hopkins
“This display of the divine character will be most entertaining to all who love
God, will give them the highest and most ineffable pleasure. Should the fire of
this eternal punishment cease, it would in a great measure obscure the light of
heaven, and put an end to a great part of the happiness and glory of the
blessed.”
Bishop Newcomb
“The door of mercy will be shut and all bowels of compassion denied, by God, who
will laugh at their destruction; by angels and saints, who will rejoice when
they see the vengeance' by their fellow-suffer the devil and the damned
rejoicing over their misery.” Catechetical Sermons.
Thomas Boston, Scottish preacher, 1732
"God shall not pity them but laugh at their calamity. The righteous company in
heaven shall rejoice in the execution of God's judgment, and shall sing while
the smoke riseth up for ever."
Isaac Watts:
During America 's "Great Awakening" the popular hymn writer, Isaac Watts
(1674-1748), even set Christians' feet to tapping with this crisp little verse:
What bliss will fill the ransomed souls,
When they in glory dwell,
To see the sinner as he rolls,
In quenchless flames of hell.
J.I. Packer
"...love and pity for hell's occupants will not enter our hearts." J.I. Packer
in article "Hell's Final Enigma" in "Christianity Today Magazine, April 22,2002
."
Christian Theology in Plain Language, p. 219.
"Non-Christians often ask the Christian, “But how can the God of love allow any
of his creatures to suffer unending misery?” The question is, how can he not?
The fact that God is love makes hell necessary. “Hell,” as E. L. Mascall once
said, “is not compatible with God’s love; it is a direct consequence of it.”
That was his way of stressing the fact that the very God who loves us is the one
who respects our decisions. He loves us, but he does not force his love on us.
To force love is to commit assault. He allows us to decide. He loves us, he
encourages our response, he woos us, he pursues us, he urges us, but he does not
force us, because he respects us."
Richard Baxter
It is not a terrible thing to a wretched soul, when it shall lie roaring
perpetually in the flames of hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at
them; when…God shall mock them instead of relieving them; when none in heaven or
earth can help them but God, and he shall rejoice over them in their calamity .
–(“The Saint's Everlasting Rest” 1846)
Alban Butler 1773
“Do we think that God can find torments in nature sufficient to satisfy His
provoked vengeance? No, no; He creates new instruments more violent, pains
utterly inconceivable to us. A soul for one venial sin shall suffer more than
all the pains of distemper, the most violent colics, gout, and stone joined in
complication,--more than all the most cruel torments undergone by malefactors,
or invented by the most barbarous tyrants,--more than all the tortures of the
martyrs summed up together. This is the idea which the Fathers give us [even?]
of Purgatory. And how long souls may have to suffer there we know not.” Lives of
the Saints, November 2
Thomas Boston, Scottish preacher, 1732
“God will hold sinners with one hand over the pit of hell, while He torments
them with the other.” Fourfold State.
Dr. Gardiner Spring
“When the omnipotent and angry God, who as access to all the avenues of distress
in the corporeal frame, and all the inlets to agony in the intellectual
constitution, undertakes to punish, He will convince the universe that He does
not gird Himself for the work of retribution in vain.”
John Calvin (Who had some of his theological enemies burned to death in green
slow-burning wood.):
"Forever harrassed 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 his hand, so
that to sink into any gulf would be more tolerable than to stand for a moment in
these terrors.
Dean of Glouchester
“There is the cup of trembling and of wrath. Your hands must take it, your mouth
must drink it. But you can never drain it. There is no last drop. Infinite
vengeance ever fills it to the brim. Eternal wrath is ever bringing more. What
is the curse? It is the endless accumulation of all the miseries which God's
resources can command and God's power can inflict. It is the fiery torrent from
the lake of fire. It is the pain which cannot be keener, despair which cannot be
blacker, and anguish which cannot be more bitter. It is eternity in the oneness
of all torment.” Christ in all.
Bishop Oxenden—Late Metropolitan of Canada
“It would be difficult to measure the waters of the sea; but it is impossible to
reckon the ages of a boundless eternity. After millions of years it will only
begun. God's wrath in hell will be always ‘wrath to come.' Few are so tossed in
this world but they have some rest. There are few tempests without some lull
between the storm. But there is no pause in that storm which falls upon the
inhabitants of hell.” Great Truths
Thomas Goodwin
Sin in thee and the Injury of it to God is an eternal Stain, which Hell Fire
cannot eat out, or satisfy God, but in an Eternity of time. –“A Discourse of the
Punishment of Sin in Hell” 1680
Richard Baxter
If it will be an intolerable thing to suffer the heat of fire for a year or a
day, or an hour, what will it be to suffer ten thousand times more for ever?
What if thou wert to suffer Lawrence 's death, to be roasted upon a gridiron; or
to be scraped or pricked to death as other martyrs were; or if thou wert to feed
upon toads for a year together? If thou couldst not endure such things as these,
how wilt thou endure the eternal flames ? -- (“The Saint's Everlasting Rest”
1846)
John Shower
We have heard…of some who have endured breaking on the Wheel, ripping up of
their Bowels, fleaing alive, racking of the joints, burning of Flesh, pounding
in a mortar, tearing in pieces with Flesh-hooks, boyling in Oyl, roasting on hot
fiery Gridirons, etc. And yet all these, tho' you should superad thereto all
Diseases, such as the Plague, Stone, gout, Strangury, or whatever else you can
name most torturing to the Body…they would all come short…of that Wrath, that
Horror, that unconceivable Anguish, which the Damned must inevitably suffer
every Moment, without any Intermission of their pains, in Hellish Flames .
–(Heaven and Hell, 1700s)
John Bunyan
Set case you should take a man, and tie him to a stake, and with red hot Pincers
pinch off his flesh by little pieces for two or three years together, and at
last, when the poor man cryes out for ease and help, the tormenters answer, Nay
but besides all this you must be handled worse. We will serve you thus these 20
years together, and after that we will fill your mangled body full of scalding
lead, and run you through with a red hot spit, would this not be
lamentable?...But he that goes to hell shall suffer ten thousand times worse
torments then these, and yet shall never be quite dead under them . – “A Few
Sighs From Hell” or “The Groans of a damned Soul…” 1658)
William Gearing
Your dainty delicate persons that now cannot brook the least savory smell, shall
lie down in a stinking dungeon, in a loathsome lake, that burns with fire and
brimstone for ever . – “A Prospect of Heaven” 1673
Reverend J. Furniss
"Little child, if you go to hell there will be a devil at your side to strike
you. He will go on striking you every minute for ever and ever without stopping.
The first stroke will make your body as bad as the body of Job, covered, from
head to foot, with sores and ulcers. The second stroke will make your body twice
as bad as the body of Job. The third stroke will make your body three times as
bad as the body of Job. The fourth stroke will make your body four times as bad
as the body of Job. How, then, will your body be after the devil has been
striking it every moment for a hundred million of years without stopping?
Perhaps at this moment, seven o'clock in he evening, a child is just going into
hell. To morrow evening, at seven o'clock, go and knock at the gates of hell and
ask what the child is doing. The devils will go and look. They will come back
again and say, the child is burning. Go in week and ask what the child is doing;
you will get the same answer, it is burning; Go in a year and asks the same
answer comes it is burning. Go in a million of years and ask the same question,
the answer is just the same--it is burning. So, if you go for ever and ever, you
will always get the same answer--it is burning in the fire.” ---The Sight of
Hell (A Catholic book for children….Quoted from Christ Triumphant by Thomas
Allin)
"The fifth dungeon is the red hot oven. The little child is in the red hot oven.
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." (The Sight of Hell Quoted from Christ Triumphant by Thomas Allin)
Jeremy Taylor of the Church of England
"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."
“Husbands shall see their wives, parents shall see their children tormented
before their eyes…the bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in hell
like grapes in a wine-press, which press on another till they burst…”
“This temporal fire is but a painted fire in respect of that penetrating and
real fire in hell.”
Barrow
“Our bodies will be afflicted continually by the sulphureous flame, piercing the
inmost sinews.”
John Bunyan 1688
“Their bodies will be raised from the dead as vessels for the soul—vessels of
wrath. The soul will breathe hell-fire, and smoke and coal will seem to hang
upon its burning lips, yea the face, eyes, and ears will seem to be chimneys and
vents for the flame, and the smoke of the burning , which God, by His breath,
hath kindled therein, and upon, them, which will be held one in another, to the
great torment and distress of each other.” Works, ii 136.
South 1716
“Every lash which God then gives the sinner shall be with a scorpion, every pain
which He inflicts shall be more eager than appetite, more cruel than revenge;
every faculty both of soul and body shall have its distinct property, and
peculiar torment applied to it, and be directly struck there where it has the
quickest, the sharpest, and the tenderest sense of any painful impression…But I
shall use no other argument to evince the greatness of their torment but only
this, that the devil shall be the instrument of their execution. And surely a
mortal enemy will be a dreadful executioner; and the punishment which an
infinite justice inflicts by the hands of a implacable malice must needs be
intolerable.” Sermons, vii. 143
John Whitaker 1783
“The bodies of the damned will all be salted with fire, so tempered and prepared
as to burn the more fiercely, and yet never consume.” Sermon on Death, Judgment,
and Eternity.
Sharrock
For if a man were to have all his sins laid to his charge, and communion with
the devils , and as much wrath as the great God of Heaven can inflict upon them,
I say, if it were but for a time, even ten thousand years, if then it might have
an end, there would be ground for comfort, and hopes of deliverance; but here is
thy misery, this is thy state for ever, here thou must be for ever…When thou
hast been in hell for as many thousand years as there are stars in the firmament
or drops in the sea, or sands on the sea shore, yet thou hast to lie there for
ever. O this one word, ever, how will it torment thy soul! – (“The Miscellaneous
Works”)
Bonhour
“These unhappy children of wrath not only suffer during eternity, but they
suffer eternity during each moment of their existence. Eternity is engraven on
the flames which torment them…O tormenting thought! O miserable condition! To
burn for ever! To weep for ever! To rage for ever!” Meditations, translated for
English Roman Catholics
John Foster 1843
“It is infinitely beyond the highest archangel's faculty to apprehend a
thousandth part of the horror of the doom to eternal damnation.”
John Gill
"Ver. 49. For every one shall be salted with fire, &c.] That is, every one of
those that transgress the law of God, offend any that believe in Christ, retain
their sins, and sinful companions; every one of them that are cast into hell,
where the worm of conscience is always gnawing, and the fire of divine wrath is
always burning, with that fire every one of them shall be salted: that fire
shall be to them, what salt is to flesh; as that keeps flesh from putrefaction
and corruption, so the fire of hell, as it will burn, torture, and distress
rebellious sinners, it will preserve them in their beings; they shall not be
consumed by it, but continued in it: so that these words are a reason of the
former, showing and proving, that the soul in torment shall never die, or lose
any of its powers and faculties; and particularly, not its gnawing, torturing
conscience; and that the fire of hell is inextinguishable; for though sinners
will be inexpressibly tormented in it, they will not be consumed by it; but the
smoke of their torments shall ascend for ever and ever; and that they will be so
far from being annihilated by the fire of hell, that they shall be preserved in
their beings in it, as flesh is preserved by salt." Expositor