WHAT TOP CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS SAID ABOUT HELL BEING REAL
Today, many think they know better than the top Christian thinkers. They deny that the traditional doctrine of Hell is part of Christian faith. But who are they to contradict the figures that follow?
Peter Lombard, the Master of Sentences “Therefore the elect shall go forth…to
see the torments of the impious, seeing which they will not be grieved, but will
be satiated with joy at the sight of the unutterable calamity of the impious .”
Sent. Iv 50, ad fin
Martin Luther
When questioned whether the Blessed will not be saddened by seeing their nearest
and dearest tortured answers, “Not in the least.”
Gerhard “…the Blessed will see their friends and relations among the damned as
often as they like but without the least of compassion.”
Jonathan Edwards
“The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardour of the love and
gratitude of the saints of heaven.”
The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. .
.Can the believing father in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in
Hell. . . I tell you, yea! Such will be his sense of justice that it will
increase rather than diminish his bliss.
["The Eternity of Hell Torments" (Sermon), April 1739 & Discourses on Various
Important Subjects, 1738]
Jonathan Edwards:
“Reprobate infants are vipers of vengeance, which Jehovah will hold over hell,
in the tongs of his wrath, till they turn and spit venom in his face!”
“For ever harassed by a dreadful tempest, they shall fell themselves torn
asunder by an angry God, and broken by the weight of His hand, and transfixed
and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by the thunderbolt of God. So that to
sink into any gulf would be more tolerable than to stand for a moment in these
terrors.”
1785 “Here all judges have a mixture of mercy, but the wrath of God will be
poured out upon the wicked without mixture. Imagine yourself to be cast into a
fiery oven…and imagine also that your body were to lie there for a quarter of an
hour, full of fire, as full within and without as a bright coal fire, all the
while full of quick sense; what horror would you feel at the entrance of such a
furnace? Oh! Then how would your heart sink if you knew that after millions and
millions of ages your torment would be no nearer to an end than ever it was. But
your torment in hell will be immensely greater than this illustration
represents.” Works, vol. Iii. 260
“The pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to
receive the wicked: the flames do now rage and glow. The God that holds you over
the pit of hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider or some loathsome
insect, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked…He will trample them beneath His
feet with inexpressible fierceness; He will crush their blood out, and will make
it fly, so that it will sprinkle His garment and stain all His raiment.” Works,
vii. 499.
“You cannot stand before an infuriated tiger even; what then will you do when
God rushes against you in all His wrath?” Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
(Do not suppose this kind of preaching no longer fills the pulpits of the world.
This sermon is still continuously printed even to this day.)
Jonathan Edwards (Newspapers reported people leaving his sermons and
committing suicide from the fear he instilled in them.)
"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 and 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."
John Wesley 1791
“Is it not common to say to a child, ‘Put your finger in that candle, can you
bear it even for one minute?' How then will you bear Hell-fire? Surely it would
be torment enough to have the flesh burnt off from only one finger; what then
will it be to have the whole body plunged into a lake of fire, burning with
brimstone?” Sermon 73
“The wicked will gnaw their tongues for anguish and pain; they will curse God
and look upwards. There the dogs of hell, pride, malice, revenge, rage, horror,
despair, continually devout them.” Sermon 15,
“Consider that all these torments of body and soul are without intermission. Be
their suffering ever so extreme, be their pain ever so intense, there is no
possibility of their fainting away, no, not for one moment … They are all eye,
all ear, all sense. Every instant of their duration it may be said of their
whole frame that they are ‘Trembling alive all o'er, and smart and agonize at
every pore.' And of this duration there is no end … Neither the pain of the body
nor of soul is any nearer an end than it was millions of ages ago.” Sermon 73
John Calvin: "There are babies a span long in hell."
Charles. Spurgeon
"When thou diest, thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a hell for it,
but at the day of judgment they body will join they 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 they veins roads for the feet of pain to
travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall forever play his
diabolical tune of 'Hell's Unutterable Lament.'" Sermon on the Resurrection of
the Dead
