The Tortures of the Damned?
"...we are asked to
believe that God endlessly tortures sinners by the million,
sinners who perish because the Father has decided not to
elect them to salvation [while they were alive on earth],
though he could have done so, and whose torments are
supposed to gladden the hearts of believers in heaven. The
problems with this doctrine are both extensive and
profound." (C.H. Pinnock, Four views on
Hell, Zondervan, (1992), Page 136)
"How can
Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and
vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting
torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have
been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly
like Satan than like God, at least by any ordinary moral
standards, and by the gospel itself." (C.H. Pinnock,
"The Destruction
of the Finally Impenitent," Criswell Theological Review
4 (1990-Spring), Pages 246-47.)
Is
author/theologian Clark Pinnock, quoted above, exaggerating what
is taught in Christian circles these days? Is "everlasting
torture" too strong a word for what is alleged by theologians,
preachers, teachers, and church leaders of large numbers of
denominations to be happening to every single person throughout
human history who has died "unsaved"?
Brian
Schwertley, Pastor of
Westminster Presbyterian Church of Waupaca County, Wisconsin,
puts it this way on a Reformed Church website.
The doctrine of eternal
punishment is probably the most unpopular, hated and feared
teaching in the entire Bible. The thought of people burning
in hell for eternity is most repugnant to the human mind.
...
It is well known that those who die by
burning to death suffer tremendous pain. Burning to death is
a terrifying and excruciating experience. Throughout
history, death by burning was reserved for only the most
wicked of criminals. Yet the fire in hell is much worse than
earthly fire. Earthly fire consumes the flesh of its
victims. When the nerve endings are consumed, the pain
ceases. But for those in hell, the pain will not cease,
because the fire of hell does not consume. Rather than being
consumed by it they are preserved to burn and suffer and be
tormented on and on, forever and ever. (http://www.reformed.com/pub/hell.htm)
Not only does
Schwertly assert this view of the plan of God for the vast
majority of His human creation, he approvingly provides a
quotation from an earlier preacher who was even more eloquent
than himself in describing the tortures of Hell:
... The
noted American preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) gave
this warning regarding the everlasting nature of hell’s
torments: “Imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, or
a great furnace, where your pain would be much greater than
that occasioned by accidentally touching a coal of fire, as
the heat is greater. Imagine also that your body was to lie
there for a quarter of an hour, full of fire, and all the
while full of quick sense; what horror would you feel at the
entrance of such a furnace! And how long would that quarter
of an hour seem to you! And after you had endured it for one
minute, how overbearing it would be to you to think that you
had to endure the other fourteen! But what would be the
effect on your soul, if you knew you must lie there enduring
that torment to the full for twenty-four hours! And how much
greater would be the effect, if you knew you must endure it
for a whole year; and how vastly greater still, if you knew
you must endure it for a thousand years! Oh then, how would
your hearts sink, if you knew that you must bear it forever
and ever! That there would be no end! That after millions of
millions of ages, your torment would be no nearer to an end,
and that you never, never should be delivered! But your
torment in hell will be immensely greater than this
illustration represents.”
Modern
religious writers don't commonly create elaborate new
descriptions of the tortures of Hell. They don't need to. They
have a vast collection of the writings of previous centuries
from which to draw. Here is famous preacher C. H. Spurgeon, in a
sermon titled "The Resurrection of the Dead" that was first
delivered 2/17/1856:
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, body and
soul shall be together, each brimfull of pain, thy soul
sweating in its inmost pore drops of blood, and thy body
from head to foot suffused with agony; conscience, judgment,
memory, all tortured, but more—thy head tormented with
racking pains, thine eyes starting from their sockets with
sights of blood and woe; thine ears tormented with
"Sullen moans and
hollow groans.
And shrieks of tortured ghosts."
Thine heart beating high with fever; thy
pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony; thy limbs
crackling 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 of Hell's
Unutterable Lament; thy soul for ever and ever aching, and
thy body palpitating in unison with thy soul.
Modern
preachers seldom speak about another topic that was
enthusiastically addressed by their predecessors: the fact that
those who have been saved and are "in Heaven" are able to "look
down into" Hell and see the tortures of the damned--including
their own loved ones who didn't make it to Heaven with them!
Theologian Peter Lombard (d. 1160):
“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)
Jonathan Edwards, sermon
preached in April, 1739, "The Eternity of Hell’s Torments.
Hereby the saints will be made the more sensible how great
their salvation is. When they shall see how great the misery
is from which God has saved them, and how great a difference
he has made between their state and the state of others, who
were by nature (and perhaps for a time by practice) no more
sinful and ill-deserving than any, it will give them a
greater sense of the wonderfulness of God’s grace to them.
Every time they look upon the damned, it will excite in them
a lively and admiring sense of the grace of God, in making
them so to differ. ...
Fourth, the sight of hell
torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. It
will not only make them more sensible of the greatness and
freeness of the grace of God in their happiness, but it will
really make their happiness the greater, as it will make
them more sensible of their own happiness. It will give them
a more lively relish of it: it will make them prize it more.
When they see others, who were of the same nature and born
under the same circumstances, plunged in such misery, and
they so distinguished, O it will make them sensible how
happy they are. A sense of the opposite misery, in all
cases, greatly increases the relish of any joy or pleasure.
Jonathan Edwards again:
"Can the believing husband in Heaven be happy
with his unbelieving wife in Hell? Can the believing father in
Heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in Hell? Can the
loving wife in Heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in
Hell? I tell you, yea! Such will be their sense of justice that
it will increase rather than diminish their bliss." [Discourses
on Various Important Subjects, 1738.]
So not only do these preachers
and authors insist that God is a vengeful being who will torture
billions for eternity. They insist that the God of Love will
recreate the nature of humans so that they will take joy in the
suffering of others, including their closest loved ones. In 2
Timothy 3:3, the Apostle Paul notes that one of the signs of the
perilous "last days" would be people without "natural
affection." The Greek term that this comes from implies
"hard-hearted toward kindred." If people are created, then, with
such a natural soft-heartedness toward family, their nature
would have to be drastically changed to cause them to be able to
endure seeing the endless suffering of a loved one and take joy
in it!
Perhaps this doctrine is not
accepted these days in as wide a circle. But it would likely be
difficult to find articles on the Internet refuting it--by those
who still believe that the destiny of those closest loved ones
is torture in Hell for all eternity. The fact that their
loved ones in Heaven might not have to focus on their sufferings
in the way glorified by Edwards and Lombard doesn't really
change the reality of the suffering.
And although the material above
doesn't focus on the fact, the reality is that all of this vivid
imagery of the tortures of Hell is not a description of just the
fate of the "incorrigibly wicked" such as men who molest and
kill children. It is likewise the fate of the children who were
molested, if they didn't become saved Christians before their
death at the hands of their molesters! Perhaps they will get by
with enduring for eternity slightly cooler flames and slightly
less fiendish methods of torture, than those of their killers.
But it is not clear how their "saved" parents in Heaven could
draw comfort from that fact. In fact, according to the authors
above, those parents will rejoice at the sight of their
suffering children they see, convinced of God's righteousness by
it.
The Law in the
Old Testament never provided torture as a solution to any
situation. The Israelites were not a nation that used torture as
a method of discipline, penalty, or retribution. It was
"beast-like" peoples such as the Assyrians who were famous for
torture. For some grisly examples of the notorious tortures of
the ancient Assyrians, if the reader can stomach them, see
http://www.dushkin.com/olc/genarticle.mhtml?article=11492 .
What is painfully obvious when reading through these
descriptions is that they are almost identical to many of the
fiendish descriptions of the tortures that await the damned in
Hell. How Christians can possibly conceive of a righteous,
loving, just God whose methods are identical to the
Assyrians--but taken to the nth degree because those methods are
to be inflicted on humans for eternity--is almost beyond
comprehension.
The Bible does
not require the believer to accept this doctrine of eternal
torture.
The reader is encouraged to consider carefully all of the
documentation and commentary on this website
before coming to a personal conclusion on
just what the Bible does have to say about these matters.
This site contains a collection
of articles, on the topic of Hell and the Afterlife, that may
each be used independently for research purposes. But it also is
designed as a systematic, sequential overview of the whole
topic, which can be read like a book.
For those who would like to take
advantage of this perspective of the content, the articles are
arranged in the
Reading Guide as they would appear as chapters in a book, along
with a few reference chapters at the end such as would appear in
a book Appendix.
Use the
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PLEASE
NOTE:
No single short article can comprehensively cover
any aspect of the topic of Hell. If you have
questions or concerns regarding the material in this
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points you are wondering about.
All of the articles on this Is it true what they say about Hell?
website were written by Pam Dewey, with
the support and sponsorship of Common Ground Christian
Ministries. For more of Pam's inspirational and educational
writings, visit her Oasis
website.
All website content
© 2007, Pam
Dewey and Common Ground Christian Ministries
All rights reserved. Material may
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