Watts the hell are you talking about!

Just found this Isaac Watts hymn quoted in a book:

What bliss will fill the ransomed souls
When they in glory dwell
To see the sinner as he rolls
In quenchless flames of hell.

This is one of the nastier sides of the traditional view of hell. I hope I don't really need to explain why.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Here are two early sources which offer a different point of view:

- Apocalypse of Zephaniah: a non-canonical Jewish book, preserved by the Christians, that is dated to the 1st century by most scholars. In this book, the righteous, including the famous Jewish Patriarchs, pray for God to have mercy on all of the wicked suffering in Hell.

- Christian Sibyllines: a non-canonical Christian section of the Sibylline Oracles that is dated to the late 1st century by some scholars. It depicts the righteous in heaven praying for the wicked in Hell, who are in 'eternal' and 'immortal' torment. It is written that God will answer their prayers and rescue those in Hell. Several of the early church fathers, including St. Augustine, favorably cited select sections of the Sibyllines in their efforts to convert pagan Greeks and Romans.
Anonymous said…
I copied & pasted a link to this blog's All Souls Day post last year. A couple more universalist posts came out recently. Just thought the Christian universalist community might find them interesting.

http://mrholidays.blogspot.com/2014/04/holy-saturday-christs-descent-to-hell.html

http://mrholidays.blogspot.com/2014/04/divine-mercy-sunday.html

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