#107 - HELL – J.W. WILLIAMS
“Who could have peace in the Christian hope while overwhelmed with the consciousness that many of those dearest to us are even right now shrieking hopelessly for watery relief from fiery torments? If any can be happy under such a burden of woe, are they hardened to insensibility; or do they really take their creed seriously?
Do believers in eternal hell torment really believe it, in their careless unconcern for the unsaved, or do they just give formal and thoughtless assent to their creeds. A sincere contemplation of such an infinite spectacle of woe as they present about hell is enough to unseat the reason of every believer of it if it weighs on his mind as it should if true. It would be appalling to know the number of all those who thought they had committed ‘the unpardonable sin,’ another erroneous tradition, and that they were hopelessly hell-bound because of it, and as a result became maniacs and suicides.
Yet in utter disregard of the frightful results of their hideous pagan ideas, the eternal hell torment evangelists would like to unchristianize those of us who dare to question their views by turning the searchlight of truth on their errors.
After hell is ended in the lake of fire, where can the previous inhabitants of hell go? Not back to hell, for it then will be no more. Not back into death, for ‘there shall be no more death.’ Only one destiny will be possible for them, and that is the one declared in Is. 26:9, and that is correction through judgment.”