Speak for yourself…I don’t rejoice in any suffering…it is contrary to Christs teachings…we are to return good for evil
On earth. But Scripture tells a different story about the relationship between those in Heaven and on Hell. Will we not rejoice in these individuals as signs of God’s perfect justice and power? Will we not see the inherent love of sin and evil within them (even a close family member) and rejoice that God’s justice has answered it? See below for Scripture references.
The mind recoils in horror. I don’t suppose you have any Church teachings to back this “awful thing” up?
Why would you suppose I don’t? That’s a bit presumptuous, isn’t it? I suppose you’re assuming (based on the pun on my screen name, which is often misunderstood) that I’m just trying to insert some dark and unsubstantiated thoughts, but here is what Scripture and the Church Fathers, doctors, etc. (as well as a few Protestants) say on the matter. I don’t suppose you have any Scripture or Church writings that counter it?
Scripture:
Revelation 16:5-7 - “And I heard the angel of the waters saying, ‘Righteous art Thou who art and who wast, O Holy One, because Thou didst judge these things; for they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and Thou hast given them blood to drink. They deserve it.’ And I heard the altar saying, ‘Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments.’”
Revelation 18:20 - “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her”
Revelation 19:1-3 - “‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; because His judgments are true and righteous; for he has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and has avenged the blood of His bondservants on her.’ And a second time they said, ‘Hallelujah! Her smoke rises up forever and ever’”
Proverbs 21:15 - “The execution of justice is joy for the righteous.”
Exodus 15:1-12 - Moses rejoiced and sang God’s praises when he saw God’s glory manifested in the destruction of Pharaoh and all his forces
Church Fathers:
“The blessed in the heavenly kingdom will see the torment of the damned so** they may even more thoroughly enjoy their blessedness**” - St. Thomas Aquinas
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
Gerhard
“.
the Blessed will see their friends and relations among the damned as often as they like but without the least of compassion.”
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
Tertullian
**“At that greatest of all spectacles, that last and eternal judgment how shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; **so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from applause.”
"What a spectacle. . .when the world. . .and its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy? As I see. . .illustrious monarchs. . . groaning in the lowest darkness, Philosophers. . .as fire consumes them! Poets trembling before the judgment-seat of. . .Christ! I shall hear the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; view play-actors. . .in the dissolving flame; behold wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows. . .What inquisitor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favor of seeing and exulting in such things as these? Yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination." [De Spectaculis, Chapter XXX]
Augustine
"They who shall enter into [the] joy [of the Lord] shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness. . .The saints’. . . knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted. . .with the eternal sufferings of the lost." [The City of God, Book 20, Chapter 22, “What is Meant by the Good Going Out to See the Punishment of the Wicked” & Book 22, Chapter 30, “Of the Eternal Felicity of the City of God, and of the Perpetual Sabbath”]
Thomas Aquinas
**In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. **. .So that they may be urged the more to praise God. . .The saints in heaven know distinctly all that happens. . .to the damned. [Summa Theologica, Third Part, Supplement, Question XCIV, “Of the Relations of the Saints Towards the Damned,” First Article, “Whether the Blessed in Heaven Will See the Sufferings of the Damned. . .”]
“The same fire” (which he decides to be material) " torments the damned in hell and the just in purgatory.The least pain in purgatory exceeds the greatest in this life." Summa Theo. Suppl. Qu. 100, acts. 2, n. 3.
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]
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.”
St. Anthony Mary Claret
"Once [a soul] is condemned by God, then God’s friends agree in God’s judgment and condemnation. For all eternity they will not have a kind thought for this wretch. Rather they will be satisfied to see him in the flames as a victim of God’s justice. (“The just shall rejoice when he shall see the revenge . . .” Psalm 57:11) They will abhor him. A mother will look from paradise upon her own condemned son without being moved, as though she had never known him."-- “The Pains of Hell,” Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, consisting of thirty-five meditations from The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius as explained by St. Anthony Mary Claret. St. Claret’s “explanations” were written in Spanish in the late 1800’s.
