In my blog on the Beatific Vision, I spoke about how at judgement, all would see what they did during life, how it adversely affected the world and how the world would have been had they not done the terrible things they did and for those that did good how their good affected the world. Those that had done evil would understand why they would never get to heaven, enjoy the Beatific Vision and would understand how they choose this by their life. I posit that they will also have a glimpse of hell, and just as those who choose communism in Russian and Socialism in Hitler’s Germany will see it as a sort of Utopia, where they can do whatever, they want. At the temporal start of hell at the end of time, it will seem as just the kind of place they want to be, immoral, catering to their basest desires, and they will not see the wars and conflicts that are sure to arise will, without a doubt, eventually create the everlasting fire and land of worms that infest humans and never die (possibly biological weapons) and how this depravity will have no end and no bounds, getting worst forever. On earth people will eventually die and will earn either eternal happiness or endless forever worsening horror with none of God’s precepts or laws to stop it. But just in those two cases and other similar cases like the French revolution and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, they will not see the future and what it will become and freely choose it.
This is the tragedy of all that do not follow God’s plan. They cannot see that, as God described in Romans 1:16-23 not following his precepts lead to chaos and pain in this world as it will in the next. In my opinion God will give the damned one last chance to try correct their error, which they are doomed to fail because of their inability to love each other and work together to prevent it from happening. Though their hatred for God will grow stronger and stronger forever as things become worst and worst, they will be unable to end their existence (try though they might) and will know they will have created their own destiny. The one thing that they will need to change their fate – compassion and help for one another through love and subjugation to God’s laws, will be missing in hell. In essence, except for the correction for original sin in the “essence of their souls” which all in heaven will have and the direct knowledge of God, hell will start the same as heaven in environment which the inhabitants will transform through their greed, avarice and lusts into the place in which they will be in eternal fire, creating worms that never die and eternal misery through endless wars and plagues etc., created not by God but by them.
But what in the Bible hints at what I say is true? Christ talks about the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46. At the end of this passage Christ says: “and these shall go into everlasting punishment; and the just into everlasting life.” It does not say they are dragged by the angels or thrown somewhere; it is implied if not directly stated that they go on their own volition. Would this be the case if they were walking into something that was already horrible or on fire? Similarly, in Revelation 22:1-21 it speaks of a holy city. Inside are all the beautiful things – the tree of life and water, and the just can enter but outside the gate is where the mortal sinners must stay. To me this implies that the just and the mortal sinners are in the same environment but the just are inside the protected city having been transformed to be “as the angels in heaven” with the wound of original sin healed (Mark 12:25) and “we are now the sons of God; and it had not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we will see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2). To me this tells of the fundamental transformation which the just will be given because they have “said yes” to everything God wanted them to do and accept in life and thereby agree to be changed, trusting in the fact that God is all good, in whatever way God has planned from the foundation of the world. It will enable us to live in peace for eternity unlike those outside of the heavenly city, who will be as they were on earth fighting endlessly and eventual transforming the wasteland outside of the city into the land of everlasting fire where the worm dies not. Through God’s protection those inside the city will not be affected.
Another passage worth considering with respect to heaven and the damned is Exodus 33:20 (“And again he said: thou canst not see my face; for man shall not see me and live”). The fact is that actual annihilation might occur if one is not “inoculated” with the repair of original sin to his or her soul and he or she is exposed to direct knowledge of God. In heaven Catholics believe we will know God, especially His perfect loving intellect, directly, not through our senses as we know every other thing on earth. This direct knowledge of God is part of what makes heaven – the Beatific Vision, so wonderful! The lesson is don’t blame God. Don’t be prideful, reform your life and join His church. We all know which church that is and despite what the present day modernist say, keep practices and holy traditions as the father’s of the church followed so closely in the first five centuries of the church. The things which are most fought against by modernists because they want to satisfy their own wants for an easy life or value signal is to accept contraception as not offensive to God’s first command “Increase and multiply, and fill the Earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28), to abolish priestly celibacy which is against what Christ said for those who want to follow him closely (i.e. priest, bishops in 1 Corinthians 7), to allow to remarry after divorce though Christ would say that this is adultery (Matthew 19:9), to say that civil leaders do not have the authority to prosecute a just war, kill someone in self-defense or carry out capital punishment on a justly convicted felon for what authorities classify as a capital offense (John 19:11, if God were against this Christ would have been direct and said something like: in my kingdom only God has the authority to take someone’s life – Christ was never known to not say exactly what he meant to authorities) and finally pornography and practices associated with it (Matthew 5:28). There are other things but at least these are clear in my mind. Modernist aim to overthrow the will of God by weasel words and erroneous logic. The catholic church does not pull these restrictions out of the air but as you can see from the quotes directly from the Bible that from the biblical perspective their views cannot be justified. We must follow what we know is Gods will if we believe He is all good and lays down precepts that are good for our happiness both in this world and in eternity.
Traditional Thomistic Catholic 