THE WORSHIP of the devil that is now spreading across the U.S.A. and other countries is a fearful reminder of the existence of that most malignant spirit, a reminder also that he has great power to intervene in the affairs of the human race and to drag human beings to hell with him for all eternity. To forestall the devil, and to warn humanity, Our Lady showed a vision of hell to the three children at Fatima. God confirmed this vision of hell, along with all the other revelations, by the great miracle of the sun on the following October 13th.
There is therefore a hell, but one would scarcely know this by going to church in the sixties and seventies. Betraying the Gospel and the very words of Christ Himself, preachers are deliberately refusing to speak of hell from the pulpit and they must be prepared to face, on the Last Day, the frightful accusations of souls damned forever because these warnings were unjustly withheld from them. For it has been laid down many times that the People of God are entitled to have the full Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ preached to them and not a version watered down to suit the whims of individual priests.
All through history God has permitted chosen souls to have visions of hell, so that a constant stream of warnings would be relayed to the People of God of the fearful Judgment to come when all of us must answer to the most strict Judge for the gifts and talents that have been entrusted to us for the few brief years of our life on earth.
We publish below some warnings to saintly souls, excerpted from the book Heaven or Hell, by George Panneton.
Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727), had memorable visions of Hell. Here are some extracts:
February 14, 1694, she saw Hell opened. Many souls were falling into it, hideous and black, and terrifying to behold. They disappeared into the middle of the flames ... She could hear the howls and blasphemies of the damned, and with it all there was a stench, and horrible darkness.
January 27, 1716, Mary, appearing to the saint, summoned two angels to be her guardians and lead her in spirit to the gates of Hell ... She found herself facing a darksome place, deep and stinking, out of which came noises of animals, the hissing of snakes, dreadful voices, and claps of thunder.
She perceived a tall mountain, all covered with serpents and vipers. Curses were issuing from beneath them, then the mountain opened and seemed to be full of damned souls and demons holding them bound with chains of fire ...
She saw other mountains, the scenes of torments even more cruel. In the center of this infernal abode was raised up a throne. There sat Lucifer, a frightful sight to see. He seemed to have a head-piece composed of a hundred heads, all stuck with spears, and on the butt of each there was a sort of eye, emitting spurts of fire, which set all Hell ablaze. The number of demons and damned was incalculable; yet each of these beheld this horrible head and received from Lucifer torment upon torment. He saw them all, and all of them saw him.
"Here," she said, "my angels gave me to understand that, just as in Heaven the sight of God brings happiness to all the saints, so here in Hell that dreadful form of Lucifer, that hellish monster, brings torment to the damned. Their greatest punishment is loss of God; this is the pain that Lucifer endures the first of all, and then the rest of them participate in it. He blasphemes, and all blaspheme; he curses, and so do they; he suffers and is in torture, and all suffer and are in torture too.
"I believe," she said finally, "that if I had not had my angels with me, and had not been fortified by my dear Mother, I would have died of horror. All I have told of it is a mere nothing, and all that I have heard of it from preachers is nothing at all, when compared with what I saw."
Here now is a vision of the Venerable Bernard-Francois de Hoyos:
January 9, 1730, the Venerable Bernard-Francois, while making the Spiritual Exercises, had a terrible vision. At God's command, his Angel Guardian conducted him to the edge of the abyss of Hell.
"I saw," he said, "an immense sea of fire; some of the damned, driven by fury, came forth from it, but fell back at once, thrown in by the devils, and dragged toward the abyss.
"Then I beheld the particular forms of punishment which are dealt to the unchaste, the covetous, the malicious, and others. Overcome at the sight of these monstrosities, I averted by eyes ... After we had gone a long way farther, my angel said to me: 'Come and look, and write down what you see.'
"The path I was following gaped before me, and I saw a hollow cave even more horrible than the first. Here were imprisoned unworthy priests, guilty of sacrilege. These wretches suffered more than the rest of the damned. They were tormented especially in those parts of the body which had touched the Sacred Host —their hands were like burning coals; their tongues were torn and hanging out of their mouth; their hearts were consumed with intense fire, a prey to frightful pain ..."
More recently, in 1922, at Poitiers, a religious of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Sister Josefa Menendez, also had several visions of Hell. Here are some details of these:
One of the damned souls cried out: 'This is my torture ... that I want to love and cannot; there is nothing left in me but hatred and despair. If one of us could so much as make a single act of love ... this would no longer be hell ... But we cannot, we live on hatred and malevolence ..."
Some yell because of the martyrdom of their hands. Perhaps they were thieves, for they say: 'Where is our loot now? Cursed hands ... Why did I want to possess what did not belong to me ... and what in any case I could only keep for a few days?'
Others curse their tongues, their eyes ... whatever was the occasion of their sin ... 'Now, O body, you are paying the price of the delights you granted yourself! ... and you did it of your own free will ...'
I saw many worldly people fall into hell, and no words can render their horrible and terrifying cries: 'Damned forever ... I deceived myself .... I am lost ... I am here forever! ... There is no remedy possible! ... a curse on me!'
Reprinted with the permission of Don Bosco 's "Madonna," March 1980.
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