The Apocalypse of Peter: A Terrifying Vision of Hell

The Apocalypse of Peter, an early Christian writing once read in some churches, describes a horrific vision of the afterlife—where sinners suffer according to their deeds. Some early Church Fathers, including St. Clement of Alexandria, considered it inspired Scripture, however the Church concluded is was not and excluded it from the Bible.

Transcript

welcome back today is Thursday of Lent Daily and I'm actually not supposed to be sitting here but I am because I'm going to read some quotes yeah Janelle is usually homeschooling during the day but read the quotes about hell you know our favorite topic as of late as you have if you're new here we're journeying through heaven hell and purgatory looking at the private revelations of the saints and this is our last episode on hell uh tomorrow Father Christino is going to join us and then we're going to move on to purgatory for eight episodes so the last one on hell this one has a viewer discretion attached to it if you have young ears around you this uh they shouldn't hear this one uh and if you're sensitive to like for the example St francis of Rome if you're sensitive to that one don't watch this one cuz this one's not for you either but this one is again very eye opening because it comes from the Apocalypse of Peter now who is this Peter well it is thought that this account of hell comes from St peter himself the first pope uh and it's the earliest description of hell outside of the New Testament so I got this account from a great book called uh Saints Who Saw Hell by Dr paul Thickpin so thank you Dr paul thinking because this is it's a really excellent book and he also notes that uh this account was known and used in the early church he says that St st clement of Alexandria who lived between 150 and 215 AD so early in the church thought this account of hell by Peter was inspired now it turns out it wasn't because it's not in the cannon but that's what he thought and he acknowledges that others in his time do not believe this is an inspired word of God uh but also in the fifth century Dr thigpen mentions that in Palestine in the fifth century this account that we're going to read to you was read every Good Friday interesting because I think if it was read every Good Friday now it might hurt the collection plate it's very it's very graphic uh so with that let's get into the account of hell from Peter it was a place of punishment and those who were punished and the angels who punished them were clothing that were dark like the air of the place some there were hanging by their tongues these were the ones who had blasphemed the way of righteousness under them was laid a fire blazing up and tormenting them the word that strikes me is the way of righteousness it's like what is that i the way of living for Christ and I think the the note for us is that we got to be careful on what we say about the Catholic faith the way of righteousness and how do you react when you hear other people speak in a derogatory way about the Catholic faith it actually should disturb us because our Catholic faith is a gift from God it has been divinely revealed this is just not another subject that you can open up in a textbook like algebra or chemistry the Catholic faith and her truths are divinely revealed and when we speak about our faith we should use words of reverence there were others as well women who were hanged by their hair above that mire which boiled up on them these were the ones who had adorned themselves to engage in adultery the men who had joined with them in the defilement of adultery were hanging by their feet with their heads immersed in the boiling mire they said "We didn't believe we would ever end up here." One thing that strikes me about this is that word we we believed we never would end up here is that what it said mhm uh this is a a theme in some of the private revelations that we've read thus far um but attached to this is also this agony of regret that St katherine of Siennas mentioned i think we talked about that on Monday there's this like realization of the foolishness of living a life apart from God and this one specifically touches on adultery and so it be started me made me wonder like how many people in our society commit adultery research indicates that approximately 20% of married men and 13% of married women report having cheated on their spouses it's important to note that these figures are based on self-reported data which may be influenced by individuals willingness to disclose such behavior common sense kind of tells me here that these numbers are likely under reportported because who brags about committing adultery but I I feel like even if these numbers aren't accurate do we really take this all that seriously i know you just mentioned I know I was just thinking like you would hope that anybody who's practicing their faith that this wouldn't be um anything that they would ever consider however I I think like even just in our modern culture like even within extended family I I know lots of people who've been to like someone's wedding who was raised Catholic who's now no longer practicing the faith who's getting married for a second or third time and and it's like I don't even bat an eye at it anymore cuz it's kind of become so normalized that yeah that's just the way the society goes and even some of my extended family right so that quote was specifically on the sin of adultery but St peter gets into another one uh I'm unable to say it on YouTube because YouTube will flag this word and that it hurts the discoverability of the video uh and could even hurt the channel but it is the intentional destroying of a life of a child that is unborn so you know what that's called starts with an A i can't say it because the video gets flagged so keep that in mind as we censor our language and continue to read through this account jesus speaks to St peter other men and women who had their children will stand above them naked while their children stand over against them in a place of delight they will sigh and cry to God because of their parents saying "These are the ones who have despised and cursed and transgressed your commandments and delivered us to death they have cursed the angel who formed us and have hung us up and withheld from us the light that you have given to all creatures the milk of their mothers flowing from their breasts will congeal and from it will come flesh-eating beasts these creatures will turn on them and torment them forever with their husbands because they have abandoned the commandments of God and their children as for their children they will be given to the caregiving angel and those who kill their children will be tormented forever for so God wills it okay so this is a great evil within our society right now and one thing that struck me was I didn't realize it was something that happened in the early church i'm not familiar with their methods and means of doing something like this of destroying the life of an unborn child but in any case the early church is here we have very aware and calls it out as a great evil one thing to note to our modern day society is just the sheer number of children whose lives have been ended this way it's just it's just a a terrible evil and then the dullness of our conscience regarding this for just consider what percentage of people just in society now think that this is an evil mhm well can I share something it just makes me think of so just the other day I brought our son in for a checkup with our doctor and um right away she's like "Okay so are you guys going to have any more children?" And I just said "I don't know like I'm 43 you know and she's like well would you like me to prescribe you some birth control and I was like no i'm like you know we use natural family planning and I was thinking you know if she were to you know give me the pill for example I was like does she realize that that's that could cause the termination of one of these unborn babies and I think often people don't even realize that they think that it's a harmless means of preventing a pregnancy but actually it is actually has the potential of terminating a child that has been fertilized within their mother's womb what percentage of people do not object to this evil in the United States recent data indicates that a majority of adults do not morally object to destroying the life of an unborn baby according to Gallup polls from 2023 and 2024 54% of Americans consider to be morally acceptable that's like half the population that's dangerous it's like fear for your life this speaks to the depravity of our our culture now might be thinking well what about Catholics do Catholics have a more refined conscience when it comes to this a 2020 Gallup poll found that 54% of Catholics consider morally wrong which implies that 46% do not hold this view your thoughts here then well I'm just kind of looking at the math there it kind of makes it seem like there's not really much difference between Catholics and the rest of the population that's the point and again I don't think we understand the seriousness of the state of the church i think that's that's why I wanted to share some of these statistics we don't understand the seriousness of the state of the church and the the state of people's faith formation who go with the title Catholic um so we we do live in very serious and diabolical disorientating times so moving on what about pre-marital chastity beside them will be girls clad in darkness for a dress they will be painfully chastised and their flesh torn in pieces these are the ones who did not remain virgins until they were married and with these torments they will be punished and will feel them and again behold the corrupt women they are hung up by their necks and by their hair they will be cast into the pit these are the ones who plated their hair not simply to be attractive but to seek fornication so that they might ins snare the souls of men and lead them to damnation and the men who lay with them in fornication will be hung by their genitals in that place of fire they will say to one another "We didn't know we would end up in everlasting punishment." So again this leads me to the question for today do we value pre-marital chastity research indicates that premarital sex is very common in the United States a study analyzing data from 1954 to 2003 found that by age 44 95% of Americans had engaged in premarital sex a 2025 government study found that 90% of young males and 93% of young females aged 22 to 34 reported not being virgins so is this a big deal um again sometimes I think we can become so desensitized to what God is offended by and this is the point of this journey god is offended by sin and so our response number one if we have committed some of these sins is to know that God's mercy is available to us in the sacrament of reconciliation there's always hope that's that's the good news that God gives us the grace to amend our ways the second is we can make reparation for these sins by offering our Lenton sacrifices to God for for these offenses against him we can do that uh if you recognize some of these offenses within your family or your family lineage I would really encourage you then to offer your sacrifices and your prayers in reparation for what has happened in the past in your family a a beautiful spiritual practice looking at what has happened and say "God have mercy on my family now I offer this fasting for this uh sin in reparation of it or whatever else your Lenton sacrifice might include." Now besides sin being an offense to God what else does it do well it destroys society to emphasize this point J d unwin he's a anthropologist from Yale University he studied 80 societies six civilizations spanning 5,000 years and he concluded from all this research that when a society or civilization loses premarital chastity and marital fidelity it collapses within three generations and three generations according to him is 30 is 90 years 30 years is one generation according to his research friends we're in trouble if this research is true and his point of all this research and it's volumes of research by the way and he wasn't even a Christian he wasn't doing this research with a Christian philosophy world outview it was just here's the research this is what happens society collapses when we lose marital fidelity and premarital chastity within 90 years of this happening so our response to this I I I just don't think we understand the seriousness that we're in right now of how spiritually deprived society is we have this phrase a great diabolical disorientation that comes from Sister Lucia visionary of Fatima and this is what I believe we're living through you don't see this urgency from the shepherds of the church to speak to the issues that are eroding people's faith perhaps because well maybe because we don't want to offend people we've forgotten that sin offends God these are not times to be complacent the time of lukewarm Catholicism is over the time of casual Catholicism is over you take Catholicism casually you end up a casualty it's now time to decide to choose how do you want to live your life do you want to live for Christ do you want to live a holy life or do you want to live the way of the world there is no middle ground here there's no flirting with the line either we're all in or we're all out i I hope that these private revelations of hell and this was our last one that we're going to do because we're moving on to purgatory on Monday inspires you to have a greater love for Jesus Christ should this disturb us and make us a little bit afraid yeah yeah i think that's it's a good thing to be afraid of hell but it's an immature thing just to stay there because this should motivate us to realize this is what Jesus saves us from this is what he died for this is what he gave the church for to lead us away from eternal damnation which is our default position by the way the default position of humanity isn't everyone goes to heaven if that was the case what was the what's the point of Jesus what's the point of the gospel no the default position is damnation and so all the more reason to go to Jesus and say "Thank you for your sacrifice thank you for your mercy to praise God for the sacraments the sacrament of confession what a gift the sacrament of the eukarist what a gift receiving the body blood soul divinity of Jesus to nourish us and strengthen us to live a life of holiness the these are great gifts and how many people look at this kind of message and think it's just hogwash crazy talk fairy tale things many so should we should be then grateful that we've been given the grace to know the truth cuz so many don't so many don't do you feel blessed i hope you do because you are you are [Music] blessed with that share with us below what stands out to you and why and let's end with a prayer

oh Mary my most dear mother in what an abyss of evil I should find myself if you with your kind hand had not so often preserved me how many years should I already have been in hell if you with your powerful prayers had not rescued me my grievous sins were hurrying me there divine justice had already condemned me the raging demons were waiting to execute the sentence but you did appear oh mother not invoked nor asked by me and have saved me obtain for me the grace to be no longer ungrateful to you and to my God who for love of you has granted me so many favors pray for us oh holy mother of God that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ amen [Music]