The early Christians believed in judging and in punishment as vengeance,
the same as the Jews and other peoples believed in it. (See 13 Matthew
41-43, 23 Matthew 33, 25 Matthew 46.) They believed that the end of the
world was at hand; that the coming of the Lord was imminent; that some
of that generation would not taste death, and that God would punish
sinners in his own time. The New Testament is replete with this
doctrine, which was stated and elaborated in the so-called "Revelations
of St. Peter."

Probably this document was composed about the year 150 A.D. and by the
year 200 it was read as "Scripture" in some Christian communities.
Subsequently it disappeared and was known only by name until a
substantial fragment of the document was discovered at Akhmim in Egypt,
in the year 1887. A portion of it represents a scene in which the
disciples of Jesus ask him to show them the state of the righteous dead,
in order that this knowledge may be used to encourage people to accept
Christianity. The request is granted and the disciples are shown not
only a vision of the delightful abodes of the righteous, but also a
vivid picture of the punishments that are being meted out to the wicked.
It is interesting to note how the punishments are devised to balance in
truly retributive fashion the crimes mentioned. It is this type of
tradition that furnished Dante and Milton the basis for their pictures
of hell.

The following is the more interesting portion of this document:

And the Lord showed me [Peter] a very great country outside of this
world, exceeding bright with light, and the air there lighted with
rays of the sun, and the earth itself blooming with unfading flowers
and full of spices and plants, fair-flowering and incorruptible and