This is the second response to the saying, “I would rather be partying with my friends in hell than sitting on a cloud strumming a harp all day.” Satan has done a masterful job creating images that are totally misleading to draw the unsuspecting into his defeated cadre. In this blog I deal with the false image of hell.
The popular view is when someone dies, “he or she has gone to a better place,” or as I heard someone say of someone who loved fishing, “he has gone to the great fishing trip in the sky.” The idea seems to be that when one’s spirit leaves his or her body, it continues the life it had in another place and that life has all the same things as this life but without the problems. But who made heaven and hell and why? Why can you believe we can have the afterlife the way we want it? Can we remake it? We have absolutely no power to make heaven or hell the way we want it to be. We need to find out from the Creator the nature of heaven and hell and the reasons for them. Fortunately besides the testimony of the Bible, we have the testimonies of many people who have been able to witness hell and return to give us a first hand report.
Before I show you some of the testimonies, let me give you background that Jesus told some of these witnesses and some of which can be found in the words of the Bible. God created the angels as heavenly beings. They are not the same as humans and do not experience what humans experience. As a result angels constantly obey God and do not sin and therefore do not require redemption. God made humans with freewill so they could act out of love and not just obedience, so God could have a love relationship with His creation. But to do that He had to give them the capability of refusing the relationship, the capability freely to make the choice to love Him or not. As a result, humans sin, disobey God, and in some cases rebel against Him. When Lucifer and the other angels rebelled against God he had to cast them out of heaven with no recourse. But he made a recourse for humans. Jesus came without any rebellion or disobedience of God and took on the death He did not deserve to give us the pure life we couldn’t live. God made heaven perfect and beautiful for us to enjoy His love forever. He made hell as a place for Lucifer and all the angels that rebelled with him since He could not allow them in heaven. God never had any intentions of humans going to hell instead of heaven. It pains Him deeply when someone chooses to maintain his rebellion against God and choose to go with Satan’s troupe. So God does not send anyone to hell. He accepts those who have chosen Him into heaven, that is it. Those who have chosen to rebel against Him have chosen already the destiny of all those opposed to God, hell.
Glimpses of testimonies of hell: Dr. Maurice Rawlings was testing a patient when he suddenly died. Dr. Rawlings immediately began CPR. When the patient resuscitated, he had a grotesque grimace expressing sheer horror and cried out, “I’m in hell! Don’t let me go back to hell!” and then he died again. This happened several times before he stabilized. He also reports a woman who was struck my lightning, suddenly when she died learned the answer to a question she had always had, “Is there a God?”
The totality and reality of His presence exploded in her with every atom of her body filled with His glory. But then she was horrified to see that she was going away from Him, not toward Him. Donald Whitaker, Ph.D. was very successful and didn’t need God. As he faced death, he faded away into a total darkness that invaded his soul like no darkness he had ever experienced. He saw no light or felt any warmth or love. Instead he felt untold terror. B. W. Melvin died from cholera and traveled down an extremely dark tunnel. He saw unspeakable horror, smelled an extremely putrid stench and felt intense heat. He heard intense screams and saw people being tortured in cages. He saw tornado-like vortices bringing people who were deposited in 10 by 10 foot cubes, demons would enter these cubes and morph into images of people the victim knew or stage props to make the person feel like they were in a good place. Eventually the person begins to figure that he or she is being deceived and in fact is all alone. One former German SS officer was now being tortured over and over as those victims of his were. He felt himself being raped, being shot with a baby in his arms, being buried alive. Melvin abandoned his atheistic beliefs and became a follower of Jesus after his experience in hell.
Bill Weiss tells of similar testimonies of a dark tunnel, an open pit that smells of sulfur and other putrid odors, cries of pain and terror, people being dropped into the pit of fire, people in iron cages, and evil demons. Besides the pain and suffering there is absolute aloneness. Some report recognizing some of the people there. One had been shot and bled to death; another died of drug overdose; another went to church but didn’t take it seriously. In one case, the person there told the guest who died temporarily and was being shown hell, “Don’t come to this place. If you come here, there is no escape. There’s no way out.”
Lori Haider saw a reptilian creature with its claws in her head. She saw a prison cell in hell that was for her, but fire was closing in on it. She was going to be burned alive, but dying is not an option any more there, so she would repeat the burning alive experience over and over forever. She saw ten sinister looking demons around her cell that were ready and eager to torture her. They had instruments with which they could torture her inflicting unimaginable pain.
Ron DeVera died during quadruple bypass surgery and awoke with horror and dread. He was in a dark forest of dead, barren trees and an ashen sky. Sticky, black gook hung from the tree branches, and he knew it would harm him if he touched it. All around him among the trees were hundreds of demons, some with horns and claws, other like misshapen humans. One of the human-like demons sat down next to him and tortured him by pushing a claw into his hand to have joy seeing Ron’s pain. He knew he was going to be tortured like this forever if he didn’t get out. He thought, “I don’t belong here. I am a good person.”
There is much more I could report but I hope this glimpse is enough to assure you there is no partying in hell.
When Mary K. Baxter returned from her divine revelation of hell, her soul was in severe shock and she was so afraid of going back that she would scream in hysterical fear. The torment she endured there was so awful it made her sick enough and frantic enough to plead with everyone, “Please repent of your sins before it is too late!”
[I know this is very saddening, but it is truth and sharing it accentuates the wonder of heaven and the incredible gift it is to us.]