23 minutes in hell (8 page)

Another time, I was invited to address a youth ministry in South Orange County. You could hear a pin drop as I shared my experience with them. They listened with such intent, had a lot of questions, and desperately wanted material to share with their friends. After speaking with them, the youth pastor told me he had never seen them so attentive before.

It is a privilege to speak before the younger generation. They are sharp, smart, and don’t cut you any slack. I appreciate their directness and their inquisitiveness regarding God and the supernatural.

Kansas City

This is another account of God’s orchestrating and providing confirmation. We were at a prayer meeting one night, and a pastor said, “I feel you are to go to Kansas City, that God is doing something big in Kansas.” The next day we received a call from Hal Linhardt, a long-time pastor in the Kansas City area, who asked if we would come out to speak at several churches. He had seen a video of my wife and me, and he really wanted us to come out and share. We knew God was telling us to go.

After arriving in Kansas, Hal told us how all this came about. He had recently joined forces with another ministry. A lady close to the ministry had a vision of hell and was very disturbed by it. She told the pastor about the vision, and it prompted him to ask Hal for an in-depth study on hell. During Hal’s study, another leader of the church said that he had seen a video of us sharing our experience about hell. He gave the video to Hal, who knew this was a sign from God to help him complete his study. He asked his pastor if he could invite me to speak at their church. His pastor agreed, so he contacted us.

We were delighted to get to know him and his family during our week in Kansas City. Though we were there for only a short visit, we felt we had become lifelong friends. We were inspired by his humble attitude, his excellent character, his stand for truth, and his dedication to Jesus. During that week we spoke at five different churches. At each one we saw people respond to the message. People of all ages shared with us that God had touched their hearts through our words and that their lives were changed.

One particular teenager came forward and gave his life to Jesus. Just one week earlier, he had tried to commit suicide because he faced jail time for a recent car accident.

Another person I remember was a little seven-year-old girl. She and her mother came up to us after one of the meetings. It was clear that she had been crying, and her mother proceeded to tell us of how strongly her daughter was affected by our story. Her daughter had told her, “We have to tell our neighbors about Jesus, because they are going to hell!” She was so upset that she was sobbing at the thought of her neighbors perishing in such a horrible place. Her mother was touched by her daughter’s sincerity and compassion for others, and she thanked us for coming and sharing the story with the church. We were deeply moved and humbled by the reaction of this little girl and her commitment to do something to help her neighbors.

At another church on this trip, we met a lady who was concerned for her husband. For years she had tried to get him to go to church with her, but he consistently resisted. After the meeting, she approached us and asked where we would be speaking next. She thought the story was unusual enough to get her husband’s attention and that he might be willing to hear us. Sure enough, she showed up with her husband the very next morning at the last church on that trip.

Afterward she came up to us again and introduced us to her husband. We weren’t sure what to expect, as he was not a regular “churchgoer.” To our surprise, he was excited and glad he came. He told us that he thought most churches were filled with hypocritical rhetoric and that he didn’t need to attend, but now he had a different outlook altogether. “I want to thank you for opening my eyes,” he said. He could see that he had misjudged both God and the Bible, and was choosing to believe differently in the future. He was completely changed, and his wife seemed eternally grateful. “If you’re ever back in town, you can stay with us!” they said.

These are just a few of the numerous experiences in Kansas City that really touched us. Several years have passed since our visit to Kansas City, but the reports continue to pour in via e-mail of many coming to Christ after hearing about the reality of hell.

Around the World

Our first venture out of the state was to a little church in Texas. Although there were only about a hundred people there, the meeting turned out to have a far greater effect than we could have imagined. We didn’t know it at the time, but the church had videotaped the meeting.

Even though the tape didn’t turn out to be the most professional quality, it has literally reached the world. We have had reports from all across America and many other nations, including China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Many calls and e-mails have come in, all with positive reports.

The tape had not been advertised, marketed, or distributed in any formal way. This grassroots distribution is something we never could have foreseen or planned. I truly believe it has been orchestrated by God to get the message out. In fact, a similar thing has happened with an audio CD of this message.

Three years ago, Hal was in a meeting telling the story of my trip to hell. One of the men in the audience happened to own an audio duplicating company and said that he felt this message needed to be spread. He offered to duplicate fifteen hundred CDs for free to be handed out in their community. Several churches in the area got excited and decided to pass the CDs out on Halloween. They have done this for the past three years now; they have distributed more than seven thousand CDs in the Kansas City area alone.

More Radio

Recently I received a phone call from a Christian radio talk show host. He heard a tape of my account, and it had so impacted him that he wanted to interview me. As we talked, he shared his near-death experience. He died and was on his way to hell, but he had been revived. He said that he had traveled down a large tunnel-like cavern. This cavern was lined with evil creatures of every shape and size. The creatures desperately tried to grab him as he descended. As the light continually decreased, the fear inside him grew steadily stronger. He knew that he was on his way to hell.

He said that he knew I was telling the truth. Besides, he appreciated all of the Scripture references to validate the experience. The radio show was a success, and he expressed a desire to have me on the air again.

Found in a Rental Car

This story is inspiring. There is a gentleman who works at a rental car agency in Kansas City as a service agent. One day he found a CD on the ground in his service bay. It had been removed from one of the rental cars and was headed for a trash can since there was no way to identify which car it came from. The CD was titled, “23 Minutes in Hell.” This service agent was intrigued by the title and thought he’d listen to it. He said that for the next forty minutes or so he couldn’t turn it off. He admitted that he had really never thought much about religion and had never been a churchgoer. He said he had pretty good radar for someone not telling the truth, as he had lied a lot in his day. He thought, “This guy either really believes he was in hell, or he was actually there.” He couldn’t think of anything else the rest of the night, and at the end of the CD he prayed.

Just in Time

This last story is quite sobering. It reminds us that life is truly short, and some decisions should be made quickly…

I received an e-mail from a lady in Georgia. As a boy, her son gave his life to God and was living a good life. Unfortunately, during his teen years, his life took a bad turn, and he got involved with drugs and alcohol. He began to get into trouble and was in and out of jails and hospitals for twenty years. One night in June 2005, his mother was listening to the CD “23 Minutes in Hell,” which tells the story that’s in this book. To her surprise, her son stopped to listen and took the message seriously. At the end of the CD, there is a prayer, and her son repeated it. He was so excited! He told his mother that he was going to church with her the following Sunday to tell of how he’d been changed, but he never made it. He died in his sleep that night at age thirty-nine. In his mother’s e-mail she said, “Amidst our grief at losing Brian so suddenly, we have the joy of knowing he is in the presence of the Lord Jesus.” One day more would have been too late, but God’s mercy spared him an eternity of torment.

There have been many other confirmations. I could go on with story after story. We have not sought out one opportunity, but God continues to open up doors to share this message.

There are no words that are descriptive enough or adequate to truly allow you to imagine such a nightmare. It is my sincere hope that in the pages of this book I have been able to convey the reality of the agony one will go through in hell. Please take this seriously. I strongly urge you to read all the scriptures for yourself.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

—Romans 5:8–9

Chapter 6

Can “Good” People Go to Hell?

You might be thinking, “Am I a good enough person to go to heaven? Yes, I think I am. Who goes to hell? Only bad people, really bad people like Hitler, Stalin, murderers, rapists, and so forth. People who kill little children. Those are the really bad people.”

This sounds reasonable to most of us. But what standard is used to determine if one is “good enough” to go to heaven and another is “bad enough” to go to hell? What criterion determines our eternal fate? Could it be based on a higher standard? This is something we all need to know for certain. What authority can give us those answers?

The Bible has much to say about this widely misunderstood subject. Perhaps you even have your own opinion about the realities of hell. Are you willing to risk your eternity on “your opinion”? Since the Bible has undergone such intense scrutiny, thorough investigation, and thousands of years of testing, you may want to at least research what it has to say about this matter.

The qualification for entrance into heaven (or hell) is not based on how we compare to others. You may look pretty good to yourself, but what if you were looked at through the eyes of one who is sinless? What if you were judged not only by your actions but also by your thoughts? Would that make you a little more uncomfortable? If we are honest, we will admit that our actions alone would condemn us.

A girl was looking at a beautiful hillside covered with lush, green grass. She noticed a herd of sheep standing on the hill. They looked so white and clean, especially against the dark green grass. The girl went to bed, and the next morning she walked outside to look at the sheep. However, it had snowed all night. The sheep were still there, but now, against the unblemished white snow, they looked dingy, even dirty.[1] In the same way, our “goodness” when compared to God’s standard for “good” falls far, far short.

Or perhaps you view your actions and thoughts in the same way Danny viewed his parking tickets. Ray Comfort, in his book “How to Live Forever…Without Being Religious,” explains what happened to his friend Danny.[2] “When he told me that he once went to prison for failing to pay parking tickets, I asked, ‘Why didn’t you just pay them?’ He answered, ‘They were just parking tickets; it was no big deal.’ Then he told me that the police arrived at his home at 4:00 a.m., put him in a big black bus, and took him to Los Angeles County court. As he stood before the judge, he said, ‘Your Honor, I brought $700 with me to pay the tickets and to cover the court costs.’ The judge said, ‘Mr. Goodall, I’m going to save you all that money. You are going to jail!’” Danny was terrified.

His big mistake was that he trivialized his crimes by thinking that they were “just” parking tickets, and so he deceived himself. Had he known the judge’s ruling (that he would go to prison), he would have immediately made things right between himself and the law.

Most of us realize that we have broken God’s law—the Ten Commandments, but it’s no big deal. So, let me ask you a few questions about the law you have broken and see if it is a big deal. Have you ever lied? You say, “Yes. But they were only white lies. They were nothing serious.” Have you ever stolen something? You say, “Yes, but only little things.” Can you see what you are doing? You are trivializing your crimes, and like Danny, you will deceive yourself. What you are doing is saying that you haven’t actually “sinned,” and the Bible warns, “He who says he has no sin deceives himself.” The truth is, if you have lied, then you are a liar. If you have stolen anything (the value of the item stolen is irrelevant), you are a thief.

What you need to hear is the judge’s ruling for lying and stealing. Here it is: “All liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone” (Rev. 21:8). All liars go to hell. You say, “I don’t believe in hell.” That’s like someone saying to the judge, “I don’t believe in jail.” What we believe or don’t believe doesn’t change realities. No thief will enter heaven. Not one.[3] Now look at this: Jesus said, “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). Have you ever looked with lust? Then you have committed adultery as far as God is concerned. Have you used God’s name in vain? If you have, then you have used His holy name as a cuss word to express disgust. That’s called “blasphemy,” and it’s very serious in God’s sight.

So if you have been honest enough to admit that you have broken those commandments, you are a self-admitted lying, thieving, blasphemous adulterer at heart. If God gives you justice on Judgment Day, you will be guilty and end up in hell. Think of it—if you died right now, you would end up in hell forever. So what are you going to do? How can you make things right between you and the law? The Bible tells us that you cannot “do” anything.”[4] Further, keep in mind that a good judge must carry out justice.

There was a judge in a town that had a case brought to him one day. A girl was speeding in her car through an intersection that had signs posted warning drivers to drive slowly and watch for blind, handicapped children crossing the street. A police officer stopped her vehicle and gave her a ticket. The judge set the fine at the maximum—$25,000. Since the girl was unable to pay the fine, the bailiff prepared to take her away to jail. Just then, the judge did something very strange. He got up from his bench, went over to the bailiff, and paid the $25,000 for her! People wondered what was going on; only later did they find out that the girl was his daughter. Even though it was his daughter, the judge still imposed the maximum fine. He had to carry out justice. However, his love for his daughter would not allow him to leave her in that predicament.[5]