Most of us have heard exotic tales of “near death” experiences where the semi-deceased rush down a tunnel to a piercing light and are embraced by an ecstatic sense of awe, peace and tranquility. This “Omega Moment,” as Near-Death-Experience expert Kubler-Ross has dubbed it, is purported to be the destiny of all the dead by a coterie of NDE experts.
Yet hidden and ignored in the testimonies of the near dead are countless examples of men and women sensing the horrors of hell awaiting their impending demise.
Why are they ignored? Because testimonies of hell undermine the story of acceptance and forgiveness that unbelievers demand. And because those who’ve had such terrifying encounters either bury it in their psyche or convert to Christianity.
Those are the conclusions of former skeptic Maurice Rawlings, MD, in To Hell and Back, a report of near death data that contradict the “feel good” death stories popularized by National Enquirer type newspapers and TV shows.
Consider the following accounts:
In a first hand testimony of a twenty-three year old male suffering from a genetically transmitted heart condition he tells his doctor:
You were watching the television monitor to guide the pacemaker wire inside my heart. That’s when it stopped. I was blacking out and then you hit me on the chest, saying ‘excuse me.’ Then you fist came down like a hammer. I saw that scared look in your eyes. Someone was yelling. Something crashed over to my left and everybody went crazy. You started shoving me with both hands and then I was out of it.
I was floating, pitch Black, moving fast. The wind whistled by and I rushed toward this beautiful blazing light. As I moved past, the walls of the tunnel nearest the light caught fire. Beyond the blazing tunnel a huge lake of fire was burning like and oil spill. A hill on the far side was covered with slabs of rock. Elongated shadows showed that people were moving aimlessly about, like animals in a zoo enclosure.
And old stone building was on the right, mostly rubble, with different levels and openings crammed with people trying to move about.
Down the hall I saw and old friend who had died. The last I recall, they were dragging the river for him; he had been involved with gambling. I yelled to him, “Hi there, Jim!” He just looked at me. Didn’t even smile. They were taking him around the corner when he started screaming. I ran, but there was no way out. I kept saying “Jesus is God.” Over and over I would say, “Jesus is God.”
Someway, somehow, I got back as you were putting in the stitches. I loved every one of those stitches.. Only God could have gotten me out of a mess like that. I’ll never forget it.
This young man was revived. (Talk about a close call). Is his case supportable by the scriptures? Yes, Revelation 20:15 says that “if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
Or consider the case of George Godkin, of Alberta (Canada), who in 1948 related this despairing account of his near death experience in the midst of a prolonged illness: (p. 75).
I was guided to the place in the spirit world called Hell. This is a place of punishment for all those who reject Jesus Christ. I not only say Hell, but felt the torment that all who go there will experience.
The darkness of Hell is so intense that it seems to have a pressure per square inch. It is an extremely Black, dismal, desolate, heavy, pressurized type of darkness. It gives the individual a crushing, despondent feeling of loneliness.
The heat is a dry, dehydrating type. Your eyeballs are so dry they feel like red hot coals in their sockets. Your tongue and lips are parched and cracked with intense heat. The breath from your nostrils as well as the air you breathe feels like a blast from the furnace. The exterior of your body feels as though it were encased within a white hot stove. The interior of your body has a sensation of scorching hot air being forced through it.
The agony and loneliness of Hell cannot be expressed clearly enough for proper understanding to the human soul; it has to be experienced.
Is his account correct? Yes, according to Jesus who described hell as “the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 22:13)
Mr. Godkin’s description of the searing heat duplicates the story told by Jesus of the rich man in the fires of hell pleading for a drop of water to be dripped on his parched tongue by Lazarus (Luke 16:23, 24).
AB Shaw and MB Pritchard both record numerous accounts of men’s encounters with eternity. Consider the account of English noble Sir Francis Newport as he lay dying :
Sir Francis Newport was trained in early life to understand the great truths of the gospel, and while in early manhood it was hoped that he would become an ornament and a blessing to his family and the Nation, the result was far otherwise. He fell into company that corrupted his principles and morals. He became an avowed infidel, and a life of dissipation brought on a disease that was incurable. When he felt he must die…. He exclaimed as follows: ‘Whence this war in my heart? What argument is there to assist me against matters of fact? Do I assert that there is no Hell, when I felt one in my bosom? …Wretch that I am, wither shall I flee from this breast? An infidel companion tried to dispel his thoughts, to whom he replied,
“That there is a God I know, because I continually fell the affects of his wrath; that there is a Hell I am equally certain, having received an earnest of my inheritance there already in my breast; that there is a natural conscience I now feel with horror and amazement, being continually upbraided by it with my impieties, and all my iniquities and all my sins brought to my remembrance ….O that I was to lie upon the fires that never is quenched a thousand years, to purchase the favor of God, and be reunited to him again! But it is a fruitless wish. Millions of millions of years will bring me no nearer to the end of my torments than one poor hour. O eternity, eternity! Who can discover the abyss of eternity? Who can paraphrase upon these words— forever and ever?”
As his mental distress and bodily disease were hurrying him into eternity he was asked if he would have prayers offered in his behalf. He turned his face and exclaimed,
“Tigers and Monsters! Are ye also become devils to torment me? Would you give me prospect of Heaven to make my Hell more intolerable?”
Soon after his voice was failing, and uttering a groan of inexpressible horror, he cried out,
“Oh, the insufferable pangs of Hell!”
and died at once, dropping into the very woe of which God gave him such an earnest, to be a constant warning to multitudes of careless sinners.
Or this recollection by a Pastor visiting the dying Mrs. JB in 1886:
I called to see her during her last sickness and found her in a most distressing State of mind. She recognized me when I came in, and was loath to let me leave long enough to bring my wife, who was only three-quarters of a mile away; saying “Devils are in my room, ready to drag my soul down to hell.” . . . She would say, “See them laugh!” this would throw her into paroxysms of fear and dread, causing her to start from her bed; but when I tried to get her to look to Jesus for help she said, “It is no use; it is too late.”
Its not the ignorant and obscure alone who testify of the wrath to come. Napoleon Bonaparte confessed to Count de Montholon in 1821:
“I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth to become food for worms. Such is the fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon! What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ.
It’s bad enough to be sent to hell for yourself. How would you like to be responsible for deluding others into rejecting Jesus Christ – the only source of eternal salvation?
Consider Voltaire’s final words to some friends as he lay dying:
He cursed them to their faces; and, as his distress was increased by their presence, he repeatedly and loudly exclaimed: “Begone! It is you that have brought me to my present condition. Leave me, I say; begone! What a wretched glory is this which you have produced to me!” Hoping to allay his anguish by a written recantation, he had it prepared, signed it, and saw it witnessed. But it was all unavailing. For two months he was tortured with such an agony as led him at times to gnash his teeth in impotent rage against God and man . . . Then, turning his face, he would cry out, “I must die – abandoned of God and of men!” . . . Even his nurse repeatedly said, “For all the wealth of Europe I would never see another infidel die.”
In fairness to Voltaire’s fans it must be reported that his account is in dispute. His disciples claim he died in perfect peace. Yet either way he shall be judged and I do not envy him. For he must account not only for his own sins, but the lies he spread which have hindered millions from believing in the Name of Jesus Christ – the only name by which a man can be saved from hell.
Of Thomas Paine, the following account is rendered:
Paine is widely known by his connection with the American and French revolutions and by his infidel writings. During a session of the French convention, Paine composed his infidel work, “Age of Reason” by which his name has gained an unenviable notoriety, and after the alteration of political circumstances in France he returned to America and there dragged out a miserable existence, indebted in last illness for his acts of charity to disciples of the very religion that he had opposed.
Bishop Fenwick says: “A short time before Paine died I was sent for by him. A decent elderly looking woman showed us in the parlor. ‘Gentlemen,’ said the lady, ‘I really wish you may succeed with Mr. Paine, for he is laboring under great distress of mind, ever since he was told by his physician that he could not possibly live and must die shortly.
He is truly to be pitied. His cries, when left alone, are heart-rending. “O Lord help me!” he will exclaim during his paroxysms of distress; “God help me! Jesus Christ help me!”—-Repeating these same expressions in a tone of voice that would alarm the house.
Sometimes he would say, “O God! What have I done to suffer so much?” Then shortly after, “but there is no God”; and then again, “Yet if there be, what will become of me in the hereafter?” Thus he would continue for some time, when on a sudden he will scream as if in terror and agony, and call for me by my name.
On one accession I inquired what he wanted. “Stay with me,” he replied, “ for God’s sake! for I cannot bear to be left alone.” Then said he, when I told him I could not always be in the room, “Send even a child to stay with me, for it is Hell to be left alone.”
I never saw a more unhappy, a more forsaken man.’” Among the last utterances that fell upon the ears of the attendants of the dying infidel, and which have been recorded in history, were the words, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?”
Hell need not be a man’s destination. Those who believe in Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sins find peace and eternity.
Consider the account of Mrs. Williams, as recorded by her physician:
Late on rounds one morning I barged into the room to fund the minister hovering over the bed, quietly reading from the Bible. Mrs. Williams, whose eyes were tightly closed, asked the minister to stop reading and turn down the bright lights.
“But the lights are not on,” the minister said.
“Then the sun is too bright. Turn down the blinds.”
The she finally opened her eyes and pointed:
“I see Him! He’s here! See his hands! See the heavenly hosts! There all here – Majesty unutterable! The most glorious morning of my life,” she said, welcoming them.
Slowly she eased back, the heartbeat fading, and the breathing stopped.
I wish that you would know Him, the Savior Jesus Christ, as Mrs. Williams does, and rest with her in eternal peace.
References:
AB Shaw (or SB Shaw), The Dying Testimonies, Noblesville: Newby Book Room, 1969
MC Pritchard Pebbles from the Brink Ottawa: Holiness Movement, 1913.
Maurice Spaulding, MD. To Hell and Back. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1993
Maurice S. Rawlings, MD, To Hell and Back, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1993), 72.
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saw the Father. They saw the Lord, the Almighty. But it was never ever the Father. To believe the Prophets and Patriarchs saw the Father is to contradict the Word of God:
Samson was compromised by lust for a woman.
