Is There a Hell? Part 2

Yes, there is a hell. But there is also grace.

Image by author using ChatGPT

I strongly recommend that the reader visit Part 1 of this two-part series, but both posts can stand alone if need be.

On the writing platform Medium in particular, there is a lot of “deconstructing”―people rethinking long-held beliefs and tenets, especially about fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity. I’ve been through that process myself, and I’m all for it―to a degree. I’m certainly not the theological fundamentalist that I used to be, but neither have I spun off into New Age or some vague new paradigm. Nor am I awash in doubts or new questions about the nature of God.

The way I stay grounded in my faith is to see Jesus Christ as the Shepherd and the Gate to the sheepfold, just as he claimed to be. The sheepfold is the Kingdom. It’s within us, it’s where we want to be, it’s the place of safety and blessing, it’s the place where we have the guidance of the Kingdom to make the most of our lives and to get in tune with the music of heaven here on Earth. The fence of the sheepfold comprises the words and teachings of Jesus. Those words are the hill I will die on, even if I sound like a doctrinal troglodyte.

Jesus told us clearly that hell is a very unpleasant place, a place of regret, where there will be a blazing furnace, darkness, separation from all that is good, and wailing and gnashing of teeth, (Matthew 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13). There are plenty of intimations of hell in both testaments that should give us pause in thinking that we are so wise we can refashion hell and judgment into something more convenient and more to our liking.

In my first post, I traced how Dr. George Ritchie’s testimony inspired Dr. Raymond Moody, a medical doctor, and Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist. From there, research branched out in several directions under the auspices of professionals such as psychologists Dr. Kenneth Ring, Karlis Osis, and Erlandur Haroldsson, theologians J.P. Moreland and Gary Habermas, and many others.

Two events drew Dr. Maurice Rawlings, M.D., into near-death research. He was intrigued by the work of Moody and Kubler-Ross, but more importantly, he was shocked into his own pursuit when one of his heart patients coded in his office. Rawlings immediately began chest compressions. He writes that when a patient recovers from compressions, they usually say, “Stop, you’re hurting me.” This patient, however, said, “Don’t stop. Every time you quit (to reach for his other equipment), I go back to hell. Don’t let me go back to hell.” After several episodes of regaining consciousness, he asked, “How do I stay out of hell?” Rawlings told him to pray, but the man didn’t know how. He demanded that Rawlings pray for him, so while thumping on his patient’s chest, he uttered something akin to the sinner’s prayer.

This patient recovered. When Rawlings approached him with pad and pencil, asking, What did you see over there? What did hell look like? The answer was, “What hell, I don’t recall any hell.” He did recall seeing his mother and stepmother. He never met his mother, but he astonished his father by recognizing her in a photo.

As a cardiologist, Rawlings was able to interview patients as soon as they were resuscitated. He noticed a disturbing pattern among the one in five patients who record an NDE. If a patient who has a negative event is not interviewed immediately after resuscitation, they may forget what they experienced. He encountered so many negative cases that he wrote two books about his findings. In the second one, To Hell and Back, he challenged the findings of Ring, Kubler-Ross, Moody, and other researchers who interviewed near-death experiencers days or weeks after their death event. Rawlings claimed that they do the whole discipline a disservice by emphasizing the positive incidents and making hell less real.[i]

In one of his cases, a 23-year-old man inherited a heart block that afflicted his brother and father. As he was on the operating table, he coded. In his words, “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 an 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.”

The young man recognized one of his friends there, but there was no wave or smile. “They were taking him around the corner when he started screaming. I ran, but there is no way out. I kept saying ‘Jesus is God.’ Over and over I would say, ‘Jesus is God.’”[ii]

Rawlings’s patient got a second chance by calling on Jesus and God. Some of these rescues from hell demonstrate that even a brief memory of some distant Sunday School song can make the difference between being trapped forever in hell or being snatched out.

Howard Storm’s NDE has been around for decades, but now you can look him up on YouTube and hear the man describe what he went through. He was an art professor, an atheist, and full of pride about his accomplishments. He was in the hospital when he died, but he wouldn’t accept that the body he saw there in the bed was him. He heard his name being called in the hallway. Thinking that the shadowy figures urging him to come away with them were hospital staff who were taking him to surgery, he followed them. He should have been surprised that they were walking him to the OR, but he felt pretty good at the time. He ignored their snide remarks and comments like, “Hush, it’s too soon for that. You’ll scare him off.”

To make a long story short, he wound up in a gray, dull space where he was brutally attacked. As he lay helplessly on the ground, a voice in his head urged him to pray to God. He didn’t believe in prayer and didn’t know how. All he could remember was a phrase or two like “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” or snatches from The Lord’s Prayer. Then a Sunday School song occurred to him. “Jesus loves me, this I know.”

As he repeated the few bits of prayer and sang that song, the creatures attacking him dissipated. He lay there unable to move and finally cried out, “Jesus, save me.” Suddenly, he was in the presence of God. Jesus was touching him, and the touch brought healing. His final message in the video resonates with so many other NDE messages: it’s all about learning to love. “That is the curriculum.”

Since there is a limit on words and a cap on reader attention, I’m going to point to a few compelling podcast testimonies about the existence of hell, but also of God’s redeeming mercy.

Janie Duvall interviews a former atheist claiming to have seen several levels of hell.

She also interviewed a real “rounder,” a term used by Dr. Raymond Moody for a hardened criminal. This man came from a family of Wiccans, was a Wiccan priest himself, and was serving a 70-year prison sentence for shooting and robbing someone. When Kenneth McDonald found Christ during his NDE, or rather when Christ found him, his change was so radical that the prison gangs tried to kill him.

Those stories are the tip of the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If you Google hell NDEs on YouTube, you will find plenty of stories to listen to. Having said that, I want to end this post with the message that Howard Pittman brought back for the church from the other side of the veil. There’s a lot to learn from this one incident.

He didn’t actually see hell. He was an active church member and a preacher. When an aneurysm burst, and he was hemorrhaging internally, he knew how to plead with God for a reprieve from sudden death. He resisted a sweet, musical voice that told him he could have perfect peace and security if he would just stop breathing. Instead, he was brought to the gates of the third heaven by two angels. It was there, and not inside the gates, that he would make his case for a longer life. He saw 50 souls go in, but according to a radio interview I heard long ago, the vast majority “went the other way.” As he stood before the gates of the city, recounting all the good things he had done on Earth, he expected a warm welcome. God’s answer was a stunner.

Howard pointed out the sermons he had preached, the volunteer sheriff service he had provided, the abused children he had fostered, and everything else he could think of. God answered “in a voice that sounded like thunder.”

“Your faith is dead! Your works are in vain. The life you have lived and offered to me as a life of Christian service is an abomination that I rejected in the Pharisee. What made you think that I would accept it from a Laodicean-type Christian? In fact, untold millions are living the same kind of life that you lived, and they stand in danger of my everlasting wrath.”

“I couldn’t believe he was talking to me. I’m a teacher, I’m a preacher. I just told him about all my good works.”

“You didn’t do those works for me. You did them for a false god.”

“Lord, I worked for you. I called you Lord every day.”

“Yes, you called me Lord, but you didn’t make me Lord.”

God revealed to Howard that the false god was SELF. He was so rattled that the angels took him aside for a bit to calm him down. When he came back, he asked for nothing and said nothing, just listened. God’s tone was more compassionate. He sent Howard back with a 5-point message:

1. This is the age of the Laodicean church. (Wealthy, comfortable, self-interested, professing with the mouth, but not living the Life.)

2. Don’t underestimate the devil. Take him seriously as a powerful, anointed adversary.

3. If you want God’s power in your life, you’ve got to walk the life, not just talk it.

4. The days of the Coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah, and we have reached that point where mankind’s main priorities are wealth and pleasure, wealth and pleasure.

5. Matthew 3:11, 12: Quoting John the Baptist, ¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” We need the Holy Spirit in this age, but take both aspects of that seriously, too.

I could fill an entire post with recommendations of books to read about the afterlife, including hell, but it would be pretty dry. I understand that few have the time or the focus to listen to the many YouTube videos available about the topic. My two posts have not resolved that issue. If there is anything to take away from this series, it’s that heaven and hell are real. Your impending death is real. Eternity is real. Stop living as if you are immortal and consider the words of Jesus―love God with your whole heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. If you can’t love a God that you don’t believe in, at least love your neighbor―meaning everyone else―and at least make the world a better place.

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[i] Rawlings, Maurice S. To Hell and Back: Life after Death―Startling New Evidence. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1993) 73.

[ii] ----------. To Hell and Back, 72.