Hell: Who’s there and what are they doing? Right now?

I’ve often shared that I can’t think about Hell more than 5 or 6 seconds before I have to intentionally shut down the thought. It’s extremely unsettling and difficult for me to visit that place, even in thought.

Some people have visited Hell and have been forever changed. I never made it there, but was grabbed by the ankles and dragged there… but woke up before I made it. You can read about it in my book The Terror of Hell. That short trip toward Hell caused me to pray most nights for 15 or so years for God to not give me any dreams that night. It was that terrifying.

So, here’s the questions I can never shake: Who’s there now? What are they doing?

It’s very easy to dismiss this question, or to even avoid it entirely out of ‘respect for the dead’. Have you ever been to a funeral where the minister said the person was ‘in a better place’? How do they know?

Today, Paul Newman died. Where is he right now. What is he doing right now? He is, right this very moment, looking around his new habitat, thinking about a variety of things, attempting to figure out what’s going on. Same thing with Heath Ledger, Charlton Heston, George Carlin, Estelle Getty and Bernie Mac. They all died this year.

Luciano Pavarotti, Robert Goulet, Evel Knievel, Dan Fogelberg, Don Knotts, Aaron Spelling, Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin, Ed Bradley, James Brown and President Gerald Ford have also died within the past few years. Where are they? What are they doing right now?

These are just some people we all know. What about people in our churches and communities? Where are they and what are they doing right now?

I think we need to entertain these questions. Today people will die, and today most will find themselves white with fear as they discover their new home for the next trillions of years. For me, a few seconds in the grip of one of Hell’s valets was more than I could handle. I literally can’t think of such a life that continues for ten minutes, than an hour, then a day… then an eternity.

This is why I’m so resistant to the idea that we need to cause people to repeat a simple prayer. We can’t afford to give false hope to those who simply want to go to heaven instead of falling in love with Jesus. We must, under the intense fire and unction of the Holy Spirit, in the very furnace of prayer, impart that love and life and power into desperate people. We must see a new wave of evangelism that’s fueled by the Rhema revelation of the very person of Jesus Christ.

I just wanted to get this down… I’m bothered and compelled to see revival spread through our churches and into the streets of the cities of the Earth.

Thoughts?