The lead pastor of a church in Austin, Texas says he has visited hell, and he wants everyone to know that is a very real place.
Gerald Johnson, the lead pastor of Faith Culture Church, says he was sent to hell in Feb. 2016 after suffering a heart attack. The Jerusalem Post reported that “in one of his more viral videos, Johnson said that he indeed saw the real hell.”
“I was there and wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” Johnson says. “I don’t care what he did to me. No one deserves that.”
Johnson says the things he saw were, “indescribable,” and that good works won’t get you to heaven as it says in Ephesians 2:8-10, which reads: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we should walk in them.”
“My spirit left my physical body, and I thought I was on my way up [to heaven],” Johnson says. “I thought I did so much good during my life and that I helped so many people. But even so, I went down [to hell]. I entered the very center of the Earth. … It brings up so many difficult feelings when I talk about it.”
One of the things Johnson says he witnessed in hell included a man “walking on all fours like a dog and getting burned from head to toe. His eyes were bulging and, worse than that, he was wearing chains on his neck. He was like a hellhound. There was a demon holding the chains.
“Like telepathically, I knew that the demon was sent in this man’s life to ride him from his childhood to his death.”
Johnson says that “the demon knows if he succeeds in making people not serve God and do bad things, he will overpower them in hell, where they will be his slaves.”
During his trip to hell, Johnson says he was angry with God because he felt as if he undeservedly wound up there. But, he was able to escape and return to earth.
“I rose up out of hell and God spoke to me. He said, ‘You were secretly angry with people who harmed you and you hoped I would punish them. These are not your people. They are My people. I just want you to focus on the task I have given you.’
“A man who cannot forgive is a man who forgot that He was forgiven,” Johnson says. “That is my experience from hell. It is a completely real place.”
Bill Wiese, the author of the New York Times bestselling book, “23 Minutes in Hell,” has also been in hell and came back, and says his message is not a message of condemnation, but one of love.
Wiese said he actually asked God, “Why did you send me to this horrible place?” God told him that it was because many of His own people do not believe that hell is real.
Both Johnson and Wiese tell a markedly different story.
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
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