In surfing the internet, via YouTube, this afternoon I came across a couple of odd videos. One was where a guy visited hell for 23 minutes. The other was another guy who visited heaven for 9 minutes! I didn’t waste 32 minutes viewing the videos in their entirety. Actually the title of the videos revealed to me that two more charlatans were trying to foist off their blatant lies on an unsuspecting audience. Evidently these guys were wearing their watches when they made their brief trips to heaven and hell and glanced at the time that they first entered those realms and looked at their watches once again when returning to good old mother earth. I wouldn’t even want to venture a guess at the number of persons viewing those videos who believe what they are hearing.
The one guy who went to hell for 23 minutes was a preacher. Surprise, surprise, surprise! When I found out he was a preacher I was sorely tempted to believe that he did go to hell. No wonder someday Jesus Christ is going to say to MANY preachers, “I never knew you!” (See Matthew 7:21-23). Preachers must think Jesus joked a lot. (Maybe that’s why so many of them seem to think they must elicit a good belly laugh from their congregations at least three or four times when sermonizing to them). Read the letters of Paul, Peter, James or John – all nothing more or less than sermons reduced to writing. There’s not one joking remark in any of them.
Of course when I use the term “preachers,” I am not being all inclusive. There are many pastors, ministers, preachers, evangelists, missionaries who are supremely godly and have a marvelous understanding of the scriptures. But they are in the minority. That’s for sure.
I have no doubt that had I spent several more minutes surfing through the internet I would have come across several other frauds who would have related how they had either been to heaven or hell or that Jesus had come to them and spent an hour or so visiting with them even helping them feed the chickens before flitting off back to glory. P.T. Barnum must have had the spirit of prophecy infusing his mind when he said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Rest in peace, P.T. You were right.
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley