Hell is a Holodeck

As some of you may know, I am a huge fan of NDEs—Near Death Experiences, where a person dies and comes back and has some experience of the afterworld during this time period.

When NDEs were first popular, only good NDEs were published, stories of meeting Jesus or going into the Light, but with time, stories of Hellish experiences have been shared as well.

As a rule, I am less interested in the Hellish ones, because I’ve already written about Hell, it is making Heaven interesting that is the real challenge for an author, but I still read or watch videos about such experiences occasionally, and having just watched such an interview, I had a few thoughts.

This man’s experience was very similar to others I have come upon, but one thing he said was a bit different. I have read before that there were cells, maybe fifteen feet across, set into the wall, where, from the outside, one could see the prisoners, but inside, it seemed to be a landscape—some horror the person within was facing.

What I had not heard before was he said, “When the person walked, the floor moved, so they thought it went on in any direction, but they were really in a prison.

So, basically, it’s the holodeck from Star Trek.

Kind of creepy.

This was not, by any means, the only type of torment. But, to a great degree, what he and others have seen was people suffering in one of two ways:

1. Suffering themselves what they did to others in life. (He saw Hitler and other Nazis undergoing the kinds of deaths they inflicted on others. If Hitler has to die even once for each person who died during WWII, he’s going to be there a long time.)

2. Suffering something they imposed upon themselves…ie, facing a spiritual version of some way in which the person cut themselves off from God and their fellow man. (I had seen another interview recently with a woman who found herself cut off and alone, which she realized she had been doing to herself. But the moment she prayed, she was saved and brought to a better place.)

Another terrifying thing about his experience is that he saw that when people arrived in Hell, demons met them shaped like their loved ones and told them all was well. Only after a little while did they realize they were not in Heaven.

He said that anyone who reached this spot and went back before they learned the truth would arrive back on earth telling people that you didn’t need God and Jesus. They come back claiming everything was good. Nothing men do is evil…and basically leading people away from God.

I notice NDEs like this from time to time. New Age NDEs rather than Christian NDEs. Something often has rung false about them for me. I wonder if what he describes explains why.

Everyone whom I have read or heard who has had a Hellish experience has agreed on these points:

1. It is not God who sends us to Hell. It is the choices of men who choose to move away from him, who waste what God has given us, or who harm others.

2. In Hell, you can no longer lie to yourself, so all the self-justification we do on earth vanishes, and we are left consciously acknowledging what we did and just how bad it is.

A nun called St. Bridget of Sweden, I believe, once prayed to know why the wicked flourish and the good suffer. Apparently, Jesus came and answered her questions—whether in a vision or something else, I know not. She was told something interesting. I don’t know if it was truth, but it is interesting to think about.

She was told that every sin must be paid for (by suffering or by accepting Christ) and every good deed must be rewarded. When men are bad but savable, they often face some bad situation that might draw them closer to God.

But when they are truly horrid and headed for Hell, they still must be rewarded for whatever good things they do in their life, if only small things, such as build a hospital to get their name on it, but still people are helped, or perhaps they love their own mother.

For these things, they are rewarded during their brief span on earth, which is why sometimes one sees a wicked person living it up while others suffer.

I find this interesting, but I am not entirely convinced. For one thing, might they have found their way to God had they suffered more? If so, the good life seems like entrapment.

I am reminded of the story of a nun who had all sorts of special abilities for forty years…at the end of which, the Devil removed his gifts, and suddenly, everything went wrong for her, and she was caught.

I wonder if it is not God rewarding the wicked, but the Devil tempting them that leads to things like Jeffrey Epstein and his cohorts—extraordinarily rich, extraordinarily evil people get away with so much because they are being given enough rope to hang themselves. Some of them are lucky, and the rope runs out before they hang.

Others, not so much.

The most important thing to remember about Hell, however, is: if you find yourself going there, PRAY!

I have now read quite a few NDEs where the person was being brought or found themselves in a Hellish place, who prayed and God or Jesus came and saved them. One arrogant atheist even just sang the “Jesus loves you” song. That was enough. (He came back and is now a minister)

One woman who had committed suicide and found herself in a dreary landscape merely thought of Judas and then, because of him, of Jesus, and that was enough.

Stories suggest that people actually in Hell cannot pray. This is a startling notion, the truth of which I do not know.

So, if you find yourself in such a situation, you might as well pray, even if you have never done so before.

God, if it is Thy will, bring this fact to the remembrance of anyone who has read this, should they ever be in such a position as to need to recall it.

This man put a slightly similar idea into song:

I have noticed something else as well. Every single person who has gone to Hell, either to be shown Hell for some reason or because that was where they were heading, has mentioned that while they are there, they are absolutely certain that they will be there for eternity and will never escape.

Absolutely certain.

Even though they did in fact leave to come back here.

Even though it says in the Bible that there will be an end to Hell, when Death and Hell give up their dead before the final judgment. (Revelation 20:13.)

So, bascially, that information that Hell is eternal is…a lie.

Hell lies? Shock of shocks.

Oh, wait, the other thing.

There is a lesson there for the rest of us, too. Hell does not just lie to us when we are in Hell; it also lies to us in our everyday lives.

Are there good things you are absolutely, utterly certain will never happen? That you cannot get that job? Won’t recover from this illness? Can’t pay that bill? That our country will never recover? That the current government corruption is permanent?

Are you as certain as Peter was that, after a night fishing, he was not going to catch any fish?

Where did that certainty come from?

Not from God.

He never told you that you must suffer from whatever it is that the sense of certainty in your thoughts is claiming.

It’s a lie.

Because it isn’t just the horrors of Hell in Hell that are a holodeck. Sometimes, the troubles we seem to face here on earth are just as much a deception…a deception with which we do not have to continue to agree.

And sometimes, if we can recognize it as a lie and throw our weight onto God’s side, the problem vanishes.

It was never ordained by God to begin with.

Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.

⁴ But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.

⁵ Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No.

⁶ And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.

(John 21:3-6)