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Visions of Hell

Visions of Hell

Bill Weise is a clean-cut real estate agent from Southern California. His wife, Annette, describes him as emotionally stable, churchgoing and certainly “not a complainer.”

Yet Weise can’t stop talking about what happened to him on Nov. 23, 1998, the night he tumbled into one of the raging theological debates of modern times, the night he was plucked from his bedroom and sent straight to hell.

“We came home from a prayer meeting on the night of the 22nd, went to bed, and at 3 o’clock in the morning, the Lord picked me up and dropped me off in a prison cell in hell,” Weise explained in a recent television interview. “I did not realize where I was, but I noticed immediately the heat.”

Sharing his cell, Weise says, were two 13-foot-tall reptilian creatures, pacing around and cursing God. When they noticed Weise arrive, the first one set about breaking Weise’s bones against a stone wall, and the second one used its huge claws to tear the flesh from Weise’s body. Later, Weise beheld a lake of fire crammed with sinners, and was carried up a long tunnel to kneel at the feet of Jesus before being returned to his house in California. It’s a story Weise has spread worldwide since the release of his book: 23 Minutes in Hell: One Man’s Story of What He Saw, Heard and Felt in That Place of Torment.

The funny thing about hell is that a decisive majority of Americans believes it is an absolutely real place, but those who try to describe what goes on there come off sounding like lunatics.

The pressure to explain hell comes from its enduring – indeed rising – popularity. According to a recent Harris poll, far more Americans believe in a literal hell (62%) than believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution (42%). Twice as many believe in hell than in witches, and hell beats out UFOs (35%), ghosts (41%) and the Virgin Birth (60%).

In fact, polls by the Gallup organization claim to have tracked a long upward trend for belief in hell, rising from 52% in 1953 to a peak of 71% in 2001 before relaxing to 69% last year. That’s a 13 percent jump for literal hell from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

Read the rest here.

Tags: belief, christianity, christians, damnation, hell, rolls eyes, superstition

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Permalink Reply by booklover on September 13, 2011 at 4:39pm

Well there's certainly enough "hell on earth" to not need another one.

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Permalink Reply by Lois on September 13, 2011 at 5:30pm

Yeah, I have some crazy dreams, too, sometimes so real it feels like I really did leave my body and visit another planet or plane of existence or something. I guess if this man had been a Hindu, he'd be having vivid dreams about blue-skinned gods with eight arms.

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Permalink Reply by Prog Rock Girl on September 13, 2011 at 7:33pm

Dreams, and hallucinations, can be pretty horrific. And too many people think they mean something real.

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Permalink Reply by A. Gabriele Eichel on September 13, 2011 at 5:31pm

Heaven... People say it's a place were you do nothing than pray with the others on it,FOREVER. For me,hell would be exactly like that. Imagine yourself,spending all the eternity praying with the pope and some gospel singers... Argh.

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Permalink Reply by Lois on September 15, 2011 at 9:36am

Most people cannot tolerate church for more than a few hours. What makes them think they will enjoy worshiping God forever and ever, with no breaks for lunch and you can't go home afterward to sit back and watch TV?