Thorncrown Studios

To Hell And Back?

It happened to a man named Thomas Welch on July 1, 1924. He had gotten a job at a saw mill in Oregon as an engineer’s helper. What happened took place on his first day of work. The mill was sawing giant squares that were flumed down a trough of water to the Colombia River. There was a dam at the mill and a log pond. The trestle over the dam was 55 feet above the water. Thomas went out on the trestle to straighten out some timber that had become jammed causing the conveyor to stop moving. Suddenly, he fell off the trestle between the timbers. An engineer saw him fall. He landed on his head on the first beam 30 feet down, then tumbled from one beam to another until he landed in the water and disappeared. The pond was ten feet deep. The mill shut down. There were 70 men working that day and all of them joined in a search for his body. It took almost an hour to find him. He was submerged for that entire time. But while that search was going on, Thomas Welch was having the most stunning experience of his life.

Welch had lost both his parents when he was 11 years old. At an early age, he stopped believing in God and became an atheist. But what happened that day changed everything. These are his words. “I was dead as far as this world is concerned. But I was alive in another world. There was no lost time. I learned more in that hour out of my body than I could ever learn while in this body. All I remember is falling over the edge of the trestle. The next thing I knew I was standing near a shoreline of a great ocean of fire. It appeared to be what the Bible says it is in Revelation 21:8 “The lake which burns with fire and brimstone.” It was the most awesome sight one could ever see this side of the final judgment. I remember more clearly than any other thing that has ever happened to me in my lifetime every detail of every moment, what I saw and what happened during that hour when I was gone from this world. I was standing some distance from this burning, turbulent, rolling mass of blue fire. As far as my eyes could see it was just the same. A lake of fire and brimstone. There was nobody in it. I was not in it.

“I saw other people whom I had known that had died when I was thirteen years old. One was an uncle of mine who died of consumption. Another was a boy I had gone to school with who had died from cancer of the jaw. He was two years older than I. We recognized each other, even though we did not speak. They too, were looking and seemed to be perplexed and in deep thought, as though they could not believe what they saw. Their expressions were those of bewilderment and confusion. The scene was so awesome that words simply fail. There is no way to describe it except to say we were eyewitnesses now to the final judgment. There is no way to escape, no way out. You don’t even try to look for one. This is the prison out of which no one can escape except by Divine intervention. I said to myself in an audible voice, ‘If I had known about this I would have done anything that was required to escape coming to a place like this.’ But I had not known. As these thoughts were racing through my mind, I saw another Man coming by in front of us. I knew immediately who He was. He had a strong, kind, compassionate face, composed and unafraid, Master of all He saw. It was Jesus Himself. A great hope took hold of me and I knew the answer to my problem was this great and wonderful Person who was moving by me there in this prison of lost confused judgment-bound souls. I did not do anything to attract His attention. I said to myself, ‘If He would only look my way and see me, He could rescue me from this place because He would know I never understood it was like this. He would know what to do.’ He passed on by and it seemed as though He would not look my way, but just before He passed out of sight He turned His head and looked directly at me. That is all it took. His look was enough. In seconds I was back and entering into my body again. It was like coming in through the door of a house. I could hear my Christian friends praying minutes before I could open my eyes or say anything. I could hear and I understood what was going on. Then, suddenly, life came into my body and I opened my eyes and spoke to them. It’s easy to talk about and describe something you have seen. I know there is a Lake of Fire because I have seen it. I know Jesus Christ is alive in eternity. I have seen Him.”

There were many witnesses to the miracle that Thomas Welch experienced. It was written up with sworn statements by several of those witnesses including a statement by a physician who attended him. His full story is available on the Internet. The first place I found it was in a book entitled Life, Death and Beyond by J. Kerby Anderson.

Back in the late ‘80s I was the co-executive producer and Showrunner of the television series, The Equalizer. It ran for four years on CBS and starred the wonderful actor, my friend, the late Edward Woodward. I commissioned an episode about a street gang in New York that was terrorizing a high school. In the story, Robert McCall, The Equalizer, takes on the task of turning these young men from their dangerous and destructive lives. It would be a kind of “scared straight” episode. In the story, McCall does the traditional “scared straight” things. He takes the gang to see the autopsy of a former gang member, but as I wrote, none of this was enough. In our day, street gangs see death all the time. I struggled with the script and I prayed. Then I remembered the story that I just told you. Based on that I wrote a scene such as had never appeared on television. It was about a hitman who got hit himself and went straight to hell. It was performed by the marvelous actor David Strathairn. If you would like to see it, it’s the first scene on the showreel of my work.

Most people, including many who consider themselves Christians, don’t believe in a literal hell. They think that when the Bible talks about hell it’s just being metaphorical, a kind of scare tactic to make people live right. Surveys have shown that the overwhelming majority in the United States who believe in an afterlife are sure they are going to Heaven when they die. Almost no one thinks they are going to hell. Those who do, joke about it as though it were a giant sports bar where all the most fun people hang out forever in an endless party. Over the years I have read dozens of eye witness accounts of people who were shown the reality of hell and came back to give a warning. A number of years ago, I spoke to a group about the reality of Heaven and hell. When it was over, a woman came up and told a story. She was a Jewish believer in Yeshua (Jesus) as her Messiah. Life had not been easy for her. Her mother was an atheist who did not believe in an afterlife at all. For years, she had mocked and derided her daughter for her faith. Finally, the mother’s life approached its end. But a few days before she died, something happened. She had been in a coma. Suddenly, she awoke. What she told her daughter was amazing. Though unconscious in this world, she had been completely alive in another one. In fact, more alive and aware than she had ever been before. First, she had found herself outside a gigantic city larger and lovelier than anything on earth. It had huge entrances with beautiful gates. From inside the city came sounds of incredible joy, as though the greatest party in the universe was taking place. But she couldn’t go in. The gates were closed. Then, the scene changed. The city vanished. She found herself standing outside an ominous door darker and more forbidding than anything she could have imagined in a nightmare. From behind that door came wails of agonizing sorrow and raging cries that utterly terrified her. More than anything, she didn’t want to go through that door. One thing was certain to her, whatever this was, it wasn’t a dream. Her daughter explained to her what she had seen from the Bible. The city was the New Jerusalem, the Messiah’s home. She told her that Yeshua, the God of Israel’s Only Begotten Son, had paid the price for her sins with His death on the cross. If she believed in Him, the gates of that beautiful city would open for her and she could live there forever. The dying woman placed her faith in Jesus Christ and a few days later passed from this world.

Do you want to understand the most important pattern of supernatural phenomena that you will ever hear? Listen to this next eye-witness account: Howard Storm was a professor of art at Northern Kentucky University.

When he was 38 years old he and his wife were leading a group of students on a tour of the art museums in Paris. He had been having some gastric pain, but over-the counter medications had been taking care of it. Then one morning he was talking to a member of his group, when suddenly, it felt as though he had been shot in the stomach. But no one had shot him. He didn’t know it, but the wall of his stomach had been perforated and acid was flowing into his abdomen. In agony, he was taken to a hospital. But it was a weekend and it was hours before he could see a doctor. Finally, he was in such pain that all he wanted to do was die. Storm was an atheist. He didn’t believe in an afterlife. So in the hospital bed, he drifted into a dark sleep that he thought would lead to annihilation. Here is what happened to Howard Storm. The darkness vanished. He found himself standing up in the hospital room next to his bed. Clearly, this was all wrong. All he wanted was oblivion, anything to be free from the horrible pain he was experiencing. He told himself that this must be a dream. But it didn’t feel like a dream at all. He was totally aware of everything around him in a way that he had never been in his whole life. All of his senses were extremely vivid. He felt the cold floor under his bare feet. Strangest of all, his entire environment seemed alive. He looked down at the hospital bed. A body was lying under the sheet. He bent over to look at the face. To his horror, it bore a frightening resemblance to him. But how could that be? How was it possible? He was standing over it, looking down at it. And the face was utterly lifeless. Everything that was “him”, his consciousness and physical being, was standing next to the bed. Then, he heard voices calling from the distance. They were coming from outside the hospital room in the hall. “Howard, Howard…” He heard friendly male and female voices calling in clear English, which was very weird because none of the hospital staff spoke clear English. He was confused. What was going on here? His wife, Beverly, who was sitting in a chair next to the bed, didn’t appear to hear them at all. Storm called out to them, asking who they were and what they wanted. All they said was, “Come out here. Let’s go. Hurry up. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.” He told them that he couldn’t leave, he was sick. They responded that they could get him fixed, but he had to come now. Then they asked, “Don’t you want to get better? Don’t you want help?” Storm was afraid of them. He moved closer to the door. The hall outside the room looked very odd. The terrible thought came to him that if he walked out there he might not be able to get back in again. He tried to speak to his wife, but she didn’t seem to hear him or even be aware of his presence. The voices called out telling him that they couldn’t help him if he didn’t come out to where they were. He knew he needed surgery, so he began to think they were there to take him to an operation. He left the room. Once in the hall, he felt very anxious. The light was strange and hazy. The people were off in the distance. It was hard to see them, but he was sure they were adults, both male and female, tall and short, old and young. But they didn’t look right. What they were wearing was gray and their skin was pale. He started walking toward them, but the closer he got the more they withdrew into the fog. He felt like he had to follow, but he never got closer than ten feet.

As he walked, he asked them a lot of question, but he never got any answers. They just kept urging him to hurry up, move faster. Again and again, they repeated that if he followed them his troubles would be over. They walked for a long time. Gradually, the fog got very thick and turned dark. He demanded to know when they would get to where they were leading him. Over and over, he told them that he was sick and couldn’t keep doing this. The voices changed. They grew angry and sarcastic. In Storm’s words, “The more questioning and suspicious I became the more antagonistic and authoritarian they became. A terrible sense of dread was growing within me. Everything I had experienced before this was a dream compared to the way that I was now experiencing reality. I was frightened, exhausted, cold and lost.”

As he kept walking, he realized that people were moving around him in the dark fog. And there were a lot more of them. How far had they travelled? He was sure it had been miles. In spite of that, when he looked back he could still see the doorway to the hospital room. He could still see the body on the bed and his wife sitting in her chair as though frozen. Then, without warning, the light vanished. To his horror, he was in total darkness. And with the darkness came a crushing hopelessness such as he had never known in his entire life. He was overwhelmed with it. Calling out, he told the people to leave him alone. He said they were liars and he wouldn’t follow them anymore. They started raging at him, shrieking insults. Then they began pushing and shoving him. He fought back, which started an insane battle of screaming, mocking and hitting. He fought like a wild man, swinging and kicking at them. They bit and tore at him. Most hideous of all, it was clear they were having fun doing it. Though it was totally dark, he knew there must be hundreds all around him. The more he fought the greater was their glee. They were in no hurry. Each new attack brought shrieking laughter. They started tearing off pieces of his flesh. In his words, “To my horror I realized that I was being taken apart and eaten alive slowly for their entertainment.” There was no one in control of them. It was a mob of raging beings whose only pleasure was endless cruelty.

Though he couldn’t see, he could hear and feel everything with the most awful intensity. The noise alone was a horrifying assault. Hundreds of people were yelling, laughing and jeering in their excited lust over his torment. The harder he fought, the more they loved it. Finally, he was lying on the ground with his attackers swarming over him like huge, ravenous rats. It was at that moment that he heard a voice. It sounded like his own voice coming from inside himself, but what it said wasn’t a thought of his. He knew he hadn’t spoken it. The voice said, “Pray to God.” Storm’s first thought was what a stupid idea. Being a good atheist, he knew that wouldn’t work. It would be nothing but a cop-out. Even lying in pitch-black horror, he didn’t believe in God. And what did it matter anyway? He was far beyond hope or help whether he believed in God or not. He just didn’t believe in praying, period.

The voice came again, “Pray to God.” It was his voice, but he hadn’t said a word. Desperately, he thought, “Okay, what should I pray, how should I pray?” In his whole adult life, he had never prayed. A third time the voice said, “Pray to God.” He was stumped. When he was a child he had heard adults pray, but it was always something fancy. He tried to remember prayers from his childhood in Sunday School, but it was just so long ago. Storm says he “murmured a few lines – a jumble from the 23rd Psalm, the Star Spangled Banner, the Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance and God Bless America.” What happened next amazed him. The cruel beings that were shredding him to pieces grew absolutely enraged by his pitiful prayer. In his words, “It was as if they were throwing boiling oil on me.” They screamed, “There is no God. Who do you think you’re talking to? Nobody can hear you. Now we are really going to hurt you.” They shrieked obscene language worse than any kind of blasphemy he had ever heard on earth. But, while they shrieked, they began pulling away.

As he lay there the voices grew more and more distant. He realized that saying things about God was driving them away. He became much more forceful. Slowly, they receded into the darkness where he could no longer hear them. But he knew they could return. Storm says that lying there torn apart, inside and out, he knew that he was lost. He would never see the world again. He was left alone to become a creature of Eternal Night. Then, a song from childhood started playing through his mind. It was his voice, but him as a little boy singing the same words over and over. As he describes it, “The child that I had once been was singing full of innocence, trust and hope, Jesus loves me. There was only that bit of the tune and those few words that I could remember.” Then an incredible thought came to him. “Somewhere out there in that vast darkness there could be something good. There is someone who might love me. I didn’t have any theological interest about what it meant. It was simply a spontaneous recollection from my Sunday School days. Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me. I desperately needed someone to love me, someone to know I was alive. A ray of hope began to dawn in me, a belief that there was really something greater out there. For the first time in my adult life I wanted it to be true that Jesus loved me. I didn’t know how to express what I wanted and needed, but with every bit of my last ounce of strength, I yelled out into the darkness, “JESUS, SAVE ME.” I had never meant anything more strongly in my life.”

As Howard Storm stared into the darkness, far away he saw a little pinpoint of light like the faintest star in the sky. Why hadn’t he seen it before? As he watched, every moment, it grew brighter and brighter. At first he thought it was a thing, not a person and it was streaking toward him at frightening speed. Finally, it was huge and brilliant and he couldn’t stop looking at it. He was afraid it might burn him up. Storm relates that, “The light was more intense and more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. It was brighter than the sun, brighter than a flash of lightning.” And then it was on him. With all of its unspeakable brilliance, it wasn’t just light. It was a “luminous being approximately eight feet tall and surrounded by an oval of radiance.” As the intensity of the light swept through his body, ecstasy swept the agony away. Storm says that, “Tangible hands and arms gently embraced me and lifted me up. I slowly rose up into the presence of the Light and torn pieces of my body miraculously healed before my eyes. All my wounds vanished and I became whole and well… More important, the despair and pain were replaced by love. I had been lost and now was found. I had been dead…and now was alive.” Once more he entered his physical body and healing came. But Howard Storm was never the same. He had met Jesus Christ, his Savior and King, who loved him so much He had given his Life for him. Howard Storm wrote about his entire experience in an important book entitled, My Descent Into Death. I recommend it. Howard Storm isn’t an atheist anymore.

My friend, these are the most important words you will ever hear. Jesus Christ loves you more than you could ever begin to imagine. No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, there is forgiveness in His love. But you have to want that forgiveness and ask for it. He gave His life to pay for your sins so that you could enter that beautiful city. Life is short. What will happen when it ends for you in this world? Are you ready? Remember these words found in the Book of John, God loved the world so much that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. Don’t wait. You may not have tomorrow.