Hell Is Real--Some Have Come Back To Tell About It

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

Empirical means, "by experience." The following is one example of an experience that many have had.

In his book, "Why I Believe," D. James Kennedy records his interview with one who has been there:

I have heard the testimony of a man who went to hell. He is a living man, and his testimony is on tape. He has given me his permission to use it in any way that I wish. He described himself as an atheist. He believed neither in soul nor spirit nor angel nor God. "When you are dead," he said, "you are dead like a dog." One day he planned to crawl into a hole and pull the top in over him. He did not believe in heaven or hell or God. But then he did, in a very enlightening way--he died!

Not long ago he had a cardiac arrest, and the doctors pronounced him clinically dead. (In the last year or so numerous scientists have reported on more than five hundred people who have been pronounced clinically dead and have been resuscitated. Whatever that means, we may not wholly know, but the reports that they bring back have convinced scientists that there is life beyond death.) Later he was resuscitated, but he told me that during his "death" he experienced the following:

He sank into a realm of darkness, a place of dark shadows--yet still he had a body. He found himself in great agony pushing a huge stone into a pit. (The Bible speaks of a pit.) He was in great pain, and there was nothing he could do to diminish it. "If you got shot in the arm," he said, "you could at least grab your arm and get some slight lessening of the pain, but not so with this."

I asked, "Where was it? Was it localized?" His answer was, "No, it was everywhere. I am quite certain that if I had cut my throat I would not have lessened that pain at all. When I questioned how severe the pain was, he said, "It was worse than anything I have ever experienced in this world." I thought perhaps he had never known much pain. I asked, "Have you ever really suffered any pain in this world?" He said, "Well, when I was nine years old, a freight train ran over my leg and left it hanging by a tendon. Somehow I picked it up, dragged myself to a crossing, and was finally picked up by a man in a car. I never passed out but by blood squirted all over his windshield as he drove me to a hospital. I was never unconscious." "How did that pain compare to the time when the doctor said you were dead?" I asked. "It was insignificant," he answered. "I wouldn't even compare it."

I told him, "I once burned my hand rather severely and experienced a pain unlike anything I have ever known before or since. Did you ever burn yourself?" He said, "Yes, I knocked a can of gasoline off a shelf over a candle onto my leg and set my remaining leg on fire. As a result I spent several weeks in the hospital." He raised his pants leg and showed me the scars. I said, "I know of nothing in this world that compares to the pain of burning. How did the pain you experienced when you were dead compare with that?" He answered, "It was one thousand times worse than when my leg was on fire!

I tried every way I knew to explain that away, but everything dissolved before my attempts to do it. I did not believe in hell before, and I did not want to believe in it then. On the face of this earth, no matter what you did to me, I don't think you could experience the pain that I experienced in that hospital. I asked, "What do you think that was?" "Why, I feel that it definitely had to be something other than on this earth, so the only place I can think of is that there must be a hell, and I was in it." He told me that when he thought about that after he got out of the hospital, he began to tremble with an uncontrollable trembling.

You need to understand that sin is failing to attain to the glory of God. You aren't claiming to have attained to the glory of God, are you? You can be one of those who is saved.

Hell Is Real--Some Have Come Back To Tell About It

How can we know anything about anything

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