God Allowed Me To Feel Pain In Hell - Soul Choice Ministries

In the vision God gave me of hell, He allowed me to feel only some of the pain people will experience. Yes, I experienced real torment but I only felt a fraction of what’s to come.

People have said to me, “God would never allow a Christian to feel pain so why would He allow that?” I came to understand that God wanted me to be able to tell people that hell does in fact involve physical pain. It is not simply metaphorical. I understood even at that time that most of the pain was being blocked or softened by God.

Still some people ask, “Why would God allow you to feel any pain at all, when He paid the price for us?” First of all, I didn’t “pay the price” for anyone’s salvation by suffering pain. That would be like saying, “Since Jesus suffered on the cross for us, then no Christian should ever bear any pain, at any time, for any reason.”

In addition, I can answer that question with a question. “Why did He allow the apostles to suffer the way they did?” They were sawn in half, hung upside down on a cross, stoned, shipwrecked, thrown in dungeons, beaten, chained, and so forth. If God would allow even His best to suffer for the sake of the gospel, then how much more I, who am not to be compared with any of these great men? Even though twenty-three minutes seemed like twenty-three weeks, it was still only twenty-three minutes. What I experienced was minor in comparison to what the great men in the Bible had to go through.

Please understand that God is not the one who steals, kills, and destroys our lives. In John 10:10, Jesus told us who was behind it. Jesus said, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

God’s desire is not to cause pain to anyone, but only to bless and help people. In addition, people exercise their free-will and make unwise decisions which result in pain, suffering, loss, and destruction. I told the Lord a long time ago that I was willing to do whatever He would want me to do at any time. My life belongs to Him totally and completely.

I want to also get across to you that our God is a loving God and doesn’t want His followers to experience pain. However, we do live in a fallen world, and Satan is the god of this world. He is the one causing pain, stealing, killing and destruction. But also as I said, we can make wrong decisions, which result in pain and suffering because we didn’t obey God, or didn’t listen to His warning. Our poor choices can bring painful consequences.

To make the point about how much God loves us, and desires good for us, I will use an analogy. I love my wife more than I could ever express or tell you. If I went on for five or six hours about how much I love her, you’d think I was a bit fanatical. If I picked up a handful of sand, and if each grain represented a single good thought I had toward my wife, how many good thoughts would I have in my hand? There would be thousands! You would say that Bill is really crazy about his wife. Well, God says this about us in Psalm 139:17–18

“How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand.”

This is literal because God can’t exaggerate. His thoughts for you are more than the sands on the whole earth, and all are good thoughts. He loves us that much! It so far surpasses our ability to love that we cannot even grasp or understand it. Ephesians 3:19 says that His love “passes knowledge.” Because of this great love, God feels such sadness when He sees even one person going to hell.

God gives people numerous opportunities while they are alive, but they reject His free gift of salvation over and over again. Romans 1 says, “They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking.”

They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too. This is what man is like, even though he thinks he is good enough to enter heaven.

Job 15:16 says, “How much less man, who is abominable and filthy, Who drinks iniquity like water!”

God allowed me to feel some pain so I could describe to people the horrors of hell, and how to avoid going there. If the small amount of pain I experienced during my 23 Minutes In Hell vision would even help influence one person to receive salvation through Jesus Christ, then it would be far worth it.

In Luke 15:7, Jesus said, “I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”

Will you help lead someone to Christ, and bring joy to heaven?