By Erika Schwibs
Advanced technology coupled with prosperity seems to bring about the worst cases of an intoxicating spiritual disease that attacks our most important sense: our fear of the Lord.
Two signs of this intoxicating disease are dismissing the reality of the Devil and of Hell.
So in the interest of combating this disease as God has enabled me to, I have a short testimony about Heaven and Hell to share.
First, when I first became a Christian more than 30 years ago, I was praying one night when I experienced the presence of God, His Holy Spirit. I was 21 and had just decided for myself, as an adult, that I believed in God and that Jesus was who He said He was. And I started to pray just as I lay down to sleep one night, with my eyes closed, when suddenly I sensed something surprising going on. I remember thinking loudly, "Something is happening!" It was like having another sense I didn't know I had, and there was a living spiritual light, like a tiny seed, starting to grow somewhere within or beside me. It sort of felt like both. It was shimmering with life, I'd say, but any words to describe it aren't quite accurate. It seemed like the most light and most lively of any light and any life that there could be. Life and light themselves. This presence grew quickly so that it felt as big as I was, I noted, and then it became just a bit bigger than I, and I was inside of it for several seconds. Then it was gone, and I immediately fell asleep.
The next day, I found that I'd been healed of my addiction to cigarettes just like that, as if I'd never smoked, and I'd been a chain smoker who needed to go out in snow storms to buy more cigarettes if I was out. Just before bed the night before, I'd heard a "quit smoking" infomercial and thought that since I was Christian, I shouldn't smoke, but gave it no more thought. I was only 21 so I'd never tried quitting. But now I'd quit with no cravings whatsoever. I went into work and told people I'd quit, but not how. I didn't know anyone who took the Christian faith seriously. Everyone I knew thought devout Christians were religious freaks to be laughed at. Not knowing the whole story, my coworkers told me I'd never be able to quit cold turkey. They knew I smoked while still eating on my breaks. I stayed quit, though, for over four years until, still immature in faith, I went back to smoking under some stress. Then I tried multiple times over the next four or five years to quit under my own will power and couldn't. Only financial difficulties made me stop, and having learned my lesson, I decided never to pick up another cigarette and haven't. I'm grateful that the Lord got me to stop again, though not so easily. But my second experience of smoking and quitting did demonstrate to me that the Lord had openly performed a miracle for me the first time.
Despite confused living in sin after my experience with God's presence, I came to believe that that was when I was born again and became a part of the Kingdom of Heaven. Afterwards, whenever I'd reach the crossroads of a crisis, God would show me I'd have to turn, and I'd follow Him the best I could. He, I saw, was and is everything, and there was nothing worth trading Him for.
Now about Hell.
Many years later, I was going through another difficult period. My faith had grown a lot, but partly through superstition. For example, I wouldn't walk down a certain street because of a number on a license plate of a nearby car. I often made decisions that way. God had used my fear of such things to get me to come closer to Him at one point, as it was bound up ignorantly with the fear of Him, so I couldn't see not paying attention to them and being guided by them, but with my growing knowledge of Him, I felt it was wrong. I didn't know what to do.
So eventually He solved the problem for me. He gave me months of a supernatural Hell experience. Not a "hellish" experience, which I'd had a number of times, but experience with the actual Hell itself. As I said, I was experiencing a rough period personally, and the devil was after me especially hard at this time. If he can't get you to actually sin, he'll try to convince you that you have, and that you've so hopelessly fallen short of God's will for you that He is rejecting you. And while God promises to correct us over time, the devil will make you feel like your need for correction means you're not truly a Christian and don't have a saving relationship with the Lord. And the devil had a very powerful weapon in the hold that superstition still had on me.
So during this troubling period, there was suddenly a tremendous rash of runaway cars in my area, drivers driving their vehicles into buildings, usually after confusing the brake and gas pedal. It was widely covered in the local news, with more cases practically every day, and the reporters were looking increasingly fearful about it themselves. I knew it wasn't "all about me," but I thought it was partly about me, probably. Me and a large number of other people all being affected differently.
Then, too, during this time, almost every time I had a hopeful thought, with only a couple exceptions, one of three things would happen within seconds: a nearby crow would caw, or there would suddenly be an emergency siren, or I'd hear a jet overhead and have the thought, "man-made," which meant the hope I had was just from the tainted works of man, not the perfect works of God. God made birds to fly.
As this troubling time went on, there was on Christmas Day afternoon about 10,000 crows that flew over my home for about 10 minutes, packing the entire sky as they swirled around in flocks. These massive swarms are actually a phenomenon, though I wasn't aware of that then.
And other things happened, too. For awhile I stopped going to church. A voice had said, if I have faith, I should go into church the next day and go up and give a short testimony about God being good always and helping me in my troubles. But with the supernatural torments I was experiencing, I doubted His acceptance of me and was distressed. The next day, it being around Christmas, the guest pastor we had preaching spoke on belief and the birth of John the Baptist. He pointed out to us how the angel Gabriel had made John's father, Zechariah, temporarily unable to speak because he had questioned his pronouncement.
"Note the lesson that we should learn from this," the pastor preached. "Unbelief has nothing to say."
I was distressed, thinking that if I'd gotten up and spoken before this sermon, I'd probably feel supernaturally restored for having had something to say.
The next week, as I walked to church, I stopped halfway and pulled out my phone to check the time. When I did, I was horrified to see that it had started to pocket dial and the display actually said nothing but, "666." I felt so rejected of God right then that I turned around and went home, and while I kept up with my faith at home, I didn't go back to church for months.
During this time, I saw that people's sins pursued them through the universe in the spiritual world. And I felt the hopelessness of Hell, that weeping and gnashing of teeth was all one could do, but they held no hope. For a moment I'd forget that I felt permanently cut off from God, and I'd feel a hope that there was still a way out. Then I'd feel sick as I remembered there wasn't any hope, ever. And I felt, too, how people's damning words and actions were played over and over in Hell in their remembrance, mockingly tormenting them.
And it got to the point where I felt so troubled that I could only read God's Word one verse at a time, and one day as I looked at the Bible sitting on my nightstand, a voice said, "If you don't stop reading the Bible, something terrible will happen." But I said, "No, I love the Lord and His Word! I can't stop reading the Bible!"
That was some light in the darkness. I still loved the Lord and mourned over the distance between us.
At the same time, on a few evenings, as I went to bed, I turned out the lights as usual, making the room pitch-black. But on these occasions when I closed my eyes, it was just as if my eyes were closed in a bright room, or I was facing a very bright light with my eyes closed. Since I knew each time that the room was completely dark, it actually concerned me that I might have something wrong with me neurologically, but it only happened a few times and then stopped entirely, and later I fully recognized that it had been miraculous. The Lord had been encouraging me through the darkness that I'd been in.
And not long after, the Hell I'd been experiencing all went away. I still lived in the same home, but the supernatural torments stopped. I thought hopeful thoughts and noted that nothing unusual and disturbing was happening anymore.
I learned more, too, about the need for us to see that we were saved by faith through grace and not our works. I'd struggled with that also before this troubling time, feeling I couldn't be good enough for the Lord. I saw that while giving a testimony before the church was a good and right thing to do, if it wasn't the Lord's will for me at the time and I thought I should be able to give it in my own strength, then I'd lack confidence, fail somehow, and so be open to the attacks of Satan against my faith.
As hard as this Hell experience was, I can look back and see that the Lord worked through it in my life in many ways. He brought me out of it (after bringing me through it, though it had been hard to feel His presence at the time) and I think that was because, by His grace, I refused to let go of Him.
So, that is my testimony on Heaven and Hell. Make use of it as you can in this time of little fear of the Lord.