The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Are visions of hell fearmongering?

Evangelical Universalism
#1

This is sort of related to my other post about near death experiences. There are many who claim to have had visions of hell and although i dont recall God ever saying that the people will be there forever, there are certainly accounts of people who call out to God but to no avail. I hear of people who see Bhuddists in hell
who lived a life of love but are still there anyway because they were unlucky enough never to have heard about Jesus. (Incidentally it is Satan who tells the visitor this) This has only ever bred fear in me and others-see the testimony below:

It still haunts me and I have “given my heart to Jesus” over and over again cause I don’t ever want to go to hell. But now I struggle with the “mechanics” of salvation and how can one ever be really sure that they will go to heaven cause so many folks teach and believe that it’s a real fragile thing and if you “backslide” and die before you get a chance to repent, then that’s it you are going to hell and nothing can change that. I hope that’s not true but after going through what I have already gone through I don’t want to “miss it” again.

This does not seem biblical as God does not give us a spirit of fear. We have no need to fear hell if we embrace God or, if we are ignorant of God, if we embrace love. the bible says that even those who dont know who God is will be justified if they did what they know is right.
My question then is: do you think that some of these visions of hell i.e. the ones where you end up being afraid of making a tiny mistake and think that you have to obey every single command or you will go to hell, do you think they are actually induced by religious spirits?

#2

This is connected to my question to Kav in the other thread: what does the data tend to say about the impression people get (or are told) about those other souls in hell (if any other souls feature in the experience)?

Obviously, one might not want to trust THE FATHER OF FREAKING LIES!! about the hopelessness of hell. :mrgreen: But in the past I’ve gotten the impression that God/Jesus supposedly reinforces this idea in these NDEs. (Which constitute a fraction of a fraction of the NDE material, I suppose, but still…)

As to which visions/NDEs are truthfully inspired or not, I remain strongly agnostic. I wouldn’t put it past malicious spirits to screw with people in dreams or even in NDEs, but still… there’s a lot to be said for subconscious dumping, too.

(And I say that as someone who has had prophetic mystical dreams and had freakishly improbable coincidences pointing me in a particular direction for years, particularly on one topic near to my heart. Though again, that topic was and remains near to my heart, so… But then again, the first and most important such dream only ended up having a freakishly improbable connection to that topic twenty-one years later. Please believe me when I say that this is all very confusing, and I’m frankly kind of resentful about it even though I’ve done, and still do, what I can to work faithfully with what I thought I was being shown. Sure would be a heck of a testimony someday, if matters changed… but I can’t honorably see or even hope for matters changing. Much the reverse!–I should hope that the situation grows even stronger and better the other way! Which I continually try to do. Long story. :wink: :frowning: )