Hi all, I'm new to forum. I'd like some feedback............
I've been a Christian 20 years and only recently started to doubt some doctrines, including hell, tithing, and the "immortal soul". Ray's stuff has helped a lot, though I'm not ready to jump into the universalist "pond of fire" just yet.
I read that horrible testimony by Bill Weise (23 Minutes in Hell) and it scared the hell out of me. It was complete with a four minute video of hell (I still can't figure out how he smuggled a video camera down there) What you think about this, as well as other visions and visitations of hell? Even though I now doubt hell, reading it still scares me. It seems so real and vivid and he spoke so calmly giving his testimony.
Anyway, there are few things which don't add up. He gives the 18th or 19th century version of hell - the demons do the torturing. Now if God created hell for the devil and his angels, did he mean for it to be a kind of demonic Disney World, where demons have never ending fun torturing human souls?
He claims to have had an out of body experience, yet in hell he had a body. Also he says Jonah went to hell. I just read the whole book of Jonah and I didn't see where he went anywhere while he was in the fish's belly. I'm sure he felt as if he was in the grave, being buried alive and all, but hell?
Also an interesting note on the "immortal soul". When I search online for articles about hell, I could easily find both defenders and deniers. But when I search for articles on immortal soul, I had to look very hard to find even one article defending it. Maybe because it's indefensible. Yet the doctrine of hell relies heavily on immortality.