As I’ve explained in my article “Christian Experiences in Hell – Could This Be Real,” it is very unlikely that the reported tours of hell by self-confessed Christians are legitimate.
To recap, the bible teaches us that the “dead is conscious of nothing,” and that we have to wait for the resurrection and judgement before going either to heaven or hell. Therefore, it is contradictory to biblical reason that anyone can go down to hell, see people who have died there and come back to tell the story.
So what is really going on with all these YouTube videos? Could everyone be lying? There are several possible explanations.
First of all, it’s possible that some of these people are outright lying. They are part of an elaborate hoax for some self-serving purpose.
Second, it’s possible that some of these people did experience something of the sort after falling asleep or into a state of subconsciousness. Remember, that when we go to sleep, our mind replays what happened in our past. Our dreams when we fall asleep are a result of the “conditioning of the mind.” For example, you may have a scary dream if you fall asleep after watching a scary movie or hearing ghost stories. Remember that time when you dreamed you were flying? It felt so real! Didn’t it? Our mind is like a factory: what we put in is what we get out. Some of these people who allegedly went to hell and came back might have experienced a hallucination.
To put this into perspective, let me tell you a little story. When my sister and I were about 5 and 6 years old, our dad use to warn us not to go close to the big trench at the back of the yard. He use to tell us stories of alligators and how they ate children. He would tell us that the alligators could grab a child and pull it into the water, then swim away with it at 20 miles per hour.
These stories naturally frightened me and kept me away from the big trench. But one night, I had a dream. In the dream, I sat up in my bed and looked out of the window. I was hearing a child scream and the water being beat violently in the back trench. Then, I saw the outline of an alligator swimming about 20 miles per hour with a child in its mouth.
The dream felt so real that when I woke up, I couldn’t tell whether it was real or a dream. But it scared the hell out of me. It made me avoid the big trench even more. Indeed, I had seen a child being carried away by the gator!
For years, a part of me thought that I had actually this, and this happened to a child around midnight. But as I grew older, and pondered upon this incident, I realized that it was only a dream for the following reasons:
- No child was reported missing or eaten by a gator the next day.
- It was unlikely that an alligator would catch a child at that hour of the night.
- The alligator would simply pull the child under the water and eat it close to where he or she was caught, and not swim 20 miles an hour with the child screaming in the mouth.
- It would have been difficult for me to see the alligator in the trench from my window because of the trees blocking the view.
The dream experience of the alligator seemed so real that my mind had a hard time figuring out of it were real or a dream. But, as I mentioned before, it had to do with “conditioning of the mind.”
In the same way, these people hear so many frightening stories of hell from a young age that if they fall asleep or lose consciousness, the mind might replay something like this them – and it would feel real.
This article expresses the view of the learning author at the time of authoring the article. The author’s view is subject to change if new knowledge come to light.
