Sovereign Spirit | One Woman's Path from Shameful Sheep to Spiritual Sovereignty | Chapter Three, Part Seven

Sovereign Spirit
..One Woman's Path from Shameful Sheep to Spiritual Sovereignty

Chapter Three, Part Seven

In Autumn, the youth group at Antioch Baptist didn’t have any large scale events going on to speak of. But one year, in October, we attended an event at another church I will never forget.

We all met at the church and piled in the church van one evening after dark, around Halloween time, and were driven to another church a few towns away. We’d been encouraged to bring our unsaved friends, and were told that this would be a good witnessing opportunity.

The event was called Judgement House, and I had no idea what to expect. In retrospect, we should have been forewarned about what we were getting ready to experience.

The church had been transformed and was set up with dark, black hallways leading to different rooms to which we were led to by a guide. The atmosphere was bleak and somber, and as we walked down the black narrow hallways, we could hear screams coming from the doors we passed by.

In each room there was a different scene with teenagers, and occasionally a few adults, acting out different dramas.

Each room was set up to depict a certain scenario which involved Christians and non-Christians, a specific sin or unchristian behavior acted out, followed by the death of one or more of the actors. There were scenes which portrayed a troubled teen who didn’t believe in God and her life ending in suicide, a girl who had sex before marriage, ended up pregnant, and died while having an abortion procedure, a drug deal followed by a murder, a drunken teen party and subsequent drunk driving accident, and so on.

After all the scenarios had been played out, and we’d witnessed several horrific deaths dramatized mere feet from where we stood, we were then brought down another dark hallway and into another room.

This room was hotter than the others. It smelled like smoke. Red walls and black smog surrounded us. The clank of chains echoed back and forth between the walls. The only lights in the room lit up the faces of the non-Christian kids we’d just watch die in the previous rooms. They were chained to the walls. Others writhed on the floor, covered in pools of blood. Their screams of agony and pleas for release were piercing, their wails unending.

A faceless demon dressed in black darted in front of us, and, in a sinister voice, welcomed us to Hell.

Hell’s captives screamed out their life’s regrets as we passed by, begging us to find their family members and friends, to tell them that Hell is real, and that Jesus was the only way out. The faceless demon taunted them as he swirled around the room, torturing each one and mocking their pain as he went.

I remember the desperate sense of urgency I felt to get out of that room, and the relief that came when we finally did get out, even if it was only to go back into another dark hallway. I also remember the pain that came with the thought of every person I knew who wasn’t a Christian, who would go to a place like that if they happened to die that night. Many people crossed my mind, and I vowed to myself to witness to them if I had the chance.

When we left Hell, our guide brought us to one last room. As we entered, we found ourselves at the end of a very long line. At the front of the line was a blinding bright light and a man like an angel standing there. He was holding a large book in his hands, and he was looking for names. I knew the book was supposed to represent the Book of Life, where the Bible says God writes your name when you accept Jesus as your savior. I recognized the angel-like man to be God, and the scene to be Judgement Day.

As each person in line approached, God would look for their name in his book. If he found the name, he tenderly embraced that person and pointed to the shining pearly gates to his left. With a booming, cheerful voice, he welcomed the person into the Kingdom of Heaven.

When someone came to stand and be judged before God, and that person’s name did not appear in the Book of Life, God’s voice grew loud and stormy. He shamed the person for never accepting his son, Jesus, as the sacrifice for their sins, and for denying all that he’d done for them. He banished them from his kingdom forever and condemned them to Hell! Demons would come, snatch the person from where they kneeled, having dropped to their knees in shame, screaming for mercy, begging for one last chance for forgiveness. God made it clear that plenty of chances had already been given, that the decision was final and everlasting. The demons, snarling and visibly satisfied with their newest capture, dragged the condemned, writhing and wailing, through the doors with billowing black smoke on God’s right hand side, the doors that led straight to Hell.

After we witnessed several of the dead enter a heavenly paradise, and several others hauled off to everlasting torture, we were led out of the room and into a lobby area.

The room was set up with several chairs, tissue boxes, and youth counselors waiting to pray with anyone who wanted to ensure their eternal future would be a happy one before they left that evening. One of the counselors began to speak to our group. He thanked us for coming to Judgement House that evening and wanted us to know that everything we had seen had been a very real representation of what the Bible says happens to us when we die. He reminded us that we could get in a car wreck on the way home when we left that night, and instantly be faced with God’s judgement, followed by eternity in only one of two places, as we’d just witnessed. We were also reminded, once again, that all of us deserved to go to Hell when we died, no matter how good of a person we were. All of us were so filthy and full of sin in the eyes of God, that he could not even look upon us, much less allow us to enter his kingdom. The only way, we were told, that God was able to have any mercy on us at all was through his son, Jesus’, sacrifice on the cross. Through the spilling of Jesus’ blood, we were washed clean in God’s eyes. We were repeatedly urged to accept Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins and believe in him right then and there if we never had before. If we were already Christians, we were implored to pray for the unsaved, and to tell as many people as we could about Jesus before it was too late. For how could we stand before God on Judgement Day and enter his paradise if we had never shared his gift with anyone else?

A few teens in our group went over, prayed with the counselors, and got saved, but most of us were already Christians, so there was a lot of standing around and waiting. There wasn’t much of an emotional response the way I was used to seeing at church functions. Most of us were solemn, I suppose a bit shocked at the scenes we’d just encountered, though none of us discussed it afterwards. I stayed off to myself, replaying what I’d just seen in my mind, unsure of how to process it all. Part of me felt so relieved that I was already saved and would never have to experience anything like Hell. The other part of me shivered with dread at the thought of the millions of people who would call Hell home one day, and the millions more who were probably already there. It made my chest ache to think of the pain they would eternally endure, and I wondered how I would really be able to enjoy Heaven knowing they weren’t there. I made vows to myself to witness to others as often as I could, to invite my schoolmates to church so that they could hear the gospel, and to be an immaculate example of what a Christian should be so that everyone who came in contact with me would want to know Jesus too.

I never thought to blame God for this whole charade. How could I when I was taught that God loved us unconditionally, that he was the very essence of love? Instead, I blamed the sinner. In fact, that was the only way I could feel okay about God sending a person to Hell over Heaven: it was their fault. The thought never crossed my mind that God was the one in charge of it all, and had the power to love us despite our sins. It never occurred to me that if God really didn’t want to send anyone to Hell, he would have created us much differently, or perhaps he could have decided not to create a Hell at all. I never once had the thought that a truly loving god could never condemn his own creation to a place like Hell.

Thoughts like these wouldn’t come to my mind until many years later. My vision of unconditional love was skewed on multiple levels.