Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather be afraid of Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
-Matthew 10:28-
Hacksun Cha
It was back in early 2015. It was just months after I was saved.
One day I read portions of a recently published English translation of the Xunzi, a two-thousand-year-old book named after a Chinese philosopher known for pioneering the theory of the innate evil of the human being. I am a translator of classical Chinese texts into English and wanted to compare this new translation with the original classical Chinese text to see how faithful the translation was and to see if there was anything worth learning from how the translation was done.
At night, I went to bed. When I was asleep, I suddenly saw a most grotesque sight. An Asian man was chained to a huge horizontal column, which was rotating. Burning fire in the background was the only thing I could see, other than the man on the column. I could feel the heat.
The man, tightly attached to the column, was also rotating along with it. As the column was turning, I could see the face of this man, clothed in what appeared to be ancient Asiatic garments. Somehow I instantly recognized him as Xunzi. Or to be more precise, I was given a perception that this was Xunzi.
As the man was rotating, something most dreadful happened to him. Some indescribably vile things broke forth from inside his face and his body. “Dark-colored elastic rods” might be the best description I can come up with.
Obviously, this “elastic rods” breaking forth from within his face and body must have caused unimaginable pain to him. But more than anything else, his face showed extreme disbelief–that this was really happening.
The most horrifying of all was that soon after he disappeared to the other side of the revolving column, he appeared again, restored. Then he went through exactly the same ordeal he suffered just before, again and again, without pause. His face again exhibited extreme disbelief more than anything else. He seemed forever unable to accept, or even process, what’s happening to him.
I was so horrified, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and then I woke myself up. I could almost still feel the heat. I don’t know how to describe what I experienced, but it was certainly not a dream because it was so vivid and real.
Because what I saw was so horrifying, almost beyond description, that I didn’t think it was Hell. I thought, ‘Granted, I saw something very real and very strange, but it can’t be Hell because it was different from the Hell I read in the Bible. Look at the story of Lazarus the beggar and the rich man. There was no torture involved in that story, and so this can’t be Hell.’
My baptist theological background also served to dissuade me from believing that I saw Hell. No one was supposed to visit Heaven or Hell according to what I learned from baptist sources.
And so I never told what I saw to anyone, not even to my wife Seya because I didn’t want to horrify her and I didn’t think I saw Hell. I just wrote it off as something inexplicable.
Recently, I watched Pastor Philip Mantofa’s testimony on Hell he visited with Jesus. What shocked me was how similar his description of Hell was to what I saw. In particular, there are two common features: First, there is endless torture. Second and more importantly, those in Hell are restored to their original state after they are tortured.
And so, I told my wife Seya that I saw similar things five years ago when I was asleep. She suggested that I write a testimony on this experience of mine. And this is my testimony of what I saw.
This dream is from 2015
Relevant Bible Verses
If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched— where ‘Their worm does not die And the fire is not quenched.’ And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched— where ‘Their worm does not die, And the fire is not quenched.’ And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire— where ‘Their worm does not die And the fire is not quenched.
Mark 9:43-48 NKJV
But I say to you that everyone who continues to be angry with his brother or harbors malice against him shall be guilty before the court; and whoever speaks [contemptuously and insultingly] to his brother, ‘Raca (You empty-headed idiot)!’ shall be guilty before the supreme court (Sanhedrin); and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of the fiery hell.
Matthew 5:22 AMP