Welcome to Hell

There is a warning attached to this message. It is not for the faint of heart. I was in a great deal of pain, and I was having cold sweats and blackouts, and I barely got in my car to drive myself to the ER.

After examining me, the doctor said I needed an emergency appendectomy, and they wheeled me into the operating room. When I came to, I couldn't breathe. I kept hollering, I can't breathe, I can't breathe.

Then I don't remember anything else. They said afterward that my heart failed, and they put a tracheotomy in me, and things took a turn for the worse as I began to turn gray. So they told me.

When I came to, I was in an ICU with strangers staring at me. I could have just as easily left this world quite suddenly and unexpectedly. God wasn't ready for me yet, or I wouldn't be here talking to you now, friends, to give you this warning.

All I remember is coming out of anesthesia and yelling, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. And that's what they're hollering in hell right now. The smoke of a furnace and the heat is so intolerable there, they can't breathe.

If I could walk you over to the verge of hell and lift the lid right off that bottomless pit so you could hear the suffering of the damned as they shriek right now, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. Welcome to hell. It's a horrible place.

I had a nightmare the other night. I live on the second floor, and I dreamed I walked over to the window in the dead of the night because I heard some scratching on it. And as I peered out through the blinds, a face peered back at me.

It was a terrifying face, a man with dead eyes just gazing at me silently. And I started to yell, but no sound was coming out of my mouth. So there I was scared at this eerie face just staring at me, and I couldn't yell for all my strength was gone.

And then I heard myself finally hollering louder and louder. And then I heard my daughter's voice from upstairs, and she was calling to me, Daddy, Daddy, what's wrong, Daddy? And I woke up, and I realized that it was a dream. And I called out to my daughter that I was okay.

I was just having a nightmare. Welcome to hell. It's a living nightmare you will never, ever wake up from.

You are in constant terror and alarm, and you are afraid. Demon faces stare back at you in hell. Their dead eyes and twisted faces gaze at you, and they never look away.

You can holler as loud as you want, and there'll be no loved one to comfort you. You sit in chains and out of darkness, and you will see the faces of dead-eyed demons staring back at you. I don't like spiders, and I don't like snakes, but if I had to choose between them, I'd pick a confrontation with a spider over a snake any time, because you can step on a spider with your shoe and kill it, but you can't step on a snake and kill it.

You have to cut off its head. When you do, that slimy body will still move and slither from muscle reflex. My father once worked in a mortuary, and he told me that at night, when he was alone with the corpses, that it was not uncommon for a dead man to suddenly sit up on the table.

A rigor mortis would set in, and a corpse could suddenly start moving around without warning and even sit up. Welcome to hell, where corpses all around you are twisting and writhing, and you look down at your feet as you feel something slither over it, and it's a nest of snakes. I used to have to kill copperheads on my property in the South, and I'd put my boots on and grab a shovel in one hand and a can of gasoline in the other, and I'd pour that gasoline down on the rock bed, and out would slither several snakes at a time.

They would slither right over the toe of my boot, and then I would bring that shovel down on their heads, and one time I got venom spit in my eye. Fortunately, I was wearing glasses, or I could have lost my eye. Welcome to hell, where snakes will spit their venom in your eye.

You see, friends, hell is a combination of all the things you dread, all the things you fear, and they're rolled into that one house of horrors, and once you shut up in that haunted house, you never get out. I used to live in a haunted house. Just the memory of it still unnerves me.

My family would be sitting in the living room, and upstairs above us we would suddenly hear heavy footsteps walking slowly down the hall. It was eerie, scary, listening to those bodiless footsteps land heavily and flop on the floor as they made their way down the hall. I'd get a chill down my back just thinking about it now.

But there was something much worse than those heavy footsteps in that haunted house. Much more frightening, because every now and then, without warning, a pounding would begin on the door beneath the stairwell, and it would not stop. But when it finally did, it stopped you dead in your tracks as you were confronted with that violent, sudden pounding on that door.

One day, I crept over to that door just seconds after the pounding stopped, and I reached my hand on the doorknob and yanked that door open, and a rush of cold air came out on me. Even though it was a hot summer day, oh, welcome to hell, where horrible events occur, where they'll suddenly happen to you, and you have no control over them, nor can you escape the terror. Oh, welcome to hell.

The demons will shriek and delight as they welcome you to your new abode. But you won't pay them any, never mind, because the snakes and the smoke will be so bad you won't be able to breathe. It's too dark to see much around you, but your ears will ring with the sound of millions and millions all around you, above you, beneath you, screaming and hollering, I can't breathe.

I can't breathe. The last words you ever want to hear, friend, will be welcome to hell. Let me ask you a question, friend.

Have you ever been saved from going to that horrible hell house? Do you know for certain that when you die, you won't be cast in there? Have you ever gotten to Christ Jesus, and have you gotten under his redeeming blood? The word of God says, and I say, seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

If you have not trusted this blessed Savior, friend, now is the time to do business with God. Look at that blessed man on the cross. He utters not a word of scorn or resentment to his persecutors.

When all is against him, his love flows out to a world of guilty sinners. He prays, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The cross is the place where men sought to get rid of Jesus, but by his death it becomes the place where his saving power flows out to all who come in repentance, confessing they are sinners, and own him as their Savior and Lord.

Put your trust in this blessed Savior now, friend, before it's too late. Soon he will come in judgment upon this world, when you shall meet him as your judge. He will say, away from me, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you who work iniquity, or you just might suddenly be taken out of this world like I almost was, and the next three words you'll hear will be, welcome to hell. Repent, friend, before it's too late.