Has anyone been to hell before?

Answer 1

According to Our Blessed Savior, quite a few people are in hell, and a huge number of angels. Theologians think as many as a third of the angels refused to serve God in heaven. However, hell is a place of no return, no one goes there and comes back, when a person ends up in hell, they are there for eternity. There have been several reported apparitions of people who are in hell and have appeared to people through the agency of the Almighty, but only to tell people of what their end is if they continue as they are.

Answer 2

There have been reports of those who have been to hell, and have been resuscitated or, in the case of St. Teresa of Avila, Our Blessed Lord showed her a vision of hell - something that she never fully recovered from her entire life long. The other famous vision of hell was seen by the three shepherd children at Fatima, Our Blessed Lady showed them a vision of hell. The two descriptions of hell are at the links below.

Answer 3

The word "hell" can be confusing, it certainly has confused me at times.

The reason I write this is because scripture refers to "the pit," "gehenna," "hades," "hell," "the lake of fire,"...etc. All places of suffering and punishment for sin. We see in the Revelation that the lake of fire is the final place of torment for those condemned by God. Until unbelievers are sent to the lake of fire, scripture refers to some of these other names for an intermediary place of suffering.

Scripture says, "it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment." So I know of no men who have come back to tell us of hell. Scripture mentions Christ preaching the gospel to the "spirits in prison" between the time of his death and resurrection, but we have no scripture of Christ telling us of this.

Many have seen "hell," having been assigned there until final judgment, but none have come back to tell of it. I have seen tv shows claiming to have guests who have had "out of body experiences" and having gone to hell, but until I see scripture in agreement with this I do not take it seriously.

Answer 4

Hell is not an 'experience'.

The Bible word for Hell is 'sheol'. Sheol is simply the 'common grave of all mankind' both good and bad. It's a place where there is no life at all. The Bible states that 'from dust we are' and "to dust we shall return'.

Therefore everyone who dies goes to 'sheol' or 'hell' or 'the grave'.

The Bible says that David went to hell. -Acts 2:27 (But he won't be left in there forever. He'll be resurrected.)

The Bible says that even Jesus went to hell. -Acts 2:31. Then it says that Jesus 'wasn't left there'. He was there for 3 days. Then he was resurrected. But he was there in hell. So no big deal. It's not like what the religions teach about hell.

The Bible shows that Lazarus also died. John chapter 11 likens death to 'sleep'. Sleep is 'peacefulness' / 'unconsciousness'. When he was resurrected, he mentioned nothing about being in heaven, or in a place of torment. He was simply dead and inactive in 'sheol', 'Greek Hades', 'the grave', 'hell'.