Hell Is For Real: Pastor Claims People Are Tortured In Hell With Rihanna’s Umbrella
The world of pop-culture evangelicalism is chock full of purported accounts of individuals who claim to have temporarily died or left their physical body and departed to heaven. These stories and visions often contain far-flung extra-biblical details that often contradict the details given in scripture, focusing on a vision of heaven that is highly individualistic and catered to the desires of the individual who has the vision.
Three-year-old Colton Burpo’s alleged vision of heaven, detailed in the book Heaven is For Real included Jesus riding on a rainbow-colored horse and Colton sitting in Jesus’ lap while angels serenaded him. A similar child-centered account was given by Alex Malarkey in the 2010 bestseller, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, an account that was openly recanted by Alex in 2015.
While fictitious first-person accounts of going to hell that are sold as fact don’t seem to have quite as much popularity as heaven accounts, especially in evangelical circles these days (Dante’s Inferno seems to have permanently cornered the market), a tale of temporary “hell tourism” occasionally goes viral. Word of Faith Pastor Gerald Johnson of Faith Culture Church recently released a video interview, where he recounted his alleged descent into hell in 2016, an encounter that he alleges took place 22 years after the start of his ministry.
I thought that I was having a heart attack, and I physically… my spirit left my physical body and I thought that I was going upward, but because I thought I had done so much good in this lifetime and helped so many people, and made so many decisions that were Godly decisions, but um as opposed to me going up, I went down, and I went literally into literally into the center of the earth and that’s where hell is. Jesus even said that in the scriptures.
Pastor Johnson follows in Dante’s footsteps, making the case that hell lies at the earth’s center. As Johnson continues, claims in the account become increasingly bizarre, as he claims that there are people in hell who became the dog slaves of demons, and he received a telepathic communication from these demons.
There’s a man on all fours like a dog. He was burned from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet and his eyes were bulging out, and what was worse than that is that he had a chain around his neck so he was like a dog in hell, and what was even worse than that is that who was holding the chain. It was a demon holding the chain and I knew because their things are not said they’re known. You just, it’s like a telepathic communication. I knew that this demon was sent in this man’s life to ride him from his childhood until the time that he died, because the demon knew that if I could stand his life long enough on the earth if I can keep getting him to not serve God and to make bad decisions on the earth then I’ll have power over him in hell, and he’ll be a slave to me. So it was like twice as late it was like you’re a slave on the earth to the things of the devil and then in hell you’re really like a tormented dog slave.
Johnson goes on to claim that there is music played by demons to torment the occupants of hell. Apparently, in Johnson’s version of hell, people are tortured with terrible versions of worldly songs that they enjoyed on earth. He specifically mentions hearing Bust Your Windows by Jazmine Sullivan, Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin, and Umbrella by Rihanna. Johnson’s hell is either very egocentric or ethnocentric, as he doesn’t mention any music by artists who aren’t black.
If early red flags within Johnson’s story are not enough to debunk it as fantastical story-telling, one can ascertain that this account of hell is fake, because Johnson claims that after returning to earth from hell, he personally saw Jesus, and Jesus told him the reason why he was sent to hell instead of heaven.
I came back on the earth, and God began to speak to me. I actually saw the real Jesus. I saw him, and he began to speak to me, and he said that he said you have been secretly upset with the people that hurt you. You have been hoping that I would punish the people that hurt you. He said these are not your people. These are my people. He says, “I only want you to focus on the assignment that I’m giving you, because I want to do something through you that the world hasn’t seen… and so the root of it is that although I did good, I gave a lot to people. I did a whole lot of good things. The thing that I had in my heart was unforgiveness towards people who had did me wrong.
While Johnson does go on to make vague references to Jesus as “the light” and reason, “I won’t see any more days in hell”, the whole account is self-centered and fails to present a clear gospel message. Instead, Johnson promotes himself and his “assignment” from God and “vision” from Jesus as the center-point of his hell story while presenting a false gospel of works, as if God sent Johnson to hell to make him a better person, do good works, and thereby enter heaven.
Contrary to Johnson’s false gospel, salvation by grace through faith is a gift of God. Salvation cannot be earned because all people sin and fall short of God’s perfect standard. Man cannot pull himself up by his own bootstraps by simply “doing better” or completing an extra credit work assignment to make up for all the bad things that he has done. God doesn’t judge a man on the basis of a curve. Instead, he judges man on the basis of his perfect son. Every person in hell is there because they failed to live up to God’s perfect standard and have not received salvation through the covenant of grace. Thankfully, God has made a way to salvation, by grace through faith for Pastor Gerald Johnson and anyone else who would put their faith in the atoning work of Christ alone.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26
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Egads.