Hell is Real

A Story of My Uncle.

One Sunday afternoon in 2004 my dad got an international call from Korea. My grandmother who usually shows as much emotion as a block of marble was in tears on the other line. "Your brother... he's in the emergency room. The doctors told him to prepare for the worst."

Apparently my uncle drank himself to the point of no recovery. The last time he was in a similar rut the doctors told him that if he was to have another drop that would be the end of it. He did not listen.

The experts came up with this ridiculous number, 300 percent fatality rate. Blood filled his lungs causing an infection in his veins, a temporary kidney failure, and his prior diabetes along with the alcohol shot up the sugar level way above the norm. The complications were enough to kill him three times over.

My parents got on a plane the next day, praying all the while that at least someone would share the Gospel with him before his death. Dad was worried that he would lose his brother the same way he lost his father, without ever having the chance to tell him about Jesus.

When they had arrived at the emergency room however, my uncle was in stable conditions, awake, and in his right mind and proceeded to tell of what he saw while he was in his coma. The following is an account of his experience.

My uncle had been in the emergency room for two days and in the intensive care unit for one day. But he was adamant in claiming that he had been in the hospital for a total of ten days. Day in and day out he saw doctors and nurses fighting and arguing over where to place him. Through the opening of the ventilator shaft in the ceiling he could see figures staring intently at him. The stucco patterns of the ceiling panels morphed into an image of hell, of men, women, and babies tangled up together in piles. The same image played out like a film projection onto the sides of the hospital wall. Voices of deceased hometown friends whispered behind the window curtains all the while a pastor was saying the last rites. The most peculiar thing that he saw was a white misty glow, like lightning, near his feet. At the time he did not know what to make of it. He thought perhaps it was either an evil force that was draining his life source or a benign one that was protecting him.

To explain something about my uncle, he is not religious. He is a "non-practicing Buddhist" as a lot of Koreans of his generation are. He does not know a thing about the Bible nor has he ever been a churchgoer. From his father he inherited a rice winery and in his younger days he would take free rice wine to the local home for the elderly for several years without telling anyone. Eventually the local newspaper found out about it and acknowledged him as a "Good Samaritan." He was sort of a hometown hero for his charitable contributions to improve the welfare of the poor.

The only person who is Christian in his family is his daughter. After her conversion, she was concerned for the spiritual well-being of her family and had been praying for their salvation ever since. When this tragedy struck, all she could do was to pray the Lord's Prayer near her father’s side. Instinctively she knew that if she stopped praying her father would die. In the midst of her desperation, she saw a vision of Christ reaching over to her father on his deathbed and lay hands on his chest. At that point a quiet calmness and assurance came over her that her father would live.

By the time my parents had arrived at the hospital room with the heavy burden of trying to convert a dying, obstinate sinner they found that the job was already finished; he was healthy, converted, and giving a testimony to a room full of unbelieving relatives. This was the sovereign work of God.

My parents and I had been praying for the salvation of the relatives from my father’s side for over ten years. We had never had the courage to share our faith with the stout, traditionalist, mostly Buddhist relatives. They were not entirely known for being gregarious either; rather they spoke mostly in silence and in watching TV or eating together. In such an environment I can understand why sharing something as personal as one’s own conversion account or religious beliefs would have seemed as unnatural as singing bluegrass at a funeral.

The breakthrough had come when the aforementioned uncle’s daughter had come from Korea to live with us for over a year. During that time she was gradually introduced to the Gospel and naturally attended church along with us. Eventually she was converted. As she left for Korea we were worried about how she would fare amidst her non-Christian family members and relatives, especially since she was the frail and sensitive type. God had other thoughts in mind however.

This was how God had answered both her and our prayers. He had caused a supernatural breakthrough in the wall of unbelief in my father’s family through the conversion of its eldest member, my uncle, and this through the intercession of a frail, burgeoning recent convert. All the more surprising, it was exactly out of my uncle’s lips the rest of them were able to hear of the eternal realities of the Gospel, not out of some well-trained preacher. In this way God had put to silence all qualms my parents had in confronting the non-believing relatives directly regarding matters of faith. This was the way God worked. It also spoke of a greater truth that God was sovereign in bringing about his works of salvation despite human shortcomings.