Reviews for 23 Minutes in Hell

The average rating for 23 Minutes in Hell based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-02-25 00:00:00 Timothy Vaughn From a literary standpoint, 23 Minutes in Hell was an abomination. The first part of the book deals with the authors descent into Hell. The narrative is peppered with biblical references as well as personal anecdotes in an attempt to get the reader to believe his story using very fuzzy 'logic'. The intent is clear: Do whatever it takes to stay out of Hell. The middle of the book tells of his conversion to Christianity and the end is an appendix of scripture and references which seem to lend credence to his experience. Bill's description of Hell are simply terrible and horrifying, which brings me to my main contention with this book and others like it (the warnings of 'deciding to go to hell'): Why does Hell exist? According to the bible, the Christian God created it. Hell is a place of eternal suffering, pain and torture, designed for Satan and his angels (demons), yet the majority of mankind WILL end up there for doing nothing more than not believing in the very God that created this place! What kind of a monster would directly cause the ceaseless suffering of anything/anyonewith no chance of rest? Why not simply destroy the offender? It is a sick and truly evil thing to cause suffering, and eternal suffering can only be conceived by a personification of such malignancy that anyone would do well to not have any contact with such a monster! In addition, why the delay? If Hell was created for Satan and his minions, why not simply chuck them into Hell NOW??? If Satan is the cause of all sin, suffering, evil, etc, then what is the hold up? Even if mankind was not in danger of the flames (and according to Bill, there are indeed flames), consider how many have suffered, continue to suffer and will suffer! Just do it already. Bill attempts to answer some of the "tough" questions such as: Do children go to Hell? Of course not, that would be ghastly, yet the Christian bible offers no such sanction. Bill uses quote mining and what he would call reasoning to lead the reader to the answer, but his conclusions are based on nothing more than a man realizing that not even his God would do such a thing. Of course not, the bible does not contain any stories of this God demanding that his followers kill children, or of bears mauling children that dare call his prophet "Old baldy". Of course not. Mr Wiese hammers home the point that NO ONE escapes the fires of Hell, yet breaks his own declaration by...escaping Hell. Of course, Jesus was responsible since 'I AM' allowed Bill to suffer the terrors of Hell so that he could come back warn people. The Rich Man was not allowed this.....but Bill was. Bill then states the location of Hell, and it is in the center of the Earth. It would seem then, that Hell is not a spiritual place, but the filming location of The Core. 23 Minutes in Hell is published by Charisma House, a Christian publishing company that has a wide variety of books on Hell, but the tract "Hell-Suppose It is True after all?" is of particular interest since is invokes Pascal's Wager....Bill tries to do this well, but I have this to say about deciding to follow a God that would cast you into Hell for not believing, so it would be better to believe than not: Anyone that believes in a God in order to escape punishment is clearly demonstrating where is motives lie. If one merely wishes to escape the worst punishment after death, it would be better to be a Muslim, since their version of Hell is indeed worse than the Christian Hell. In any event, that is seriously flawed reasoning and if Hell exists in whole of in part as Bill and the other writers of the this subject, than I WANT to be as far away as possible from the monster than created such a place! Kissing up to such a being is an indication that one lacks integrity, courage and, in the opinion of this reviewer, an intellect. Allowing fear to dictate a belief system is as best irresponsible. I have shelved this book along next to Bob Larson, Mike Warnke and Rebecca Brown. I would entitle the shelf 'Comedy' if it weren't so damned sad.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-10-02 00:00:00 Brandon Peterson I liked the book, however, I understand all the low reviews. The description of Hell is brought up right off and dealt with quickly. The rest of the book is confirmation he isn't crazy and scripture references. So there aren't 130 pages of gory detail. Plus, it is his witness tool, so if you're not believing his message, you aren't going to be impressed. I believe Hell is a real place and people are there because the reject the gift of God's salvation. That is what the Bible preaches. If you don't believe in the Bible, I don't imagine you will rate this book too high. The book took me about 90 minutes to read, but being familiar with the Bible, I didn't need to spend much time in the footnote section at the end of each chapter. If you are unfamiliar with the Bible, you will want to spend more time there. As a literary work, he has no style. He does follow the rules well though. However, this is his witnessing tool, his way of sharing the Gospel of Jesus. He is honest and doesn't appear to be interested in money because he was happy people were sending bootleg videos and audio CDs of his speeches around the world, with no royalties. So he honestly believes everything he says and why he says it. I understand his motivation because the account of Lazarus and the Rich Man haunts me like this haunts the writer. I feel a great need to share what I believe about God, Jesus, Heaven, and Hell as well. So I can relate to the writer. After all, if Christians actually believe all this Hell stuff is true, we'd be doing what we can to keep people from going there. At the end of the day, that is all the writer is doing.