Many claim that Jesus took them on a trip to hell and heaven to tell us that these places exist. Are they making it up? Why would they do that?
The only verse that says Jesus did descend to hell, as in the Apostles Creed, is 1 Peter 3:19-20.Many claim that Jesus took them on a trip to hell and heaven to tell us that these places exist. Are they making it up? Why would they do that?
I tend not to take these visions seriously because if you examine them closely, you'll find out they constantly contradict each other. For example, some describe seeing children in hell, whereas others say there are no children in hell because children are innocent. Some talk about differing punishments depending on the sin, kinda like in Dante's Inferno, whereas others do not personalize the punishments. (furthermore, the ones that describe sin-specific punishments contradict on what those punishments are!) The doctrines given to the people often don't line up either--and, quite suspiciously, are almost always in agreement with what the person already believed or had been taught.
Maybe some of these are real. But given all of the above, it's obvious that a huge chunk of them are not--and there is no real way to determine which ones are the real ones. Some people say you can figure it out based which ones are in alignment with the Bible, but while that would allow you to dismiss some as false, it wouldn't prove the others are true. If it says things that are in line with the Bible, it provides no new information, and if it says things that are neither confirmed nor denied by the Bible then the accuracy of those statements cannot be verified.
Because of the impossibility of telling which ones are true and which ones are false, I tend to disregard them entirely.
Many claim that Jesus took them on a trip to hell and heaven to tell us that these places exist. Are they making it up? Why would they do that?
Many claim that Jesus took them on a trip to hell and heaven to tell us that these places exist. Are they making it up? Why would they do that?