The day had already been heavy, fraught with the kind of friction that grinds down the soul. Earlier, I had stepped into the dark path of a woman I knew, someone being systematically dismantled by an unruly spirit. I could feel its weight—sticky, malicious, and desperate to anchor itself to her fear. With the authority granted by faith and years of navigating the unseen, I fought it off, commanding it to leave her in peace. It obeyed, fleeing into the ether, but not without leaving its mark. As it retreated, I felt a sharp, burning sensation searing across my arm, a parting gift of malice from a defeated parasite.
When my head finally hit the pillow that night, my mind was a storm of frustration and exhaustion. I fell asleep instantly, but there was no peace in the dark. Instead, dream after dream rushed by, a chaotic reel of fractured thoughts and lingering anxieties.
I woke up sweating and restless, needing to break the cycle. I walked to the kitchen, drank a cool glass of water, and tried to wash the static from my mind. Standing in the quiet kitchen, I bowed my head and prayed. I asked God for guidance, for a sign, and for protection against the spiritual blowback that always seemed to follow my work as a light warrior.
Call it what you will, but I know what I am. Over the years, I have documented over four hundred encounters with spirits—walking the waking world, trapped in sleep, or tied to specific haunted grounds. It all began on an operating table years ago when I died for seven minutes. When I crossed back over, I brought something with me. The veil had been torn. I could suddenly sense, feel, and see the spiritual undercurrents of the world, and I chose to stand on the side of light. I use the Word of God, the power of His name, and hard-earned experience to pull tormenting entities off the people they harass.
But deliverance has a cost. Doing this work drains me to the bone, and nine times out of ten, the spirits I banish come looking for payback while I sleep.
Anticipating the retaliation, I braced myself before drifting off again. And sure enough, the trap sprang.
The moment unconsciousness claimed me, the entity struck. It tried to pin me to the mattress, a suffocating weight meant to paralyze my spirit. I shoved it away with a burst of will and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. It mocked me, a jagged, discordant sound of absolute contempt. But a demon laughs only until it collides with true faith.
With a violent wrench, the entity hurled me past the boundaries of my bedroom and shoved me downward into a vast, suffocating void.
I landed on a sprawling road made entirely of black tar. It stretched out for miles, an abysmal highway teeming with unruly, howling demons. They swarmed the roadside, reaching out to push me down, taunting me with whispers of failure and despair. I pushed forward, sometimes crawling on my hands and knees through the boiling, viscous substance. The tar burned my flesh, sticking to me like liquid asphalt, and when I reached down for traction, my fingers scraped against something solid. I pulled my hand up only to find the skeletal remains of lost souls who had perished in the pit—skulls of the forgotten, swallowed by the highway to nowhere.
The screaming and moaning grew deafening on either side of the road. I looked ahead, my eyes straining through the gloom, and saw a colossal wall, easily a hundred feet high, blocking the end of the road. There was no other way out.
As I approached the base of the wall, the cacophony reached a fever pitch. Cutting through the noise came the voice of the devil himself.
I turned and saw him looming about a hundred feet behind me, standing twenty feet tall with a hide the color of fresh blood, a long, whipping tail, and two massive, jagged horns curling from his head. His face was a masterpiece of pure malice, and his eyes burned like twin furnaces. Surrounding him were tens of thousands of miniature devils—tiny, grotesque things standing about two feet tall, varying in shades of bruised green, muddy brown, and greasy black. They were his shock troops, the foot soldiers of everyday misery. And among them, shrieking insults, was the very entity I had driven away from the woman earlier that day.
“You’re weak!” the devil roared, his voice shaking the tar beneath me. “Frail! Too tired to crawl out of the pit!”
His minions cackled, echoing his mockery with a barrage of vile jeers. They told me I wouldn’t make it. They told me I belonged here with them.
Instead of listening, I clamped my teeth together, prayed the Lord’s Prayer, and begged God for the strength to move. I reached the towering wall and began to climb.
The higher I went, the heavier I became, my limbs turning to lead, slowing my desperate ascent. Below, the devil and his hordes stood watching, a sea of jeering faces, crying, laughing, and spitting profanities. But I kept my eyes fixed upward. I refused to stay in this place of rot and ruin.
As I clawed at the surface, the tar wall began to magically harden, allowing me to jam my fingers directly into the stone-like material for leverage. I found a reserve of strength I didn’t know I possessed. A few of the smaller minions scrambled up the wall behind me, trying to drag me back down, but I lashed out, kicking them backward into the churning tar pit below.
As I neared the summit, the darkness began to fracture. A brilliant, blinding light spilled over the edge of the wall, accompanied by the most exquisite, heavenly music I had ever heard. The light filled me with a sudden, overwhelming surge of vitality, and a voice—rich, resonant, and filled with infinite love—spoke directly to my spirit: Fight for yourself. Beat the devil at his own game.
The voice guided my final, desperate scramble to the top. My hands, arms, and legs were entirely spent, trembling with exhaustion. I made one last, lunging effort, my grip slipping, but just as I thought I would fall back into the abyss, a giant, warm hand caught mine. With effortless grace, it pulled me over the edge of the wall and out of the pit entirely.
I looked down one last time. The devil stood at the base of the wall, but he had turned his face away. He could not look at the light; he could not bear its purity. His minions, paralyzed by sudden terror, dove headlong into the tar road, squealing like panicked pigs fleeing a predator in the dark. They were thoroughly ashamed, utterly beaten, and fleeing in absolute dread of the power of the light.
I turned away from the edge and looked into the light itself. It was staggering in its beauty and power—so absolute that I couldn’t move or even blink.
The voice spoke to me again, gentle yet firm: “Away from me, my son, for you have work yet to do.”
I jolted awake in my bed, soaked in sweat, staring into the quiet shadows of my room. I lay there for a long time, turning the vision over in my mind. I had faced demons before, but I had never looked upon the adversary himself. Say what you want, doubt my gifts if you must, but I know what I saw. I know the pit was hell, and the light was Heaven.
The vision stirred something deep within my core, resetting a path I had recently begun to stray from. Lately, I had grown weary. I had doubted myself, questioned my impact, and allowed my gift to sit idle. I had forgotten the fundamental truth: the difference between Heaven and hell is a matter of attitude, commitment, and faith. Hell offers nothing but pain, suffering, anxiety, depression, and rotting flesh. Heaven offers vibrant colors, breathtaking music, heavenly people, angelic hosts, and an eternity in the presence of God.
I got up, took a hot shower to wash away the phantom chill of the nightmare, and spoke aloud to God. I told Him that I choose Him, always. I thanked Him for pulling back the curtain, for showing me both sides of the human condition, and for reminding me of the stakes.
So, what will it be? Heaven or hell?
When this old body finally gives out and my spirit moves on, I choose beauty, forgiveness, and God. And if you are out there right now, suffering from something that attacks you, hurts you, or keeps you in the dark, know that there is help. Find someone equipped with the gift to move it along, and call out to God. His angelic army is standing by, ready and willing to assist.
God bless, and I hope to one day see you in Heaven!
Leave a Reply