Steven Halford says the Lord sent him to hell. Not for eternity, but for one eventful day.
Halford says he visited hell almost 20 years ago while he was back in his native England (he lived in America at the time) evangelizing and working with youth.
“I went to sleep one night, and next thing I know, I’m standing in hell,” he says. He traveled there alongside three other people in a dream that he has now concluded was a God-given vision.
“Many people have visions where they go to heaven, and they see angels,” Halford says. “For some reason, I went to hell and saw demons.”
He has lost friends because of sharing this story, Halford says. He has been mocked about it as well. “I’ve had national church leaders in England sit me down and correct me and say what I saw was not from the Lord, and I was wrong,” he says. “But what I experienced and what I felt at the end of this vision has kept me when all my other friends—or many of my friends and church leaders, national church leaders in England—have not only started to say that hell isn’t hell, is no longer eternal and never was eternal—but that hell doesn’t exist, and that this is our hell.”
Halford knew in the beginning of his vision that he was only in hell as a type of day trip or excursion, and he and the others began making fun of the demon they met there.
“When the demon tied us up with chains, he whipped us over the arm, and I didn’t think anything of it; it didn’t really hurt,” Halford says. “And then I was looking at one of the guys and talking to him, saying, “Hell isn’t that big a deal, is it? I mean, is this it?”
“All of a sudden, my shoulder broke, and my arm just crumpled,” he says. “And I remember panicking, like sheer panic. And I looked at the demon whom I was mocking just minutes before, and … he changed his voice so dramatically. And he said to me, ‘You’ll never leave.’ And I looked up at him, and he pulled the chain back to hit me again.”
What happened next fueled Halford’s passion to share the gospel and has propelled him into a ministry in which he proclaims the realities of hell in a world where many say it doesn’t exist. To hear the rest of Halford’s story, listen to the Strang Report podcast here, and be sure to subscribe to the Strang Report on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform.
To learn more about and prayerfully consider supporting Steven Halford Ministries and Halford’s vision to reach the nations, please visit our nonprofit partner, Christian Life Missions, at this link. {eoa}