A Prominent Woman Makes an Unsuccessful Attempt to Escape Hell

Harold Armstrong Baker (1881–1971) was an American Pentecostal missionary to China from 1919 to 1950, during which he pioneered the Adullam Rescue Mission for street children in Yunnan Province, China, together with his wife, Josephine. The children in the home, mostly boys aged from six to eighteen, began to have spiritual experiences, claiming to have seen heaven through a series of visions. These visions were recounted in Baker's book Visions Beyond the Veil.

Baker was also the author of the book Plains of Glory and Gloom, and in it he deals with the question of life beyond the grave. To that end, he discusses divine revelations that people have received, and the excerpts of Baker’s report is below: 

The true church from days of old warned of hell because from time to time some of its members were taken by angels to visit it.

The Bible also tells of hell; because its writers, inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote of realities. The pagan from pre-historic times, the church from its earliest days, the Bible of the ancients in describing the horrors of hell in varying degrees according to the depths of sin and principle of judgment for sins committed.

The hell of the past is the unchanged hell of the present. As I have written in my former book, Visions Beyond the Veil, the Lord so poured out the Holy Spirit on the children of our Chinese orphanage and gave such repeated and unmistakable God-sent visions of hell that I could as easily doubt my own existence as revealed in the Bible and seen by these present-day witnesses. The children saw their acquaintances in hell. That is surely up-to-date news.

Many similar reports recently given corroborate the same facts. For instance, when Miss D lay in a trance from which she could not be wakened for seven days, she visited not only heaven, but also hell. While in the latter place she met Miss W, who had died during the time of Miss D’s trance. As Miss D was leaving that awful place she saw Mr. C also enter the infernal region. He, too, had suddenly died. Not even the friends watching by Miss D’s side had heard of the death of this man so clearly seen.

Miss D was next conducted to a place which she described in the most terrifying language and declared that the horrible shrieks of lost spirits still seemed to sound in her ears. As she approached the burning pit, a tremendous effort was made to draw her into it; but she felt herself safe under the protection of her guardian angel. She recognized many in the place of torment whom she had known on earth, some having been considered Christians. There were princes and peasants, rich and poor, learned and unlearned writhing together in a dreadful unquenchable fire where all earthly distinctions and titles were forever at an end. Among them she beheld a Miss W, who had occupied a prominent station in society, but had died during the trance of Miss D. She said that when Miss W saw her approach her shrieks were appalling beyond the power of language to describe and that she made a desperate, but unsuccessful attempt to escape.

“Punishment of lost souls she represented as symbolizing the respective sins which had occasioned their condemnation. Miss W, for instance, was condemned for her love of money, which I had every reason to believe was her besetting sin; and she seemed to be robed in a garment of gold, all on fire. Mr. O, whom she saw, was lost through intemperance; he appeared to be punished by devils administering to him some boiling liquid. She said there was no sympathy amongst these unhappy spirits, but that unmixed hatred in all its frightful forms prevailed in every part of the fiery regions.

“She beheld parents and children, husbands and wives, and those who had been companions in sin, exhibiting every mark of deep hatred to each other’s society, and heard them in fiendish accents upbraiding and bitterly cursing one another. She saw nothing in hell but misery and despair, and heard nothing there but the most discordant sounds, accompanied with weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Whilst she gazed upon the revolting scene, many souls arrived from earth, and were greedily seized by innumerable devils of monstrous shape amidst horrid shouts of hellish triumph.

“This fearful view of the state of the lost agrees with the testimony of S.T., whose case is on record in Mr. Wesley’s Journal whom he knew on earth. Among them was a former school mate of whose death this witness had not heard. If this man was not seeing realities, how did he see in hell these deceased people? He tells his own story thus:

“My guide said, ‘Look.’ As I looked, oh, horror of horrors! There was an ocean of fire with many people in it, a few of whom I knew. As far as I could see there was fire and people. The fire I am accustomed to seeing does not look so horrible, or so hot, as that awful fire did. It was so hot that there was a vapor looking a little like steam everywhere. Oh, the misery and suffering! Words utterly fail me to give an idea of what I saw and heard.

“Some of the people were crying, some groaning the most pitiful groans and begging for water, water! Some were pulling their hair; some gnashing with their teeth; some biting their hands and arms; such a sight is impossible for me to describe. One I knew was a young man, formerly a schoolmate of mine. His mother was my Sunday school teacher, and we all thought her to be a Christian. He raised up and said, ‘Mama is here, too.’ At that time I did not know that either this boy or his mother was dead. I saw others who died as they had lived, in deep sin. One was a woman who cursed, but when she saw it did no good she groaned and said, ‘That used to ease my temper, but it doesn’t any more.’ Another standing near remarked, ‘Well, we had our own choice.’

“Then my guide said to me, ‘Do you want to go further?’ ‘No’, I replied; ‘never again do I want to see this place of torment.’ It makes me shudder now to think of that place of misery and suffering called hell. No one can possibly imagine how awful it is. It seemed to me that I was suffering at the time I was seeing hell.’

Of another testimony we read:

“She tried to tell us something of the horror of the scene upon which she looked; she declared that she had no language with which to describe it, that it was beyond the power of words to describe the misery of lost souls. She saw an innumerable company of them, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth, tearing their hair and digging their faces with their nails until the blood ran. The unsaved soldiers who fought in the late war were still engaged in deadly conflict and fought and bled unceasingly. The misery of all was augmented by the torment of demons, multitudes of whom thronged the pit, while hosts of others were driven out by the master demon to bring in the souls of men. They were faithful in the discharge of this duty, and were constantly dragging in their shrieking, terrified victims whom they threw down in the midst of that mass of wretchedness. The most vivid impression made upon the mind of the girl who viewed this horrible scene was that hell was enlarging its borders to make room for the throngs who were trending that way. Constantly the prince of devils urged his co-workers to greater activity and encouraged them to repeat. “The harvest will be great. The harvest will be great!” Lost souls were vainly trying to escape to warn their friends of the depths of misery which await if they refuse the mercy of God.

“This was told to us as a continued story, but was related slowly, with frequent pauses, as the terrible scene once more presented itself to the mind of the young woman. Frequently she cried out in anguish and covered here eyes with her hand as if to blot out her vision. ‘Oh!’ she cried, ‘I cannot even think of it for a long time lest it drive me crazy.’”

Plains of Glory and Gloom is a rare, out-of-print book that was published in the 1950s. You might be able to get copy from Amazon in the link below: