23 Minutes in Hell

Description

Wiese, who had been a Christian since 1970, states he had never studied hell before his experience. He describes finding himself in a cell about 15 feet high and 10 by 15 feet in area, occupied by two foul-smelling beasts with roughly a thousand times human strength, speaking a blasphemous language. He reports hearing the screams of billions of damned people and then encountering Jesus, who instructed him to tell others that hell is real. The vision ended with Wiese screaming on his living room floor.

Response

The book spent at least three weeks on the extended New York Times Best Seller list for paperback nonfiction. Some writers treated it as an accurate description of hell; Lawrence Yang devoted two columns to it in the Asian Journal, and Billy Bruce wrote in the Ironton Tribune that he believed Wiese's vision and urged others to read the book. Other reactions were sardonic or harsh. Rob Moll of Christianity Today commented on Wiese's statement that hell was too hot to sustain life, noting that everyone there except Wiese had already died.

John Sutherland in the New Statesman described Wiese's account of billions screaming as "rather lamely" called "annoying". Steven Wells of the Philadelphia Weekly argued that if Wiese is right, God is an insane tyrant. A writer for the Northern Iowan called the book "23 minutes of nonsense" and saw its success as a sign of Christianity's faults.