One gulp of Coca-Cola went down the wrong way. Thirty seconds later, Levi Golding was falling through a darkness so thick he couldn’t tell which way he was facing. In this episode of God’s Truth Podcast, the young father from Lansing, Michigan, shares his near-death experience: the fall, the torment, the gates of hell, and the love that pulled him out.
A Christian in name only
Levi grew up in a rough part of a rough city. By his early twenties he had been shot at, had stolen and lied, and knew people who were dead, locked up or carrying bullet wounds. “My heart grew cold,” he says. He never shook his fist at God. He just drifted wherever the wind took him.
Yet he called himself a Christian. At ten, he had a vivid encounter he believes was with Jesus: flying over a beautiful sea dotted with islands, while a voice told him, “Don’t worry, Levi, you are free.” As a schoolboy, he defended Jesus when other children mocked him. As an adult, he believed, but he didn’t read the Bible, rarely went to church, and lived however he pleased, sure that forgiveness would cover it.
November 15, 2021
It was a calm night. Levi was 21, relaxing with YouTube and the window open, when he took a huge swig from a two-litre bottle of Coke and felt it pour into his lungs. The world began to spin and darken into a colour he had never seen. Time slowed. He heard his heart beat three times, loudly. Looking back, he believes each beat was Jesus giving him the chance to call out. He didn’t know to.
After the third beat, everything went black.
The fall
Levi describes falling faster than light, faster than thought. Something he couldn’t see slammed him around and bit into him as he fell. With every bite, he felt God’s gifts being stripped away: the ability to love, to be thankful, to smile, to hope. Then a trapdoor opened beneath him, a blinding light flung him down like a slingshot, and he hit the ground with a pain he calls “anything in your life times a billion.”
What he saw and heard
Lying on his side, Levi heard billions of voices at once. Some cursed God. Most cried the same words over and over: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Please help me.” Above him, the fire was alive, and it spoke.
Out of the darkness came grotesque beings he says he knew had once been people from the days before the flood, creatures he compares to the corruption described in Romans 1. Their goal, he says, was simple: to feed on fear and drag as many people as possible into the place they know is coming for them. He saw insects the size of coffee tables, caves, mock churches, and a place that never stops growing.
Levi says he felt no hope at all. It felt like a hundred to a thousand years. “You knew that you were there,” he says, “and you deserved it.”
The part of hell for fake Christians
Levi believes everyone in hell carries the weight of a personal sin, and his was lust. He was held in a place of torment tied to that sin, and he says he knew his next stop: a vast area for people who called themselves Christians but never lived it, where millions hung on crosses.
“I called myself a Christian,” he says, “but yet I thought I could just do anything and then I’d be forgiven. I found out that was a farce.”
At the gates
Levi was then taken outside the gates of hell. The wall seemed alive, breathing in and out. The gate was rusted and decayed, and above it he saw a pole with two snakes wrapped around it. Later he recognised the symbol, the caduceus, which he connects to witchcraft and to the false god Hermes.
He knew that anyone who passed through that gate was lost forever. Then it fell on him. Bleeding, swearing, being whipped from behind, he tried to lift it with his own strength, until his strength ran out and he fell back.
“Infinite times infinite love”
In that moment, Levi says, a love beyond anything he could measure came inside him. He didn’t see a face, but he knew it was Jesus. He was lifted into brilliant light and the sound of hymns, in pain that felt like being washed clean. “I can’t die yet,” he managed to say. Reality spiralled into a point, burst with a thunderclap, and he woke on his couch, his spirit settling back into his body head first.
Coming back, and coming to Jesus
Levi came back sobbing. He thanked God for bringing him back, but he didn’t surrender straight away. Within minutes he was smoking and eating as if nothing had happened. He says the world’s illusion, and the enemy behind it, wanted him to forget. His salvation came as a journey, not a moment.
Today he is a changed man, and he says the proof is in how he now responds to people. Insulted online, he smiles and says, “I love you.” Cut off in traffic, he prays for the other driver to get home safe. He treasures the peace God gives him.
His message to you
Levi says unforgiveness, bitterness and gossip are the three biggest things he saw sending people to hell, and he urges us to guard our words. His final plea is simple: “If you don’t believe that it’s real, I beg you from the bottom of my heart, please just rethink that.” Choose humility over pride. Love one another. Smile at someone and tell them Jesus loves them. You never know whose soul it might reach.
Connect with Levi
- YouTube: @TheLevite99
Mentioned in this episode
- The Bait of Satan by John Bevere, which Abigail recommends on offence and forgiveness
- God’s Voice Today, where Levi first shared parts of his testimony
Scriptures in this episode
- Romans 1:21–24, the corruption Levi saw in the beings in hell
- Matthew 8:29, “art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”
- 1 Peter 3:20, eight souls saved in the ark
- Psalm 139:8, “if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there”
- Matthew 6:14–15, forgive, and you will be forgiven
- James 3:5–10, the power of the tongue
- Colossians 3:8, put off anger, malice and filthy talk
- Matthew 5:39, turn the other cheek
Watch the full testimony
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