Three Nights in Hell: Ryan Cook's Warning to the World

The Messenger in the Darkness

Ryan Cook wasn't looking for God. He was looking for a break. Working double shifts as a firefighter in Houston and at Dow Chemical, he had no time for his father's pleas to attend church. "I still remember popping that dose Eis and saying enjoy that mind control, I'm going to enjoy my Sunday," Ryan recalls. His father, a former wild man who'd found faith late in life and was now bold enough to smuggle Bibles into China, kept pushing. Ryan kept drinking.

What Ryan didn't know was that something had been following him his whole life. His father was a backslidden Baptist. His mother practiced santería, a form of black magic disguised as Catholicism that she'd brought from Trinidad. Ryan grew up with what he calls "generational curses," astral projecting every night without understanding what was happening. As a child, he traveled to heavenly places in his sleep. As he grew older and sinned more, the imagery turned darker.

The first messenger came to him in 2011, six months before the three nights that would change everything. Ryan was in darkness, but he could see a figure: an old fireman in cotton gear and a leather helmet, not the modern reflective gear Ryan wore. "He said, 'After all the times that I've saved your skin, you still have no idea who has your back,'" Ryan remembers. The messenger warned him: seek refuge in the Lord, or famine would come upon his household.

Ryan woke up and shrugged it off. He was stressed. He needed a vacation. Six months later, he was laid off from Dow Chemical. His city fire job dried up to a few hours a week. The echo of the warning came back: "A famine is upon you." But Ryan went to a doctor instead, got medication for his nerves, and tried to calm down with pharmaceuticals and the wisdom of man.

The second visit came after that doctor's appointment. Ryan was back in the darkness that "can be felt," like being in a Walmart when someone cuts the power and you feel bodies bumping past you but can't see them. A great wind was blowing. The messenger said Ryan had failed to listen. "But I am merciful and I am full of grace, and I give you the chance once again to accept my hand and accept my mercy," the voice said. "Seek me now, for the storm is now upon you."

Ryan woke up nervous. He told himself it was the new medication, the stress of losing his job, the critical pressure. He ignored it again.

The Flask and the Third Warning

Ryan's father offered to pay his bills if he'd just come to the New Year's Eve party at church. Ryan agreed, but he had a plan. "I went to the liquor store, got myself a big bottle of Sky vanilla vodka and a big old flask, one of those nice curvy ones that you could fit in a pocket," he says. If he had to deal with all these hypocrites, he might as well be tanked. His tolerance as a firefighter was high. He drank through the entire service, three sheets to the wind among a crowd of Christians who probably never noticed.

Before he left for the party, a small voice had said, "Don't do it." Ryan ignored that too. "I still remember the moment my head hit that pillow," he says. "Boom. I was in the darkness, but this time it was hot. It was boiling hot."

The messenger appeared again. "You have not heard, nor have you listened to any warning I've given you," he said. "Do you know where you are?" Ryan had no idea. The messenger said, "This is the place you shall visit for your disobedience. Ryan, is there a fire?" Ryan looked around the pitch darkness. He felt the heat but saw nothing. "He said, 'Let me help you.' Boom. Got to watch the darkness light up," Ryan recalls.

What was underneath him was a fire unlike any on Earth. Not the orange-yellow flames of a house fire or a campfire. The hottest flame reserved for the devil: blue. Like looking into a natural gas heater. "You're burning up in God's fearing," Ryan says. "That eternal flame is there to torment you day and night, night and day."

The messenger told him some lessons have to be taught. "I shall revisit you for three nights, and you shall make a decision where you stay," he said. Ryan woke up soaking wet with sweat. He looked at his girlfriend and said, "I believe there's a God, and I believe he's telling me I'm going to hell." He was shaken. He thought that was it. He didn't realize the messenger was looking for him to repent, not just acknowledge.

Ryan went to a church and said the sinner's prayer. He thought he'd punched his ticket. But when God makes a decision, Ryan learned, He makes a decision. The next night, the real journey began.

The River and the Gray World

On the second night, Ryan woke up following a different messenger, one who looked like an angelic prison guard with chains and shackles. "He said, 'You will follow me. The Lord has things to show you, and if you do not come willingly, you're coming all the same,'" Ryan recalls. This wasn't the fireman anymore. This was a being of authority.

They walked through a forest and came to a clearing where a river flowed. The river parted like Moses parting the Red Sea. Ryan hadn't opened a Bible yet, so he was experiencing these things raw, without the framework of Scripture. As they walked through, Ryan could see faces in the water, souls moving through the river like an intersection of traffic, waiting for them to pass.

On the other side of the river, the world turned gray. All color drained away. "The further you walk, the darker it gets," Ryan says. This was limbo, what he calls the gray world: this life void of life, void of light. The lack of God's presence is the absence of light. Ryan wants people to understand something. "When you wake up every morning to the sunlight, you're waking up to his presence," he says. "When you wake up to that wind blowing on your face, you're waking up to his presence. There's no wind where I'm going. There's no sunlight. There is only pain and suffering."

The further they walked into the darkness, the more Ryan felt he deserved what was coming. Hell is a place of constant reminder, he says. You're told over and over that you walked away from God and everything about to happen, you deserve it all. This is part of the torment.

As they walked past the gray into full darkness, Ryan began to see levels. He didn't realize it at first, but they were descending in a spiral. "Imagine a mine quarry, where they're mining the earth and it's just a big circle going down," he explains. "This is the same way it is taking this trek into the inner depths of hell. Each ring is a different level, a different section."

Level One: Lust

The first section Ryan entered was lust. He pauses before describing it, warning that some things he has to say are graphic. "If you're young ears or soft hearts, this might not be for you," he says. But he's going to help people understand the magnitude of what's happening.

The demons there consistently torment. They force people to fornicate with devils until their flesh falls off. Ryan wants you to imagine fornicating against your will until your flesh can no longer stay on your bones. Then, when you're down to your skeleton, you regenerate and experience it again and again and again.

But there's a difference between those being tormented and those receiving a specific torment. The Lord allowed Ryan to understand the distinction. The ones being tormented the most were lukewarm Christians who believed they could fornicate, be in pornography, be of the lust of the eyes and the flesh, and there wouldn't be a consequence. They were given over to their desires, and the devils enjoyed tormenting them more than they did the sinners.

How could Ryan tell which ones were Christians? "There's a light that was in them that the devils were constantly trying to rip away from their flesh," he says. "They were consuming the glow that was left upon them." Like anointing oil that was once on something but you can smell what's left over. "You were once in the presence of God, unlike those that are darkness. They hate you more because you have the residue of light."

Then there were those with special assignments. Those who raped others in this life were themselves raped by the demons who took on the imagery of their victims. This was their punishment forever. Those who molested children were kept in the form of children to experience what they did to others. "God kept them in the form as children to experience what they did to other children. So forever they were tormented in hell for the things they did in this life."

The messenger asked Ryan if he'd had enough. Ryan said he did. "Then we must move on," the messenger said. "There's much to show you."

Levels Two and Three: Gluttony and Greed

Level three was gluttony. Ryan walked into a scene of people at a large banquet table. They were all being fed the things that pleased them in this life. Those who loved steak got steak. Those who loved sweets got desserts. Those who loved fine things got breads and caviar. Every time they ate a spoonful or broke a piece, there was more.

But what was pleasure on Earth was meant for torment here. The demons said, "Let them eat cake," over and over, forcing them to eat more until their innards ruptured. Then they regenerated and did it again. For others, the demons put things in the food: fire ants, spiders, scorpions. Each torment was customized to the individual for the highest output of suffering.

Level four was greed. People were force-fed Judas silver. As their teeth bit down, their teeth shattered and they bled and screamed. They choked on the money. But then $100 bills of different time periods, all forms of currency, fluttered down from nowhere. And here's what Ryan found most disturbing: Pink Floyd's song "Money" plays in hell on loop in this level. "It is a constant reminder to everybody what they traded their life for, what they traded their glory for, what they traded their eternity for."

But that was only one portion. There were ancient souls being tormented with the age of gold. Some were vomiting molten gold, consumed until they were skeletal and then regenerating. Others were forced to drink molten gold, and the demons would melt statues of false gods in front of them and force-feed the liquid into their mouths. "They would have to drink their idols."

Levels Four and Five: Anger and Heresy

Level five was anger. Ryan entered and saw people from all different time periods in constant combat that never ended. He could feel it being ministered to him internally: "Observe, their blood is boiling so much with anger that it's coming out of their eyes." Everyone's blood pressure was so high their capillaries were bursting. They were bleeding out of their eyes, thus seeing red.

Ryan watched Civil War reenacted. Every war that's ever happened: Romans, Egyptians, all of them, continuously happening forever. Then it got more intimate. He watched two men in a bar fight with broken glass, stabbing and slitting each other but never bleeding out, locked in eternal mortal combat. He watched people who were angry in their last moments shoot guns, and the bullet went forward and then shot them through the back of their head. They fell, got up, and did it again.

Those who screamed out at God in anger had Brimstone pouring down on them like rain, the stuff of Sodom and Gomorrah, fiery sulfury Brimstone they couldn't escape. They were all on their knees, accepting it as the molten fire burnt away their flesh.

Level six was heresy, and Ryan pauses before describing it. "I'm not here to judge anybody," he says. "The people and the things that I've seen in heresy, that's between you and God. Just understand what I saw is my testimony, so you need to really take it to the Lord." What he saw was judgment that matches the Bible. God can't be mocked.

The first part of this level: the religious and the lukewarm being crucified upside down. "Hell hates them more than anybody else. The religious, they hate them because they were this close to not having to be there." These people were given over to a grand delusion. They were being slit open like fish, and they argue amongst each other as they're crucified, trying to argue about how holy they are versus the other people around them. "They have literally no understanding they're in hell being tormented, being crucified eternally. But their ego, their pride, continuously has them in a state of torment that they will never understand, they'll never break from."

The lukewarm are always saying, "Why me? I don't deserve to be here. I was a good person," Ryan recalls. And the demons tell them: "He denied you as you denied him."

The next part hits home for Ryan now as a pastor. He witnessed pastors who stole from the tithe. They were all given knives and scales. They were forced to cut out however many pounds of silver they stole from the plate and put it on the scales. The irony: the scales were never satisfied. They were consistently having to cut from themselves because they'd cut away from what God had.

Then Ryan saw the sodomites. Men who slept with men were forced to fornicate with demons that looked like men but were full of molten fire inside. As they fornicated, they would literally waste away like a hot dog on hot coals, bursting and shriveling and cooking themselves. Ryan heard the spirit say, "By their own hand they've chose their own judgment. I shall not be mocked."

Women who slept with women were forced to sew themselves shut over and over. Ryan heard: "If modesty was their portion in life, they wouldn't have to try to have modesty in hell."

Level Seven: Violence and the Cells

The messenger told Ryan after the heresy level, "Have you had enough? There's many in this level." Ryan said he'd had enough. "So be it, onto your greatest challenge yet," the messenger replied.

Ryan walked out into a clearing. This is the picture he showed the interviewer, but not orange and yellow flame. All blue, raging fire, blue and white. On the walls carved into hell itself were gel cells, jail cells. Each soul has a jail cell with tormenters in it. Ryan compares it to when Neo wakes up in The Matrix and sees all the pods. "Imagine that now for jail cells. Each soul has a jail cell."

Everything Ryan had seen before was general admission, like going to a theme park before the special roller coaster. These cells were reserved for special torments.

The first cell belonged to false teachers and false prophets. They were forced to consume altar coal, the fiery coal from the altar of the Holy of Holies, blue burning and intense. Ryan heard in the spirit: "Because they blasphemed my word to consider themselves holy, I will allow them to taste the wrath of true holiness." They consume this coal eternally until they're down to their frame, then regenerate.

Serial killers were in cells being killed over and over by the people they killed. The demons took on the forms of their victims and killed them in the ways they were killed. "It literally is eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth down there."

Ryan saw tyrants. He watched Caesar continuously getting stabbed in the back. Others who tried to take the easy way out in life were picking up guns and shooting themselves over and over. Whatever violent way these tyrants tried to escape was their continuous torment.

Sadists had their skin peeled like a potato since they enjoyed giving pain to others. Masochists were bound to large sharp stones and rolled consistently. "They were allowed to experience the consistent pain that they so desired in this life. The Lord made it their portion."

Ryan passed jail cells of witches, warlocks, and wizards. They were tormented by their own magic. Those who threw curses were cursed themselves. Those who spoke curses were vomiting up nails like what Christ was crucified with. Others coughed up broken glass. Those of the voodoo variety had a demon outside their cell with a doll, and the demon would torment the doll and it would torment them eternally.

Those who practiced fire magic had their magic burn them up with no control. The shamans, the shape shifters, kept shifting into different animals and couldn't stop. "They were screaming and then they were becoming a different animal. It was a constant torment of they could not control who they were shifting into."

The Lake of Fire and the Choice

The angel told Ryan, "You've seen enough here. Now it's time for you to experience your eternity," and they walked down toward the Lake of Fire. Ryan was thrown into a cell.

Inside the cell, his mother appeared. Ryan's mother was very abusive in all ways when he was a child. "I name a form of child abuse, there you go. Bingo, loves your uncle, you got it." She came toward him angry as she always was, ready to tear him limb from limb. Ryan was gripped by a fear he'd never known. As he found himself cornered, the door opened and the angel said, "That is enough. This is only but a taste," and told him to come see the fire.

Looking out over a cliffside, Ryan saw the Lake of Fire and everybody in it. People were constantly being consumed by fire but could not be put out. Unlike the others whose flesh went down to the skeletal, these did not have that mercy. Their flesh was not consumed quickly.

Ryan thought about how judgment hasn't come yet, so how are some already in the final lake? The Lord said to him, "There's some who have come to my throne room asking for mercy and they were still found guilty," Ryan recalls. "Judgment comes to those who challenge a final verdict." There are courtrooms of heaven and courtrooms of hell, both proceeding as they are. This is not the final party. The lake has not yet begun to fill up.

Ryan walked through the fire not being consumed, staying close to the messenger. In the middle of the Lake of Fire is a throne: the throne of the devil. The messenger said, "Now we have come to the end of our journey, and you have a decision to make. Shall you follow me back and proclaim Christ your Lord, or shall I leave you here?"

Ryan said yes. He'd never realized why he could see the messenger in the darkness. He could see him brightly, and so could the demons, and everyone stayed away from this light.

"Then proclaim it," the messenger said. "Proclaim Jesus as your Lord and Savior." The moment Ryan screamed, "Jesus is my Lord and Savior," the messenger told him to look up. Ryan looked up and realized he was seeing into the infancy of heaven, all its different realms, all its different levels. Just as the spiral went down to the throne room of the devil, it went up to the throne room of God. Massive levels of heaven. "But one throne room can see to the other throne room. It's almost like a diamond."

As they started ascending, it became brighter and brighter. Ryan looked to the sides and saw something disturbing: demonic spiders that stayed around the outer edges, the rim of hell. Bodies were captured in cocoons, moving but unable to escape. They couldn't reach Ryan with the messenger.

And then he came back. He woke up radically changed. Not perfect, but forever changed, knowing he couldn't continue in that direction.

The Aftermath and the Ministry

Ryan woke up from the three nights traumatized. It took him a month of practically not being able to work because of what he experienced. He asked the Lord how it was possible he went to hell and was still here. Don't you have to die?

The Lord reminded him: "Ryan, how many physicians have told you that you have severe sleep apnea and you've ignored them? All three nights you quit breathing," Ryan recalls. God told him to go see a doctor for a CPAP machine. That's how Ryan went there: his severe sleep apnea stopped his breathing three nights in a row, and God used it to show him what awaited if he didn't change.

It took Ryan 12 years to get to where he is now: not just obeying God but being a fiery minister of God, trying to do everything he can to further His kingdom. Ryan is now a Deliverance Minister in Boaz, Alabama. His wife is a Christian counselor. Together, they help people break free from demonic oppression and heal the traumas that opened doors in the first place.

"Deliverance is only one part of this," Ryan explains. "I can clean you up. She can help you stay clean. Otherwise, you will open a door again and again." He offers deliverance for free because it's the children's bread. "God's never charged us," he says, and after seeing what pastors who stole from the tithe experience in hell, he's never going to dip from that plate.

Ryan's message is urgent but not without hope. "God wants no one to go to hell," he says at the beginning of his testimony. "It is not his intentions for anyone to ever be in hell. This testimony is because he wants eternity with you. He wants eternity with what he desired when he put himself on that cross, when he took every nail. He did it for you. This is a plea. It's a warning."

The God who pursued Ryan with a messenger for three nights, who showed him the horrors of hell not to condemn him but to save him, is the same God who pursues everyone. "He will not allow you to not have a chance to know his son," Ryan says. Even those in the Middle East, radical Muslims, go to sleep one night and wake up as radical Christians because a man in white came to visit them. "The God that was yesterday is still the God that is today. He still does exactly what he did back then."

What This Reveals About the Nature of Reality

Ryan Cook's account stands out among near-death experiences for its harrowing detail and its alignment with ancient descriptions of the afterlife. The seven levels he describes echo Dante's Inferno, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and biblical accounts of Sheol and Gehenna. What makes his testimony particularly compelling is that he experienced these things before reading the Bible, before having any theological framework to interpret them. He was encountering the raw reality of what awaits, and only later did he discover that mystics and prophets across millennia had seen the same architecture of judgment.

The pattern of customized torment, where each soul experiences consequences directly related to their earthly actions, appears in NDE accounts across cultures. The man who abused others is abused. The glutton is force-fed. The greedy choke on their wealth. This isn't arbitrary punishment but a kind of spiritual physics: what you put out into the world returns to you, magnified in an environment where there's no grace to buffer the impact. On Earth, we're protected by God's common grace, the sunlight and wind and beauty that Ryan says are God's presence even for those who deny Him. In hell, that protection is removed, and souls experience the full weight of what they chose.

What's most significant about Ryan's experience is the persistence of the messenger. Three warnings before the journey. Three nights of being shown the consequences. Even in the final cell, when Ryan was cornered by the manifestation of his childhood trauma, the angel intervened and said, "That is enough. This is only but a taste." The choice was always available. Proclaim Jesus as Lord, and you can leave. Refuse, and you stay.

This aligns with thousands of NDE accounts where people are shown hell not as their final destination but as a warning, a preview of what they're heading toward if they don't change course. The being of light, the life review, the choice to return, all of these are expressions of a fundamental truth: we are not cosmic accidents. We are eternal beings making choices that have eternal consequences. And the God who made us wants us to choose life.

Ryan's description of seeing heaven from hell, the diamond structure where one throne room can see the other, is a stunning image of the metaphysical architecture of reality. Hell is not some distant dungeon. It's the basement of the same house where heaven occupies the upper floors. The Lake of Fire at the center, the throne of the devil, is directly beneath the throne of God. They are in relationship, one the inversion of the other. And between them, spiraling up and down, are levels of existence we can barely fathom.

The most hopeful part of Ryan's testimony is what happened after. He came back radically changed. Not perfect, but transformed. He spent 12 years being shaped by God, humbled and refined, until he became the fiery minister he is today. The same man who mocked his father's faith and got drunk at a church party now offers free deliverance to anyone who needs it, knowing that what he saw in those cells could have been his eternity. He knows the weight of what's at stake. And he knows the mercy of the God who sent a messenger three times to a man who didn't deserve even one warning.

If Ryan Cook's experience reveals anything, it's this: the choice is real, the consequences are real, and the love pursuing us is real. We are not alone in the dark. There is a light that will walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death if we're willing to follow. And on the other side of that valley, if we proclaim the name that has authority over every demon and every throne, we will see levels of heaven we can't yet imagine. The same God who showed Ryan the depths will show him the heights. That's the promise. That's the hope. And that's why he's telling this story.