The Big Event

“They came at me out of the ceiling,” he remembers. “I can’t describe the terror, it was so beyond horror. I thought I’d go mad, I was so scared.”

Ridgeway insists it was not a dream: “I was wide awake. It wasn’t a vision. It was real. I don’t drink, so it wasn’t a hangover.”

He later told his wife he was sure he would have a heart attack. He shouted at the top of his lungs, “Jesus Christ, save me! In the name above all names, in His name every knee shall bow.”

The demons immediately retreated back into the ceiling, which shut.

He says it took 45 minutes even to muster the strength to get out of bed. He prayed, “Lord, you have to take away this terror.”

But the experience was an answer to a prayer. “I had prayed for years that God would reveal hell to me,” Ridgeway says. “I wanted to warn people about where they will go if they reject Christ.” The experience showed him “this is who comes to get you when you die lost.”

In August 2004, Ridgeway had just wrapped up a massive two-day evangelical revival on the Minnesota State Capitol grounds sponsored by the Oregon-based Luis Palau Association. “It was a huge success,” he says, but the many logistical challenges involved in moving 185,000 people and their vehicles around the capitol grounds had been particularly intense. He was exhausted.

As he lay in bed, the white ceiling of the room split in half and peeled back, exposing a black abyss. And from this chasm emerged "nine or ten giant demons from hell." They were brown, gray, and black reptilian creatures with piggish snouts. "I can't describe the terror, it was so beyond horror."

The next morning, he says, “the Lord spoke to me very audibly—I’ve had this happen many times. He said, ‘Paul, you’re saved, but am I really the Lord in your life?’” Ridgeway explains that a Christian who’s saved also must submit and allow God to be lord of his life.

Ridgeway responded, “Lord, you’re not. But I want you to be.”

He calls it a turning point. “I’ve become more committed. I’ve lost interest in things that used to entice me, like fancy cars and the like. I’ve taken more of an eternal look.”

His fervor intensified again earlier this year, when he heard a messianic Jewish professor in a radio interview correlate biblical end-time prophecy with current events. The professor admonished evangelicals to “‘quit telling people Christ might come back 100 years from now. He’s not. He’s coming back in this lifetime.’” Ridgeway consulted separately with a handful of PhD biblical scholars, who all agreed that the “countdown began when Israel became a nation on May 14, 1948.” Since then, Ridgeway says, of the 25 events that will occur before Christ returns, 23 have already happened.