West Terre Haute, IN – The 1970s were a time of profound upheaval and changing paradigms in the American landscape. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War protests, political assassinations, and rise of the counter culture, a young man named Kent Lyle Hutchinson, growing up in the rural world of dairy farming in Indiana, began journeying along a road far more disturbing than any social revolution could bear witness to.
What began as collegiate curiosity at Indiana State University turned into a chilling entanglement into witchcraft and the occult, a walk that nearly cost him both his sanity and life. His extraordinary testimony, the basis of his gripping new book, Good People Don’t Go To Heaven: Only Saved People Do is a warning and intensely personal testimony to spiritual warfare and miraculous salvation.
With a foreword by Curtiss Davis PhD, of Key of David LLC, Hutchinson challenges markedly accepted ideas of morals and eternal destination;
Good People… is essentially an anti-memoir/theological treatise. One of its more controversial assertions is that simply being a “good person” will not get you into heaven that the relationship with Jesus Christ is what counts. Such a bold assertion is based on the incredible and horrific chronicles of his life which, oddly, go far beyond your average Christian testimony and present a singular view of the war of good and evil.
The Appeal of the Unknown: College-Upset Life
Kent Lyle Hutchinson’s formative years during the 1960s and ’70s were loaded with hard work and scenic nature at his dairy farm in Terre Haute, Indiana. He remembers a childhood filled with frolicking about in the woods, fishing, and the rare joy of driving and plowing a tractor at barely ten years old. Those were days of innocence, pierced with the wildness of Apollo 11 touching down on the moon in 1969, which led to Hutchinson’s intrigue with the cosmos and the unknown. That innocent curiosity was to be tragically diverted.
His freshman year at Indiana State University would lead to a critical turning point. Bored at his fraternity house, one fraternity brother presented a book on witchcraft. Importuned, the decisive moment saw Hutchinson asserting, “We all became fascinated by it. The curiosity was overwhelming. It was like it was supernaturally drawing us in. We performed a séance and that’s all it took. I was hooked.” Very soon thereafter came a jump right down the deep end of occultism. He started dating a woman who declared herself to be a witch, one of the “little sisters” attached to his fraternity, his thirst for occult knowledge grew without satisfaction. He collected an entire library of books on witchcraft, demonology, and mysticism, and he acquired as well some of the tools of the trade, an Ouija board, tarot cards.
Hutchinson provides an in-depth account. He goes on to explain how he entered deep states of “the unknown,” during which he “meticulously encountered Satan and his demons.”‘ The initial promises of power were seductive. “Satan promised me the keys to the universe to unlock the secrets that are held within,” Hutchinson writes. Hutchinson also claims that he was bestowed the power by Satan to foretell the future, and he did so with great accuracy. Unfortunately, this gift was a curse because Hutchinson was only able to predict death and destruction.” He never really found a moment to enjoy these company, as they never left him; instead, they afforded him a living experience of the impending tragedy of death.
The terror of these episodes was also accentuated by the fact that there were six occasions in which he had a premonition of his own death; each one came very near to happening, with him narrowly escaping from the ghastly fate that he foresaw. The constant dance with death and the knowledge that these demonic “friends” would not just tell him what was going to happen but actively “make it happen” pushed him over the edge. Hutchinson describes vivid and harrowing visits to hellish sceneries: “a great, fiery, bloody river that flowed into the lake of fire,” “blood-curdling, diabolical screams of dead souls crying out in torment, suffering and pain,” and “despicable mutilation of body parts.”
The atmosphere was rife with “sexual perversion and blasphemy against Almighty God.” He realized that he was in a spiritual quicksand loop from which, as he puts it, most people “don’t get out of the occult alive.”
The Cornfield Covenant: An Unlikely Redemption
Having hit rock bottom, mentally and spiritually exhausted, Hutchinson knew he had to escape. The turning point arrived in the most unlikely place, a cornfield. His hired hand had lost a wallet containing two hundred dollars in cash while discing the huge 130-acre field all night.
Knowing his demonic associates would foresee a disaster, or else make one occur, in a moment of desperation, Hutchinson considered a different kind of supernatural power to call upon.
“I made a deal with Jesus,” Hutchinson recalls. “I asked Him, if He would tell me where to find his wallet, in turn, I would give my life up to Him.” The response was immediate and profound. “Jesus immediately showed me in my spirit where to look for his wallet.” Hutchinson led the boy to a particular disc furrow and told him to follow it for three hundred feet the length of a football field. The wallet was found exactly where he had indicated.
he wonder on the hired hand’s face betrayed his disbelief. Asked how he had known where the wallet was, Hutchinson simply replied, “Jesus showed me where it was.” Despite his disbelief, from the boy’s perspective the probability of finding the wallet on top of the ground in such a big field was beyond chance, confirming a divine intervention.
There in that cornfield, fulfilling his side of the bargain, was the seismic change that began a new life for Hutchinson. “Immediately, the Holy Spirit of God took over with an overwhelming sense of unconditional Love and Joy,” he describes. “I was finally at peace and experienced true freedom through Christ. In an instant everything changed. My heart was softened and I began to cry like I have never cried before. I asked God to forgive me for every sin I have ever committed. In an instant, everything became new. I was ‘born again!'”
This conversion, a key subject in his book, especially Chapter 11, “From Darkness into Light,” he describes as a change from seeing “everything in ‘black and white’ and changing in an instant to ‘living color.'” It was such a pulling off a huge weight, actually a step “out of the darkness and into the light.”
The Book: A Clarion Call for Personal Salvation
Good People Don’t Go To Heaven: Only Saved People Do is not merely a personal saga but a passionately felt warning and an urgent evangelistic message. Hutchinson felt “prompted by the Holy Spirit” to write the book, convinced it would be “a sin not to pass this message on before I die.”
The book’s title itself stands as an affront to a very common notion, one Hutchinson himself once held: “The wrong belief I had as I was growing up was that all you had to do to go to heaven was to just be nice. As long as you were a good person and obeyed the laws of the land, you would surely without a doubt go to heaven.” He stresses that “so many people don’t realize it has to be a personal relationship with Jesus to be able to enter into heaven,” citing Matthew 7:23 where Jesus says, “Depart from me, I never knew you!”
His core message is clear and forceful: “Satan is real and he is the true adversary of God. I give warning about messing around with witchcraft and the occult.” He describes Satan as a “great deceiver,” one who tricks people by presenting illusory gratification only to bring “death and destruction.” The only way to get out of this spiritual “bondage,” Hutchinson says, is to “reach out to Jesus Christ and call upon His Holy name.”
Writing lasted about seven months, and it was very emotional especially when it comes to the surrender to Christ and “born again experience.” He says that his experiences with demons and with the supernatural make his testimony “unique and extremely bizarre,” which sets him apart from other Christian testimony. Since his conversion, Hutchinson claims to have witnessed a life transformed by miracles, healings from “incurable sickness and diseases,” and the overcoming of “numerous attacks from the enemy.” He now lives without fear but with “intense love” and “freedom in Christ Jesus.”
A Farmer’s Ministry: From Cornfields To Christmas Trees
Kent Lyle Hutchinson is a man who to this day holds on tight to his faith and traditions. He recently gifted the extraordinary story of his life at a Local Author Showcase at the Clinton Public Library in Clinton, Indiana. He continues to run his family’s Christmas tree farm, Trinity Tree Farm, as an avenue for ministry. He wishes to “put the true meaning of Christmas back into the Lord’s holiday.”
The family visitors who come to pick a living Christmas tree will be entertained with a gift shop, a petting zoo, free popcorn, hot cocoa, and candy canes while Christian Christmas tunes play in the background. The slogan for the farm is “Growing Family Traditions With That Perfect Tree, Year After Year…,” which tells the story of building deep family ties and associations with God. Every little square foot of that farm he says is “Holy ground.”
Kent feels his story must be told now more than ever in a world agonized by massive stress, mental health issues, and an ever-weakened revival of “ungodly practices of Satan worship, witchcraft, and the occult.” According to him, the young generation forms the nucleus of “a mass revival,” which is happening in colleges across the country, he believes. His call goes to those that are “trapped in spiritual darkness:” “reach out to Jesus. Jesus is the only way out of the darkness. Anything else will only lead to death and demise.”
Book Review: A Gripping Memoir and an Urgent Call
Good People Don’t Go To Heaven: Only Saved People Do is a book that demands attention. Kent Lyle Hutchinson’s narrative is so deeply personal yet universally relevant that the parallel themes of spiritual warfare, redemption, and the nature of salvation arise. What makes his testimony so compelling are his graphic descriptions of descending into the occult. He does not, in any way, sugarcoat those horrific visions or the torment he went through, which actually gives heavy weight to the very radical transformation that came afterward.
The unique selling point of the story is the blatant retelling of weird supernatural encounters that could be gripping irrespective of one’s spiritual standpoint. Hutchinson is palpable in his emphasis on the born-again experience, especially in Chapter 11, “From Darkness into Light.” The chapter, which he cites as being the most important, is filled with unusual peace and joy, contrasting strongly with the preceding darkness. He expresses that his spiritual awakening was like going from seeing everything in “black and white” and changing in an instant to “living color.”
Though this book is most definitely Christian in its message, the raw, testimonial style opens it up to a wider audience than just the strictly religious. Those who have an interest in the occult or are looking for a riveting story of personal transformation will find Hutchinson’s account compelling. His clear-cut style of writing emphasizes his message, so readers used to more academic or nuanced theological discussions might find some of the stark declarations about sin and salvation jolting.
This work ultimately acts as a warning and invitation from the heart. The book attacks what Hutchinson sees as an unconscious acceptance in modern society regarding spiritual truths and outlines a direct path to what he believes is the only true freedom. Hutchinson’s extraordinary journey from a curious farm boy dabbling in dark arts to a redeemed man proclaiming the power of Christ is a compelling narrative that will surely resonate with many and stimulate reflection on faith, purpose, and the unseen forces at play in this world.
Good People Don’t Go To Heaven: Only Saved People Do is available for sale on Amazon and will soon be released as an audiobook.
Readers can connect with Kent Lyle Hutchinson and follow his biweekly blogs on his website: Scapegoatonline.com.
For autographed copies, visitors can request them directly through his website at no additional charge.
Hutchinson encourages readers to provide feedback and reviews on his site, eager to learn how his story has influenced them and if “their eyes were opened to the fact that evil influences do exist and that Satan and his demons are real.”
