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About Hells Bend: A Moment from Eternity

As a teenager, Barry had resisted God’s call to salvation for some time. Then, in November of 1978, when he was sixteen years old, he was the passenger in a terrifying automobile accident in which the car went out of control, flipping end-over-end going 130 miles per hour. Through God’s grace, he and the driver miraculously walked away with only a few minor cuts and bruises. On the outside, very little was affected by the accident, but on the inside, Barry was dealing with his salvation. He knew that if he had died in the crash, he would have encountered Satan face-to-face…and he knew that his pride was no longer important. He surrendered his life to Christ the next night and never looked back.

In the fall of 2007, he helped with a Judgement House presentation at one of the local churches in North Mississippi. (Judgment House is a walk-through drama depicting people making life-altering choices and the consequences of those choices.) It ran for three nights straight, while several hundred people came from many surrounding counties to view it. Walking through it several times with different groups, he was able to see the effects that it had on everyone. Many of these people looked as if they had never even been to church before, and he could tell the groups had a real hunger to hear the true facts about Heaven and Hell. On the last night, he thought, “When this is all over, then what? How can we keep this going? What if we could do this more often or think of a way to spread this type of information across the nation…possibly even around the world?” This experience definitely put a stirring in Barry's heart to put his talents to work, but he wasn’t exactly sure where to go with it at the moment, so he set it aside for a time.

Almost simultaneously, Angie Camp was walking through a very difficult time. Just months before Barry’s experience with Judgment House, Angie’s sixteen-year-old son, Bryant, had been involved in a tragic SUV accident where he was pinned in the vehicle. The SUV caught fire, and for approximately ten minutes, Bryant’s body was literally on fire. Although Bryant’s life was saved through a miraculous escape, the damage to his legs was classified as beyond fourth-degree burns. The extensive injuries led to a double amputation. After eleven surgeries, occupational therapy, and many months of wound care, Bryant found himself confined to a wheelchair awaiting prosthesis. It was a long and very painful road. But his mother trusted God, knowing He had an incredible plan for her son. 

In the summer of 1996, through mutual friends, Barry had met Angie Camp for the first time when they were both attending a wedding. Many years went by before they were divinely reconnected in 2009 through other mutual friends. Knowing Angie had done some screenplay-writing over the years, Barry shared his story of the Judgement House and his own life experience with her, and he told her his thoughts about putting something in writing. She agreed that it was a great idea, but she said it wasn't nearly enough to make a complete story. With that, he decided to give it more thought for a couple of weeks.

Then one day, it hit him! Barry suddenly remembered that Angie's son Bryant had been through a severe car accident in 2006 when he was sixteen—the same age Barry had been at the time of his own wreck. What if they combined the shared experiences into one story; would that be enough to make it complete? He shared his idea with Angie, and she agreed that Bryant's wreck was the missing link to the story!

Barry and Angie continued to discuss the possibilities and toss ideas back and forth for several months. The ultimate goal from day one was to do a movie. So with that in mind, they decided to contact a movie director in Nashville, Tennessee. It progressed to the point of getting the movie script written, but a few thousand dollars later, they decided to put the story on hold for a while due to lack of funding. (This was during a time of uncertainty in the market, and people were uncomfortable with investing.)

A couple of years passed with no activity on the project. Then, while going through an extensive period of prayer and fasting, God spoke to Angie. “Write the book,” were the words she heard. Angie knew exactly what it meant. She shared this with Barry, who caught the vision for it right away. In August of 2014, the book-writing process began. Finally, after a lot of prayer and fasting, research and hard work, Hell’s Bend: A Moment from Eternity was published in March 2016.

Looking back on things, they now realize why it all worked out like it did. It was all about Gods timing.