Nine Days in Heaven: A True Story (12 page)

In front of him was an open book. He tried to read from it but failed at every attempt. His voice was shrill and piercing and his accent hard to understand. His face became distorted, and he writhed and agonized in his efforts to read. He tried again and again but with the same result. His frustration increased until he burst out vehemently, cursing his own being and everyone around him. He then began to blaspheme God, blaming Him for every wrong and sorrow. He even tried to gather together all created intellect to curse the Creator of the universe.

His oaths, his manner, and his insatiable passion made him so desperate that I was afraid he might destroy everything around him. But he suddenly gave up, exhausted, and I realized that his strength was limited, and, to a large extent, he was under the control of his audience.

One glance at the crowd was enough to know why he was suffering like this. Their faces showed deep hatred and maniacal pleasure as they mocked his efforts. They reveled in fiendish delight at his dreadful agonies. But I was aware that their pleasure was like the relief you feel when you rub a bruise, knowing all the time that when you stop, the pain will be much worse.

H
IS WHOLE APPEARANCE BESPOKE
AGONIES EQUAL TO THE WORST
CONCEPTIONS OF THE SINNER’S HELL
…

As he sank back, the look on his face was that of horror beyond description. Ghostly fires flashed around him, and he writhed with an inner turmoil as tumultuous as a volcano. His agonies were equal to the worst ideas of the sinner’s hell. It reminded me of the words of Jesus, “And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth…where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
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While he lay there, enveloped in the fires of his own unholy passions, one in his audience stood up and rebuked him.

“You fiend of darkness! You child of hypocrisy! Deceiver! Unrivaled deceiver! You are in the hell reserved for the heartless religious teacher! You can never endure enough punishment! You turned religion and the souls of men into nothing more than a means of making a living. Yes, and for this you were even honored and respected! But you took things easy instead of reaching out to the souls of men and women. You did not seek out ruined hearts, and you never brought them the soul-saving truth of heaven. All you did was tell them what they wanted to hear, and so you magnified their delusions. Now you are being tormented, and so you should be!

“Get up, you false teacher in your silk gown! Get up and show us how great your false apostleship is. Speak smooth words to us, and lead the choir in their ludicrous travesty of a song. Stop your blasphemy and your curses, and stop wishing you could tear God from His throne.” The speaker grated out the words. “Your Maker is just, and you have mocked His majesty. You should have shown the world His glory, and by that light thousands of people should have been led to seek His face.”

At this the minister tried to leave, but the speaker continued, “No, you hypocrite! You want to escape, but you cannot. Look over this crowd of sufferers, and then ask yourself why they are here. Yes, it is true that each of them has sinned and is accountable for their actions. But can you look at them here with a clear conscience, knowing how you have misled them?

“ T
HY LEARNED ESSAYS AND ELABORATE
EXPOSITIONS OF THE
S
ACRED
W
ORD
,
ADORNED WITH POETIC GENIUS, ADDRESSED
WITH MOST ELOQUENT DISPLAY, DID
THEY NOT LULL IN DEEPER SLUMBER THE
DORMANT SPIRIT, WHILE WREATHING THY
MORTAL BROW WITH HUMAN LAURELS?
”

“Did you try to lead them to God? No! Instead you wrote learned essays and elaborate Bible expositions. You dressed your sermons with brilliant poetry and marvelous oratory, but the only result was that people were lulled into even greater apathy while you received honor for your clever words.”

At this point the former minister cried out, “Stop! Stop! Leave me alone! My remorse tortures me, and I have had enough! It never ends! Stop! Don’t cut me down! I know I deserve this suffering. I know that all my life I did things just for pleasure. I trifled with men’s souls and wrote about eternal things without any conviction. I put my prayers together only to please people. I interpreted the Bible to suit the selfish and fickle and proud, and I found excuses for those who oppressed others.

“This existence is pure horror! Sorrow has gripped me, and endless night! I hear the wailing voices; I see the madness of frustrated spirits. They haunt me! If I try to escape, I find multitudes of evils in front of me like ghosts. They give no rest to the souls here. My parishioners drive me mad with their bitter curses. The memories of my secret sins rise up like demons and give me never-ending pain. Spare me a deeper hell!”

As he said these things, the whole audience stood up and mocked him in his agony. The spirit who had rebuked him continued to censure him: “You knew very well that we would have done what you told us to do. But when we did wrong things—things that could cause us to end up in this place—you, our supposed teacher of religion, did not try to correct us!
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“The Bible, that sacred book, is a gift of God to guide people to heaven! But it was misinterpreted by ministers and theologians like you. You all loved pleasure; your hearts were far from God. Your version of the Bible was a passport to this place!

“Now all we know is bitter grief. Our sins ripen here and turn into living things. The latest fashions that were once so important to us bind us now like unquenchable fire. And the money god we all worshiped sits like a ghost in the clouds of death that hang over the abyss.”

He shook his finger at the former minister. “Your life here is the consequence of breaking the law of life. You violated it! You were driven by your love of glory! Your kind of religion was hypocritical, like a clean white grave. On the outside you looked beautiful and pure, but on the inside your heart was a den of lust and pride, a lair of snakes’ thoughts. It was a tomb full of dead men’s bones, the legacy of other bigoted, heartless ministers and theologians.
5

“Do not curse your Maker,” he laughed mockingly. “This is your wellearned reward. Listen and I will quote you a Bible scripture that you so often preached so carelessly. Listen to this!

“‘The one who sows to please his sinful nature…will reap destruction.’
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Here is another: ‘For the wages of sin is death.’
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“Those verses ring so loudly here now. They reach every home of every spirit. They touch every part of our senses. Worse still, they are magnified to the utmost by the doom of this place.

“No, you false teacher, let God and His Word be true,
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for sin has done this to us. We suffer because we have violated God’s law.”

A
S HE SPOKE THESE WORDS A FEARFUL
TREMBLING SEIZED HIS FORM
.

As he spoke these words, he began to tremble violently. He became more and more agitated until he and the rest of the congregation collapsed on the floor. As this happened, they seemed to lose their individualities and began to blend together into a mass of agitated life. Above this mass rose a thick cloud, so dense that it appeared to be a part of the writhing body below.

The sight was too much for me. I could not endure any more of these woeful scenes. I shrank back and cried, “Isn’t there a God of mercy somewhere, and can’t He see these things and save these people?”

“Yes,” declared a voice above me. “Yes, there is a God of mercy. He sees sinners and yearns for them with the greatest compassion. Haven’t you read the scripture that says: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life’?”
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The voice took on a grieving tone. “But even though salvation is offered to the whole world, even though Christian believers explain it to sinners and plead with them, there are millions who refuse it. Then there are the millions of others who pretend to believe but have their own false ideas about redemption. Still others experience grief on earth because of their own sins, but many of these will not change. They fall into terrible misery simply because they broke the law of purity and love.”