Hell & Beyond

by Michael Phillips

  And then, in the midst of the fire and the rain and the music, I heard the Scotsman singing the eternal song of creation. The words that filled my being were his words, spoken long ago, yet timeless and spoken anew to every generation: Hark the herald of the Sun of Righteousness, rising with healing in its wings, the auroral wind, softly trumpeting an Approach! He comes through the solemn aionian march of the past, pregnant with eternity, drawing nigh to restore every good and lovely thing a hundredfold!

  The latter rains that fell now splashed upon my face with unspeakable comfort, for they were the refreshing rains of the dawn of a new spring. And the agony of the fire turned to comfort.

  Love possessed me. Love was my life. Love was to me, as to him that made me, all in all!

  I was aware of the joy of existence and knew that I was blessed—more blessed than I deserved or could imagine. The gentle rain of God’s tears soothed every care, dissolved every anguish, comforted every pain. All sorrow was swallowed up in the life. I was at peace.

  The throbbing of the great Heart entered my soul, for I was one with it. It vibrated in resonance with the strings of my own heart, for at last I had come home, into the Father’s heart, the heart of him who had created me to be his son.

  Twenty-Four

  The Alabaster Heart

  Ahead I saw a great round ball of white—a white sun of fantastic size rising at the horizon of the earth. It appeared to be the very Orb of Light through which I had passed at the beginning of my sojourn.

  As I stared at it, I knew that it was indeed the same Light, though now transformed and for different purpose. As I had perceived the door of my Portal in its midst as I looked back from my Yellow Wood of Decision, I now saw in its midst another door, a new Portal of Light into the life beyond.

  From the center of it rose a Cross. It was the very cross I had encountered on the Hill of Betrayal where I had nailed his hands to the wood. The cross of my betrayal had become the Cross of my Deliverance. I knew my way led through it. I knew I must yield one final time to the Consuming Fire, that I might be one with the One who had yielded his life upon that cross that the world might discover the doorway into his Father’s heart.

  With tentative step I fixed my eyes on the blinding Light and walked toward it.

  Again flames rose and swirled, full of wild, windy heat and the voices of a great confluence of languages. The rain had now stopped. The portal with the Cross at its center grew large, as if it would draw all the earth into it. Voices of praise roared, then whispered soft as an angel’s breath. I heard every tongue of the earth and tongues that were not of the earth.

  With flames raging about me, I walked into the turbulence of Fire. My entire being burst anew into trembling flame. The pulsing of the Great Heart rumbled with mighty throbbing thunderclaps of power.

  Again I heard the eternal song. Something more than the sun, greater than the light, is coming. Again I was entering into the heart of it! What matters today, or tomorrow, or ten thousand years to Life himself, to Love himself! He is coming, the embodiment of the Father’s never-ending sacrifice to his children, and the necks of all humanity are stretched out to see him come, and every knee is bowed in veneration and adoration.

  I fell to my own knees. And I worshipped him and praised him.

  And every tongue, with mine, loudly proclaimed:

  Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father!

  The hurricane of pulsing thunder rose to a great height. Gradually I realized that the deafening commotion had become the sound of singing. Many voices had joined the Scotsman’s in praise of God’s signature tune of creation. I rose and passed the rest of the way through the Portal. The Cross disappeared. The Man of Light approached in front of me. His arms were open in welcoming embrace.

  I knew him and was not afraid.

  Suddenly another appeared at my side. I turned. Though she was greatly changed, I knew her instantly, for I saw into her, and I knew whom she had been created to become.

  “Lelia!” I exclaimed. “You are positively glowing!”

  “You are seeing what he has made me,” she replied with the smile of utter humility. “He loves me. I still cannot fathom it. Why would he love one like me? You are also much changed. I perceive that you too have become a child.”

  “Where did you come from?” I said.

  “I came through the fire from along the river, and through that door back there.”

  There was no time to contemplate her words. He was awaiting us. The fire had vanished. We stood bathed in light.

  Lelia ran toward him and fell at his feet.

  “Welcome home!” he said to her with a smile. He bent low and laid a gentle hand on her head.

  Weeping freely for joy, she began washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her long flowing hair.

  An aroma of perfume burst into the air. It was of roses and honeysuckle and orange blossoms and gardenias and hyacinths and jasmine and daphne and the fresh air of a mountain morning. As Lelia wept at his feet, I approached, and he embraced me. His hands were spotless and clean and pure. I knew that the sin of my betrayal, and all my sin, had been burned away. It was as if it had never been. Forgiveness was complete. And I wept on his shoulder, for I knew his embrace was the embrace of a Brother, as well as a Savior.

  “What is that glorious fragrance?” I whispered.

  “It is the perfume of repentant tears,” he replied. “For my daughter who was lost is found. The well of her heart, now purified white as alabaster, has been broken open, and the balm of forgiveness has poured out. All heaven is rejoicing to welcome her home. As it is also rejoicing for you.”

  I stepped back. “I think I am now ready to give you what you asked for when you first met me,” I said. “I had nothing to give you then because I had spent my life thinking I was something. I still have nothing to give you, for I am nothing. But what I am, I now give. I give you myself… all of me.”

  “You shall give it to your Father and my Father,” he replied. “You are in his country now. He will be well pleased with your gift. For it has been purified in the refiner’s fire and is of pure gold.”

  He stooped to Lelia and set his hand gently on her shoulder.

  “Rise, my daughter,” he said. “You too have a gift to give our God. It is a heart made pure by tears and flame and sacrifice.”

  Lelia stood, radiant and beaming. The Man of Light turned and we walked away, the atheist and the prostitute, on either side of him. Now for the first time I noticed that both Lelia and I were attired in white robes. As the light began to thin, I perceived that we were among the Mountains. Peaks and forests were all about us. Waterfalls and rivers and streams flowed down steep slopes. The air was crisp and warm and fresh. Singing filled the air, voices from a great cloud of witnesses.

  A mighty river flowed from the very peak above, plunging down to the foot of the mountain, filling to its banks with translucent emerald green—the color of life. Instead of rock or sand, it flowed over grass in which grew primroses and daisies, crocuses and narcissi, pimpernels and anemones, a starry multitude, large and bright through the brilliant water.

  Looking higher, I could dimly discern the lower steps of a great stairway that disappeared above the mountain in a cloud of pure Light. Above the steps I saw, but with my mind’s eye only as it were, a grand old chair, the throne of the Ancient of Days. Over and under and between those steps issued, plenteously, unceasingly newborn, the river of the water of life.

  The singing rose and filled the air with the perfume of song from the breaking of the Alabaster Heart of worshipful repentance.

  Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest! The lost are found. Another son and another daughter have come home. Alleluia, alleluia!

  Twenty-Five

  The White Stone

  As we walked up the slopes toward the fountainhead of the rushing emerald river, from every direction those of a great multitude joined us. They were ascending the Mountains from everywher
e, from every direction, from every land. They were from every race, even every creed. Truth was no longer fragmented into the divisions of men but was one, as all things were one, and the Man of Light was hailed and praised by all as the embodiment of every truth. Whether they had come through the Portal or along the river of fire, or whether there were other Portals and other rivers that led into the High Places, I had no idea. But all were attired in robes of white and every voice blended in melodious praise. And every face wore the radiant expression of rejoicing.

  The song from the multitude rose into the heavens and caught up into it all the music that had ever been written and all the music that had ever been sung or played, all the music that had even been imagined. As they sang, some wept and others danced, and all were wide-eyed with wonder at the glory of it, for it was at once the music of the heart and the music of the spheres. It was all the music that had ever been, culminating in the song of the One who sat on the throne.

  Suddenly ahead I beheld my wife!

  Unable to contain my joy, I ran toward her. She was beaming as we embraced. Beside her I greeted my children with tears and expressions of love. I knew them as my children, yet they were no longer children. Strange to tell, we were all the same age. They had lived their lives and come here at the end of them. What age we were would be impossible to say. There were no outward signs of age. Though we had bodies, I hardly stopped to think whether they were physical bodies. All sight, all perception, all knowing was internal now. We beheld one another as we were, as we had become. We no longer saw the outer clothes of that incomplete becoming. We were the age of the aions, and that was enough.

  “But where did you all come from?” I exclaimed. “How long have you been here?”

  “I have been here several aions,” replied my wife. “I have had some unbelievable experiences—I can’t wait to tell you all about it.”

  “I came from over there, Dad,” said one of my sons. “Look—see there… between those two mountains. I had just crossed over, or crossed through, I should say, and had begun to climb up the slope… and then I saw you and Mom!”

  “Did you all—” I began.

  The words died on my lips. I remembered what the Scotsman said about questions of comparison. All at once behind them among the swarms of millions—or was it billions!—I saw my parents walking down the slopes to meet me. I knew they had been waiting for me. Somehow I yet also knew that they had probably arrived not long before. This was not a land where before or after or any measurement of time had meaning. This was simply the land of the aions.

  They ran toward me and I hurried forward and we embraced. There was so much to say! Yet as I gazed into their eyes, and they into mine, I knew that our hearts had already said it, and all was well. There were no sorrows, no regrets, nothing left unfulfilled in the land of Light. All incompleteness had been left on the other side. Here there was only love. All unfinished circles had been joined into wholeness.

  More were coming from many directions to greet me. I knew my grandparents… and my great-grandparents, and a host of ancestors and friends. We were all ageless because the age of the aions had entered into us all and had transformed us. We were now of the age of the ages. And though they were greeting me, they were greeting one another and ten thousand reunions took place together. And I saw all those I had met across the chasm—the English naturalist, the intelligent young Chinese man, the woman on the train, the pastor and his family, the Christian man from the debate, the man Iscariot, and so many more—their countenances radiant, for all had passed through.

  As my eyes swept about me, I turned away from the Mountains down in the direction from which I had come. I expected to see the plain I had come across, and perhaps even the pit of fire. But all that had disappeared. In every direction extended valleys and meadows and rivers and hills and woodlands and forests and more mountains and oceans and lakes. They all stretched away forever. The landscape was somehow larger and more real and beautiful than anything that had ever been on earth. It was as if my eyes had become two twin telescopes and I could see forever.

  Far in the distance, I saw the shimmering blue waters of a great ocean. And as I gazed, away across it a huge rock, even a small mountain, rose up out of it. With a gasp of astonishment I realized that it was the Rock of Gibraltar. Now to the right and left I saw the outlines of the shorelines of Spain and England and North Africa.

  I spun about and gazed into the distance in the opposite direction. There was North America… and South America!

  In my continued amazement I saw oceans and islands and continents everywhere, all the lands of earth. In every direction I beheld extensions of the Great Mountains of this new country of the eternal High Places. All the earth was here, for it was a new earth… like the old, but more than the old, the perfection of which all that had come before had been a mere shadow.

  As I was struggling to take it in, I heard familiar voices behind me. I turned to see the Scotsman and the Professor. They had obviously been engaged in deep conversation. A roar of exuberant laughter had just sounded from the Scotsman’s lips. Beside him the ruddy face of the Don seemed well pleased with himself for the witty remark that had sparked it. They came forward and greeted me warmly.

  “Finding it a bit much to take in?” said the Don with a great smile.

  “Yes!” I laughed. “But wonderfully so. Everything is so… light and bright and full.”

  “So it is… but come,” said the Scotsman. “We are to accompany you up the stairs where you will be given your name.”

  “With all that happened, I had almost forgotten,” I said. “I was told something about that, but it was very long ago.”

  “All who come through the fire are given a white stone with their new name upon it. You are now ready to receive yours.”

  “A white stone, you say?”

  “Upon it is inscribed the name the Father envisioned for you before the creation of the world, when he thought you into being. It embodies the essence of His thought of you, what he has always thought of you. At last you are able to fulfill that name, for you have become all that the name signifies. It is the blossom and perfection of your personhood. You have become your name.”

  With the two men accompanying us, and with my wife and children and parents at my side, we turned and made our way higher up and into the Mountains, and toward the great stairway beside the emerald river. And all about there was singing and music, for we were going together to be given the names that were in God’s heart for us.

  And I heard a loud Voice from the throne high above saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and they will be his people, and God himself will be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning forever, for the aion of eternity has come.

  A Final Word from Michael Phillips

  Every book has roots and beginnings that are often untraceable. This is probably truer of imaginative writings than any other genre. Everything one has read and thought and felt and experienced, dreams and daydreams, visions and aspirations, hopes, fears… all one is as a person tumbles and swirls together in the imagination to create new visions and stories and dreams.

  Hell and Beyond no doubt has its roots far back in my own imagination forty or more years ago with the three fantasies of my two literary mentors, George MacDonald’s Phantastes and Lilith, and C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. A few images of the High Mountains and the Emerald Waters began to coalesce in my thinking with the publication of A God to Call Father (Tyndale House, 1994.) These continued with the first of my afterlife “Beyond” fantasies, The Garden at the Edge of Beyond (Bethany House, 1998.) And now, fifteen years later, once again I find myself standing on the shoulders of these two great men of the past, occasionally borrowing a few of their words and images—such as the spinning wheel song and Curdie beside the rose fire and Lewis’s impact of choice upon the each individual’s “central thing,” as two examples—and attempting as they did to peer wi
th imaginative vision into the distant future of God’s eternal purposes. MacDonald’s contributions to Hell and Beyond are ubiquitous. Some of the words from “the Scotsman” are taken from his sermons, The Consuming Fire, Salvation From Sin, The Last Farthing, and Justice, as well as a few from Lilith, italicized as the Scotsman’s eternal song and the description of the emerald river and the stairway up the mountain in the final chapters.

  I must also echo, and strongly, Lewis’s caution. I can do no better than to quote his own words from his Preface to The Great Divorce: “I beg my readers to remember that this is a fantasy… the transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.”

  I would not risk this suspension of disbelief by repeating Lewis’s caution, and merely let the story stand or fall on its own merits as MacDonald did his, were it not for the inordinate tendency by some to read far too much into what is intended as fiction. The trend in recent years to read certain well-known stories about future events as outlining actual prophetic predictions has been disturbing. I would, therefore, also urge readers not to imbue this story with too many predictive overtones or invest it with too many doctrinal boogiemen. With Lewis, I would not hazard “even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us.” But of one thing I am certain—God’s love and eternal plans are much deeper and more wonderful than we can hope to imagine.

  This is not to say that my intent here has been merely to entertain. I hope there is more to it than that, as Lewis made clear about his motives as well. I have tried to set forth possibilities about what may be in God’s heart to accomplish in eternity, but not in any way to predict how he might work toward such ends. If this story can open doors of new and expansive thought about God and his ways, then I will be happy. But to read this as a doctrinal tract would be a mistake.