by Tim Hawken
I clung to the hope that God’s plan was a righteous one. I prayed that despite your ungracious departure from this world, your sacrifice would be enough to keep you in the Kingdom of Heaven. I did as Jesus asked and spread word of his resurrection. The effect was as he desired: all those who believed became zealous converts. We were still a small group, but the gospel of Jesus and his sacrifice resonated with all who heard. The followers grew. I kept the secret of your part in the plan buried inside me. I lived a guilty life until the end of my days, but I stayed true to Jesus. I lived a good life. Unlike many, I lived what I preached. When my time came I died and went into the graces of Heaven. It was a wonderful place. Everything you could want was there. It was true rest. You didn’t have to struggle against desire. You need not worry about any harm coming to you. It was bliss. But still things were missing: you Judas. You were not there.”
Mary looked at her brother and a single tear fell down her cheek. She clasped Judas’ hand. He held tightly and she continued.
“The man I knew as Jesus had also essentially disappeared. He had reunited his soul with God Almighty and so both of my true loves were lost. God was kind to me, but he was not a companion, He was a master to be worshipped. I walked with God in the bountiful gardens of knowledge, but I didn’t understand how you could be left to suffer in Hell alone. When I asked God why, he explained that he viewed suicide as a slight against His gift of life. Your body is a temple, and you had soiled that temple willingly. He said that if anyone could murder themselves and expect to come to Heaven, everyone would kill themselves before they could be corrupted. Human life on earth would cease to exist. He had built Hell to redeem souls, but the sin of suicide must first be punished by ten thousand years penance of imprisonment within a petrified forest. He was unwilling to revoke his binding creation, even in your case. God maintained that his decision was perfect and therefore could not be contradicted. I was uneasy with the explanation and even more distressed that you should be tortured in Hell for so long before coming to us. I felt impotent to do anything. Anyone who challenged God outwardly was expelled to Hell immediately and if I were to speak out in direct opposition to Him, we would both be hopelessly trapped. I knew there had to be a better way.
“I watched and waited. Over time I grew troubled at the lack of souls that seemed to pass into Heaven from Damnation. Any unrepented sin on Earth, no matter how small, would send a soul to Hell. It seemed that, although Hell was designed to help redeem souls, it would actually corrupt most of them further. It seemed the temptation that dwelled there in abundance was too much to resist for many. The tales of Hell I heard from some of The Converted seemed to confirm my suspicions. I was told many souls deeply despised God for sending them to Hell, the worst place for the worst evils, when they felt they had lived justly in their hearts. Even if people weren’t completely evil to begin with, they learnt over time that goodness doesn’t pay in the savage jungle of damnation.
“After centuries of seeing the trickle of souls coming from Hell dwindle almost to nothing, I approached God one day with a proposal. We would create a middle ground, where dead souls who were close to being able to enter Heaven could go to perfect their intentions. Initially, God rejected the idea. He wanted perfect obedience to His will in Heaven or nothing at all. But I persisted. God craves love like we all do. He wants souls to bask with him in Heaven. I began to slowly convince Him, over centuries of cautious debate, that my way would help allay the bitterness of many souls. If they didn’t have to experience The Guilt in Hell and did not feel condemned by Him, then they could understand more clearly their own small imperfections without feeling resentment at being punished. Of course, the truly evil people would still go to Hell and feel the remorse for their sins, but the essentially good could have the mercy of realizing their errors through quiet reflection. I dubbed this middle ground Purgatory. Many since have called it Limbo.
“Through long debate, God grudgingly accepted my logic. His concern now was that there was another hurdle in creating this Purgatory. God had made Heaven and Earth in six days, but Hell was more complex. It had taken him centuries to perfect the formula for its construction. If we were to build something in between, he would first have to build a new wall between Purgatory and Heaven and then alter the barrier of Hell without destroying it. This would take a colossal amount of time and energy. I pressed him. What is time for God? What is energy for the infinite one? Finally he agreed on one condition: that I was to be the supervisor of this Purgatory once it was created. I had questioned his word, so in a sense it was a punishment, but I accepted it for the good of others. The bargain was struck. I was hopeful that once I was able to control Purgatory, I might somehow be able to find a loophole to help speed your passage from Hell to Heaven.
It took God half a millennium to finish the task. He worked day and night and paid attention to nothing else. Earth fell into the dark ages without his divine influence, but in the end he succeeded. There were now three realms to the afterlife: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.”
We reached the bottom of the stairs. Mary cut off her story and stopped at a golden door with a sculpture of a circular eye at the top of the frame. The pupil in the center was a picture of Earth, surrounded by an iris of grey. Above the iris, the space to the top of the circle was white, while below the iris the space was black. Mary opened the door and we were bathed in a soft light. She walked inside; we followed behind her into what appeared to be a revolving dome. The roof stretched up high above our heads, the arc of the walls a gentle curve. We looked down to see we were walking on glass flooring. Rolling black clouds struggled to rise against the clear level at our feet.
“This room is a representation of the sum of God’s creation.” Mary said, continuing to move to the center of the room. “I had it built so I can educate my employees about the reality of their predicament. I can use it to show you where we stand in the universe.”
She stopped at a bench in the middle of the room, which sat in front of a slowly spinning globe. The top half of the globe rose above us, around ten feet in height, while the other half sunk into the floor. Clouds shifted above its surface, constantly moving and spinning.
“This is, of course, Earth,” said Mary. “It is an exact replica, which changes as earth does. Weather, developments of man and environmental movements are all recorded moments after they happen.”
I looked in amazement at the globe. It was an incredible feat of engineering. Before I could voice any questions, Mary pressed on.
“If you look upwards you will see the Heavens. They are forever expanding to be in essence infinite. I don’t have the resources to map any changes, but they are created from my memory of my time in the Kingdom. Heaven is perfect to God, so the only change would be to repeat what exists, to allow more room for his wanted children. This model is a poor substitute, but at least it gives you an idea.”
Above us shone galaxies of stars, suns and planets. Gold and silver tracks of light spun into swirling nebulae, which were joined by fine rainbows of illumination. The detail was remarkable. From my vantage point I could only make out a portion of what was there, but I was sure that if I were able to move up into the sky that I would discover new worlds, new splendor.
“Below,” Mary interrupted my enchantment, “is the basin of Hell.” I looked down and the black clouds parted. The fires of doom spread at our feet. Indeed the city of Hell shone beneath us. Mount Belial framed the metropolis, with the lakes, deserts, rivers and seas beyond that.
“It’s so big,” I said.
“Bigger than you think,” Mary replied, “yet not big enough to maintain the perpetual growth of population we’re experiencing. If something isn’t done, then eventually Hell will become so choked with souls that it will be even worse than it is now. This is why Satan worked tirelessly to try to cleanse souls as best he could. Ultimately the task was impossible for him. But I digress.”
She pulled a switch on the bench before us. The ground started
to rise and curve.
“What I have shown you so far is what God created before we inserted Purgatory in the middle. This is what the universe has evolved into now.”
As the floor rose underneath us, higher into the air, I could see that it had pushed into a curving bulb below as well. Small, grey mountains began to grow inside the cavern it created. Grey rivers started to flow and grey trees sprouted. Buildings rose up between the landscapes. It was totally colorless. Finally we were standing on the ceiling of Earth, looking down to this new world of Purgatory. The new realm surrounded the atmosphere of the model of Earth. I looked down to take in the detail and Judas did as well. Mary stayed at the bench, which was positioned right above the North Pole of the green and blue planet.
“God didn’t want any spectacular beauty to foreshadow the purpose of the souls from their reflection while in this state of Limbo,” she went on. “He created landforms, so people are able to move about with a sense of bearing. However, he refused to bring any potential joy into the realm. He was afraid people would settle for freedom in Purgatory, rather than come across to love and serve him in Heaven. The real mercy he showed to the souls was that there was to be no forced visions of guilt while there. Also, since most of the souls that arrive in Purgatory are basically good, there is no fear of harm coming from other deep evils like anger, lust or greed.”
Judas and I both looked up back at Mary. She pointed to a sketch of the realms on the desk in front of her.
“It’s easier to understand how each realm related to the other when it was smaller. Come and see.”
We moved back to her side. The sketch showed the same figure I had seen on the door outside. It was a large circle eye with a pupil of the earth in the middle. Around Earth was an iris of grey; purgatory. Above was a white Heaven, below was a black Hell.
“All of the realms of afterlife are connected to Earth through the rite of death. Heaven brushes the top tip of Earth, Hell the bottom. Purgatory surrounds. It means that souls can go directly to their intended realm once their mortal body dies. It is a perfect arrangement. The only way you can exist on Earth is if you are alive inside a flesh casing. Once that shell releases your soul, you are sucked towards whichever afterlife you belong. At the time of death, the barriers of the realms sense your soul’s deepest emotions, your dominating thoughts. They gauge your past actions and your potential future intentions to determine your destination. The walls between Hell, Purgatory and Heaven act the same way. Once your intentions form and change to true conviction, once you have conquered desires that pull your freewill away from the obedience of God, then your soul will be drawn through the filter towards Him. Your ethereal body in the afterlife comes with you wherever you go, but of course it can change just as your mind can. If you regress back toward sin or give in to your desires, you are sent plummeting back through the filters. It is possible to float from Hell to Purgatory and then to Heaven, once your soul becomes light without the burden of desire.”
I stepped back and looked once more around at the universe. It was stupendous. All of this had come from the hands of one creator. There was beauty and form that could only come from the mind of incredible artistic genius. However, it sickened me. The whole creation was a system designed to enslave us. We were bound to obey the rules of that system or suffer as a result. The divisions between realms were walls of tyranny, blocking our path to freedom. Freewill had no place in this universe, yet it had been given to us anyway; that was the cruellest joke of all. I opened my mouth to say so, but Mary continued her story.
“Once Purgatory was complete, God handed me the keys to the gates between my new realm and Heaven. The gates work almost like service doors. They allow the keepers of the universe to move between the realms, as they desire. My keys are like Saint Peter’s keys between the Kingdom of Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven. The keepers of the keys can use them to unlock the gate and pass through into the other kingdom. They are then allowed three days in the visited realm before being drawn back to where they belong. If I needed advice on how to tend the souls of Purgatory, I could always return to God for a short time. Because in my heart I still questioned God’s decision on Judas, I would always be drawn back to Purgatory eventually. It was a caveat which I was content with since I held the ability to visit Heaven using the keys at my own freedom. I asked God whether there were keys to the barrier between Purgatory and Hell but he denied their existence. He said there could be no reason that anyone other than The Devil would want to pass back and forth from the realm of Hell at will. I knew better than to openly question his judgment, and felt my heart sink at his declaration. However, I still held his word in doubt. I continued to hope that I might be able to pass through and find you one day.
“Once in Purgatory, I threw myself furiously into the task set for me. All kinds of souls washed into my domain. Those with a slightly altered perception of God’s word came, along with kind-hearted atheists, mildly corrupted teenagers and almost reformed sinners. I welcomed them all with open arms, and was surprised with how quickly some of them accepted the true love of God and passed to Heaven. It was a resounding success. God congratulated me wholeheartedly for my accomplishments. However, over the centuries it became evident to me there were still some souls who had taken up what seemed a permanent residence in Purgatory. Those who had been murdered violently, and couldn’t accept that it was part of God’s plan, made up many of this group. There were also others who enjoyed small sins; often their desires would escalate and I would lose these souls to Hell. I grieved each passing like I were losing a child. I knew that these people didn’t really deserve to be punished, just like you did not, Judas. They were just using the freewill they were given by God. They were simply giving in to desires which he had built into their makeup. Still I continued with my task. I frequented Heaven less and less and finally kept the keys of the realm locked safe within my apartment. They were secure there, since if anyone had the true intention of stealing them from me, they would be sucked down into Hell before they could break the seal of the safe I had constructed.
“I asked every soul who entered Purgatory from Hell if they knew of your plight, Judas, but none had. It continued to eat my soul that you should be trapped in Hell.
“One day an intensely interesting being made his way into my realm. He had come from Hell. His name was Zoroaster. When I asked if he had heard of you, he said he knew your story well. He declared with great gravity that many things had been hidden from us, and that is was his purpose to battle for truth in the universe.
“Zoroaster told me that once he had been a Prophet of God, but had disagreed with the plan of Jesus and Christianity, so had been thrown into Hell. There he pondered for years on the real purpose of things. He decided that God was hiding things from us and that it was his soul’s meaning to expose as much truth as he could to anyone who would listen. He hoped that through absolute truth would come order and eternal knowledge. Zoroaster became a powerful magician. His talents grew so that he could compel the forces of the elements with his will. Preaching his ideal of truth, he converted many demons to his new religion. He embraced demons that were true to their desires, as long as they never lied about their intent or actions. It was a revelation in Hell. Many followers joined him. Finally, Zoroaster led a revolt to Satan’s palace to demand their freedom from The Guilt and insist he free the trees in the Forest of the Damned. Zoroaster had known the truth of Judas and wanted to expose the lie to everyone. Satan used all of his power and influence to quash the rebellion. Demon was pitted against demon. Zoroaster fought against Satan himself. The war was bloody but swift. Satan was able to defeat Zoroaster’s forces by weight of numbers and the magician was no match for the Lord of Hell.
“In defeat, Zoroaster and the last seven of his followers fled to the outreaches of Hell. He set up a small monastery there, and continued to reflect on his internal search for truth and how to spread it throughout the universe. He built a bridge up into the sky to the barri
er between Hell and Purgatory: the Chinvar Bridge. He studied the barrier’s construction, and saw how he could work the system of its function –by controlling his own thoughts and desires. Zoroaster was able to push away his grudge against God and his desires for revelling in the pleasures that God deemed impure. He left his seven demons and passed over to Purgatory.
“Zoroaster spoke freely about all of this. He never covered up his wrongdoings. He was incredible to speak with, this man who had no duplicity or pretension. He knew exactly who I was and what I had done in my life. He could see inside me. He understood my want to redeem souls, and my deep longing to be reunited with Judas once his penance was complete.
“I told him of my suspicion that there might be a hidden gateway which would allow us to pass into Hell from Purgatory at will. He said he would find it if it existed. Returning to the barrier, he studied it closely from end to end. Finally he found a small chink in its façade. There was indeed a door. It was sealed up by elements he had never ever seen before. I had no ability to see what he could, but I trusted his word without question. It was so refreshing to be able to take someone at face value and know that he hid nothing. I showed him the keys I had for Heaven and he told me they were made of these same unique elements that sealed the doorway tight. With painstaking effort, Zoroaster was able to unpick these elements from the archway around the door between Purgatory and Hell. He then melded them into keys of a shape that could turn the gate’s lock. We now had the ability to pass between the realms of the afterlife as we wished.
“I wanted to go to Hell to see you right away, but Zoroaster advised me to think it through. What if, when I got there, Satan discovered me and took these keys? It would be a disaster. It could mean the spread of more falsehood and chaos into Purgatory and even Heaven. If we dared go into Heaven, God would know right away what we had done and would take the keys from us forever.
