(Here’s another one that bothers me. Jesus had brothers and sisters; is the Virgin Mary still a virgin? I have never had the courage to ask that question, either.)
We could see His throne for many miles ahead. This was not the great white Throne of God the Father in Heaven; this was just a field job for Jesus to use on this occasion. Nevertheless it was magnificent, carved out of a single diamond with its myriad facets picking up Jesus’ inner light and refracting it in a shower-of fire and ice in all directions. And that is what I saw best, as the face of Jesus shines with such blazing light that, without sunglasses, you can’t really see His features.
Never mind; you knew Who He was. One could not help knowing. A feeling of overpowering awe grabbed me when we were still at least twenty-five miles away. Despite my professors of theology, for the first time in my life I understood (felt) that single emotion that is described in the Bible by two words used together: love and fear. I loved/feared the Entity on that throne, and now I knew why Peter and James had abandoned their nets and followed Him.
And of course I did not make my request to Him as we passed closest (about a hundred yards). In my life on earth I had addressed (prayed to) Jesus by name thousands of times; when I saw Him in the Flesh I simply reminded myself that the angel herding us had promised us a chance to file personal requests when we reached Heaven. Soon enough. In the meantime it pleased me to think about Margrethe, somewhere in this parade, seeing the Lord Jesus on His throne…and if I had not intervened, she might never have seen Him. It made me feel warm and good, on top of the ecstatic awe I felt in staring at His blinding light.
Some miles past the throne the column swung up and to the right, and we left the neighborhood first of earth and then of the solar system. We headed straight for Heaven and picked up speed.
Did you know that earth looks like a crescent moon when you look back at it? I wondered whether or not any flat-earthers had managed to attain the Rapture. It did not seem likely, but such ignorant superstition is not totally incompatible with believing in Christ. Some superstitions are absolutely forbidden—astrology, for example, and Darwinism. But the flat-earth nonsense is nowhere forbidden that I know of. If there were any flat-earthers with us, how did they feel to look back and see that the earth was round as a tennis ball?
(Or would the Lord in His mercy let them perceive it as flat? Can mortal man ever understand the viewpoint of God?)
It seemed to take about two hours to reach the neighborhood of Heaven. I say “seemed to” because it might have been any length of time; there was no human scale by which to judge. In the same vein, the total period of the Rapture seemed to me to be about two days…but I had reason later to believe that it may have been seven years—at least by some reckoning. Measures of time and space become very slippery when one lacks mundane clocks and yardsticks.
As we approached the Holy City our guides had us slow down and then make a sightseeing sweep around it before going in through one of the gates.
This was no minor jaunt. New Jerusalem (Heaven, the Holy City, Jehovah’s capital) is laid out foursquare like the District of Columbia, but it is enormously bigger, one thousand three hundred and twenty miles on a side, five thousand two hundred and eighty miles around it, and that gives an area of one million seven hundred and forty-two thousand four hundred square miles.
This makes cities like Los Angeles or New York look tiny.
In solemn truth the Holy City covers an area more than six times as big as all of Texas! At that, it’s crowded. But they are expecting only a few more after us.
It’s a walled city, of course, and the walls are two hundred and sixteen feet high, and the same wide. The tops of the wall are laid out in twelve traffic lanes—and no guard rails. Scary. There are twelve gates, three in each wall, the famous pearly gates (and they are); these normally stand open—will not be closed, we were told, until the Final Battle.
The wall itself is of iridescent jasper but it has a dozen footings in horizontal layers that are more dazzling than the wall itself: sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, amethyst—I may have missed some. New Jerusalem is so dazzling everywhere that it is hard for a human to grasp it—impossible to grasp it all at once.
When we finished the sweep around the Holy City, our cohort’s flightmaster herded us into a holding pattern like dirigibles at O’Hare and kept us there until he received a signal that one of the gates was free—and I was hoping to get at least a glimpse of Saint Peter, but no—his office is at the main gate, the Gate of Judah, whereas we went in by the opposite gate, named for Asher, where we were registered by angels deputized to act for Peter.
Even with all twelve gates in use and dozens of Peter-deputized clerks at each gate and examination waived (since we all were caught up at the Rapture—guaranteed saved) we had to queue up quite a long time just to get registered in, receive temporary identifications, temporary bunking assignments, temporary eating assignments—
(“Eating”?)
Yes, I thought so, too, and I asked the angel who booked me about it. He/she looked down at me. “Refection is optional. It will do you no harm never to eat and not to drink. But many creatures and some angels enjoy eating, especially in company. Suit yourself.”
“Thank you. Now about this berthing assignment. It’s a single. I want a double, for me and my wife. I want—”
“Your former wife, you mean. In Heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage.”
“Huh? Does that mean we can’t live together?”
“Not at all. But both of you must apply, together, at Berthing General. See the office of Exchange and Readjustments. Be sure, each of you, to fetch your berthing chit.”
“But that’s the problem! I got separated from my wife. How do I find her?”
“Not part of my M.O.S. Ask at the information booth. In the meantime use your singles apartment in Gideon Barracks.”
“But—”
He (she?) sighed. “Do you realize how many thousands of hours I have been sitting here? Can you guess how complex it is to provide for millions of creatures at once, some alive and never dead, others newly incarnate? This is the first time we have had to install plumbing for the use of fleshly creatures—do you even suspect how inconvenient that is? I say that, when you install plumbing, you are bound to get creatures who need plumbing—and there goes the neighborhood! But did they listen to me? Hunh! Pick up your papers, go through that door, draw a robe and a halo—harps are optional. Follow the green line to Gideon Barracks.”
“No!”
I saw his (her) lips move; she (he) may have been praying. “Do you think it is proper to run around Heaven looking the way you do? You are quite untidy. We aren’t used to living-flesh creatures. Uh… Elijah is the last I recall, and I must say that you look almost as disreputable as he did. In addition to discarding those rags and putting on a decent white robe, if I were you I would do something about that dandruff.”
“Look,” I said tensely. “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus. While you’ve been sitting around in a clean white robe and a halo in an immaculate city with streets of gold, I’ve been struggling with Satan himself. I know I don’t look very neat but I didn’t choose to come here looking this way. Uh—Where can I pick up some razor blades?”
“Some what?”
“Razor blades. Gillette double-edged blades, or that type. For this.” I took out my razor, showed it to her/ him. “Preferably stainless steel.”
“Here everything is stainless. But what in Heaven is that?”
“A safety razor. To take this untidy beard off my face.”
“Really? If the Lord in His wisdom had intended His male creations not to have hair on their faces, He would have created them with smooth features. Here, let me dispose of that.” He-she reached for my razor.
I snatched it back. “Oh, no, you don’t! Where’s that information booth?”
“To your left. Six hundred and sixty mi
les.” She-he sniffed.
I turned away, fuming. Bureaucrats. Even in Heaven. I didn’t ask any more questions there because I spotted a veiled meaning. Six hundred and sixty miles is a figure I recalled from our sightseeing tour: the exact distance from a center gate (such as Asher Gate, where I was) to the center of Heaven, i.e., the Great White Throne of the Lord God Jehovah, God the Father. He (she) was telling me, none too gently, that if I did not like the way I was being treated, I could take my complaints to the Boss—i.e., “Get lost!”
I picked up my papers and backed away, looked around for someone else in authority.
The one who organized this gymkhana, Gabriel or Michael or whoever, had anticipated that there would be lots of creatures milling around, each with problems that didn’t quite fit the system. So scattered through the crowd were cherubs. Don’t think of Michelangelo or Luca della Robbia; these were not bambinos with dimpled knees; these were people a foot and a half taller than we newcomers were—like angels but with little cherub wings and each with a badge reading “STAFF.”
Or maybe they were indeed angels; I never have been sure about the distinction between angels and cherubim and seraphim and such; the Book seems to take it for granted that you know such things without being told. The papists list nine different classes of angels! By whose authority? It’s not in the Book!
I found only two distinct classes in Heaven: angels and humans. Angels consider themselves superior and do not hesitate to let you know it. And they are indeed superior in position and power and privilege. Saved souls are second-class citizens. The notion, one that runs all through Protestant Christianity and maybe among papists as well, that a saved soul will practically sit in the lap of God—well, it ain’t so! So you’re saved and you go to Heaven—you find at once that you are the new boy on the block, junior to everybody there.
A saved soul in Heaven occupies much the position of a blackamoor in Arkansas. And it’s the angels who really rub your nose in it.
I never met an angel I liked.
And this derives from how they feel about us. Let’s look at it from the angelic viewpoint. According to Daniel there are a hundred million angels in Heaven. Before the Resurrection and the Rapture, Heaven must have been uncrowded, a nice place to live and offering a good career—some messenger work, some choral work, an occasional ritual. I’m sure the angels liked it.
Along comes a great swarm of immigrants, many millions (billions?), and some of them aren’t even housebroken. All of them require nursemaiding. After untold eons of beatific living, suddenly the angels find themselves working overtime, running what amounts to an enormous orphan asylum. It’s not surprising that they don’t like us.
Still… I don’t like them, either. Snobs!
I found a cherub (angel?) with a STAFF badge and asked the location of the nearest information booth. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Straight down the boulevard six thousand furlongs. It’s by the River that flows from the Throne.”
I stared down the boulevard. At that distance God the Father on His Throne looked like a rising sun. I said, “Six thousand furlongs is over six hundred miles. Isn’t there one in this neighborhood?”
“Creature, it was done that way on purpose. If we had placed a booth on each corner, every one of them would have crowds around it, asking silly questions. This way, a creature won’t make the effort unless it has a truly important question to ask.”
Logical. And infuriating. I found that I was again possessed by unheavenly thoughts. I had always pictured Heaven as a place of guaranteed beatitude—not filled with the same silly frustration so common on earth. I counted to ten in English, then in Latin. “Uh, what’s the flight time? Is there a speed limit?”
“Surely you don’t think that you would be allowed to fly there, do you?”
“Why not? Just earlier today I flew here and then all the way around the City.”
“You just thought you did. Actually, your cohort leader did it all. Creature, let me give you a tip that may keep you out of trouble. When you get your wings—if you ever do get wings—don’t try to fly over the Holy City. You’ll be grounded so fast your teeth will ache. And your wings stripped away.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t rate it, that’s why. You Johnny-Come-Latelies show up here and think you own the place. You’d carve your initials in the Throne if you could get that close to it. So let me put you wise. Heaven operates by just one rule: R.H.I.P. Do you know what that means?”
“No,” I answered, not entirely truthfully.
“Listen and learn. You can forget the Ten Commandments. Here only two or three of them still apply and you’ll find you can’t break those even if you were to try. The golden rule everywhere in Heaven is: Rank Hath Its Privileges. At this eon you are a raw recruit in the Armies of the Lord, with the lowest rank possible. And the least privilege. In fact the only privilege I can think of that you rate is being here, just being here. The Lord in His infinite wisdom has decreed that you qualify to enter here. But that’s all. Behave yourself and you will be allowed to stay. Now as to the traffic rule you asked about. Angels and nobody else fly over the Holy City. When on duty or during ceremonies. That does not mean you. Not even if you get wings. If you do. I emphasize this because a surprising number of you creatures have arrived here with the delusion that going to Heaven automatically changes a creature into an angel. It doesn’t. It can’t. Creatures never become angels. A saint sometimes. Though seldom. An angel, never.”
I counted ten backwards, in Hebrew. “If you don’t mind, I’m still trying to reach that information booth. Since I am not allowed to fly, how do I get there?”
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place? Take the bus.”
Sometime later I was seated in a chariot bus of the Holy City Transit Lines and we were rumbling toward the distant Throne. The chariot was open, boat-shaped, with an entrance in the rear, and had no discernible motive power and no teamster or conductor. It stopped at marked chariot stops and that is how I got aboard. I had not yet found out how to get it to stop.
Apparently everyone in the City rode these buses (except V.I.P.s who rated private chariots). Even angels. Most passengers were humans dressed in conventional white and wearing ordinary halos. But a few were humans in costumes of various eras and topped off by larger and fancier halos. I noticed that angels were fairly polite to these creatures in the fancier halos. But they did not sit with them. Angels sat in the front of the car, these privileged humans in the middle part, and the common herd (including yours truly) in the rear.
I asked one of my own sort how long it took to reach the Throne.
“I don’t know,” I was answered. “I don’t go nearly that far.”
This soul seemed to be female, middle-aged, and friendly, so I used a commonplace opener. “That’s a Kansas accent, is it not?”
She smiled. “I don’t think so. I was born in Flanders.”
“Really? You speak very fluent English.”
She shook her head gently. “I never learned English.”
“But—”
“I know. You are a recent arrival. Heaven is not affected by the Curse of Babel. Here the Confusion of Tongues never took place…and a good thing for me as I have no skill in languages—a handicap before I died. Not so here.” She looked at me with interest. “May I ask where you died? And when?”
“I did not die,” I told her. “I was snatched up alive in the Rapture.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, how thrilling! You must be very holy.”
“I don’t think so. Why do you say that?”
“The Rapture will come—came?—without warning. Or so I was taught.”
“That’s right.”
“Then with no warning, and no time for confession, and no priest to help you…you were ready! As free from sin as Mother Mary. You came straight to Heaven. You must be holy.” She added, “That’s what I thought when I saw your costume, since saints—martyrs especially—often d
ress as they did on earth. I saw too that you are not wearing your saint’s halo. But that’s your privilege.” She looked suddenly shy. “Will you bless me? Or do I presume?”
“Sister, I am not a saint.”
“You will not grant me your blessing?”
(Dear Jesus, how did this happen to me?) “Having heard me say that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I am not a saint, do you still want me to bless you?”
“If you will…holy father.”
“Very well. Turn and lower your head a little—” Instead she turned fully and dropped to her knees. I put a hand on her head. “By authority vested in me as an ordained minister of the one true catholic church of Jesus Christ the Son of God the Father and by the power of the Holy Ghost, I bless this our sister in Christ. So mote it be!”
I heard echoes of “Amen!” around us; we had had quite an audience. I felt embarrassed. I was not certain, and still am not certain, that I had any authority to bestow blessings in Heaven itself. But the dear woman had asked for it and I could not refuse.
She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “I knew it, I knew it!”
“Knew what?”
“That you are a saint. Now you are wearing it!”
I started to say, “Wearing what?” when a minor miracle occurred. Suddenly I was looking at myself from outside: wrinkled and dirty khaki pants, Army-surplus shirt with dark sweat stains in the armpits and a bulge of razor in the left breast pocket, three-day growth of beard and in need of a haircut…and, floating over my head, a halo the size of a washtub, shining and sparkling!
“Up off your knees,” I said instead, “and let’s stop being conspicuous.”
“Yes, father.” She added, “You should not be seated back here.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, daughter. Now tell me about yourself.” I looked around as she resumed her seat, and happened to catch the eye of an angel seated all alone, up forward. (S)he gestured to me to come forward.
I had had my fill of the arrogance of angels; at first I ignored the signal. But everyone was noticing and pretending not to, and my awe-struck companion was whispering urgently, “Most holy person, the angelic one wants to see you.”
Job: A Comedy of Justice Page 28
