Come Armageddon

by Anne Perry

  You have given him a body in your own image, but he will defile it! If you give him no hunger, then he will wither and die. Give him desire and he will indulge it until it governs him. It will consume all other good in him. That which should sustain his life or heal his ills will become his master. He will coarsen and become gross, devouring for sensation, consuming without need. He will misuse herbs to give himself illusion so that he may escape the realities you have put there to teach him patience, endurance, and compassion. He will use them to deny the pain you have put in his path so that he may learn truth and understanding.

  Man of Holiness: It is part of the soul of man to hunger, as it is the greatest of his lessons to master himself. If he would become as I am, and know My joy, which has no boundary in time or space, then the first and greatest step on that journey is to harness the passions within himself and use their force for good. Without that he has no life but only a semblance of it, a fire-shadow in the darkness.

  Asmodeus: Life? The power to beget life he will abuse above all the other powers you give him. He will make of that desire a dark and twisted thing to ruin and torture, to feed his hunger of the flesh and the lust for dominion which corrodes his mind. He will corrupt and pervert, distort its very nature until it grows hideous. He will call dependence, pity, even the exercise of tyranny, by the name of love. Torture of mind and body, destruction and despotism will be justified by that one word alone. More abominations will be committed in your name than in any other.

  Man of Holiness: I know it, and My soul weeps. But it must be. The more sublime the good, the deeper the evil that is possible from its debasement. The corruption of love will lose more souls than any other force, and the realisation of it will redeem more, even that which had seemed lost into darkness beyond recall.

  Asmodeus: It will not be. Man is riddled with doubt and ingratitude. In his ignorance and impatience he destroys what he holds. Despair walks beside him and whispers to him in the hollows of the night.

  Man of Holiness: I give him weakness that he might learn humility, and out of his own failures might find gentleness and pity for others who also stumble. And in that pity he will help, and find a greater love. In his frailties, if he will look to Me, I will make him a giant, and My grace shall be sufficient for all things. I shall consecrate his griefs and his trials to him, that at the last he will know even the depth of the abyss and the heights of heaven which have no end. He will love all the workmanship of My hands because he has walked beside it, laboured with it, laughed and wept with it, and he will cherish it, that his joy may be full even as Mine is full.

  Asmodeus: But what you give is arbitrary and unjust! You favour one above another. For some there is happiness, health of body, an abundance of treasures; for others only misery, affliction, and the burden of loneliness. How can an unjust God command respect, far less love? I have heard the prayers, even of the righteous, echo unanswered in the empty caverns of the night.

  Man of Holiness: No prayers are unanswered, but many answers are unheard, because man’s spirit listens only to its own voice and has not learned to hear Mine. And sometimes the answer is “no” or “not yet” because what is asked for will not bring the happiness he imagines. I know him better than he knows himself. I give to every soul that which is necessary for it to reach the fullness of its nature, to know the bitter from the sweet, which is the purpose of this separation from Me of his mortal life. It is a brief span for an eternal need, for some too brief for happiness also. But to each is given the opportunity to learn what is needful for that soul, to strengthen what is weak, to hallow and make beautiful that which is ugly, to give time to winnow out the chaff of doubt and impatience, and fire to burn away the dross of selfishness. The chances come in many forms and oft times more than once.

  Asmodeus: He will see it as capricious and unfair, that you love one and hate another.

  Man of Holiness: Too often he sees but a short space, and cries in the night, because he is a child. He does not see as I see, who understand him, and love him, and know the end from the beginning. It has been decreed from the birth of all things that I cannot and would not withhold any blessing when a man has fitted himself to receive it by obedience to the law upon which it rests. If I give it to him too soon, he will not understand and he will break it, or let it slip from his grasp at the moment of earning, and virtue will be swallowed up in self-interest and the treasure will not bless, but corrupt.

  Without waiting, and cost, there would no longer be the sublime gift of sacrifice, which is the greatest love. There would be only payment, the certainty of an even more precious return. It would end not in holiness, but in destitution of heart.

  Asmodeus: Will you tell him of this promise? If you do, he may not believe you. If he does, he will still give, in hope of gain. And if you do not tell him, then you lie, by withholding.

  Man of Holiness: I will tell him, as I tell him all things pertaining to his joy. Some will believe, and some will not. Some will give with cold hearts, conscious of their own rectitude, and with an eye to reward, and their payment is dust. But some will give because they themselves know need and have felt hunger and what it is to walk alone, and they would spare another. They understand ways of love, and I shall keep them in the hollow of My hands for ever. Their names shall be upon My lips.

  And others will not believe that I am, but in love they have walked My path and I have been beside them though they knew Me not. Their deeds have spoken My name, and when they see My face they shall know Me, and I shall bless them with a great blessing.

  Asmodeus: You see man as you wish him to be, not as he is. Give him a religion and he will become a fanatic, a rulekeeper, a guardian of his own soul who preserves the letter of the law and waits for the reward with open hands and a closed heart. He will persecute others in the name of the law, understand nothing, and your name will be an excuse for lies and corruption and torture. Hypocrites will whisper it with a smile, and murder faith and hope as they do it.

  Man of Holiness: I know. And if they do not repent, and learn to understand what it is they do, and if they will not then change, their path will lead to the last aloneness, where I cannot follow, and the gulf between us will become everlasting. But if there is not the choice to take the downward road, then the road upward has no meaning.

  Asmodeus: You know all that he needs better than he knows himself. Why do you compel him to ask you daily?

  Man of Holiness: I teach a step at a time because that is how he learns. There is a season for all things. If I gave him the greater knowledge at once he could not grasp it. Like you and like Me, he must hunger for it, and seek it, and learn by experience, in order to understand not only the nature of its beauty, but also its price. What he gains too easily he will not value, and too often he cannot hold. Time and ease seep it away from him, the first bitter wind freezes his fingers, and his treasure is let go and he cannot call it back.

  I do not seek gratitude for My sake, but for his. It enlarges his soul who feels it. It is a thing of joy, unclouded by arrogance or triumph. It is a bond between the giver and the given. Its sweetness lingers in the heart long after the gift is forgotten.

  Asmodeus: His words are dead leaves in the wind. Gratitude writes nothing in his heart.

  Man of Holiness: There are gifts which are laboured for and earned, and those which are given of grace. All men are responsible for the burden to magnify them with wisdom and humility, and to share their fruits with all, both the loved and the unloved.

  The greatest gifts of the spirit are the hardest to bear well: the gift of knowledge, of healing, of prophecy, the power to lead others and share the light. Such gifts define the path for him and he must pick them up, or lay them down. There is no middle way. Once offered, there is no choice but to accept, with all the weight he can bear; or to refuse, and close the door on the journey forward, and sit alone in the night, having set aside for ever what he might have been. All knowledge places on him the right and the respons
ibility of choice. Then he must walk the path to its final step.

  Asmodeus: You speak as if knowledge were there for all. It is not! Some have intelligence, keenness of mind and swiftness of understanding. Others are slow and muddled in thought. Some are tormented by unreason. Millions, like the sands of the sea, labour all their days merely to survive. Philosophy is not in their world. Again you are unjust, a respecter of persons.

  Man of Holiness: Each man takes with him into life what he has chosen and laboured for here, in the creation before life. Some have already learned much and need only take the flesh upon them and stay but briefly, even an instant, and return to Me. Some have limitations upon them, disorders of the mortal flesh which dull and confuse the mind. Others call them simple, or deranged. They need no more learning, and they are not answerable for their weakness. They too need no probation, but they live in order to test the patience and the compassion of others. But it is each man’s choice whether he will grow or wither, take up My burden, or pass it by.

  He will teach others, but before he teaches he must learn. If he lives worthily and seeks My way, I will give him words for the questioner and answers for those who seek. He will tell in response more than he knows, even hidden things, and both will be touched by the light.

  Asmodeus: You place an intolerable burden upon those to whom you answer with truth! What if it is too great for them and they cannot bear it? What if they turn aside and seek a softer path?

  Man of Holiness: Those who have sought My face and to whom I have spoken as one man speaks to another, and have then turned from Me, will follow their road to its end, which is the eternal darkness, because it is where they wish to be. My heart yearns within Me, My soul grieves, the angels water heaven with their tears, but it is not in My gift to change it, even as I cannot change you. If I were to, I should cease to be God, and chaos would consume the stars. It would be the end of all things.

  Asmodeus: Then when you spoke of mercy and love, it was mockery, hideous farce of pretended light. You knew before he began that he would fail! Over and over he would fail. Sin and error would flow from him like the rivers of the firmament. You begat him for damnation!

  Man of Holiness: I know he will sin and make mistakes. He is yet learning. His life in the flesh is a journey, not an arriving. For this reason has My best beloved offered Himself to face all frailty, all pain, and all darkness and loss, that the creation which surrounds us and has kept its holy estate without strain, may grant Him the wish of His heart, which is the eternal life of all the children of My spirit and the workmanship of My hands. Thus even until the last day of judgement before Me, there may be repentance.

  But repentance is more than words and more than sorrow. It is understanding the bitter from the sweet, the light from the darkness, casting aside all sin because it is vile to the soul, and loving the light above cost or price. To repent is to change, no longer to desire that which separates from Me, which injures and cramps and withers the soul. When hunger for that change fills the heart of man, then will I give the grace and the power to accomplish it. And when it is done, I will wash the sin from all remembrance, and it will exist no more.

  Asmodeus: Repentance takes time and experience. What of those, countless as the leaves of the forest, who will have no time? What of the legions of those lost in wars and famines and pestilence?

  Man of Holiness: For them I have decreed a space between the death of the flesh and the last judgement. In that time will be the teaching and the repentance of the dead. No spirit of man ever conceived shall be without knowledge and time to choose all that he will be.

  Asmodeus: You ask man to live in hope and faith in that which he cannot see. You give him nothing but words in the air!

  Man of Holiness: I will never leave him alone. The night and the day are filled with the spirits of those who love him, who will speak to him in the language of his friend, and in the voice of the stranger who passes his door, whose hands will bless him and whose arms will bear him up when he is weary and broken. Hope is the gift of angels.

  Asmodeus: Another gift! You have promised him all manner of gifts and powers if he obeys. If you then withhold them, you break your word. Yet if you keep it, and give him power to perform miracles, then he himself will remove the need for faith, and for the growth you hold to prize above all. The righteous will walk the earth healing the suffering. They will calm the tumult of the elements, create bread out of the dust, command war to cease, and it will do so. And you will be defeated by your own gifts.

  Man of Holiness: I will give power to man only as he learns wisdom to use it, and as he understands the purpose of life. And if he misuses it, I shall take it from him again. There is no swift or easy path. The power to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, even to raise the dead, does not bring one soul a step closer to the fire of courage, the purity of honour or the love which is the light of the universe. If it did, then I would do it myself. Man in his frailty and his hope, his blindness and his compassion, already has all he needs to teach the truth, to heal the heart, and to lead the way upward.

  Asmodeus: The seeds of contradiction are in your words. If you do not give him power, he will never learn its use; if you do, then soon he will abuse it because he will forget who gave it to him, and in the imagination of his mind he will think it is his own. He will tyrannise and oppress because it is his nature.

  Man of Holiness: Real power is to understand the difference between good and evil, to know who he is, and what he desires to be, and then to have such a passion, a hunger, that he can govern himself until he becomes what he wishes, until he has the courage, the integrity, and the compassion he has glimpsed in vision. When he has strength, and can stay his hand from using it, when he trespasses on no man’s agency, when he can let go of an injury and forgive, when he loves Me with a whole heart and there is no division in him, then he has real power. And in suffering oppression he will learn the fragility of freedom, and its cost. He will learn to treasure it for others as deeply as he does for himself, knowing that in the end it is the same thing.

  Through pain and knowledge of what it is to sin, he will learn to forgive others, as he himself longs to be forgiven. Love is the beginning of all redemption, and no one can love with the infinite passion and tenderness, the laughter and the patience and joy that is My way unless they first forgive.

  Asmodeus: Man may forgive when he is weak and knows his own need for mercy, but he will not see another’s offence with the same eyes as he sees his own. Wait until he is strong; then it will be far different. Power is the ultimate corrosion of the soul. It is the worm in the night, grown monstrous on its own blood. In the end it will devour all else. Yet without power, he cannot go where you have gone, nor become as you are.

  Man of Holiness: The probation of the flesh has many purposes, but none greater than learning to use power righteously, and none more difficult or more dangerous or beset with as many traps and snares for the soul. He must learn to stay his hand, never to trespass on another’s agency to choose, no matter how much wiser he may believe his vision to be or how much greater his own light. He may see the path far ahead, and every precipice that hovers on the lip of the abyss, every morass that would suck a man into its bowels and consume him utterly. He may plead and teach, exhort and implore, yet he must not rob another of his right to choose for himself, good or ill.

  Love does not excuse. Even I must watch and wait, because to do otherwise would begin the chain of ruin which would in the end destroy heaven itself. There must be opposition in all things; without the darkness, there is no light.

  Asmodeus: Man will never understand that! He will not accept loss! It is beyond his concept of morality with its urgency, its blindness to all but the individual and the moment. His small, finite mind cannot imagine so far! The strong will abuse the weak, most of all when the weak believe they love them. They will protect them unwisely, because they glory in their own strength. They will trust their own wisdom above yours.
Their pride will not allow admission of error in themselves or in those of their blood or their race.

  They will foster dependence because to be needed is the ultimate dominion. They will demand obedience because in it is the illusion of glory. Thus the weak will lean upon the strong, and both will be damned.

  Man of Holiness: It is the test of the strong that they should help the weak for as long as that need exists, that their patience should never tire or grow short. They should nourish the young, the tender, the frightened, and the weak until they too become strong and no longer need them. To love is to desire growth, that every soul may reach the greatness of all its possibilities.

  Asmodeus: But what of the impaired of body or mind? What of those who are not whole?

  Man of Holiness: The impairment is temporary. The limping step of the cripple is to see if the swift will stay his speed and bend to lift him up—if need be, to forfeit the victory of the racer to carry him who is maimed and weary, to guide him who is lost and bear his burden for him. To all I will visit some weakness, in the full tide of life or in the limitations of age. I will test his humility to accept the help of others with grace, and without anger or envy, self-pity or despair.

  Asmodeus: He will rail against you when his strength fails him. Man is born to ingratitude. He will let nothing go, except you force him. You will break his fingers before he will lose his grip on what he deludes himself is his. Allow him authority over another and then take it from him, and he will hate his successor. He will hate you also for his pride’s sake. He will imagine that to magnify another diminishes him, and that service is a lesser call.

  Man of Holiness: I give him earthly power not to exercise dominion, but to minister to his fellows, and in ministering to learn those skills which he does not yet possess, each in its turn, until he has them all. And as he gains each, he must step back and with the patience of love and his greater skill, sustain his fellow while he too learns, and forgive him his errors.