Questions about heaven and hell can play on people's minds. This is a story with accompanying paper illustration which may answer some of those questions.
There was once a teenage boy named Nemo. He was friendly with, and attracted to, a schoolgirl friend called Christian. He really liked her but she was always telling him that he must become a Christian. She talked frequently about Jesus - how he is alive, and how he had come to die to save us from the eternal consequences of what she called 'sin'. He just laughed at her.
The dream
But one night Nemo went to bed and lay in the darkness of his room thinking about what Christian had said. His fitful thought patterns eventually drifted into sleep and a strange dream began.
He dreamed he and Christian were in a car. They had been out in the town that evening and they were laughing and joking and having a good time. But as Nemo was driving her home along the by-pass, the headlights of an oncoming car dazzled him, he took the bend in the road too fast, there was a sickening, terrifying crash. Everything seemed to go into slow motion. It was like falling through water. Eventually they found themselves on a huge desert outside the great gates of the city of heaven. The sun shone, the air was sweet and there was a gentle breeze.
The ticket
They turned to see the gates open silently. A magnificent, handsome angel in shining clothes came and looked at them and told them to wait. They sat down.
'What happened to us?' said Nemo. 'I don't know,' Christian replied. Confused and humbled by the awesomeness of their surroundings, they fell silent.
The angel was gone a long time and Christian fell asleep. It was then that Nemo realised that she seemed to have a strange-shaped ticket in her hand. It said on it 'Price paid, admission to heaven'.
He looked at his own hand - nothing. He searched his pockets - nothing. What did this mean? What was he to do? It looked as though what he had always feared from their previous discussions (but never allowed himself to think about), was going to happen. She would be let into heaven and he left outside. 'What can I do?' The element of panic was in his thoughts now. He couldn't take her ticket. He tried, but somehow she held too tight. 'What can I do?' What he eventually did was to tear some of the ticket off, then tear a bit more off. He held the pieces tightly together. 'Perhaps this will be enough to fool the angel. But can you fool angels ?' he thought.
Still the angel didn't return. Still Christian slept. What was going to happen to him? He always thought that when you died that was the end. But here he was somehow alive in another world. Was it true not just about heaven but also about hell after death? No. It couldn't be. How can a God of love send people to hell?
The voices
It was then that Nemo began to hear the voices. They started just as whispers. It was as if invisible people were walking by and he could overhear their conversations. As they approached the voices grew louder.
He couldn't see anyone but he could hear the noise of a crowd. Suddenly he could hear a clear and thoughtful voice, and somehow he knew it was the voice of Jesus. 'Anyone who says to his brother 'You fool' will be in danger of the fire of hell! I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell! 'The noise of the crowd and the voice faded. Nemo realised that Jesus was serious, that there was such a place as hell, and that it was their sin that took people there. It occurred to him that what Christian had been telling him now made sense. It was because Jesus knew that hell is so real and so unspeakably dreadful that he died - taking the punishment for sin for whoever trusted him - so saving them from hell. But he also knew he himself had never trusted Jesus.
Wild cheering
Suddenly he could hear another crowd and another voice, harsh, and obsessive amid the wild cheering. 'If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race - like the Germanic race - should inter-mingle with an inferior - like the Jewish race. Why? Because, in such a case her efforts, throughout hundreds and thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile !' It was Adolf Hitler. The Nazi applause erupted and died away. Now, suddenly, hell itself made sense for Nemo. If there was no hell, no retribution after death, then Hitler and his like had got away with it. Oblivion is the same for everyone.
'But how can a God of love send people to hell?' he now thought desperately. It was just then that he heard two other voices. (Still he saw no one.) One was a voice which made him feel quite frightened. The other was a voice which was so awesome it took his breath away just to listen to it. It seemed like a great senior angel talking to a lesser one. 'God's love is a wonderful, holy love. It is a love that will not confuse right and wrong. All who want to be saved can be saved through the blood of the cross. But if God were to let off everyone whether they wanted to be saved or not - that would be the same as saying that sin and evil do not matter - and that would make God no better than the devil. God forbid! Remember the words of the Book: '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.' The voices faded and Nemo knew that he had not believed.
The angel returns
How would he be admitted to heaven? He did not know. Still he had torn off those pieces of Christian's ticket. Just then Christian woke up and before Nemo could say anything to her the angel who had met them first, returned. Nemo and Christian both stood up.
'Do you have any admission to heaven?' he asked.
Christian gave him what was left of her ticket - he opened it up. It formed the shape of a cross! 'Even though it is torn, this tells me that you have trusted in our Lord Jesus Christ - enter into heaven' he said. She hesitated, but then went in, looking despairingly behind her to Nemo.
'Do you have admission to heaven?' the angel asked Nemo.
Nemo mumbled some kind of lying explanation about the car crash and why his ticket was all in bits and handed them over to the angel. The angel unwrapped them - rearranged the bits - 'Can you see what this says ?' asked the angel. Nemo looked. To his utter horror, the bits of ticket spelled the word HELL.
Waking up
'What can I do?' Nemo asked. 'Nothing,' replied the angel. 'It is too late, you could have believed, but now it's too late!'
And with those dreadful words 'too late' ringing in his ears, Nemo woke up from his dream. 'Too late! too late!' He was in an agony. He was shocked and gasping for breath. But the panic subsided. Now he realised that it had only been a dream. He was alive. It was not yet too late!
JEB
Dr John Benton
