Chapter 1: The fatal car crash
It all happened in the blink of an eye. There was no time to pray, no time to ask for forgiveness. There was only the squealing sound of tires on the wet asphalt, and then the brutal impact of metal on metal. The noise was deafening like a bomb had exploded inside my head.
Chapter 2: A life of religious pretense
I remember the crack of glass shattering into a thousand pieces and the sensation of my body being shaken with a violence no human being should ever have to experience. Then came the silence, an absolute and heavy silence that enveloped everything. Moments before, I had been driving along peacefully. It was Sunday evening. I was wearing my best navy suit and silk tie. I was coming from church. It had been a powerful service.
Everyone said people had cried and raised their hands. I was on the platform. I was one of the main leaders. Everyone looked at me with respect. Brother Carlos is a man of God. They said, "An example of integrity. I was driving my new car with that satisfaction in my chest. I felt that God owed me favors for all I did in his house. I felt safe. I felt untouchable.
Chapter 3: The secret theft
But on the passenger seat was a black leather briefcase. That briefcase was my secret. That briefcase was my downfall. Inside was the money for the special building offering that I was supposed to deposit in the bank the next morning. But I had other plans. part of that money would never reach the bank. I had done it before. It was easy. No one suspected the faithful treasurer. No one suspected the man who prayed louder than everyone else.
I had justified my theft a thousand times in my mind. I thought I deserved it for my hard work. I thought God understood my needs. How wrong I was. How terribly wrong I was. When I opened my eyes after the impact, I felt no pain. That was the first thing that
Chapter 4: Seeing my own corpse
struck me as odd. The car was smashed against a light pole. The hood was crumpled like aluminum foil. Smoke billowed from the engine and there was a pungent smell of gasoline and burning rubber. I tried to move, but my body wouldn't respond. That's when I realized something that chilled me to the bone. I was outside the car. I was standing on the sidewalk staring at the scene. I approached the vehicle, a fear tightening in my throat.
I peered through the driver's side shattered window. What I saw made me want to scream, but no sound came out. There I was. My body was trapped between the steering wheel and the seat. My head was tilted at an unnatural angle. There was blood on my blue suit. My eyes were open, but glassy and lifeless. I was dead. There was no doubt about it. That was my corpse. Panic gripped me. Not ordinary panic, but a profound spiritual
Chapter 5: Spiritual terror and descent
terror. I began to look around desperately. I hoped to see a light. For years, I had heard and preached about the moment of a Christian's death. I expected to see angels dressed in white gently descending to take me. I expected to feel a supernatural peace that urpasses all understanding. I expected to see the tunnel of brilliant light and hear heavenly music. I looked up at the night sky, expecting to see the gates of heaven open to receive its faithful servant.
But the sky was closed. There were no stars, no moon, no angels. Instead of light, a thick gray mist began to form around me. The air grew cold. It wasn't a winter chill. It was a burning cold, a chill that pierced my soul and made me shiver uncontrollably. I began to feel an evil presence behind me. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was there. I felt eyes watching me from the shadows, eyes full of hatred, eyes that had been waiting for this exact moment.
For years, I tried to say the name of Jesus. I wanted to scream, "I am a Christian. I am a leader of the church. This is a mistake." But the words died in my throat. It was as if my tongue were tied. I had no authority. All my religiosity and my titles were worthless. My leader suit had been left in the car with my dead body. Here I was spiritually naked and my soul was defiled. Suddenly I felt a pull.
It wasn't upward. It was downward. I felt
Chapter 6: Falling into the abyss
as if the ground beneath my spiritual feet opened up. An immense gravitational force grabbed me by the ankles. I tried to grab onto something. I tried to grab the lamp post. I tried to grab onto my own car, but my hands passed through physical matter as if it were smoke. I no longer belong to the world of the living. I began to descend. At first, it was slow. The city and the street lights receded upwards.
I saw the ambulance arrive in the distance and the red lights turning, but they looked smaller and smaller. I heard the screams of people approaching the accident, but their voices became distant echoes. The darkness enveloped me completely. It was a darkness so thick you could touch it. It was like black ink. I was suffocating. The descent accelerated. I was falling at a dizzying speed. The wind whistling in my ears, but it wasn't wind.
It was wailing. At first, I thought it was the wind whistling, but then I strained my ears. They were voices, millions of voices, screams of terror, cries of despair, shouts of pain that never ended. The sound was coming from below, from the place I was heading towards. My mind struggled to understand why this was happening to me. I am
Chapter 7: Conscience awakens in darkness
saved. I prayed the prayer of faith. I served at church every Sunday. I reviewed my spiritual record as if I were on trial. But in that darkness, my conscience awoke with brutal clarity. The image of the black briefcase flashed into my mind. The stolen money. The lies I told my wife. The double life I led when no one was watching. The pornography on my phone. The pride in my heart. The contempt I felt for the less fortunate.
All of it shone brightly in my mind now, not as minor mistakes, but as heavy chains dragging me toward the abyss. I realized with horror that God hadn't made a mistake. There was no administrative error in heaven. I was headed for my true home. The place I had built myself with my hidden actions. The speed of the fall was unbearable. I felt my spirit disintegrating. The intense cold began to shift.
Now I was beginning to feel the heat, a suffocating dry heat. The air smelled stale. It smelled of old, rotten things. It smelled of sulfur. That smell I had so often mentioned in my sermons to frighten others was now entering my nostrils. It was real. Everything was real. Fear transformed into certainty. There was no turning back. I was going to hell. I, the treasurer, the deacon, the trusted man, was falling into hell.
I wanted to cry, but I had no tears. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare, but this was more real than anything I had ever experienced on Earth. Life on Earth seemed like a blurry dream compared to the intensity of this moment. Suddenly,
Chapter 8: Arriving in hell
the dark tunnel opened into an immense cavern. The heat hit me like a solid wall. My feet touched hard, rocky ground. It was pitch black. The air was thick with smoke and ash. I looked around, trembling. I wasn't alone. Shadows were moving in the distance, and the screams I had heard far away were now here, right beside me. I was in the place of the lost, and my eternity of horror had only just begun.
The heat was the first thing that shattered my sanity. It wasn't like being in the sun on the beach, nor like the heat of an ordinary fire. It was physical pressure. It felt like being inside an industrial oven that was slowly crushing my bones. My spiritual skin felt like it was blistering and peeling away, only to regenerate and burn again in a constant cycle of agony. Every breath I took was pure torture.
The air was thick and poisonous. It entered my lungs like boiling acid. I tried to cough, but nothing came out of my chest except a dry, scraping sound that tore at my throat. The smell was worse than the heat. It's hard to describe the smell of hell to someone who is alive and breathing fresh air. Imagine the smell of a slaughter house mixed with an overflowing sewer and pure sulfur. Imagine the smell of rotting meat left in the sun for weeks.
Now multiply that by 1,000. It was the smell of concentrated sin. It was the smell of absolute corruption. That stench permeated my being. It wasn't just outside of me. It was inside me. I felt dirty in a way no soap could ever wash away. I looked at my hands. They were
Chapter 9: Helplessness of false faith
the same hands that had counted the stolen money hours before. Now they looked withered and gray. They resembled the hands of a corpse, but I could feel everything. I felt every nerve screaming in pain. I looked down at my body. My fine suit was gone. I was covered in rags that looked like dirty burnt bandages. I felt exposed. I felt vulnerable. In my desperation, I tried to do what I always did in difficult times.
I tried to use my religious vocabulary. I tried to act like the leader I was on earth. I stood on that burning ground and tried to shout. I wanted to say, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want." I wanted to quote Psalm 91. I wanted to shout, "I rebuke you, Satan." But when I opened my mouth to say God's name, something terrified me more than the fire. I couldn't say it. It was as if my mind had gone blank.
The verses I had memorized for years had vanished. The name of Jesus, which I had used so casually in my sermons and public prayers, simply wouldn't come to my lips. I was blocked. I felt a lump in my throat that prevented me from uttering the holy name. Then I realized with horror that the time of grace was over. The name of Jesus is a key that unlocks doors while you are alive. But here I had no right to use it.
I had trampled that name with my lifestyle. Now that name had been taken from me. A laugh echoed from the shadows. It was a dry, cruel laugh. It sounded like stones
Chapter 10: Confronted by demons
scraping against stones. I turned, searching for the source of that sound. From the darkness emerged a creature. It was short and deformed. Its skin was scaly and as dark as coal. Its eyes glowed with a yellow malice. It didn't resemble the cartoonish strident devils. It was far more terrifying because it was real. It was pure hatred in physical form. Welcome, treasurer. Hissing the demon. His voice sounded like multiple voices speaking at once.
You brought the briefcase. Did you bring the money for the construction? The creature laughed again, and other shadows joined in the mockery from the darkness. They knew. They knew everything. They knew my title in the church. They knew my sin. They knew my secret. I felt such intense shame that it burned more than physical fire. In church, I could hide behind a smile and a God bless you, brother.
Here there were no masks. My soul was naked before my accusers. I am a child of God. I tried to scream, but my voice came out weak. Leave me alone. The demon approached me with supernatural speed. He placed his scarred face inches from mine. I could smell his rotten breath. You are your father's son, the devil. He screamed with a fury that knocked me to the ground. You served us well up there. You lied.
You stole. You deceived the simple. You belong to us now. Your hypocrisy was your worship of us. Those words hit me harder than any physical blow. He was right. My theology couldn't save me. My position on the church board couldn't save me. My mother's prayers couldn't save me. Now I was alone, utterly and completely alone. An
Chapter 11: Eternal thirst and irony
unquenchable thirst began to burn in my throat. The thirst of the rich man in the biblical parable, a thirst that made my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. I remembered the water dispenser in the church aisle. I remembered the half empty water bottles I left in my car. I would have given my soul again for just one drop of water, but there was no water here. Everything was dry. Everything was dead.
The demon grabbed my arm. His grip was like iron tongs heated in a forge. It burned my skin and I screamed in agony. "Walk!" he ordered. "This is not your place. Your place is deeper. We have a special section for people like you." The VIP section dragged me through that rocky landscape. As we moved forward, I saw scenes that will haunt me forever, if such a thing as forever exists. I saw people submerged in pools of boiling mud, screaming for mercy.
I saw people being tormented by memories of their past projected before them. The screams were constant. It was a chorus of eternal misery. No one was helping anyone. Everyone was focused on their own pain. There was no compassion. Compassion is a gift from God. And God was not here. As I was dragged, I thought of my wife. She was probably receiving the news of my death right now. She would be crying.
She would think I was in heaven walking down streets of gold. The church would hold a funeral service. They would say wonderful things about me. He fought the good fight. The pastor would say they would bury my body with honors. But while they sang hymns of hope, my soul was being dragged deeper into the abyss. The irony was sickening. The lie I lived on earth continued even after my death. I wanted to run back.
I wanted to tell them the truth. Don't bury me like a saint. I wanted to scream at them. I'm a thief, warned the others, but it was impossible. The bridge was broken. If this story is touching your heart, if
Chapter 12: The valley of hypocrites
something inside you is stirring, stay with me and take a moment to subscribe to the channel. This isn't just a video. It's an encounter with God. The heat increased as we descended. The terrain changed. We left the rocky caverns and entered a valley that resembled a fiery swamp. The ground was soft and sticky. It smelled of sulfur and excrement. The air was thick with a dense red fog. The demon stopped at the edge of this valley.
He released me with contempt, and I fell to my knees on the burning ground. I looked up, and what I saw paralyzed me before me stretched to an immense field filled with people, but these weren't ordinary people. Something about their appearance felt terribly familiar. I struggled to my feet and squinted to see better through the red haze. I saw robes. I saw long tunics. I saw designer suits. I saw what looked like burnt Bibles melting in some people's hands.
My heart stopped for a second. I wasn't in the section for murderers. I wasn't in the section for atheists. The demon grinned, showing his sharp teeth, and pointed toward the groaning crowd. Welcome home, he whispered maliciously in my ear. Welcome to the Valley of the Hypocrites. This is where those who know the truth but live a lie end up. I took a step back in horror. I began to recognize faces, not specific faces I knew personally, but types of people.
And then I saw something that made me grasp the true gravity of where I was. Walking toward me through the crowd, chains glowing red-hot. Came someone who seemed to have
Chapter 13: Torment of a false preacher
authority in this place of torment. His gaze was empty. Yet he looked directly at me as if he had been expecting me. My feet sank into a disgusting mixture of hot mud and ash as I walked deeper into the valley. Every step was a struggle. It was like walking through a swamp of boiling tar that tried to swallow me whole. But the physical pain, though unbearable, pald in comparison to the visual horror unfolding before my eyes.
I was at the center of a religious nightmare. The Valley of the Hypocrites was not an ordinary prison with iron bars. It was a grotesque, distorted open air church beneath a clotted, blood red sky. There were no demons torturing these people with whips. At this moment, it was unnecessary. Their own punishment emanated from themselves and the objects they carried. I looked to the right and saw a man dressed in what remained of an immaculate black suit.
He had a white clerical collar, the kind worn by priests or important pastors, but the plastic of the collar was slowly melting onto his throat. Burning his skin like acid, the man held an open Bible in his hands. I ran toward him, driven by a naive instinct. Brothers, I shouted, "Help me! Read me something. Tell me one of God's promises." The man looked up. His eyes were empty sockets from which smoke billowed.
When he opened his mouth to speak, no words of comfort came out. Black toads and fire erupted from his throat. He tried to close the Bible, but he couldn't. The sacred book wasn't made of paper. It was a block of incandescent red hot metal fused to the palms of his hands. He screamed, trying to release the word he had used in life to manipulate and enrich himself. But the word now burned him eternally.
I understood then that the very Bible,
Chapter 14: Eternal torment of worship
which is a source of life for the sincere believer, becomes a consuming fire for the one who uses it deceitfully. I continued onward, stumbling over bodies writhing on the ground. I saw a woman I recognized by the type of clothing she wore. She was a worship leader. She wore a robe that had once been bright and beautiful, but now it was made of worms that moved over her body, eating and regenerating her flesh without paws.
Her mouth was open in a position of eternal song. From her mouth came a high-pitched sound, a discordant and constant screech that pierced the ears. She was not worshiping God. She was screaming out her torment. in life. She sang to receive applause, to be seen, to feel the excitement, but her heart was far from God. Now her gift was his torture. The demon guiding me laughed as we watched these scenes.
He walked beside me like a tour guide in a museum of horrors. Do you recognize them, treasurer? He asked sarcastically. They were all like you. Great leaders, renowned people, people who filled stadiums and temples. They loved the applause. They loved the front seats. And look, they have the front seats here, too. Hell has special places for those who knew the way and chose to sell it. His words were knives in my
Chapter 15: Levels of punishment
conscience. The truth fell on me like a lead weight. Hell is not the same for everyone. There are levels of punishment, and the most severe punishment, the hottest fire, is not for the murderer who never knew God, nor for the thief who grew up on the streets without hearing the gospel. The worst punishment is for us. For those of us who are inside the church. For those of us who read the Bible. For those of us who participated in holy communion with unclean hands.
For those of us who like ashes stole God's money while saying, "Amen." I stopped in front of a group of people sitting in a circle on rocks that looked like burning coals. They were counting things. I approached and saw that they had coins in their hands, but they weren't ordinary coins. They were discs of liquid fire. They counted them frantically over and over again as if possessed by greed. Every time they touched a coin, their skin sizzled and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
But they couldn't stop. They were condemned to repeat their sin for eternity. 1 2 3. It's mine. It's mine. One of them shouted, hugging the fire coins against his burning chest. I saw myself reflected in him. I saw my black briefcase. I saw the bills I had stolen from the building offering. I felt a weight in my own hands, even though they were empty. I felt my hands burning with the fire of the stolen money.
I belonged to this circle. This was my club. This was my new congregation. I fell to my knees, overwhelmed by a guilt that was more painful than the flames. Forgive me. I cried into the void. I'll return the money. I'll return everything. Just let me out for a minute to return it. But the void answered me with silence. There were no banks here to make deposits. There was no time to make restitution.
The time for settling accounts had ended the moment my car hit the pole. The irreversibility of my situation hit me so hard that I felt like vomiting, but I couldn't. The devil kicked me in the ribs to pull me up. "Stop crying," he growled. "You haven't seen our honored guest yet. You haven't seen the father of you all. He forced me
Chapter 16: Meeting Judas Iscariot
to keep walking. The valley grew narrower and darker. The crowd of hypocrites began to roll to the sides, leaving a clear path down the middle, as if afraid to get too close to what lay beyond. Ahead there was a terrifying respect in the air. The heat grew more intense, more suffocating, with a metallic smell of old blood and betrayal. I felt a tightness in my chest, a deep ancient sadness that hung in the air.
It wasn't just pain. It was pure remorse. It was the distilled essence of having committed a fatal mistake that has no remedy. In the distance, isolated from the others, I saw a kind of throne. Or perhaps it was a torture chair made of rough black stone. It was engulfed in flames that weren't red, but a dark blue, cold, and terrifying. There was a figure sitting there. It was alone. No one approached it.
Even the demons seemed to keep a safe distance. As we drew closer, my heart began to beat with uncontrollable force, as if it wanted to leap from my chest and flee. I knew, without anyone telling me that I was about to see something few eyes have seen, a living warning. The figure was hunched over, its head in its hands, in a posture of eternal despair. The sound coming from that direction wasn't high-pitched screams, but a deep, constant groan, a lament that made the ground tremble beneath my feet.
The demon stopped and pushed me forward, forcing me to look. Look well, treasurer, the creature whispered. And for the first time, its voice held no mockery, but something akin to reverent fear before absolute evil. Look at the patron of those who love money more than their master. Look at the one who walked with the light and chose darkness. My eyes stuck on the solitary figure. The man slowly raised his head.
His face was disfigured by centuries of torment. But there was something in his eyes, an intelligence, an infinite sadness that chilled me to the bone. I didn't need to be told his name. My spirit recognized him instantly. I was standing before the original traitor. I stood before the man who betrayed the savior of the world.
Chapter 17: The curse of silver
though he was he wasn't a horned monster or a giant beast. He was a man, a man who looked Jewish, small, wasted, and broken. What struck me most was his ordinariness. If I had seen him on the street in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, he wouldn't have caught my attention. But here, in the center of this valley of fire, his figure radiated such profound loneliness that it made the rest of hell seem like a party.
He was chained to a black rock shaped like a table. He couldn't stand. He couldn't move. His only freedom lay in his hands, and in his hands he held what appeared to be both his treasure and his curse. 30 pieces of silver, but in this place, silver wasn't a cold, shiny metal. Silver was alive. The coins shone with a blinding white heat like tiny miniature sons. I saw Judas desperately trying to get rid of them.
He screamed and thrashed his hands violently, trying to throw the coins to the ground. But the metal was magnetized to his flesh. Each time he managed to release one, it flew back into his palm with a dry metallic click, burning his skin again, melting into his nerves. The smell of burning flesh emanating from him was unbearable. The demon beside me chuckled softly. "Try returning them," he said. He's been trying to return the money for 2,000 years.
Try going to the temple and throwing them away. But there is no temple here. There are no priests here who will accept the return. The deal is sealed forever. I [clears throat] moved
Chapter 18: The kiss of eternal fire
a little closer, trembling from head to toe. I could see his neck. There was a deep purple mark around his throat. The eternal scar of the rope with which he hanged himself. His tongue was swollen and his eyes were bloodshot, bulging from their sockets, reliving the moment of his suicide over and over. Each of his breaths was an agonizing gurgle. The sound of a man suffocating yet never dying. But the worst part wasn't the physical pain.
The worst part was what he was muttering. I strained my ear to listen through the cries of the valley. Judas wasn't cursing God. He wasn't insulting the Romans. He was repeating a single phrase over and over. His voice broken with sobs. I was his friend. I ate from his plate. I was his friend. That phrase struck me like a hammer blow to the chest. Judas wasn't a stranger to Jesus. Judas wasn't an atheist.
Judas was an apostle. He had seen the blind sea. He had seen Lazarus rise from the tomb. He had walked on water. Or at least he had seen Peter do it. He had cast out demons in the name of Jesus when they were sent out two by two. He had power. He had anointing. He had position. And despite all that, I was here. The fear I felt at that moment was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. It wasn't fear of fire.
It was fear of God's justice. If a man who physically walked with Jesus, who slept under the same stars as the son of God, could end up here for the love of money, what hope did I have? I, who was just a treasurer in a small 21st century church, suddenly saw the scene change before my eyes. A dark shadow formed in front of Judas. It had the shape of a man, but no face. Judas looked up, and his body tensed in a spasm of pure horror.
He knew what was coming. It was his psychological torture. The endless cycle. I saw Judas lean toward the shadow. He didn't want to. He fought against it, but an invisible force compelled him. He approached what would be the figure's cheek, and then he did it. He kissed it. The moment his lips touched the shadow, an explosion of fire erupted from his mouth. Judas screamed with a shriek that shook the valley rocks.
His lips blazed like torches. It was the kiss of betrayal burning him eternally. The
Chapter 19: The reflection of betrayal
price of his hypocrisy. He had used a sign of love, a kiss, to deliver the author of life to death. Now love was fire for him. The demon grabbed me by the collar of my rags and forced me to look look closely. He shouted, "Does this seem unfair to you? He sold the master for 30 pieces of silver. You sold him for much less. You sold him for a few bills from the offering. You sold him for a moment of pleasure.
You sold him for pride. The currency changes, treasurer, but the betrayal remains the same." My knees buckled and I fell to the ground. The truth was crushing. I was Judas in my church. I was the one who carried the money bag. Just like him. I was the one who criticized how the money was spent. Just like him. When he criticized the woman who spilled the perfume, I stole what was meant for the poor and for charity.
Just like him. The only difference between Judas and me was time and history. But the spirit was the same. I felt a weight in my hands. I looked down terrified for a second in a spiritual vision. I didn't see my hands empty. I saw silver coins. I saw bills stained with blood. I felt the heat of the stolen money burning my palms just as it had his. No. I cried, rubbing my hands against the ashen floor to get rid of the sensation.
I don't want to be like him. I repent, Lord, forgive me. But my words bounced off the smoke filled ceiling. Judas looked up at me.
Chapter 20: Modern disciples of Judas
our eyes met. I will never forget that look. There was no hatred in his eyes toward me. There was a desperate warning. It was the look of someone who knows it's too late for him, but who wishes he could scream at the whole world to stop. In his eyes, I read a silent message. None of this was worth it. It was worth it. The demon roughly pulled me up again. You've already seen the master of traitors.
He said harshly. Now it's time for you to see his modern disciples. You thought Judas was alone in his special punishment. You thought he was a unique case in history. How naive you are. He turned me to the left toward an area of the valley shrouded in even denser gloom. I could make out silhouettes, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. They were arranged in rows like a defeated army or a macabra congregation.
Judas led the way. The demon continued pushing me toward that crowd. But many, many of you have enthusiastically followed in his footsteps. Look at your brothers, treasurer. Look at your colleagues. As we drew closer, the heat became different. It wasn't just fire. It was a pressure of mental anguish. I began to see the faces of the people in that crowd, and the terror I felt upon seeing Judas multiplied a thousandfold.
Because I only knew Judas from the Bible. But these people, some of these people I knew from television, I knew from the news, I knew from Christian magazines. And I wasn't alone. I whispered to myself, feeling my mind about to shatter. Judas was no exception. Judas was the first in a long and terrible line. And I was about to take my place in the formation. We walked toward that shadowy crowd, and the heat became different.
It was no longer just the physical heat of fire. It was a human heat, the heat of thousands of bodies pressed together in a space of shared but lonely suffering. The noise was deafening, like entering a stadium packed with people. But instead of shouts of jubilation or chance of victory, what assaulted my ears was a collective lament of belated regret. It was the sound of thousands of throats
Chapter 21: The price of prosperity
crying, "Woe is me." At the same time, as as my eyes suggested to the reddish gloom of the place, horror overwhelmed me with a new force. What the demon had told me was true. Judas was not alone. Judas had an immense spiritual lineage. Before me stretched a sea of faces that had once been respected on earth, I saw men in remnants of expensive suits. The fabric of their jackets and trousers was burned and stuck to their skin, but the quality of the clothing was still discernable.
They were designer suits. They were the garments of those who prospered at the expense of the gospel. I saw one of them near me on earth. He must have been an imposing man, a preacher of multitudes. He still held a microphone in his hand, but the microphone had transformed into a serpent of incandescent metal that bit his hand again and again. He wouldn't let go of it. He held it to his mouth as if he were about to preach, but instead of words of faith, worms and fire poured from his mouth, he shouted distorted Bible verses, "Give and it will be given to you."
He howled hoarsely as fiery coins rained down on his head, burning his scalp to the bone. It was the offering he had so desperately demanded. Now his eternal judgment, the demon pointed at me with his filthy claw. "Look at him," he said contemptuously. That man promised healing to everyone if they gave him $1,000. He bought three private planes with the money of widows and pensioners. He said I didn't exist.
He preached that hell was a myth to scare people. Now he's my neighbor. Now he knows I'm very real. I kept walking, stumbling over people crawling at my feet. I saw women I recognized as leaders in large ministries. On earth they dressed in white and feigned impeccable holiness. here. Their tongues were long and black, trailing along the ground like whips. They were the tongues they used for gossip, for criticism, for destroying the reputations of other brothers while pretending to be praying.
They destroyed entire churches with their poisonous words disguised as piety. Now, every word they tried to say caused them sharp pain, as if they had razor blades at their throats. The most terrifying thing wasn't seeing the strangers. The most terrifying thing was when I began to see faces that were familiar from my own life. I saw the deacon from a neighboring church who had died two years earlier of a heart attack.
We all went to his funeral. We all said he was a righteous man, but there he was, naked and ashamed, trying to hide behind a burning rock. When he saw me, his eyes widened in terror. He didn't want me to see him. His secret sin, whatever it was, had brought him here. Maybe adultery, maybe theft, maybe an unforgiveness he took to the grave. I don't know. But seeing him the destroyed, what little hope I had left.
If he, who seemed so holy, couldn't make it. What chance did I have? Hell is full of surprises, isn't it, treasurer? The demon mocked in my ear. You humans have such a limited vision. You think that because someone cries at the altar or speaks in tongues, they've already earned their place in heaven. You think charisma equals character, but down here we don't care about your gifts. Down here, we only care about the truth of your dark hearts.
And there are many, many of you here, pastors, evangelists, treasurers, singers. The Valley of the Hypocrites is the most populated neighborhood in hell. The crowd parted a little, and I saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks. It was a row of tables. They looked like office desks, but they were made of hot volcanic rock. Behind each desk was a chair full of red hot nails. And in those chairs sat men and women counting money, checking ledgers, signing checks that burned instantly.
They were the administrators. They Wow.
Chapter 22: Administrative damnation
