| An Example of a Fundamentalist Preacher's Death Experience |
Let's take the case of a man of the cloth, a Billy Sunday-type who preaches hellfire and brimstone and believes every bit of the Good Book literally. He dies, and after the first shock of discovering that God is not sitting on a throne surrounded by angels, he begins exhorting people here to repent before it is too late. He thinks that this is a very brief interlude until he adjusts, and that the rest of us are probably lost souls who lack the righteousness to advance into God's waiting arms. His sermons here actually do draw souls who hunger for the kind of heaven that their finite minds had conceived, and they think that this Billy Sunday-type will lead them rapidly to the promised land. They throng to his sermons and shout "Amen," while he tells them that within a very short time they will all advance into heaven with a retinue of angels playing harps. 'Amen', they shout again, and are grateful that one of their own, at last, has arrived to open the gates of the temple. This preacher, who we'll call Billy, at first rants and exhorts, demanding to know of the older souls around here how he can find the way to the throne of God, because he honestly believes that it is being concealed from him in some mysterious way. At last the old souls gather around and explain to Billy that he is preaching a false doctrine; that heaven is within each man, and so is his private hell; that he has arrived, and nothing is being hidden from him. It is up to him to begin work on his own spiritual advancement, and he is retarding the progress of others by misleading them with false hopes of a promised land. For this is the promised land, and we make of it what we will through our own endeavors. |
