As we advanced, the big iron gate before us opened on its own accord and we passed. We entered this large space where the Hell is. Hell fire is vast and restless. As it emits heat beyond measures, so its victims roll up and down, gnashing their teeth in the brutal flame. To see the other end of hell from the entrance gate is impossible. The noise of horror and the scream of pain from the people who are more than the world population is continual. For in no earthly empire was so large a population subject to a single emperor and a body of law as the people in hell are subject to the flame of fire and the dos and don”ts of the fallen angels inside it. “So hell is as terrible as this? Who can tell?” I exclaimed with trembling. ” That’s why you must go back and tell everybody to repent and avoid, ” replied the angel. ” Whatever is revealed to you here, take it, go back to the world and tell it, ” he emphasised. After
this statement, the angel disappeared and I became stationary in that point. Friends, the human limitation will, in no doubt, hinder me from being able to describe hell as vividly as I saw it, no matter how I try. The fire of hell was as thick as a heavy cloud and rolled on its crest like a raging sea from its unknown depth to its immeasurable
height. Hidden away in its flame were people of different races and languages, whose sins escaped discovery in the world but became open scandals in the record above. There was neither class distinction nor racial prejudice in hell, because, teenagers, young
people and the aged were packed together inside it. The terror of the furnace was against them for anger. As the fire kept rolling from its far depth, their cry of sorrow and call for help reached crescendo. As they came up in its troublous tide, so they sank down thousand feet deep again, that for the next thirty or forty minutes they were buried under this heavy flame. Darkness, instead of ray of hope, hung on their brows. They gnashed their teeth in absolute extremities.
Friends, no mortal man can explain the horror of eternal burning and the hopeless state of the lost. Not even in a token, but rather in large extent, is the theme of struggle prominent in hell. This is unlike the struggle for freedom an apprentice daily dreams of, nor the other a democrat counts as being the best for humanity. It it the struggle for escape. This is what I mean. In one of the scenes I witnessed, I saw one of the fallen angels some metres away, who presumably appeared to have been assigned the most callous and cruel duty. His visage was of angry look. His voice was husky. His command was masterful. His fury was ignited whenever the abyss happened to quake such that veinous network of his forehead did budge out and his countenance wore mercilessness and vengeance. The
index of his many years of heartless service in that region of hell was reflective not only in his skin but in the whole of his teeth that had turned black completely.
Besides, his two feet up to somewhere above his ankles were buried away in the heap of sooth that had gradually fallen off his skin and wings over the years, like when a tree sheds off her leaves in autumn. I couldn’t view him beyond his knees, neither know the number of his toes. But in one of the glances I cast on his upper region, I discovered that there were more than five fingers in each of his hands. One finger was like a chewing stick in length and as thick as a graduation scroll while each of his arms was weaved around by a bundle of muscles, such as is never in possession by any world heavy weight lifter in histiry. He stood rigidly in a point and was duty- bound to pierce the new comers with a sharp and hot iron dagger in his immortal mark of welcome into the lasting sorrow on every new person just arriving. From this sight, the victims strove and struggled violently to escape, panting and shivering before the pointed edge that sank deeply into the realm of veins and inflicted
unspeakable pain that lasted for months. I started when I saw the back of some of these victims. While some were carrying unhealed peppering sores that oozed blood right inside the fire, hissing like pine trees in agony. But with sweating unreserved in his duty, not lending a sympathetic ear to these precious but lost souls. In one of his mocking utterances, the
angel addressed a lady in utter despair, who was learned to have died as a petrol station attendant. ” If in life you spurned ‘ strive to enter at the strait gate….’, should you here again say no to the command of the master whose part you followed in life; whose interest you shared until death?” After that statement, in rage he gripped his dagger and with thick biceps thrust clean the pointed edge into the ribs of the lady. Just as the iron was withdrawn as if it were a plug, her blood gushed out. Being in the state of coma, her screaming began to die away gradually as she helplessly sank into the flame. Among several other things I heard the angel said was ” Two possibilities exist in life. There abide good and bad; truth and error; past and present; life and
death; reward and punishment. Two
men strive to win a man, to rule a man: the son of the Most High and our master. Two lifestyles are possible for embracing by man: living for the Holy one or living in opposite direction of the light. Be that as it may, no man is free, no son of man is without a ruling power: either the dark one or the immaculate. But
with us is the majority. To man the truth is bitter and the narrow road is rugged. Men tend to seek for ease, many can’t endure. Such are those who bath my feet with tears. Though they plead, they only plead with the colony that can’t be forgiven and neither forgives any. Once here is forever here. Once in celestial city is forever there, but only few have the courage it takes to go there and the whiteness of heart the city demands.” Since the departure of the angel that brought me, thousands of people had entered throughout the same and trotted down into hell, but the place remained as spacious as ever. While I was yet trapped down by this awful scene, I discovered that one of the hell inmates was drawing a lit bit closer to the bank. She crawled like a fly near the bound set between hell bank and the land. ” A- ll- en, A-ll-en, ” shouted the lady. I was shocked to the root to hear my name in hell. I didn’t recognise on the time who the person was, because the face was marred and disfigured by the fire; the skin was blackened by the flame and littered by sores. “Who? Who? Who are you?” I asked with great
inquisitiveness ?” She shouted again: “A-ll- en Bamgbose, I am Rita; your hostel mate in the Grammar school. O-o-oh I’m hungry, p-l-e-a-s-e help m- e-e… ” I was flabbergasted at seeing Rita in hell. Rita in hell? No! It must be a dream. But Rita died a good Christian! I soliloquised all these questions right on the same spot. To cut a long story short, human feelings gripped me and I thought I could help her out of that predicament. Thus, I took a step to move to her, but my legs were too heavy for me to lift. I looked around for my friendly angel again, he was nowhere to be found. “Rita, why are you here? You are a child of God, why did you miss heaven? We organised concerts, carol and quiz competitions in our school fellowship and you didn’t disappoint God. You were very good at sword drill and impromptu speech. “Why?” “How? ” I sobbed out these statements. “Yes, I
did all that in the Grammar school, Allen,” she replied “but later in life and two months to my graduation in the university, I yielded to a sinful affair with a boy at home during a short break. I thought of repenting in the campus chapel when the school resumed. But on
returning from home, I had a motor accident. The next thing I discovered was that I found myself in the gate over there and an angel asked me to go to the left road which ends in this place,” she revealed. ” O- o-oh Rita, why did you allow this, after all the evangelism in the boarding house, choruses and prayer meetings? What were you doing till your flesh inflicted this temptation on you and conquered?” I asked with lament. While I was lamenting over this tragic scene, the fire as red as it were erupted like a volcano around the place she was, immediately, she sank. I was afraid of God right there. I didn’t see Rita again throughout my vision. For over thirty minutes, I was recapitulating the exploit we did in our secondary school days. I considered the heroic effort of Rita Udoh in the school christian
programmes. This
was an exceptionally
talented sister in song and extraordinary gifted lady in leadership and organisation. The concert-goers of those days used to comment that Rita’s voice made our concerts rent in accelerando and rallentando like cherub- choir’s in Heaven. She could motivate a lot. I reflected on her exercised influence both to soften the hearts of the hardened students and polish the character of the immature ones. When I considered the incalculable mass of suffering from her parents and persecution from out teachers she independently went through, I cried. It loomed large on me, that the race is not to the swift