Hell and Beyond

By Michael Phillips and William Paul Young

“Michael Phillips has done the impossible—written a thriller on hell:” The final book in the spiritual fantasy trilogy, following Heaven and Beyond (C. Baxter Kruger, author of The Shack Revisited).
 
A prominent atheist dies unexpectedly and goes to hell. Or so it appears, but nothing is what it seems in this engrossing allegorical novel about the afterlife. In the tradition of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Michael Phillips has produced a riveting tale of eternity. Hell and Beyond is a lively and fascinating trip through the afterlife—one that will inspire you to rediscover the significance of your life here and now.
 
“Phillips has offered a breathtaking and important addition to the world of traditional theological allegory, joining Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and C.S. Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress . . . It is beautiful beyond describing and stunning in its impact.” —William Paul Young, author of The Shack, from the foreword

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781625391759

Michael Phillips

Professor Mike Phillips has a BSc in Civil Engineering, an MSc in Environmental Management and a PhD in Coastal Processes and Geomorphology, which he has used in an interdisciplinary way to assess current challenges of living and working on the coast. He is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research, Innovation, Enterprise and Commercialisation) at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and also leads their Coastal and Marine Research Group. Professor Phillips' research expertise includes coastal processes, morphological change and adaptation to climate change and sea level rise, and this has informed his engagement in the policy arena. He has given many key note speeches, presented at many major international conferences and evaluated various international and national coastal research projects. Consultancy contracts include beach monitoring for the development of the Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay, assessing beach processes and evolution at Fairbourne (one of the case studies in this book), beach replenishment issues, and techniques to monitor underwater sediment movement to inform beach management. Funded interdisciplinary research projects have included adaptation strategies in response to climate change and underwater sensor networks. He has published >100 academic articles and in 2010 organised a session on Coastal Tourism and Climate Change at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in his role as a member of the Climate, Oceans and Security Working Group of the UNEP Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands. He has successfully supervised many PhD students, and as well as research students in his own University, advises PhD students for overseas universities. These currently include the University of KwaZuluNatal, Durban, University of Technology, Mauritius and University of Aveiro, Portugal. Professor Phillips has been a Trustee/Director of the US Coastal Education and Research Foundation (CERF) since 2011 and he is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Coastal Research. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Victoria, British Columbia and Visiting Professor at the University Centre of the Westfjords. He was an expert advisor for the Portuguese FCT Adaptaria (coastal adaptation to climate change) and Smartparks (planning marine conservation areas) projects and his contributions to coastal and ocean policies included: the Rio +20 World Summit, Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands; UNESCO; EU Maritime Spatial Planning; and Welsh Government Policy on Marine Aggregate Dredging. Past contributions to research agendas include the German Cluster of Excellence in Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) and the Portuguese Department of Science and Technology.

Book preview

Hell and Beyond

A Novel

Michael Phillips

Copyright

Hell and Beyond: A Novel

Copyright © 2012 by Michael Phillips

Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2012 by Bondfire Books LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

See full line of eBook originals at www.bondfirebooks.com.

Author is represented by Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard St., Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

Electronic edition published 2012 by Bondfire Books LLC, Colorado.

Cover jacket design by Alexia Garaventa.

ISBN ePub edition: 9780795333255

And again…

To

George MacDonald

and

C.S. Lewis…

worthy mentors with broad shoulders

who paved the way.

Praise for Hell and Beyond

"Michael Phillips skillfully immerses our imaginations in a detailed participation in what may be involved in ‘life after death.’ He neither defines nor explains. Instead, using fantasy as his genre, he takes us on an end run around the usual polarizing clichés regarding heaven and hell and enlists us in honest, prayerful biblical meditation. I highly recommend Hell and Beyond to anyone expecting to die, whether sooner or later."

—Eugene Peterson

Professor of Spiritual Theology

Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.

"Michael Phillips has done the impossible—written a thriller on hell. Hell and Beyond breathes the rarified air of George MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons and Lilith, C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces and The Great Divorce, and Paul Young’s The Shack and Cross Roads. If you are ready, this book can bring hope to places long buried in your tears. It is brilliant and scary, fantastic and unnerving, evangelistic and terrifying—every word drenched in undiluted love. You will find yourself longing to be healed to the roots of your soul by Jesus’ Father."

—C. Baxter Kruger, Ph.D.

Author of Across All Worlds and The Shack Revisited

"Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one…

and I have the keys to Death and Hades. Now write what you see,

what is and what is to take place hereafter….

"To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna,

and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone

which no one knows except him who receives it.

"Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire,

that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you…."

Revelation 1:17-19; 2:17; 3:18, RSV

Contents

Foreword

Preface

One: Reflections

Two: A Waking

Three: A Question and a Choice

Four: The Naturalist

Five: Unsettling Vistas Beyond

Six: The Brilliant Young Man and the Courageous Boy

Seven: Purpose of the Fire

Eight: The Town of Isolation

Nine: A New Guide Explains

Ten: The Importance of Choice

Eleven: The Desert of Introspection

Twelve: The Garden of Moments

Thirteen: The Consuming Fire that Did Not Consume

Fourteen: The Hill of Betrayal

Fifteen: The Sea of Burnished Souls

Sixteen: The City of Debt

Seventeen: Healing the Past

Eighteen: The Waters of Forgiveness

Nineteen: To the Edge of the Fire

Twenty: The Essential School of Childness

Twenty-One: The Crowd at the Precipice

Twenty-Two: The Outer Darkness

Twenty-Three: The Consuming Fire

Twenty-Four: The Alabaster Heart

Twenty-Five: The White Stone

A Final Word from Michael Phillips

Michael Phillips Titles Available at Bondfire Books

The Works of Michael Phillips

About the Author

Foreword

By William Paul Young, author of The Shack and Cross Roads

Who would dare wander into the far country and write of the spaces and times of judgment, the aions that are alluded to in the Scriptures, subsequent to death and which include the fires that all must pass through? Who would be so audacious as to invite others into such spiritual imagination?

A well-known writer and theologian recently penned the following:

Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Jesus Christ himself, the Judge and Savior. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. … It is clear that we cannot calculate the duration of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming moment of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of passage to communion with God in the Body of Christ.

In his Final Word at the end of Hell and Beyond, Michael Phillips quotes C.S. Lewis’s caution from his preface to The Great Divorce:

I beg my readers to remember that this is a fantasy… the transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.

This is an appropriate warning—we struggle between enjoying the space-creating capacity of fiction and requiring it meet our demand for doctrinal certitude and perspicuity. It is precisely because of this potent ability to increase space for thoughts and ideas that we consider such writing suspect; it has the inherent power to do violence to the assumed assurance of our self-embraced, self-centered and self-serving paradigms.

Phillips has offered a breathtaking and important addition to the world of traditional theological allegory, joining Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and C.S. Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress. Personally, I wish I had written this book, but that would have been highly unlikely. I am only 57 years old, and unlike Michael Phillips, I have not had adequate time to steep in the herbs and spices of the Scotsman (George MacDonald) and the Don (C.S. Lewis). Phillips has made the study of these men part of his life’s work. In this novel, he conveys this lifelong quest to us, delivering a fulfilling tea worthy of these two heroes of literature and faith. It is beautiful beyond describing and stunning in its impact.

Of course, the tradition of imagining the afterworld has ancient roots, from the Psalmist to Dante and more besides. And as Frederick Buechner reminds us in Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, each work of imagination is an invitation to reflect and respond, agree and disagree, and build up our shared imagination about things to come:

Dante saw written over the gates of Hell the words Abandon all hope ye who enter here, but he must have seen wrong. If there is suffering life in Hell, there must also be hope in Hell, because where there is life there is the Lord and giver of life, and where there is suffering he is there too because the suffering of the ones he loves is also his suffering. He descended into Hell, the Creed says, and If I make my bed in Sheol, thou are there, the Psalmist (139:8). It seems there is no depth to which he will not sink. Maybe not even Old Scratch will be able to hop out against him forever.

This fantasy novel will be deeply challenging to many. Some will immediately recognize an invitation into a river rarely traversed where even the raft itself may be redefined in the course of the adventure. Others will not be ready to step off the precipice and take the risk that flight is possible, let alone desired. For many of us, this conversation is a matter of timing, and while that timing is not ours, we certainly are sensing its approach. But I doubt that any who venture within these words will emerge unscathed with soul and conscience intact. Herein is a depth of imagery that is beyond usual and uniquely perplexing and inspiring.

When I read Lewis and MacDonald, and now Phillips, I walk away wanting to be more than I already am, more consistent and true, more authentic a human being, more the child who is still naïve and ignorant of sin and does not have memory banks which include images of stupidity and prejudice and regret. I want to be kinder and more gracious and a better expresser of the longing, hope and love that arises insistently within me.

The well-known author whom I quoted above is Pope Benedict. The passage comes from his Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope), section 47. What Benedict has dared to do in non-fiction theological language, Phillips has dared to do by drawing on fiction and allegory. What connects the two is not speculation, but the certain revelation of the character of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the constant that gives foundation and credence to faith and creativity.

Preface

Readers of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald, as well as my own The Garden at the Edge of Beyond, will discover in what follows a few similarities with certain of the works of my two literary friends, as well as with my own.

I have intentionally borrowed these images in order to convey an important truth: as Lewis says in the preface to his classic The Great Divorce, we do not and cannot know what the afterlife holds.

This being so, it has seemed to me that drawing upon a wide range of what Lewis calls imaginative supposals will guard against over-emphasis on any one theme, or imbalance toward error in some other direction. I have thus called upon my two mentors in the Spirit to broaden the base of my own imaginative supposals, as well as add a degree of interest and fun to the attempt.

As I am certain George MacDonald was delighted to play a pivotal role in Lewis’s imaginative work, I hope they will not mind being pressed into service a second time in mine, as they were in The Garden at the Edge of Beyond. My desire has been neither to copy nor imitate them, but rather in this way to honor their contributions to the important ongoing discussion about what are God’s eternal purposes for his creation.

Michael Phillips

One

Reflections

I had been planning a writing getaway for several months.

My schedule had been impossible for two or three years, ever since my book The Christ Myth had topped The New York Times bestseller list. What with relentless travel, speaking engagements, television appearances, autograph sessions, radio interviews, even invitations to the White House and Ten Downing Street, I had scarcely had a moment to myself.

I was an outspoken atheist long before the book appeared. Yet even I was unprepared for the explosive response to its message. Every author, of course, hopes that he will strike a chord in the public mind. But in all honesty, I miscalculated to what an extent thinking men and women in the western world were ready once and for all to recognize the damaging influences of religion in general, and Judaism and Christianity in particular. I was delighted, of course. Yet that so many millions enthusiastically embraced my challenge to discard the ancient voodoo of the former and bigoted beliefs of the latter came as a surprise both to my publisher and myself. The tawdry edifices of the two belief systems were breaking apart amid the scrutiny of modernity, and I was happy to play a role in their collapse.

The years since, however, though exhilarating, had been hectic and exhausting. All along I had envisioned a second book to follow the first, a historical chronicle of the excesses, cruelties, and evils of both Judaism and Christianity from their inceptions to the present. I also had in my mind a third volume that would gather together all the philosophical arguments and proofs against the existence of God, from the ancient Greeks all the way down to the enlightened scientific rationalism of the present day. It had been my experience through the years that deep down, deathbed conversions notwithstanding, most people possessed the common sense to recognize the obvious—that no such being as God could possibly exist. At the same time, they were so bound by the superstitions of tradition that they were afraid to admit it. I hoped to provide the factual, historical, and philosophical evidences that would enable them to leave those superstitions behind and step into the freedom of modern progressive thought. But my schedule had prevented making headway on either of the two follow-up volumes.

Finally, I carved out a two-week slice of time. I blocked the days off on my calendar and allowed nothing to intrude. Then I made plans to seclude myself at a friend’s lodge in the Colorado Rockies. During that time, I hoped to get both books generally outlined and two or three chapters roughed out on each.

I also wanted to reestablish some of the health routines that had suffered since publication of my book. I had long been a regular jogger. Travel, jet lag, hotels, and unfamiliar cities, however, are not conducive to running, and I hated exercise machines. Nor was extensive travel conducive to a wise diet. Restaurant meals are death to the waistline. The result was that I had put on twenty pounds and found myself puffing more than I liked when climbing stairs. I had always fought a bit of a cholesterol problem, but daily running kept it in check. Along with the twenty pounds had come a thirty-point increase in my combined numbers. My doctor suggested meds, but I declined. I’d be on my running regimen again soon, I assured him. The weight and cholesterol would drop back down.

That was another priority of my two-week retreat. Hiking and jogging trails abounded around the lodge. I would run every day. I would eat well. The nearest restaurant was five miles away. My wife packed up two weeks of prepared and frozen meals and everything I would need—oatmeal, salads, plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, juices, healthy snacks, cheese, nuts, wholegrain breads, yogurt, several roasted chickens… a veritable smorgasbord of health. There wouldn’t be a Coke or Big Mac for miles!

Thus it was, in the third week of June, that I drove into the mountains, my car loaded with