The Bad Fire

Jeff Fallow

“Do you want to go to the Bad Fire?”

I sat freezing and soaking, listening to the gaunt speaker at the lectern under the feeble bulb.

“Is it to be the place of everlasting torment, the Lake of Fire, the land of eternal pain and despair?”

I shivered in the tiny drafty hall, the only heating the huddled bodies around me, smelling of damp, dripping on hard wooden benches.

“Or is it to be eternal peace, joy, and bliss in the Hereafter? Will your name be called up yonder in the sweet By and By when your hour comes?”

The rain in my hair trickled through my tears of misery, my rain-sodden clothes stuck to me, a thin steam emanating from them as what seemed left of my body heat escaped through.

“Be sure that the Pit of Hell is waiting for you. You are held over it much as some loathsome insect might be held over a hearth fire, ready to be dropped into the flames, and the fire of the Burning Pit is like no fire on Earth. It does not bring warmth or comfort from the cold and the rain. It delivers only torment and pain.”

Outside, the incessant rain drummed down on the roof tiles, bouncing off violently, like porcupine quills in the dim light. My fellow sufferers coughed and chattered their teeth. How long had I been here? I was exhausted and could not measure. Hours, certainly.

“You deserve only eternal misery and, what is more, you know you deserve it. Why? Because you are a sinner, that’s why!”

But then, at least it was shelter if nothing else. Anything but that rain. And I had nowhere else to go. The speaker paused now, and took a drink of water to cool his tongue.

“How do I know? I know because I’m a sinner myself. My feet are as toad’s feet, for I have wallowed in sin. I have spent a life in debauchery and idleness, in drink and drugs, in violence and crime, in sexual wickedness and lust . . .”

I had been here hours, but it was better than wandering in the freezing rain. Anything but the rain and sleet outside.

“But I am not going to Hell! No sir, not me! Because I saw the light! I am saved. You can be saved too! Only turn away from sin, away from wickedness and embrace the light of Truth. Then when you pass away from your mortal body you can look forward to everlasting peace, warmth, comfort, bliss, joy.”

I had been wandering, wandering, wandering, through the freezing sleet and the darkness of the streets until I found this place. I had tried other places. . . .

“Let us remember the words of Dives in the Fiery Pit. . . .”

There were many, many places. . . .

“ ‘Give me water that I may cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame’. . . .”

It was, after all, a big city. . . .

“But Abraham replied that between Heaven and Hell there is a great gulf. . . .”

I listened wearily to the gaunt speaker who tightened his already tight tie even tighter.

“Yet you can be saved from such a fate! You see, there is hope. You can reform and repent and— who knows?— you may be saved from everlasting torment.”

And the revelation struck me. Of course I could not leave this city of drafty, leaky-roofed little halls stretching into the darkness, all with feeble yellowing bulbs and feeble yellowing speakers inside, all huddled with freezing, soaking refugees from the rain and eternal dark. There would be no warmth or comfort for me. There would be pain without a bonfire in sight, torment without forks or horny little devils.

“There is hope, my friends, HOPE!”

I was in the Other Place, the Bad Fire. And I was facing my ultimate torture: a dangling futile hope.