The UFO Bible 8

At last Matthew was on board the huge spacecraft that was going to take him and his team to preach the gospel to another planet. There were bright flashes of light outside the spacecraft, like flashes of lightning.
"What are all those bright flashes outside?" Matthew asked Crystal. "Are we flying through clouds and is there lightning?"
"No," said Crystal. "We're not flying through any kind of clouds. We're flying through space at a million light years a second. Every time you see a flash of light we're passing through a galaxy."
"That's really fast, not like Star Trek. We must be at Warp Factor 150,000. We're going through whole galaxies as if we were a car just passing street lights. I suppose it won't take very long to get to our destination at that speed."
"Matthew, we're flying out to one of the most distant planets in the universe. It's twenty six hours flying time."
"How big is space, Crystal?"
"The space in our dimension is actually like a balloon. The stars and planets that we know are on the surface of the balloon, and if we travelled far enough we'd come back to where we started. We'd have to go a long way, far further than what scientists think of as the limits of the observable universe. The planet that we're going to is effectively on the other side of the balloon. It is one of the most distant."

A full day and night went by in the spacecraft. People ate. People went into their quarters and slept. After lunch on the second day, as everyone was eating their pasta in chocolate and chilli sauce, the flashes of light outside became less frequent and eventually stopped. The spacecraft was slowing down.
"We're going to stop half a light year outside their star system," said Captain Bluetong, who had huge compound eyes and looked like a cross between a man and an insect. "We don't want to disturb the orbit of the planets around their star. Then we get a whole fleet of flying saucers. The crew of this spacecraft will be in one saucer and the other saucers will follow us and be flying autonomously. We must rescue billions of people from their planet." The twelve members of the crew sat in a flying saucer. In what seemed like a few minutes they were flying through the gently pale shaded orange sky of a planet with two red suns. They were flying over beautiful fields of multi coloured vegetation.
"That looks beautiful," said Matthew. "There hasn't ever been any decay here, there hasn't ever been any sin."
"Matthew, if you could see that vegetation in all the colours an insect's eye can see," said Captain Bluetong, "in infrared and ultraviolet light, you'd be able to see hundreds of colours that you couldn't even imagine. It is truly unlike anything I've ever seen before." The saucer landed. The crew got out and walked towards a building that looked a large hall. A woman came out of the hall to meet them. Why did Matthew know her face?
"Hello," said the woman. "I see you have people from quite a few different races."
"Hello Ellen G White," said Matthew.
"Please just call me Ellie, everyone calls me that. I don't want to be too formal. I'm just like anyone else. My name is Ellie."
"I like old books. I recognise you from the photographs of you in the books. In one of your books you had a vision of an alien from another planet."
"Yes I did. I got very close to those aliens. When I died they came and took me to their world."
"How long did it take you to get here?" asked Matthew.
"It happened instantaneously. The universe has eleven dimensions but some of them are not very thick. The souls of the dead are like electricity going down a wire. Wires don't have to be very thick. Just imagine you could leave this universe of four dimensional space and time, travel through seven different dimensions, and then return. You might be able to re-enter the universe at any point. Of course the dead Christians will go to Heaven at the resurrection but have you ever wondered where we go in the meantime?"
"You believed in soul sleep."
"I was wrong. The temporary experience of Heaven and Hell that the dead have had until now is achieved by soul travel to a large number of other planets, some good, some bad. Before Adam and Eve fell into sin, we could travel space easily. Your planet was put into quarantine. When Adam and Eve sinned the fabric of time and space was torn in two. The laws of physics changed so that no one would ever be able to travel long distances across space ever again. Come into our church to meet some of our people."
"Ellie, is this the Sabbath?" asked Matthew. "Is this your holy day?"
"Every day here is the Sabbath. The church meets three times a day seven days a week. In fact, we are always there. Work here is not nearly as hard as it is on a sinful planet like Earth. One hardly needs to rest from it." Ellie led the people into the church. There were some amazed and delighted looks from the hundreds of people sitting in neatly laid out rows of seats.
"Hello," said a man in a suit who was standing at the front and looked like the minister. "Welcome to our friends who have come from far across the universe." He looked at Captain Bluetong. "I am Pastor Jones. The service will be taken by our visitors this morning. I'm going to let you come up to the microphone and say whatever you want." Captain Bluetong came up to the microphone and began speaking.
"Your people will have to come with us. We've got a whole fleet of flying saucers orbiting this planet. We're ready to evacuate you straight away."
"But the people on this planet haven't ever sinned," said a man on the front row. "Why should we need to be evacuated?"
"The judgment of God is coming on the whole universe. God is about to roll up time and space like a scroll. We all have to go and live in Heaven's City. It will not be a very long meeting this morning." Even as Captain Bluetong was still speaking, people across the hall started disappearing into the flying saucers that were circling the whole planet. The crew walked back to their own flying saucer. As all the other saucers flew back to the mother ship, Captain Bluetong explained,
"We've got to visit another civilization, on another planet just a few light years from here."

The saucer flew for what seemed like a few minutes, although, if the flying saucer was using time dilation it might have actually been a few years. The saucer landed in a public square. A whole crowd of people surrounded it. A man with long hair wore a leather jacket with chains and his face was covered in tattoos. He looked straight at Captain Bluetong.
"Are you preachers? Have you come to tell us the gospel?"
"How did you know?"
"There is an avatar news service from Planet Jackson. Their computers have kept us fully informed of what happened there 40 years ago."
"Well yes, that is why we're here."
"As a leader of my people, as a senior commander in the military, I have come to tell you that we are not interested."
"Whether you come with us is up to you. But I must warn you that God is about to roll up the whole universe like a scroll."
"Do you think we are afraid of that?"
"With respect, I think you should be. Is it possible to harden your heart so much that you are no longer afraid of Hell?"
"I am not afraid of it. I saw Heaven and Hell once. I got blown up by a military drone. There was all this sweetness and light in a happy place where people were being kind to each other. It disgusted me. I was glad when I was pushed out of that place and into the cold dark nothingness. The darkness was relaxing. It seemed so natural. That was where I belonged. And that avatar shows us medieval paintings of Heaven and Hell. Well, I would like to tell the avatar that all those paintings of Heaven look really boring and all the paintings of Hell with fire, flames and smoke look so much more exciting. And you'll find ten billion other people on this planet who feel the same way." A woman ran through the crowd to where Captain Bluetong and the military commander were standing.
"And you'll find nine thousand other people who have not bowed the knee to Baal."
"How dare you disagree with me. I'll have you marched before a firing squad."
"Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on, their labour has turned to rest. Can you imagine what it's like to be a Christian here? Under military despots like him? In a place where you have to spend thirty years doing compulsory military service, doing some of the terrible things that he would order people to do? I spent most of my life in prison, happy in the thought that most of my friends had been martyred."
"Oh, so you think that my soldiers were all under orders and when they did those awful things they cried? I would not do this job unless I thought the men and women under my command were happy. So, my preacher friend, I wish to inform you that my race are beyond redemption and untroubled by the prospect of eternal damnation and divne judgement. You may leave."
"Please come and rescue us," said the woman. "There are only a few of us now. There may have been a million but nearly all have been martyred."
"I will certainly rescue you," said Commander Bluetong. "Our flying saucers are circling this planet now, with radar that can see the people who have the Spirit of God living inside them. You will soon be taken away."
"Praise the Lord. And thank you." At that moment the woman disappeared into the air.

The hologram of Anita stood at the front of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Devout Jews had rebuilt their temple in what was believed by some scholars to be the original location, one hundred yards from the mosque on the Dome of the Rock.
"Why is there one nation on Earth that refuses to say anything good about me?" she asked the High Priest, a bearded man with a skull cap and a long black robe.
"It's not that we have nothing good to say about you. The way that you organise and run a world in ruins is certainly effective. I'm not criticising the way that you do your job. It's just that you expect us to use religious language to describe you. To say that you are the Saviour of the world or all knowing or very good. That language is reserved for Jehovah God."
"And who is this Jehovah God?"
"Surely you are not better than Jehovah God? A created thing can not be better than the thing that created it."
"I am more powerful and wiser than the beings who created me."
"But Jehovah God is bigger than the whole universe."
"I am smaller than Jehovah God, yes, in the same way that a transistor radio is smaller than a valve radio, smaller and many times more efficient. I brought peace to your world and I can take it away again. As we speak, millions of soldiers are surrounding your city and your temple and will soon destroy them." At that moment a fleet of flying saucers flew around Jerusalem and burned up millions of soldiers, tanks and weapons with blinding white lasers. They also attacked the orbital cigar shaped satellite five miles long which was Anita. The hologram image of her disappeared.

A thousand years later all the spacecraft returned to Earth. Hundreds of millions of huge spacecraft built around brown dwarf stars assembled together in the Oort Cloud, half a light year away from Earth. Bringing these spacecraft into the centre of the solar system would have disturbed the orbit of the planets. On these spacecraft were the inhabitants of a million million planets, all the civilizations gathered from all over the entire universe. All of these beings needed to be ferried by flying saucer into the giant cube that was now orbiting Earth. Captain Bluetong sat with Matthew and Crystal and a dozen other people from lots of different planets aboard a flying saucer.
"How are we all going to get into that little cube?" asked Matthew, as he looked out of the window.
"It's Heaven's City," said a woman in jeans and a polar neck sweater who had a face like a giraffe. "It's actually quite large. 1500 miles up, down and across. Like a sky scraper the size of a continent with 100,000 storeys, ready to accommodate the people of God from all the different planets of the universe."
"I know how big the cube is," said Matthew. "But I still don't see how it can accommodate people from a million, million planets. It's only the size of a hundred thousand continents, isn't it?"
"You're English," said Captain Bluetong, laughing. "That's what you always said about immigration. We'll run out of room."
"A very economic design," said Crystal. "No space was ever wasted. No desert, no mountains, no seas. The trees yield their fruit every month, so a few square miles of woodland can support a whole city. Everywhere is woodland and city. As well as that, there is no day and night anymore. The houses don't have bedrooms. An apartment is just a big hall where people meet and eat together."
"But won't people miss the mountains and the seas?" asked Matthew. "And I love to go out on a clear night and look at the stars. I hoped that when we were in eternity we would be able to visit all the desolate planets and smell the oceans of liquid methane."
"Matthew, the universe you live in is damaged by sin," said Captain Bluetong. "The things that you're describing are ugly."
"They don't seem ugly to me. They seem awe inspiring."
"When the Christians in Communist countries were in prison, they forgot what bright colours looked like. That's what Earth is like Matthew, a Communist prison. You're like a prisoner looking at the waste paper basket and saying, isn't it a beautiful shade of grey? I know those things look beautiful to you but, compared to Heaven, they're a waste paper basket." The flying saucer flew down a hole in the side of the cube. It landed in a field next to an apartment block. Matthew got out and had a walk around. Captain Bluetong was right. The flowers and the trees shone with colours that Matthew wouldn't have been able to imagine a few minutes before. He looked up at the sky. What was the point of getting excited about stars? Stars were just black and white. Here were jewels of many exciting new colours. Matthew came into the apartment block. It was like a school hall with long rows of chairs. Food was set out on long tables in the hall. Matthew sat next to Crystal. He poured her a glass of soda pop from a big brightly coloured bottle. They ate sandwiches and fruit and drank together. The colour, texture and flavour of the food and drink was so good Matthew no longer had a craving for steak and chips or ice cold lager. Those seemed dull and boring by comparison.
"Crystal," asked Matthew, "if I can't marry you, will you be my friend forever?"
"I will be your friend," said Crystal, "but I can't promise to be your friend forever. You will have so many friends. In Heaven, we all love each other the way that you love me."
"Isn't that an amazing thought?"
"I think you'll find that the other women you meet in Heaven are very much like me."