I sat down at my desk that night to write next Sunday's sermon. Last week's sermon was how man could not serve money and God at the same time. That he would be devoted to one but despise the other. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon - Matthew 6:24", I spoke to the congregation as they flipped through their bibles, the thin paper filling the air with what I thought to be the refreshing sound of spiritual awakening.
Now the sound as I remember it has been replaced with the taste of ashes consuming my mouth. The dark one. The evil for which I spoke. Surely Satan won the war and thusly deposed God, dispatching Him to the netherworld of fallen angels. God has revealed Himself to be Satan.
Everything I preached was wrong. If heaven is indeed earth, if our current mortal coil is indeed the afterlife, our afterlife is not eternal but confined to the space of five score decades at most, what God ought we worship?
The conclusion rattled me to the core. "The prosperity preachers were right." Osteen, Dollar, the whole crowd I denounced every Sunday were right. Our mortal and physical reality is the same as our spiritual reality. There are indeed rewards in heaven, but those rewards have become concretely secular in nature. Those rewards are to be paid out here and now. If you can get away with murder, get away with murder.
The only consequence is the god of man with his courts of justice. Your only punishment is if you are caught by man not when you are caught by God.
How do I convey that message yet stay true to the beliefs I've held on to for so long? I cannot. If your rewards are in heaven, and heaven is earth, there is nothing keeping your from selfishly serving yourself to the sacrifice of others rather than sacrificing yourself in order to help others.
I have nothing more to say. The vicars of Satan have been masquerading as vicars of God and I am one of their soldiers. We lost the war without knowing the battle. We've been cloaked as the ultimate Trojan Horse but instead of victory, we've been handed defeat.
Sent to the gallows thinking we were going to be rewarded with mansions and paradise, this heaven is indeed a hell and what awaits is what I feared the most but now welcome.
Oblivion.