Pearly Gates: Parables from the Final Threshold

Why is that popular Christian fiction, and for that matter the popular Christian imagination, depicts a heaven that is completely unrecognizable to the biblical landscape?

The gap between the harsh grindings of Judgment Day, at one extreme, and the facetious jokes centering on St. Peter at the gates of heaven, on the other, is enormous, not to mention irritating, misleading, and downright offputting.

What if heaven’s pearly gates and the final judgment were reconceptualized to correspond to the gospel—to the savior and Lord we know from the Gospels, his parables, his healing and feeding and teaching, his death and resurrection?

That’s the idea behind Pearly Gates, thirty very short stories illustrating what might happen at the final threshold.

Here’s a sample to give you a taste of what you’ll find as you approach the pearly gates…

 

Thief

“Now wait just one minute,” said the woman. She was patting her cloak down, hands diving into pockets.

The Lord waited, quietly, passing no comment on the fact that her foot was halfway over the jeweled foundation, her toe just touching down in the holy city.

“Where is it?” She looked up at him with dismayed and clouded eyes.

“What do you seek?” he asked.

“My—” She stopped. Somehow she didn’t like to say.

“Ah,” he said. He fished into his own pocket and drew something forth.

It was ugly; that was the only thing that could be said with certainty about it. It seemed to be mostly the color of rust, rough-textured and misshapen but with a suggestion that it had once been something whole, lovely, and useful. It would not have been so terrible had it not seemed so mangled from its now unidentifiable original shape.

Yet the woman did not look upon it with disgust. Relief flooded her face. She smiled up at the Lord. “I should have known you’d have it in safekeeping,” she breathed, reaching out for it with both hands.

But the Lord dropped it into his pocket again.

“I did take it from you,” he agreed, “but not for safekeeping. Rather, to release you from its claim and put the thing to death.”

“To death!” shrieked the woman. “But you are the Lord of life! You don’t take life, you give it! How could you even think of killing this poor thing!” She reached out again, as though for a wounded animal.

“It is not this thing that needs to live, but you,” said the Lord. “And you cannot live as long as it lives with you. It is much heavier than you think.”

She saw his hand move toward the pocket again; she perceived the power in that hand, the power to crush the ugly, rusty, mangled mess into oblivion.

“You are a liar,” she said, “and a thief.”

“One who has lived long with falsehood has a hard time recognizing truth,” the Lord said. “But I will admit to being a thief. I have plundered many others before you of their treasured weights and chains. My life is stronger than these things. But yours is not.”

“I want it back,” she said.

“It has been your sin,” said the Lord. “If you take it back, it will become your death. Better to let me keep it.”

“But I love it,” wept the woman. “I love it. I have loved it so long.”

“It has never loved you.”

At this the woman’s sad face was riven by something like a passing thunderstorm, but as with a storm, it cleared. In the quiet that followed, she murmured, “No. It has never loved me.”

“Come in,” said the Lord, gesturing through the gate.

“May I,” said the woman softly, but with new strength, “may I see you—do what you do to it?”

“You may,” he replied, “but it will hurt.”

“Not as much as carrying it.” The woman turned her palms toward her face. She perceived how they were covered with deep scratches, seething and infected.

The Lord withdrew the thing from his pocket. It seemed to shrink in his hand, yet grew tougher, angrier, as if preparing for a fight.

But the Lord simply closed his fist around it, and it was gone.

“That was so easy!” exclaimed the woman, delighted.

“Only,” said the Lord, “because you had stopped loving it.”

“But I would not have stopped loving it,” she countered, “if you had not first stolen it from me.”

“Come in now,” said the Lord.

 

Want a peek before you buy? Download a free PDF of the first three stories.