[ WP ] A device has been invented that allows the user to gaze upon Heaven or Hell . Hell is terrifying , and those who see it often need counselling . But their terror pales compared to those who witness God 's domain .

I have seen hell. I saw it all; decrepit, near inhuman, bodies slaving in the suffocating heat of burning brimstone, lashed by unseen whips. I saw the many-headed beast sit on his throne – and he turned his faces towards me, one by one; each grimmer than the last, each damning me more harshly and pushing my fraying mind further into its deepest pits of despair. My body weakened, and I knew I was turning – limb by limb, thought by thought – into one of them, one of the condemned slaves I saw before me. My knees gave way for the unfathomable weight of my mind, and I crashed backwards, back into known reality. 
 
 But nothing in that vision – nothing at all – was as horrifying as what I saw next. Opening my eyes again, I saw not hell, but heaven. The luminous completeness of the unfaltering God himself, the true creator of all; perfection without end nor beginning. I became inexorably aware that it was not I who watched Him, but He who watched me, penetrating the darkest layers of my mind with the same ease with which sunlight cuts through shadow. My shortcomings, my faults, the entire history of the failed human being I was; all laid bare and judged by Him who embodied the completeness of their opposites. 
 
 I understood then that the many-headed beast had no power over me, for it was not he who would condemn me to eternal damnation; no, it was Him, the One who was presently cutting through my whole self, finding me unworthy of being in His presence. 

