free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Great Island
it. It is the will of God, you may be sure, for nothing happens without
His knowledge and His will; so He has been good enough in His
wisdom to stop the machine for us.
‘Why? I don’t know. Nor do you. But I’ll tell you what the reason
may be. It may be that you are at fault! Somebody not attending,
whispering, looking round. . . , There’s a lesson for all of us here.’
This was extremely embarrassing, since I had been relaying a trans-
lation of his words in what I had hoped was an unobtrusive whisper. I
shuffled forward and explained this to the village priest, who said that
it was nothing - the children were to blame - God was rather pleased
than offended by my translation.
After a long pause for the lesson to sink in, during which Elizabeth
suggested that we ask my brother Chris to do God’s will by mending
the machine, the preacher went on:
‘Never mind. The machine is unimportant. What is really important
is the message – what comes through the machine - and we still have
that available to us. You probably think that the machine is important,
that once the motor stops that’s the end of the whole show, but nothing
could be more mistaken! It’s no more important than your own heart!
‘Your heart is a motor working away inside you, and it has no impor-
tance compared with the other heart you have. The first one, the motor,
ticks and ticks, and if it stops it stops. Pouff, like that! It only lives
inside your body, and your body is just a house, a prison, four walls –
nothing compared to what is really in there - the soul. And the soul too
has its heart and the heart of the soul is what matters. . , .’
His arms began to wave. His bald head glowed in the darkness.
‘We are all sinners. But there are several different kinds. There are
the molynliria, rotten right through, cancerous growths, and where are
they going? You know where they are going. To kolasis. Hell!
‘Then there are the vairachi [frogs] who may repent, and may not.
They must make the choice, because there is no middle way. It’s either
heaven or hell - paradise or kolasis. You can’t hide. The tallest castle,
the deepest cave, the biggest crowd is not enough to hide you from God.
‘You know that there is an eye up there which sees everything, and
that eye is God’s eye. And an ear which hears every word. God’s ear.
And next door a book in which your record is written - this is symboli-
cal of course, since God and His angels don’t actually write - so there is
no escape !’
Next came harrowing stories about murderers who thought they
had gone undetected, sheep-thiefs who faced the prospect of a year or
two in gaol with equanimity, not realizing that hell is for all time,
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