There it stood in the midst of this countryside—a lone closed door of wood standing upon the earth here outside. “Ha ha ha! Who went and built this here?” he asked. So funny this was. Why was there this door without a wall? It must open up to something, he thought. He took a peek around to its other side, and he saw the same countryside as the countryside on his side of this door. He paused, and he mused, and he contemplated. He had just moved here yesterday, and his own house was not far beyond the fields from here. How wonderful it was for him to have acre after acre of rural land all to himself now. He had always wanted to live in the country. And that house not far from here was his very first house. All about him where he stood in his new yard was tall swaying field grass and lots of nice big and little sand dunes. He looked again on the other side of the door to confirm his understanding and did see more fields of tall grass and sand dunes. Yes, this other side was the same as this side. But he had not yet opened this door. It was a door of ebony wood with three gold hinges on the left and a silver handle and latch on the right. This door was connected to an ebony wood frame,
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and it opened along the right toward him. Still curious about this solitary door and not satisfied yet with his certainty about the other side, this man went around the side of this door to its right, walked out into his fields on its other side, and came back to this side from its left. Nothing was any different on that other side. Nothing was any different for him. Nothing was any different from this strange, odd door. Then he heard a silent familiar voice say to him, “Nay, my Flanders. Do not go through this door.” Ah, more comforting words from his beloved from Above. He would obey her words of warning. He cared very much for her, and she cared very much for him. His relationship with this giver of thoughts to him was a unique long distance relationship between a man on the Earth and an
angel up in Heaven. Whatever she told him to do in those silent messages to his head he did do. And whatever she told him not to do, he did not do. She called herself “the Queen of Heaven.” And his Queen of Heaven was a resplendent Collie dog whom he had never yet met, but would someday settle down with when he got to Heaven in his time to come. He would turn away from this door now and walk away from this door now. But he did not turn away from this door now, and he did not walk away from this door now. His beloved spoke into his head in thoughts, “Flanders, I beseech you, ‘Turn away and walk away from this door.’ It is dangerous!”
He spoke out loud up toward his Queen of Heaven There, “Why is it dangerous?”
In response she sent a cold chilly breeze upon him in warning to not disobey her for this commandment. The man had never disobeyed a directive from his angel before. She was an angel of God, and she knew more things about what was bad and what was good for him than he did. Yet her winds of reply did not answer his question. He wanted to know why it was so dangerous for him to open this strange dark door. He asked her again, “Why must I not go through this door?”
And his beloved she-Collie angel spoke into his head in thoughts, “Because it will break us up both for the rest of your life down here and for eternity for us to come, O Flanders.”
“I shall never leave you!” he cried out up to Heaven toward her.
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“Then break down the door, my love,” she said into his head.
“With what?” he asked, ready to prove to her his love.
“With this,” she said. Behold, a sledge hammer suddenly appeared in the tall grass between Flanders and this door.
Right away the man Flanders picked up this big maul and thought to break down this door. After all, he was going to marry this she-Collie in Heaven and frolic with her forever in Heaven’s meadows and seashores as masters and dogs can best do. And right away she took away the cold uncomfortable wind and made it again a gentle warm zephyr. He was doing the right thing.
Just then he heard the voice as of singing on the other side of this door. It sounded like a woman singing. He held the maul downward in both of his hands and paused to listen. It was a church song that he had heard before, one that everybody was familiar with—the hymn “Rock of Ages.” And he did not like “Rock of Ages.” He did not like hymns. He did not like Jesus. He dared to partially disobey his Queen of Heaven and took another peek around the door. He saw no one singing. And he well knew that it was surely not his Queen of Heaven who was singing this. And though he did rue this
hymn with offense, his curiosity drove him to great wondering. And a force greater than his Queen of Heaven compelled him to open this door. Such a force could only be God Himself. He put his hand to the latch, and lo, his hand burned with a scorching, and he took away his hand from this latch. And his Queen of Heaven said to him in her thoughts, “I made this latch hot! Go through that door now, and I will leave you for another master!” She had never hurt him before like this. And this made him angry with her. And for his first time, Flanders Nickels disobeyed his Collie dog angel. And he threw down the maul, took the edge of his shirt in his hand, put his hand to the latch again, and this time opened this lone dark door in the countryside. And he went through it and shut it behind himself.
Behold a truly mythical world of paradise! He now found himself in a great forest of great weeping willows everywhere. His bare feet stood now upon short green grass of lawn. And beautiful
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yellow sunlight of noon shone down upon this forest floor between the branches of forest canopy. He could still hear this singing, and the singer sounded not far from here. He looked back at this door, and it was still there. Part of him wanted to look back around this door to snatch a peek at the original side from where he had come. He did not do this. He liked this new world that he was in and did not want to see again right now his old world. Besides, would it not be this same mythical world now on the other side of the door from this side just as it was from back there in the world, the other side no different from the first side in looking around? A voice of thought told him, “Come back, my love.”
It was his Queen of Heaven beckoning him to come back through that door. That did sound like a good idea. But the hymn suddenly became clearer and more audible. And though he did not like the song,
again a force greater than his she-Collie called out to him, and He said to him, “Flanders Arckery Nickels, turn away and walk away from this door.” And he obeyed this voice from God. And he began to walk toward this hymn singing woman deeper into this truly mythical world.
Behold, he came to a big and wide clearing in the midst of this weeping willow woods, and he saw a little lake in a world of bright yellow sunshine uninhibited by trees. And, lo, a figure, like unto a woman, standing out there in water up to her neck, her beautiful head singing her song. She saw him seeing her, and she put her hand to her mouth in surprise of a visitor. She waved to him in amity, and he waved back in curiosity. And she quit her singing and began to swim toward him until she could
start wading toward him. And he could tell that she was a foxy brown-eyed brunette dressed in a red, white, and blue stars and stripes women’s gymnastics leotard. He waved to her again, and she waved back to him and flashed a most welcome smile upon him. And very soon she stood dripping before him on this sandy shore of lake. He wanted to ask this fair lady, “Where am I?”
But before he could ask her, she said, “Welcome to the Mythical World, sir.”
Her pretty teeth that filled her jaws were unusually wide and few. Her ears were pointed somewhat outward and looked like the ears of an elf. Her hair was ravishingly black, and it descended
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down all the sides of her head dripping down upon her bare feet. Her nose was wide and long and pretty. And her eyes of brown had unusual largeness to her irises. Her arms were longer in the forearm than in the upper arm. Her hands had one thumb and five other fingers each. Her own legs were longer in the shins than they were in the thighs. Her feet also had each one big toe and five little toes,
And she stood only about five feet tall. And she was delightfully slender and curvaceous in that women’s gymnastics leotard. And his man’s heart was smitten by this type of woman before him now.
She then spoke again and said, “Kind sir, welcome to the Mythical World. My name is ‘Lisa Watermarsh.’ But you can call me, ‘Gravel.’” Even her voice was pleasingly mythical in its husky and resonant feminine tone. “They call me, ‘Gravel,’ because I can walk on stones as easily as I can on sand or grass,” she went on to tell him. This kind of girl then cocked her head to the side to charm him with wiles for her, and he was charmed with wiles for her.
He then introduced himself to her, “I am Flanders Nickels, Gravel.”
“Did you come from the other side of the door, Flanders?” she asked.
“Yes. That I did,” he said.
“You must have come from the world of sin,” she said.
“This Mythical World you said about this place here…is there no sin here?” he asked.
“There is little sin here, but there is much sin there,” she said. She was comparing her Mythical World to his world of Earth.
He then asked her, “Are you a woman?”
And she said, “No, Flanders. I am a water sprite.”
“I never met a real water sprite before, Gravel,” he said.
“Well I am that, a real water sprite,” she said in gladness.
“Are there other water sprites here in this Mythical World, O Gravel?” asked Flanders Nickels.
“Yes, both males and females, Flanders,” she said. “And also centaurs and fauns and griffins
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and unicorns and winged horses and dwarfs and elves and mermaids and mermen and dryads and nymphs, and all manner of creatures of myth truly alive and real here in this Mythical World.”
In joy amid this novelty, Flanders said, “This Mythical World is a beautiful place. Gravel!”
“Indeed does Christ walk with us here in the Mythical World now,” said the water sprite.
“Christ is here?” asked Flanders offended.
“He rules and reigns here in my world, O Flanders,” said Lisa Watermarsh.
“Christ is here,” he said in bitter words.
“He makes the Mythical World the paradise that it is,” said Gravel. “Are you mad at the Lord,
Flanders?”
“Do you believe in Him?” asked Flanders.
“I do indeed, Flanders,” said Lisa ‘Gravel’ Watermarsh.
“I do not believe in Him,” said Flanders.
Her beautiful face fell upon sorrow for him. “I am sorry to hear you say that, Flanders,” she said.
“How come?” he asked, seeking to please her.
“I can see that you do not love God,” she said.
“Oh, Gravel, but I do love God,” he said. “I love God the Father!”
“How can you?” she asked. “No man can come unto the Father but through Jesus.”
“I reverence the Highest Power, and He is God the Father—not God the Son or God the Holy Spirit,” declared Flanders Nickels.
Shock filled her pretty eyes of brown, and he was sorry for having hurt her with his words. This dismay in her eyes, he could tell, was a burden in her heart for his soul. To assuage her troubles for him, he sought to sum up his own personal theology to her lock, stock, and barrel right now: “Unlike born-again believers, Lisa, I worship God the Father directly—and not through the intermediary Jesus.
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Unlike you, I cannot believe that God would give up His only begotten Son for mankind. All of mankind is full of sin. Born-again Christians are arrogant and conceited who think that God did that sacrifice for them. Born-again believers have an ego problem. Further, Lisa, why would God do that to His Son for only one species of many of one planet of many of one galaxy of many? Right now, whether in Heaven Above or in this paradise here, I’d bet that the man Jesus is wringing His hands in consternation at what mankind has vaunted Him to be. He was never God, and He never said He was God. And His regrets haunt Him every day Here. What Jesus Christ was instead was the best Christian Who ever lived. Oh, the other Christians, who profess His deity, are Up in Heaven, too, but God the Father does not smile upon them There. This Jesus was never the Saviour you make Him out to be.
And Christianity is an offense and a stink to the nose of the Heavenly Father.”
“Oh, Flanders, you are so handsome on the outside, yet so ugly on the inside,” she cried out in
a broken heart. “I have no hope for the eternal destiny of your soul.” And she turned away her head, stepped back out alone into the lake, and tried to hide her weeping.
“I never wanted to make you cry, Gravel,” he said in grief of heart. Her tears for him brought tears for her to his eyes, and he quickly wiped his eyes to hide his own little cry for her. “I’m sorry,
O Gravel,” he apologized in great remorse. “I care for you.” That was truth spoken from his heart.
“And I care for you, too, Flanders,” she said. “Everything is happening so quickly for this lonely little water sprite.”
“You are lonely with a Saviour?” he asked.
“A little, Flanders,” she said. “I never found a boyfriend in this Mythical World. Then you came along from the world of Earth, and I kind of fell into a crush with you all at once.”
“May I come out to you in the lake, Gravel?” he asked.
“Please hold my hand, Flanders,” she said, proffering her right hand. “And promise me that you will listen to me when I tell you all about my Saviour all the time I have you here with me in this
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Mythical World.”
“I promise, fairest water sprite,” he said to her in sweet and ardent affection for the woman. And Flanders stepped out into the lake and took her hand in his hand.
“Is it a date then, Flanders?” she asked, sniffling.
“It is a date, Gravel,” he promised.
And man and water sprite stood now knee deep in the lake. “Flanders, do you like what I have on now?” she asked. He again paused to admire her in that patriotic long-sleeved gymnastics leotard that did honor his America back in the world from where he had come.
“You dress like Mary Lou Retton and Julianne McNamara!” he said in fond approval.
“I went through that door myself into Earth, Flanders, for a little extraterrestrial traveling,” confessed the water sprite. “There I discovered the Olympics and women gymnasts and women’s gymnastics leotards.”
“That was the year 1984, when the summer Olympics was in Los Angeles in my United States,” bragged Flanders of his country that she had visited. That was before he had moved to his new place in the country just on the other side of that door. Then he asked, “What else did you see when you came to my nation on your travels through the door?”
“I did see a world dominated by mankind, whom the Scriptures say were to dominate the Earth and Whom were created in God’s image,” went on to say the water sprite. “I did see all manner of wild and tame animals. I did see men and women and children living their lives in the cities and in the countrysides. I saw great science and great things created by your mankind’s science. I saw also great imposing edifices. I saw great roads and streets. I saw many coming and going to work. I saw schools of many students learning man’s wisdom. And I saw churches. And I saw great and marvelous means of transportation and communication. And I learned of computers. Earth is a most exciting place to visit, Flanders.”
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In savvy understanding, Flanders said, “You find my world an exciting place to visit, but you would not want to live there.”
“My home is here in the Mythical World, Flanders,” confessed the water sprite. “I am a country woman, and there are no cities in this Mythical World.”
“You found something else new to you in your visit to my Earth. Didn’t you, Gravel?” he asked.
“You know me so well so quickly, Flanders,” said the water sprite. “Yes. I did find the one thing that your Earth has that my world has not. And it was very uncomfortable for a water sprite who had come from Paradise.”
“Was it bad?” he asked. She nodded her feminine head. “What was it?” he asked.
“It was sinners and sin, O Flanders.” she said.
“You are right about us people on the Earth,” confessed Flanders Nickels.
“My travels in your world lasted for one week. Then I came back home,” said the water sprite.
“Your world has Jesus, and my world has sinners,” he said in humbleness.
“But your world is the world for whom Jesus died. My world is not the world for whom Jesus died,” confessed Lisa Watermarsh.
“But my world is the evil world, and your world is the good world, Gravel,” said Flanders in humility.
“But Jesus Christ the Son of God loves your kind more than He can my kind, O Flanders,” said Gravel.
“How can you say such a thing?” asked Flanders in incomprehension.
“Because mankind has eternal souls that will end up either Up in Heaven or down in Hell depending on what a person chooses to do with this Saviour,” preached Lisa ‘Gravel’ Watermarsh.
“This Jesus seems to have great compassion for me and other people of my Earth, if what you
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say is true about Him, Gravel,” said Flanders Nickels in a first reconsideration of his theology. The beautiful water sprite woman smiled at him in affection. Her black hair was dry now, and it was long and straight and wispy and with the most beautiful bangs he had ever seen in a girl.
“Would you like me to tell you more about Christ, Flanders?” she asked.
Her otherworldly attractiveness softened his hard heart toward Jesus, and he was now willing to hear her out all about Him. And he nodded his head and said, “I am ready now, Lisa.”
“Are you sure that you are ready for all of this?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said.
“I warn you– I have the Word of God that can disprove every last statement that you had stated to me about what you think Jesus really is,” said the water sprite. “We of the Mythical World have the King James Bible, too, just like you people have back in Earth. And I have been studying it all of my life. In it is God’s inerrant, plenary, inspired, and perfect and eternal and infinite truth.”
“I believe the King James Bible is truth,” he said.
“You do?” she asked.
“I never read it, but I’ll believe it if it is in there,” he said to her.
“Okay. Here goes,” she said. “Let us step out of my lake and sit down on the sand.”
Man and woman sat down side-by-side upon the shore of the lake. And the wise water sprite of a woman began, “You said, Flanders, that you worship God the Father directly.”
“Yes, Gravel—through neither any intermediary nor any intercessor,” said Flanders Nickels.
“It is written in I Timothy 2:5, ‘For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,’” recited the water sprite.
“That makes Him an intermediary,” said Flanders.
“Again it is written, Flanders, in Romans 8:34, ‘Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession
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for us,’” recited Lisa “Gravel” Watermarsh.
“That makes Him an intercessor,” said Flanders.
“And you did ask, ‘Why would God give up His only begotten Son for mankind?’” she asked.
“Yeah!” he said.
“It is written in Genesis 2:7, ‘…; and man became a living soul.’” she quoted. “And again it is written in Genesis 1:27, ‘So God created man in his own image,…’” She went on to say, “Only humans among God’s creation have eternal souls. And only humans among God’s creation are made in His image. And God’s love for people, saved or lost, is called ‘agape love,’ a love that only the Good Lord can give. And Christ the Son of God and God the Heavenly Father and the Holy Ghost did not want mankind to burn in Hell. Jesus went willingly to the cross out of this agape love for you, Flanders.
And God the Heavenly Father, in His agape love for you, did sacrifice His only begotten Son for you—and for all people. And, besides all that, three days later, this same Jesus came back to life. And He lives today.”
“So then you’re saying that God gave up His Son on the cross because He loves us and does not want us to go to Hell, Gravel?” he asked.
“Rightly said, Flanders,” said the learned water sprite. She proceeded further into her preaching, saying, “And you say that born-again Christians are proud and arrogant for what they believe?’
“I did say that, Gravel,” he said. “My friend Proffery told me that only Christians get to go to Heaven. Crazy idea! Makes me so mad!”
“Flanders, it is written in Jesus’s own words in John 3;3, ‘…, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,’” preached the water sprite. “And again it is written in Galatians 3:26, Flanders, ‘For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.’”
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“Proffery was right then, after all,” said Flanders. “And God’s born-again believers are indeed His children. Then I can see that Christians are not arrogant after all. If they say that God died for them and for all sinners, then that makes them humble instead. It’s in the Bible.”
“And you said also that God would not give up His Son for one species of many of one planet of many of one galaxy of many, O Flanders Nickels,” said Lisa Watermarsh.
“My greatest argument against Christians like you,” said Flanders Nickels.
“Assuming that there is life in outer space,” she said.
“Yes, Gravel,” he said.
“It is written in Psalm 115:16, ‘The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men,’” shared Lisa more Scripture with Flanders.
“That makes it sound like there is no other life out there outside of the Earth,” he said.
“Outer space—the heaven—belongs to God,” said the water sprite. “The heavens are for His glory.”
“Maybe I was wrong,” said Flanders.
“And you also say that Jesus Christ is wringing His hands in regrets in Heaven for having been
falsely deified by mankind. You say that Jesus Christ was never God. And you say that Jesus Christ was the greatest Christian Who ever lived,” Lisa Watermarsh went on to say.
“I was very probably wrong about that, Gravel,” said Flanders Nickels, convicted of his false religion by the Word of God.
“It is written, in Jesus’s own words, ‘I and my Father are one,’” said Gravel the water sprite. “That’s John 10:30.”
“Why, Jesus makes Himself equal to my Heavenly Father!” exclaimed Flanders.
“What does that tell you now, Flanders?” she asked.
“That tells me that He really is God!” confessed Flanders.
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“And you said that Christianity is an offense and a stink to the nose of God the Father,” said
Gravel.
“I was all wrong, Gravel,” proclaimed Flanders. “Up in Heaven, God does smile upon His believers. He does not bear any grudges against them for the truth that they did believe. They are His sons and daughters. They know personally that Jesus is the Saviour of the world. That is why they are There with Him in Heaven. And Christianity is truly light and truth and salvation and glory and praise and honor unto Father and Son and Holy Ghost,”
“Most well said, Flanders,” said the beautiful water sprite. And for a while she was at a loss for words upon his so quick repentance after her little sermon.
In his own thoughts with this water sprite in her American gymnastics leotard beside him, Flanders Nickels secretly thought upon that Queen of Heaven, the love of his life. All of this talk about Jesus, Who had always been his and her enemy, made him unsure now about his life and about his life with her. How he wished her to come down from Heaven and comfort him in Her Collie presence right now. He had indeed never truly seen her in her physical presence. All he knew was that she was a beautiful Collie dog who loved only him and whom only he loved. Were she to come now in her physical presence and show him herself as she really were, how good that that would be for him right now. Indeed most of his religion with God the Father these years past was praying and thanking the Higher Power for the Queen of Heaven in his life. Indeed he did even have a Bible verse that was to him “their verse.” He had to share this verse with his confidante water sprite right now.
“It is written, O Gravel, ‘Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.’ Ecclesiastes 9:9,” confidently declared Flanders Arckery Nickels.
“That marriage verse is not about you and me. Is it?” knowingly asked Lisa Watermarsh.
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“It is about me and my angel,” he said.
“You have a marriage relationship with an angel?” asked Gravel in disapproval.
“It is different from a relationship with a girl,” said Flanders. “It is completely asexual, but nonetheless all the more passionate in its purity.”
“That still sounds evil,” warned Lisa.
“Nay, Gravel. It is good,” said Flanders.
“Who is your wife?” asked the water sprite.
“She calls herself ‘the Queen of Heaven,’” confided Flanders his greatest secret to this water sprite in his life.
“You said that her name is ‘the Queen of Heaven?” cried out the water sprite in shock.
“Yeah, Gravel,” he said in resentment of her outcry.
“That Queen of Heaven is the devildog of this Mythical World!” proclaimed the water sprite in
great and utter dismay.
“What? What?” asked Flanders Nickels in his own great and utter consternation not without offense and wounded pride.
“Yes! Yes!” cried out the water sprite. “That Queen of Heaven is the Devil’s own wife, Flanders. She is already married to another. Satan is her own husband. What did you get yourself into? I pray God have mercy on this lost and foolish man’s soul!”
“How dare you say that about her!” yelled Flanders at this water sprite.
“She is not good! She is most evil! Divorce her! Run away from her! Flee her right now!” cried out the water sprite.
A most awkward dumbness came upon these two now. Then Flanders said, “You’ve got a loose cog in your head, Miss Watermarsh.” And he stood abruptly up and was about to walk out on her and go back to his Earth.
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She got up on her feet also, grabbed his arm in both of her hands in great cares and said, “Don’t leave me, Flanders.”
“Nobody calls my wife a demoness, Lisa. Not even you,” exclaimed Flanders Nickels.
“Flanders, you heard me out when I told you about the Saviour,” she said.
“I did. And I was glad,” he said.
“Would you hear me out when I tell you about the she-devil?” she asked.
“I will not. And I will be glad not to,” he said. “I must go and find the lone door back in the willow woods. It is time for me to go back home.” He turned his face away from this foxy water sprite, turned his back to her to walk away, and took his first steps to leave this Mythical World.
“Flanders, is not the truth about the Devil important as is the truth about the Lord?” asked
Lisa “Gravel” Watermarsh.
He stopped his walking away. His back was still turned toward her. He kept his face looking for that lone door amid the willow forest out there.
The water sprite now said, “Flanders, in Luke 12:4-5, our Good Lord says, ‘And I say unto you
my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell;
yea, I say unto you, Fear him.’”
“Must I fear her?” asked Flanders. “She will cast me down into Hell?”
“Your world has Lucifer; my world has her,” said Lisa Watermarsh.
He turned his front toward her, but would not look her in her beautiful brown eyes. Looking down upon the ground, he said, “I never heard such things about my Queen of Heaven before. How can I know that they are true?”
“You believe the Holy Bible,” she said.
“The Words of the King James are truth, Lisa,” he confessed in the sincerity of his heart. He
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looked up to see her eyes of brown. “I believe the Holy Bible,” he confessed.
She then said most grave Words of God: “’The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the
fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.’ Jeremiah 7:18.”
Flanders knew what this verse was saying. It was saying to him that his Queen of Heaven was a false god. And he once heard that behind every false idol was a devil. His false god was the Devil’s
concubine.
“Are you all right with what I said from God’s Word, Flanders?” asked Lisa Watermarsh.
“Yeah. Yeah. I’m all right. I’m okay,” he said, convicted of his sin of love for his Collie fallen angel.
“The Devil had brought damnation into your world, Flanders; and the Queen of Heaven had brought dying into my world,” edified Gravel her visitor.
“Maybe I need your Jesus in my life, Gravel,” he said. “Who would ever have thought that I would go and say something such at that—I who thought to have known eternal truth with my Collie of far away.”
“The Good Lord Jesus had brought salvation to your Earth and had brought life to my Mythical World,” preached the water sprite girl.
“Jesus is Lord!” utterly declared Flanders Nickels.
“Amen, O man!” praised Gravel Christ.
“Funny, isn’t it, Lisa, how things end up good sometimes in the end?” said Flanders. “What my Queen of Heaven said to me a hundred times and what you tell me just this day. And now I see things with the understanding of a water sprite.”
“Do tell me what you’re thinking about, O Flanders,” said Gravel.
“I mean she told me a hundred times, Lisa, ‘Don’t worship Jesus the Son of God.’ And I
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believed her, and I obeyed her, because I thought that it was for my own good. And I spent my whole life with her avoiding any worship whatsoever of Jesus as the Son of God. She was the good guy, and Jesus was the bad guy,” said Flanders Nickels.
“And, bang, one day with me at my lake, and now you are ready for a whole eternity of worshiping Him as the Son of God,” said Lisa.
“A day at your lake with you in a good old American women’s gymnastics leotard, Gravel,” he said.
“We water sprites are very persuasive,” said Gravel in flirt. “Do all Americans have a thing for women gymnasts?”
“Mainly just myself, Lisa,” he said.
“It was a good thing that I went shopping at the mall that day and found this and bought it,” she said, raising her right cuff to look at it in gladness.
“Is there one more thing that I need to do to be safe from my Queen of Heaven?” asked Flanders.
“Yes,” she said. “You need to ask Jesus Christ the Lord to become your own personal Saviour.”
“Is that called, ‘becoming a born-again Christian?’” he asked.
“It is,” she said.
“I want to do that right now,” he said.
“I would be thrilled to help you to do that, O Flanders,” sang out the water sprite.
“Well, girl, let’s go and do that,” he said.
“Just repeat after me in a prayer, and when we are done, you will be a born-again believer forever safe from anything that the Queen of Heaven can do to your soul,” she said.
“You mean that then I will never have to worry about going to Hell, Gravel,” he said.
“And, being a Christian, you need never worry about her coming to dwell within you,” said the
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water sprite lady. “Once a person accepts Christ, the Holy Spirit of God comes down and indwells the believer. And the Holy Spirit that indwells that Christian will not allow an evil spirit to come into that same Christian.”
“The Holy Ghost, Who is God, is stronger than the Queen of Heaven, Who is the She-Devil,” summed up Flanders.
“Let us pray and get you saved,” said the water sprite.
“Whoa! The sky is green! What happened?!” asked Flanders Nickels in great and sudden fears.
“Alas, she has come!” cried out Lisa “Gravel” Watermarsh.
So quickly had this wonderful sky of the Mythical World become just like the sky of tornado back in Flanders’s world! Nothing so bad as this could happen so fast in Earth. Suddenly the whole air about right above this lake and its shore became still and utterly noiseless.
Raising her fist at this storm-entity, the water sprite yelled, “I rebuke you! Go away!”
Suddenly it seemed like a long while ago that Flanders was just about to pray and get saved from his sins.
Then it happened, and Flanders saw it happen: a tornado descended from the green clouds and it settled down in the midst of the water sprite’s little lake. And the noise and roar and din of winds a couple hundred miles per hour filled the skies. The lake become torrents of little tsunamis coming ashore. Gravel’s beautiful tresses became wild in the gales, making her look like she were sick or wounded. The weeping willows bent and broke in the edges of the forest not far from this shore.
And the sand of this shore was blown all about, stinging man and water sprite as bees do. And it was hard for Flanders to speak. Certainly he could not repeat after her any prayer until this waterspout lifted back up into the sky. Worse yet, that funnel could leave the lake, become a tornado, and dance about on this very shore where Flanders and Gravel stood. And as for himself thinking the right thoughts to say to God in any silent prayer for salvation, he did not know what words that he should
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think in prayer for that salvation. He needed Lisa Watermarsh for that. And, most oddly, why had his
pretty water sprite referred to this waterspout as a “she?”
And indeed that waterspout out there began to approach Flanders and Lisa as a stalker or a hunter or a predator.
Bringing her hands together in prayer, the water sprite’s lips said, “Dear God, rebuke her!”
Behold, just then, a large winged creature flew out of the midst of the funnel, hovered next to the waterspout for just a moment, then turned to look right at the water sprite with a look of a demon.
As Flanders and Gravel watched, the fierce waterspout ascended back up into the skies. And all the winds stopped. And all was calm. The fell storm had ended as quickly as it had begun.
“It’s all gone. It stopped. The storm is over,” said Flanders.
But to this, the water sprite said, “All that really happened is that she came out of her own tornado. She is more dangerous as the flying creature who made the tornado than is the tornado that she had made.”
“Why, this ‘she’ that you’re talking about…is she a dog with wings, Gravel?” asked Flanders.
“She is a Collie,” said Gravel with a heavy sigh of trepidation.
“She’s beautiful,” said Flanders. “And she is coming here!”
“You do not recognize her in her evil, Flanders?” asked Lisa.
“Why, she is even more beautiful than you are, O so-pretty Gravel,” said Flanders.
“The Devil deceives you yet lost in your sins, O Flanders,” said Gravel.
“You are not deceived, yourself a water sprite of the Lord?” asked Flanders.
“I know who she is,” said Lisa Watermarsh.
“Who can such a resplendent one be?” he asked.
“This angel of light, Flanders, is the devildog you thought to marry someday in Heaven,” said
this denizen of the Mythical World.
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“I knew that she was beautiful. I never knew that she was this beautiful,” said the deceived Flanders Nickels. “Look, she’s about to light here on the sand!”
“Flanders, Flanders, this is the most wicked Queen of Heaven, and she has come and taken us away from praying your prayer,” said Gravel. “Can’t you see what she is doing?”
And the winged Collie demoness lighted upon the shore of this lake.
Flanders in love called out to her, “Are you my Queen of Heaven?”
And she spoke and said, “I am, O husband.”
“You have come for me?” he asked ardently.
“I have, O Flanders. Run away with me now to Heaven!” she said in sweet words and smooth tone.
“I have always loved you, and I will ever love you,” said Flanders.
“Are you hungry?” asked the devildog.
“No. I am not hungry,” said Flanders.
“Flanders, behold the food of my Mythical World,” proclaimed the Devil’s wife. Lo, a table of loaves of garlic bread and banana bread and pumpkin bread and cranberry bread and French bread!
“Are you hungry?” asked the Collie demoness.
“I am so hungry!” exclaimed Flanders.
“Do go ahead and eat of my bread,” said his angel wife.
Just then the water sprite spoke up and said, “Flanders, do not eat this bread. Queen of Heaven, it is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God.’”
Behold, suddenly all of the fresh bakery made by the Queen of Heaven that had so beckoned Flanders was now all rotten and spoiled even to the point of stinking and oozing and breeding bugs!
Flanders instead shot an icy glare at the water sprite and asked her, “Why did you do that,
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Lisa?”
“’But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Matthew 6:33, Flanders,” said the water sprite.
Flanders understood that she was saying that he needed to get saved right now.
Wise in guile, the Queen of Heaven concurred with Flanders’s thoughts, saying, “Flanders, you need to get saved.”
“Right now,” said Gravel.
“Right now,” said the Collie, nodding her canine head.
“Yes,” said Flanders.
“Or maybe a little later,” said the Queen of Heaven.
“No!” said the water sprite.
“God will wait for him, Miss Watermarsh,” said the she-devil.
“God will wait?” asked Flanders.
“You’ve got the rest of your life to do that, Flanders,” said the devildog.
“Yes,” said Flanders. “Later.”
“Flanders, do not wait!” cried out the water sprite. And she said, “O Queen of Heaven, it is written, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’”
And the resplendent Collie cursed Lisa Watermarsh in contempt and in another defeat from one of her Bible verses.
Yet Flanders uttered a most unkind euphemism at her.
Then she said to him, “Flanders, ‘…: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.’ II Corinthians 6:2.”
Flanders understood that she was saying that later might never come upon him to get saved.
Then the Queen of Heaven spoke and said, “Flanders, I will make sure that either you or your
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water sprite girlfriend die today. I can do this with but one thought of my mind. And I can make it happen instantly.”
“What are you saying?” asked Flanders.
“Talk between yourselves right now and choose which one dies and which one lives,” said the Queen of Heaven.
“I’ll be the one who dies,” said Flanders.
“No, Flanders. Let it be me,” said Gravel. “When I die, I die. But right now, if you die, you go to Hell.”
The beautiful Collie dog looked malevolently at Flanders, and she made the decision for them, and she said, “It shall be the lost man who dies then.”
“Just so she lives,” said Flanders heroically yet naively.
“Then she dies right after,” said the Devil’s wife.
Both man and water sprite were too vexed to speak at such treachery as manifested by this Queen of Heaven.
But the Queen of Heaven went on to say, “I shall spare both of your lives, Flanders, if you but fall down and worship me!”
“Flanders, do not get down on your knees before the devildog!” yelled out the water sprite. Then she said, “O Queen of Heaven, it is written, ‘Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.’”
And the redoubtable Collie dog roared like a dragon, overwhelmed a third time by the Word of God from the book of Matthew.
Then the water sprite said, “Flanders, ‘For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.’ Exodus 34:14.”
And Flanders Nickels understood that she was telling him not to worship this false Collie dog
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idol. And he was okay with this. He was not upset at most fair Gravel. In fact, this time he was grateful for her warning. “Thank you for the Scripture, Lisa,” he said. “I’m sorry for my attitude I had at you with her here between us and all.”
And Flanders and his Queen of Heaven looked each other in the eye. Flanders could now clearly see her diabolical evil despite her celestial beauty. And he was not in love with her anymore.
He could now perceive her wickedness as Satan’s wife. And now he hated this Queen of Heaven.
And he exuded animosity upon this great deceiver; and she, now, enmity upon him.
Just then the sky was suddenly green again. And suddenly the air was still as death. Then a waterspout descended upon the lake. Defeated, the Queen of Heaven fled from Flanders and his Gravel, and she flew out over the lake right into her waterspout, and the waterspout again returned into the clouds. Then the winds ceased. And there was a Godly stillness. And the clear blue sky returned here upon the Mythical World.
“I am ready to get saved now, Gravel,” declared Flanders Arckery Nickels.
“To God be the glory of this moment for me and for Flanders forever and ever,” praised the water sprite Jesus Christ. And this was the prayer in which she led him to salvation: “Dear Father, Who art in Heaven. I am a sinner who sinned. I am sorry for my sin. I know that Thy Son died on the cross two thousand years ago for my sins two thousand years later. Please forgive me and help me to repent. I know that this same Jesus Who died for me also came back to life three days later. Christ lives evermore. I ask Thee now to become my Saviour and give me everlasting life in Heaven. Thank You, O Jesus, for taking me now out of the jaws of the DevilDog and for taking me now in under Thy wings. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.”
With this prayer prayed now, Flanders Arckery Nickels had now become a born-again Christian.
It was the same first day in the Mythical World for Flanders on his exciting and wonderful date
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with his foxy water sprite girl. They were both in front of that lone door in this Mythical World. In her red and white and blue stars and stripes long-sleeved women’s gymnastics leotard, the naturally athletic water sprite was walking on her hands as easily as he could walk on his feet. “Would I qualify for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Flanders?” she asked, upside-down.
“You would win gold medals and silver medals and bronze medals, Gravel!” he said.
“Who were your great American women gymnasts?” she asked.
And he said, “They were Mary Lou Retton and Julianne McNamara and Tracee Talavera and Kathy Johnson and Pam Bileck and Marie Roethslisberger and Michelle Dusserre.”
“And they wore the same women’s gymnastics leotard that I do,” said his truly nimble and agile
water sprite.
“But you look the best in it, Gravel!” he said.
“That makes a lonely Mythical World gal feel good to hear that, Flanders,” said Lisa Watermarsh. She then got down from standing on her hands, and she sat down beside him.
“Gravel,” he said. Then he paused.
“Yes, Flanders?” she asked.
“Would you like to come with me back to America?” he asked her.
“I did once before. I’d like to do that once again, Flanders,” she said.
“No, Gravel. I mean for ever,” he said to her. “What I’m saying is, ‘Would you run away with me back to my world of men and women and children?’”
She looked wistfully at that door all by itself. She said, “I would be happy as your wife in your world. But I cannot leave my world long, or else I will perish. I would die in your world before too long. My Mythical World sustains my life as long as I remain here.” Then her countenance brightened and said, “Maybe you could run away with me here forever, Flanders. Would you be happy as my husband in this world of magical creatures and Jesus’s Presence?”
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He looked wistfully across these firmaments and lands and waters of this idyllic Mythical World, and he said, “No, Gravel. For me to stay here where I can see the Queen of Heaven’s physical presence would ever tempt me both with spiritual infidelity to my new Saviour and with marital infidelity to you as my new wife.”
Hurtful sorrow passed upon her comely features. “I understand, Flanders,” she said. “That Devildog cannot manifest herself physically in your world as she can in my world.”
“What if we were to marry anyway, Gravel?” asked Flanders. “I could live and stay in Earth; and you could live and stay in the Mythical World.”
“I heard of long-distance dating,” said Lisa Watermarsh. “But I never heard of long-distance marrying.”
“Back in my world of sinners, I could stay faithful to you here. And right here, you could be faithful to me in my world of sinners,” said Flanders Nickels.
“That cannot work, Flanders,” cried out Gravel. She looked pensively at their door. So, too, did he.
“That cannot work,” he agreed. “You are right.”
“What can we do, Flanders?” she cried out. “I love you!”
“And I love you, Gravel!” he said. “I will come back.”
With a sigh she did say, “Alas, Flanders. You will not come back.”
“I promise to come back!” he exclaimed. Then he asked, hurt, “Lisa?”
And she explained, “Flanders, once you go back through the door through which you had come,
that door shall become no more.”
“You mean our door will disappear?” he asked.
“And it will never come back,” she said, nodding sadly.
“And we shall never see each other again,” he said.
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“And we shall never see each other again,” said the water sprite. And she began to weep.
Not giving up hope, the new Christian man said, “I may never see you again in this life. But I will see you again in the life to come. I got born again today because of you, and in my life to come I will be in Heaven. You are saved, too, Gravel, and you will be in Heaven forever, too, because of that.
We can wait for each other, and we can think about each other until our time to die comes. Then you and I will be together in Heaven with Jesus for forever after. Let’s think about that and be glad if we can, Lisa. Does that make it hurt a little less? You and I can share Paradise as husband and wife, O Gravel.”
“Nay! Nay! Nay!”cried out Lisa “Gravel” Watermarsh with a broken heart.
“But why, Gravel?” he asked.
“It is written, O good Flanders, ‘Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?’ Ecclesiastes 3:21,” she recited, sobbing.
“Gravel, what is God saying in those words?” asked Flanders.
“It says, Flanders, that Jesus Christ died to save your soul and that He did not die to save my soul. So great salvation is available only to the men and women and children of your Earth. So great salvation is not available to the many wonderful animals of your beautiful Earth. They have no soul.
When they die, they return to the dust of the Earth and are no more. They simply cease to exist.”
“But you are a beautiful living woman, Lisa!” he said.
“No, Flanders. I am a female animal. I am a water sprite. And we water sprites have not a soul as you humans do. When I die, I will return to the dust of this Mythical World. And I will be no more.
And I will simply cease to exist. It is called ‘annihilation.’ And that is the way it must be for me, Flanders,” said the water sprite Gravel.
“Then you will never be in Heaven?” he asked.
“At least I will never be in Hell, like most of your kind, those many who die in their sins.” she
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said most staidly.
“I am so sorry, Gravel,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Promise me, Flanders, that when you go back to your home, that you will never forget me, and that you will never forget the Good Lord Who saved your soul this day,” said the water sprite.
“I promise that I will never forget you and that I will never forget my Saviour not only for the rest of my life on Earth, but also for the rest of eternity in Heaven,” he vowed.
“And I promise to ever remember both you and my wise Maker for the rest of my life here in my Mythical World, Flanders,” she said.
All was silence now. The words that they had to say to each other were done now. And no more words remained to be spoken. They looked one another in their eyes one last time. They turned away from their eyes one last time. And Flanders Nickels put his hand to the latch of this exit door of the Mythical Lands and this entrance door to the world of Earth. And he opened this door, went through it, and closed it behind himself.
He found himself back in his world of tall field grass and sand dunes and open countryside. The door was gone now. He lost the water sprite. But he still had God. And he said, “Thank You, Lord, for my water sprite. Thank You, Lord, for having created Gravel. Thank You, Lord, for your free gift to me of everlasting life. I loved Lisa Watermarsh, but I love You more. Amen!” Having said this, Flanders Nickels then walked back to his new house here in the countryside there on the other side of his many acres.
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