Man’s first son, he tilled the ground, but God had no regard. A fallen face, he killed his brother. He wandered from the Lord. Then fire and darkness, sorrow and pain, torment without end. Thousands of years, our present age, and then a thousand to come. 

Perhaps he hears the gnashing of teeth from others in this tomb. Perhaps he hears the rattle of chains from demons in darkness and gloom. Perhaps he hears one beg for water and one to tell his kin. Perhaps a ray from Abraham shines and shows the gulf between. 

See him now, one of the dead, standing before the Throne. The world, vanished—no sun, no moon. Even the sky is gone. Nothing else but this, this something, suspended by itself. Neither earth nor heaven. Only something between the hells. 

He turns his head, he sees the dead, but each to be judged alone. He sees them now, standing, like him, before the Great White Throne. The fire, the pain, the darkness, the gloom—where did these sorrows go? But what is this—some books and a book—what do these books now show? 

Perhaps he sees his name in one and reads his deeds from time gone by. “Child of Satan, mastered by sin, his brother’s blood still cries.” And then another, a book with names, but his not found therein. He was raised for death, not life, to die forever in sin.

Perhaps his early time on earth puts him in the fore. He is the first to go, and thus, the first to see no more. His time now come, his name not there, the deeds, they seal his fate. The books now shut, the angels come, and cast him in the lake. 

What he knew, he knows again—no rest, no day, no night. Smoke and sulfur, torment always, darkness without sight. The fiery waves, they fill his mouth, gasping for a breath. Now forever, ending never, this, the second death.