A Test Of Faith
By Julian Gilmour

© 2007 and reprinted with the author’s permission.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.” Father John looked up with a start as he had seen no one approach the confessional. “I have told lies on occasion,” said the voice “but I am about to tell you the truth.” Father John noticed an unusual echo in the man’s voice, and that his own hair was standing on end, as if he were charged with static electricity.

“Bless you my child. How long has it been since your last confession?”

“That will take some explaining. I am here to deliver a message to you, and I haven’t much time. Locking is only temporary”

“What do you mean by ‘locking’ my child?” The charged atmosphere, Father John felt, was becoming unnerving, and it was then that he noticed the background buzzing noise beneath the man’s voice. He wondered if perhaps the stranger had a radio with him. “A message from whom and about what?”

“Firstly it might be an idea to explain something to you”

“And what might that be?”

“That I am from your future” The buzzing surrounding the stranger ebbed a little.

“I beg your pardon?” the priest hoped that he had misheard.

“I am from your future, Father John”

“How do you know my name?” he asked.

“You’ve recently been scanned, so I know almost everything about you, Father John” It was only a short time since the priest had last encountered someone delusional in the confessional, and the previous time had resulted in the police being required and him spraining an ankle.

“Don’t worry Father, your ankles will be fine, this time” quipped the Stranger. “Ask me a question about yourself.” Father John wondered what the good Lord had sent him this time, as recently, following a conversation in the homeless shelter, for the first time in all his 32 years, his faith had almost wavered, much like the buzzing he now experienced beside him.

“What is my middle name and how old am I?” He sounded almost bored.

“Your middle names are Patrick and David, and at the beginning of this conversation you were 32 years, 1 month, 22 days, 11 hours and 9 minutes old. On your birthday this year, which fell on a Friday, you listened to Duke Ellington and drank Tyrconnell Whiskey - a little too much, in fact. It helped anaesthetise your sprained ankle, but made you more than a little melancholy, and you lay awake until long into the night thinking about Kasha. Now Father, as I say, my time here is limited, so what else can I tell you to make you believe me? You need to know about the device.”








The charged atmosphere crackled as Father John’s mind raced. The stranger went on to recount how he and his cousin, at nine years of age, had pulled apart a live frog, peeling the skin off its legs, promising to each other never to talk of their cruelty to anyone. He had detailed Father John’s first religious experience at the waterfall when he was five, and recounted, in sickening detail, the first time he had masturbated at boarding school.

His initial mild bewilderment led to an urgent shudder as he wondered how the stranger could have known about the Kasha event, what whiskey he had drunk and he was in denial altogether about boarding school. His mind swam and he felt himself incapable of grasping the implications.








Kasha had been saved, she had told Father John. She had studied quantum mechanics at Warsaw University and then at the Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. She had then come to England for further postgraduate studies.

London student life had led onto cannabis had led onto amphetamines had led onto barbiturates had led onto heroin, both for her and her increasingly abusive partner. After he had overdosed, her life had spiralled further out of control and she found herself on the streets, selling her body whenever possible.

“We must go through much tribulation to enter the kingdom of God” Father John had quoted. “Acts 14:22”.

Although she was too ashamed to go into much detail to Father John, she had found herself attacked and admitted to hospital, where, heavily sedated, she found herself sexually abused by a porter.

A blink of self-awareness at this point was the catalyst for her epiphany; her ‘moment of clarity’ as an alcoholic might call it. She had reached a low that seemed to almost require salvation. The infinity surrounding her approached a crispness and purity worthy of a biblical explanation. She began to cry as the realisation hit her. Her saviour: the beautiful, the infinite, the one simple answer to her, and all mankind’s problems. She had been saved and had the faith to look herself in the mirror once more; the courage to free herself of her dependence. She believed.
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek; and you shall find.”

“No Father John. I mean astrophysics.” she had explained, with her soft Polish accent.

“I beg your pardon?” He had asked, incredulous.

“Astrophysics.” she had repeated and smiled, albeit with a certain guiltiness, given her audience.

“But…but… God…Jesus, The Holy Ghost my child. The almighty. You were raised to be an avowed catholic were you not?”
“I mean no disrespect, Father, but there is no room for a supreme being in my understanding of the cosmos. I was forsaken by your God and saved by my study of astrophysics. I’m going back to post-grad research, I have the funding.” She had rediscovered her passion and went on to be a successful, published scientist. She also did charity work at the homeless centre.

Whilst at that moment, this had done nothing to alter Father John’s own view of creation, it planted a seed in his mind that was to grow. One day, would God gloriously return to judge the living and the dead?

He had already become somewhat familiar with physics: theoretical and otherwise. He knew of Copernicus, Galileo and Einstein and had even read a few of the earliest of the popular cosmology books. ‘A Brief History of Time’ was followed by books on evolutionary theory, Richard Dawkins and such like. “Know your enemy” he had confidently thought at the time.

That was years ago, and he remembered feeling comforted by the fact that many leading physicists of the time considered it plausible that in fact The Creator had either brought about the Big Bang, or indeed made the universe appear as though it had occurred. There was still room for his God in the universe. His faith had remained strong.








Yellow light formed a perfect cross to the left of the confessional - the shadow of the crucifix hanging between them.

“Is this my time? Asked Father John of the stranger, suddenly fearful as the colour drained from his face. “Have I mortally sinned, merely by my search for truth? Am I now to be smitten?” He swallowed as he conjured up an idea of the Angel of Death.

Initially he heard nothing above the humming.

“You won’t be dying today Father, or indeed any time soon.” The stranger said warmly, it was clear he understood Father John’s inner turmoil. “In fact,” he leaned closer to the lattice separating them “you are going to be alive and mortal for seventy more years, eleven months two days and one hour, give or take thirty or forty minutes.”

Father John squinted and tried to get a better look at the stranger, suddenly aware that he had unconsciously recoiled to the far side of the confessional. The stranger was bathed in a glow which faltered in time with the background noise. At times, he almost seemed to flicker.

“What trickery is this?” demanded the priest, rising as his confusion turned to frustration.

“Calm yourself, I mean you no harm and I am here to explain something of no small significance to you. Although in many ways it will pose as many questions as it answers.” Father John recalled the stranger’s unnatural knowledge of his life, and tried to adopt a mood of acceptance. It was not easy.

“Seventy years you say, my friend.” ‘My child’ no longer seemed applicable.

“Eleven months two days and one hour. The general trend for longevity continues” he said matter-of-factly. It was all still happening too quickly for Father John and he found himself sweating, despite the usual damp coldness of the confessional. His heart was racing. “I must press on” continued the stranger “as I said, my time is limited, and I need to explain the device to you”

Father John’s inner turmoil turned to a kind of helpless resignation. “That’s better,” said the stranger, “and by the way my name is Peter”. It was at this point, that Father John noticed that the humming he could hear rose in tone to become almost choral in nature, and in fact the honeyed light that bathed him seemed to be emitted from an area just above Peter’s head.

“No doubt here direct from before the Pearly Gates themselves, to inform me whether I am to be allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven for all eternity”

“Yes and no.”

The priest decided that his sarcasm was misplaced given the circumstances. “I must be brief, but I shall explain a little about my past and your future…” Father John uncrossed his arms.

“A huge organisation was about to achieve an unprecedented amount of influence, on a global scale. Very serious accusations were made about an extremely important woman within this organisation. The delicate balance of power, wealth and information should rest with the righteous. We needed to confirm whether these terrible crimes had been committed by one destined to have such authority.

“In order for the potential transgressions to be investigated, a method was devised to view certain past events, to know for sure whether these accusations were true - whether this autocrat had indeed committed the crimes, or not.

“A device was built. You understand already, do you not, about light speed and a little of relativity?”

“Ye-Yes.” The priest, now a little calmer, was truly intrigued by how the conversation was turning.

“I shall talk in terms of the knowledge of your time so as not to confuse matters. When you look at the sun, the image perceived is around eight minutes old, as the photons, the particles that make up the light, take eight minutes to arrive at the earth. If the sun suddenly exploded, it would be eight minutes before you saw anything from the earth. Agreed?”

“Yes.”

“In fact, whenever you look at anything you are looking at it with some delay, as the photons have taken time to reach your eyes. This delay is incredibly small when you look across the room, but may be many years as you look at distant stars.” At this point Father John hoped that the explanation was not going to stray far beyond that which he already understood of theoretical physics, the limits of which had just been reached: it takes light a year to travel a light year.

“Now, some of the photons travelling out of this confessional away from you, could be seen by an observer outside in the aisle.”

“But there is no one there to see.”

“Not immediately, but some of those photons which do not get absorbed on their journey will travel through the open door, outside, and some of those will travel into the sky.”

“Sorry?” said the priest.

“As an example, imagine that you went to the church door right now, turned and walked back towards this confessional. If someone were a hundred kilometres away in a hot air balloon, with an infinitely powerful telescope, they could catch sight of you as you walked, and in fact see a little of you through the grille, once you had returned.”

“I’m with you so far” said Father John after a pause for thought.

“…and it would take a tiny amount of time for this information to get to the observer.”

“Yes.”

“If there was no observer there to catch the photons in the telescope, then the photons would continue on their journey, up into the sky and out into space.

“To be lost forever”

“Yes and no.” Father John couldn’t help but frown. “What do you know of black holes?”

“I have read that they are believed to be collapsed stars and sources of immense gravity which suck everything around into themselves.” Peter smiled at the apparent naivety of this description.

“And you understand why they are black?”

“Because their gravity is so great that light actually gets sucked into them and cannot escape, so we cannot see the stars behind them.” Father John surprised himself with his recollection.

“Correct, but they also bend the light, which would otherwise continue past them in a straight line, thus producing a sort of lensing effect. So, streams of photons - streams of visual information - will not all travel into infinity in a straight line. There can be reflection and bends in their trajectory, a sort of pinball effect, if you like.”

“OK…. I think.”

“If you were in a large room with ten people, all with mirrors and lenses, they could be set up so that you could look at yourself in a mirror, the reflected image having travelled between all ten of them. The message will have travelled much further, and therefore taken much longer, than just the distance between you and the final mirror.”

“OK.” Father John shuffled uncomfortably, endeavouring to maintain his concentration.

“Photons from every lit event are sent out into the universe. Therefore, if we had an infinite capacity to trace photons over immense distances, and an infinite capacity to then capture and ‘read’ them, we could effectively look into the past, by putting the surviving streams of photons from certain events back together, like a jigsaw. It would be far from a perfect image, as the vast majority of photons would be lost and unreadable, but it could be done and the resulting visual message could then be enhanced.”

“So from far off in space, you could look into the past of someone to see if they had committed a crime or not.”

“Exactly.”

“And such a machine now exists in your time?”

“Yes.”

“To ascertain whether this VIP has committed this crime?”

“The project was soon overtaken by a further use for the device. There were events that happened a long time ago, that are of huge significance to some, although too much faith is required for many.”

“What are you getting at?”

“The circumstances surrounding the birth, the life and death of one Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Oh my God” gulped Father John, turning pale again.

“That remains to be seen.” said Peter.

“You say that this device exists already?”

“It has done for two years.”

“So what… what were the… findings?” Father John realised that his whole body was shaking. The noise from beside him became louder and seemed to resemble a stereotypical heavenly choir. Peter was bathed in a golden light that emanated from above his head. “The calculations and data enhancement have taken two years. We find out tonight, my time.”

“So you don’t yet know.”

“I’m afraid not.” There was a long pause before Father John spoke.

“I always thought we could find evidence of God everywhere if we looked closely enough, now it seems we have to look from far enough away.”

“Precisely.”

“How did you come to be here, Peter?” He asked after a long pause.

“To explain that would take far too long, given your current understanding of physics.”

“Why me, why now?”

“You’re not the only one, and it happened at this point in your life-time, when we last discussed it. Again, I haven’t enough time for a detailed explanation.

“When does all this happen? When will we know the results?”

“We will know in seventy years, eleven months two days and one hour, your time.” It took a moment before the significance of this length of time struck Father John.

“Yes…. You are due to die at the same time that we get the first readings from ‘The Pearly Gates’ as the device has become known.

“You have already suffered catastrophic multiple organ failure and not even our medicine can save you. You are on your deathbed and the last rites have been performed. When I left, you had around 20 minutes to live. And twenty minutes before we… know.”

Father John slowly shook his head and sank back in his seat.

“My own personal judgement day.”

“We all find out at the same time you do… I look forward to passing time with you again, Father John” said Peter, and vanished, closely followed by the buzzing sound, and finally the ring of light above where his head had been.