You will be your own spiritual assessor.

According to Orthodox teachings, the resurrection of the body means that you will all rise again with the same bodies on the Day of Judgement. The Church, which presents this explanation teaches also that all men will be judged twice, namely at death as well as on the last day. You now know exactly what to expect! I have shown you how, in literal fact, resurrection does not take place, so the remainder of the sentence is void. It is immaterial whether the same body or another body is used if there be no rising at all.

Once again, we have our old friend, the Day of Judgement. It seems to be an odd sort of judicature, which includes within its provisions that a person shall be judged twice upon the same count and one is at a loss to know how this is come about. 

We are none of us perfect; we have all at some time slipped back a little upon the path of spiritual rectitude.

Are our peccancies to be held against us twice then? Shall we be judged twice, for the same spiritual indiscretion? That does not suggest a really sound order of things nor a just one. Or is it that the final judgement upon the last day—whenever that is to be—is for those who have sinned since the judgement was pronounced at their dissolution?

By the simple estimate of the colossal number of people who have lived from the dawn of time, the heavenly tribunal will have a gigantic task before it, which presumably will last for a countless number of years if each and every soul is to have his case comprehensively dealt with and with full justice accorded to him.

Take no heed, my friends, of these woeful forebodings of the Church. You will never be submitted to any fearful judgement at any time either on the day of your passing or at any future date. 

You will be your own spiritual assessor. The whole matter is left entirely in your own hands.

You will investigate your earthly life's motives, thoughts and deeds. You will find yourself, after your dissolution, in that place of the spirit world, wherein you will be in positive attunement with your surroundings. 

Worry not upon the Church's thunderings in the name of God. 

The Church has no mandate, no right or authority to speak in His name. It is, therefore, in this respect, as in a multitude of others, a rank impostor, a usurper of divine authority and power.

Trouble not your minds with the Church's vain and boastful threats of spiritual disaster because you fail to accept with credulity its foolish claims. Listen not to its shocking distortions of the nature of the Father of us all. There does not exist such a God as that God whom Orthodoxy has revealed to the whole earth world. 

There is no resemblance between the God of orthodoxy and the Father of the universe. They are leagues apart.

The Father is man's greatest and truest friend, not his dreadful judge. He is not a merciful God, for he has no mercy to give. Mercy only exists between men upon earth. He has no justice to give. That is only between man and man. He has no pardon to give. For that too is only as between man and man. He has no great flaming, torturing hell, in which to cast poor souls, for small sins committed. That is a hideous invention of the Church. He has formulated no petty rules and commandments, the breaking of which will inevitably bring down His wrath upon you. They are the inventions of Orthodoxy and its learned doctors. 

He has no wrath ever. That is the invention of the same stupid churchmen.

What then, you will naturally ask, has God to give? This, my friends, has He to give—His eternal affection for you, which is expressed in His divine will that you will attain the greatest happiness in the whole world. 

He would wish that you could be filled with that happiness during your earthly journey.

But He knows that that is not always possible. So there exists a gigantic spirit world, which possesses all the possibilities and provides all the opportunities, for gaining supreme and lasting happiness. That superb prospect is open to every single soul without exception who has been born upon earth. There is no man on earth who can alter that superlative, proud dispensation either by canon law, ecclesiastical edict or pontifical maledictions; nor by the invocation of a thousand creeds, the opinions of all the doctors of the Church, past and present, nor pulpit fulminations of whatever degree of vehemence.

The laws of the spirit world are paramount, standing high above trivial little commandments of any arrogant ecclesiastical establishment. 

There is no room for the small-minded, irritating regulations, which so constantly beset the members of most religious denominations. 

Cast fear from your minds, my friends.

Always remember—never cease to remember—that entrance to the spirit world is not conditional upon any brand of faith. It is conditional only upon the operation of a natural process. That process is known universally as death. But that death is of the physical body only; it does not and cannot affect or influence the gift of life of the real person, which is you. 

You, my dear friends, live on and on.

Remember always another sublime and eternal truth—

All the spirit realms are open to the whole race of humanity and that faith or religious creeds can have no say in the matter. The spirit world is immeasurably greater than all the religions and all the creeds rolled into one.

Keep in mind that the right of entry is yours to any of the spirit realms even unto the very highest, provided you earn for yourself that right, which none can deny you by your life upon earth and here in the spirit world after you have left your physical body forever. 

There is no religious society or denomination, which can guarantee for you, by its ministrations and obedience to its doctrines and commandments, that you will go straight to heaven when you die. What is most important, it cannot guarantee that you will go to hell, for all eternity, because you have disobeyed the same society's ordinances.

In a word, the Church has no authority from the spirit world, for all that it perpetrates in the name of the Father. The Churches through the ages have ever frightened their believers with the savage ogre of hell and damnation and Judgement Day.

—Spirit Robert Hugh Benson

Revisited Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation—NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)