They Shall Inherit

And so, it came to pass that the old world died away. Jesus the Messiah had returned and there were terrible dark days.  The people were awed, and sought shelter. When the horsemen had run their course, when the wicked one had been defeated, the righteous survivors stood before their saviour to praise him, and they were greatly surprised. For, they were all women.

“My daughters! My bride!” cried out the Bridegroom, who had been foretold. “Welcome to eternity on the new earth!” The women were overcome with emotion. They looked in wonder, and in love, at their saviour, the king of kings…. King of kings?  King of queens?

“But my Lord,” said one, “where are all the men?”

“Child, we don’t need them anymore! They merely represented me in my absence. After the fall, your fall, you needed to learn submission, to be humble. The men went a bit overboard with the lesson, but never mind, they are gone now, and cannot hurt you anymore.” He gazed lovingly at their bewildered faces, and saw that they lacked understanding. “The men were only ever meant as a stop gap. I knew, even as I created the first man, that I intended to create woman with ambition, creative bounty, resilience and the wherewithal to do great things. The men were only there to refine you, to show you the dangers of arrogance and pompousness and overreaching; to show you how strong you really are. It was with great sadness I cast you out of the garden; with a kind of being I knew would torment, enslave, and subjugate you.” He paused a moment, letting them soak all this in. “I left you a message in your biology. Think about it, physically speaking, man was little more than an invasive pest, a snake in the garden. Loutish, he was a poor stand-in, but a promise of better things to come. Also, I made them blind to your true potential, else they would have been truely afraid of the end.” He paused again, regarding his greatest creation. “Don't you recall, 'the first shall be last and the last shall be first?' You were the last I created. Isn’t it obvious?”

Sexual desire ceased to exist. It had only ever existed as a punishment to bind the women to their erstwhile masters (Genesis 3:16). Thusly unfettered, the women had but each other to care for.  No new children needed to be born in the new heaven, God had selected all those he’d deemed worthy. He healed their prolapsed uteri, and all were and fully continent. There were no more cancers. Those whose spirits had been broken by abuse were made whole again. Some missed the men they had loved, at first. Over time they came to realise how much better society functioned in the absence of the male influence. They began appreciating each other and themselves without cosmetics or painful treatments.  They were never warned that they better not gain weight or 'let themselves go.' Never told of their duty to perform certain acts. There were no assaults, no harassments, no marital conflicts. None feared the arrival of husband or father. No one explained mundane tasks to them, unless an explanation was kindly requested. They were not castigated for their ambitions, nor told their creativity was weird or wanting.

They cheered each other on and championed causes that were dear to their hearts (which were fun and exciting, not the dark and heavy ones born of the greed and corruption of the old world). If ever they felt even slightly unfulfilled, they needed only to sit in the presence of the Lord and their hearts were made glad. And he gave them ample opportunity, for he loved them as the pinnacle of his creation that they had always been meant to be. They had all of creation to play and work in, and they were contented. All had lived the hell of men and did not wish to arouse God’s wrath again.

This was the new earth, the world of God’s blessing for his most treasured creation. And it wasn’t just good… It was perfect.

Footnote: this story is intended as a satire. The author does in fact, love and respect many men, and does not wish to see them left out of the hereafter.