Journey From Heaven

by Joe Derkacht

  #

  Brother Ruben, whom Zell had mentioned, worked on the receiving dock for a large, upscale furniture store in a famous Portland shopping mall when I first met him. African American, with silver hair and mustache, he was short but wiry from years of physical labor and, perhaps for the same reason, seemingly indefatigable. He was also the most irrepressibly jovial person I’d ever met, though behind those dancing eyes one sensed something much deeper than mirth. He expertly scanned my invoice and let out a low whistle, before shaking my hand that very first time.

  “Nice meeting you,” he said. “I hear you’re the artiste?”

  I nodded, overlooking his mistake. Artisan would have been more accurate, or master craftsman. As usual, I didn’t want to open my mouth and instantly lose any respect a person might have for me because of my wretched stutter.

  “John Raventhorst?”

  When I nodded in acknowledgment, he squinted briefly at me—searching my face for signs of hostility?

  “I’m Ruben Howard,” he said, evidently satisfied that my nervous smile wasn’t an attempt to conceal a racist streak. Folding the invoice, he shoved it into his shirt pocket. “We’ll just wheel this baby upstairs to the sales floor, uncrate it and have the manager sign for it, make sure there’s no damage or nothin’.”

  Anxious to see my clock handled properly, I followed him onto the service elevator.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re a vendor, Mr. Raventhorst. You’re supposed to go to the office first and sign in. They don’t like people just coming in and riding my elevator—something to do with liability, you know.”

  I frowned, not budging from beside him.

  He looked strangely at me. I knew I couldn’t just say nothing.

  “Y-Y-You sure, M-M-Mister H-H-Howard?” I asked, unable to meet his gaze.

  He cracked a smile. I couldn’t help but smile in return.

  “Oh gosh, it’s Ruben, not Mister Howard. We’ll just forget about the rules this time.” He pulled down on the freight elevator cage before punching the floor number. All the way up and until we reached the correct department, he provided a running commentary of the store’s history and what its prospects were up to that very month.

  “Here’s the package you were asking about, Mr. George—the clock, I mean,” he said, halting beside a desk.

  The tall thin man sitting at the desk acknowledged Ruben and me with a harried nod and kept his ear glued to the phone, while he wrote on a notepad. The warm, unusually muggy day, unaffected by the store’s air conditioner, had not yet managed to force him to loosen his professorial bowtie or to remove his dark brown suit jacket.

  “This is John Raventhorst, the artiste,” he announced, speaking for Mr. George’s (or was George actually his first name?) presumably free ear. Looking at me, he said, “I guess we’ll just open it up right here.”

  Squinting through oversized tortoiseshell glasses, George shook his head emphatically and pointed to a narrow open space between a set of tall armoires.

  Ruben grinned at his boss. “Like I said, we’ll open her up over there.”

  Instead of wheeling the box to the appointed space, he took it to a different wall fifteen feet away, where oil paintings were on display.

  “Don’t worry. After you’ve gone I’ll explain to him why that would never work. He yells a lot but always comes around to the right decision, sooner or later.”

  We attacked the glue and tape holding the box together. It was nearly ten minutes before the high impact cardboard and my careful packing were fully stripped away.

  Ruben let out another of his low whistles. “Bless God,” he said. “That is beautiful. Do you come up with your own designs?”

  I nodded. He walked around my creation, admiring the stained-glass art crowning the tall case, the handsome clock face below, the glossy cherry wood body, and the ebonized door frame and glazing through which the pendulum’s disk glowed with a mother-of-pearl mosaic.

  Looking thoughtful, he traced the stained-glass sailboat with his index finger.

  “We’ll let George wind it up and start the pendulum,” Ruben commented. “It’ll go great with these paintings around it—should sell a bunch of them.”

  I doubted I would ever see a “bunch” of them sell, but Ruben knew what he was talking about when it came to displays. Even a massive Grandfather clock in the style of London’s Big Ben would have been lost among those armoires.

  He pulled my invoice from his pocket and scribbled his initials on it before giving me a copy.

  “You go ahead now, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Y-You s-s-sure?”

  He grinned at me, and explained, “I got a brother just like you. These people treat him like dirt, so I’ll tell everybody you were havin’ trouble with your voice—that ain’t no lie, is it?”

  I escaped gladly, nodding at George as I passed his desk, and fingered my throat in feigned difficulty more than was perhaps honest or necessary. Halfway down the escalator, I heard a voice scream out Ruben’s name. I shot a prayer heavenward for him to quickly smooth over the problem, that he would be able to explain the placement of my clock with the paintings and how the arrival of my other clocks would demand a grouping of their own. In the years to come, even as more and more of my Grandfather clocks sold, I never did have to speak with anyone else in the store; management and buyers looked upon me as an eccentric and never questioned my refusal to deal with anyone other than Ruben.

  He is still the one person I deal with when I visit my favorite mall. Besides the difference in location, though, here Ruben is a Managing Director of a showcase that stretches for miles in every direction and would make anything similar of old earth look like a collection of dirt hovels. In my view, Ruben is one of many examples of “the last shall be first,” of those who had simply but nobly occupied humble positions in obedience to the Heavenly will in their mortal lives. As if to prove it, among his staff are former mayors and governors—believers who had not fulfilled their calling on earth nearly as faithfully as Ruben.

  An angel pointed Ruben out to me in the midst of a throng. Another angel, who stood in attendance upon him, directed his attention to me. Seconds later, Ruben rushed to me.

  “Steward John,” he said, extending a hand in greeting and smiling the same old jovial smile I’d known on earth, though now it was more unfettered and light-filled and ingenuous than ever. We embraced for a moment, and then he stared closely at me.

  “Over 10,000 years old,” he said, “and you still don’t look a day over 9,000!”

  I have to admit I laughed. I shouldn’t have but I did.

  “Same old joke and same old Ruben,” I said.

  “Next year it’ll be 9,001 years.”

  “All right, all right, you can use that one as long as you like, if we can dispense with the titles.”

  He pulled at an ear lobe, a mannerism carried over from the former life, and smiled, conveying the same old sense of camaraderie. We began to walk together. Around us some of his aides, including a coterie of angels, kept a respectful distance and for the meantime intercepted anyone who would disturb our conversation.

  “I heard you were back home,” he said.

  “And I’d be stopping by?”

  “An easy call,” he said. “You’re gone so much, it’s natural you’d stop by.”

  Once more, the heavenly grapevine amazed me. Before yesterday, I myself hadn’t known I would be in the city.

  “Actually, this time a messenger was sent,” he told me. “I understand you’re to have an audience with the King?”

  I nodded yes.

  “You’ll want something special.”

  I nodded my answer again, hoping he would have the appropriate thing to suggest. Countless available items were under his care.

  “What about one of your old Grandfather clocks?”

  “You have one here?” I asked in astonishment. “I haven’t brought you o
ne in—

  “In maybe those 9,000 years you don’t look older than,” he cracked. “You still work in the Sombrero Galaxy, right?” He asked, pulling at my arm and directing me into a building through a Mission-style archway constructed of diamond. Into the distance, stretching for hundreds of yards, were display platforms, each of them showcasing a single object of great beauty. Here were treasures brought into the city by the Redeemed from earth’s four corners and also from distant planets, the glory of Kings and Queens, as it were, and of the universe’s finest artisans and artists.

  Directly in front of me, situated prominently in the aisle, so that anyone entering the building must walk around it to reach the rest of the store, stood the most beautiful Grandfather clock I’d ever seen. My jaw dropped in surprise at the glory and love emanating from it as if it were a living thing. Whoever designed and crafted it had done so for the glory of God, something the Spirit Himself was revealing even as we looked upon it in admiration.

  Applause erupted all around me. Shocked, I finally remembered that I was the designer and builder of this clock. In the old life, I would have felt like turning and hurrying off like an embarrassed schoolgirl. Here I fell prostrate, feeling vastly humbled to think that the Creator of the universe, the One who stooped to the cross, continued to Himself honor those He loves in just the manner He now honored me. Tears rushing down my cheeks, I raised my hands in praise. Without seeing it, I felt those around me falling like a wave of the sea.

  I don’t know how long our worship lasted, nor was I in a hurry to see it end. I do know we continued shouting and crying and singing of the Invisible One who had revealed Himself to Adam’s race until a hand touched my shoulder and lifted me to my feet.

  I looked into the face of Jesus. Sometimes He appears as the Ancient of Days, the white-haired Patriarch with blazing eyes seen in Ezekiel and in Revelation; sometimes as the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world; sometimes as Elder brother, although like the rest of us, transfigured as He was upon the Mount long ago. To me, at least, it seemed His eyes were especially tender. If I’d known at that moment what was to come, I wonder if I might have interpreted it as pity or sympathy?

  “It is time now, little brother,” He said, His intent clear. Before I could think to ask how my Grandfather clock would be transported, Jesus took me by the elbow and glanced toward Ruben and several of his assistants. Together, we were instantly whisked from treasure room to throne room without the use of portal or the assistance of angels.

  The Grandfather clock appeared beside me. Ruben and his assistants bowed to Jesus and withdrew into a surrounding throng of onlookers, out of sight yet near enough for me to sense their presence. Zell was in attendance, too, waving to catch my eye, before she was screened from sight by men and women from the Holy Names Branch, each of them dressed gloriously and adorned in the power of those who serve God most intimately in the holiest of precincts. Here, in the throne room, more than anywhere else, shines most brilliantly the imprimatur upon them of Heavenly Father, the Name of the New Jerusalem, and the Mysterious Name given Jesus. No doubt, as one of the Redeemed, the names also shine brightest upon me in this place, but not to the same degree as those of the Holy Names Branch.

  As I scanned the multitude, Sam Draper’s eyes met mine, and we smiled in mutual recognition. Directly behind him I beheld Revelation’s twenty-four elders, each adorned in the regalia of those who have served God from time immemorial. Parted from a conference among themselves, they seemed to eye me with unusual interest. My attention would have lingered on them, except for the four living creatures towering gloriously over them, and the infinitely magnetic One installed upon the throne.

  Leaving my side, Jesus strode forward. The exact moment of transformation from Elder Brother to Ancient of Days, with terrible power blazing like the sun’s corona from His body, was undetectable to the eye. He sat beside His Father in the throne, One marked by human vestiges, while One bore manlike form but shone like living gems clothed in an emerald rainbow.

  “He is here to answer your summons, Father, and beside him is his gift,” Jesus said.

  Their attention turned appreciatively to the Grandfather clock I’d fashioned so long ago, and then back to me. I fell to my knees like all those around me, from men to angels to twenty-four elders to the four living creatures. As always, our praises were spontaneous, with songs quickly breaking out in mighty anthems. Musical instruments of every description and variety appeared. As usual, I had no idea how long our worship and praise lasted. But as is sometimes the case even in Heaven, it seemed to last all too briefly. When one can sing any note one wishes, when one can play any instrument with skill and virtuosity, when gratitude and rejoicing meet in music and song, all of eternity does not seem long enough or deep enough to praise infinite God and Savior. Still, as always, the time came when we must put away our instruments.

  Raising my eyes, I saw Yahweh the eternal self-existent one lean forward to welcome and enfold me in His wings. Surrounded as I might be, by numerous angels and men, I was shut up with Him and Him alone. On old earth I seldom felt closer than a few hundred million light years to God. In the heavenly life it is impossible, by contrast, to feel far from God. Here, in His most directly manifest presence, I knew complete oneness with both Him and the universe itself—family and place—neither of which I’d felt more than a trace before my physical death. In those timeless moments, beheld by those eyes and their transparent acceptance, I felt I was freefalling into an infinite chasm of love and joy.

  Do you know why I have summoned you here?

  His words had not been spoken aloud. Instead, they entered my spirit directly from His Spirit.

  I shook my head. No, Lord. I didn’t need to explain the summons was a mystery to me.

  You are a Whitestone Holder, are you not, Steward John Raventhorst?

  From within the recesses of my robes, I pulled out the stone given me at the Judgment Seat of Christ before my entry into the Heavenly City long millennia ago. In the prophetic book written by the Beloved Apostle, he had spoken of Pergamum’s Overcomers, those who were to receive the white stone as their reward. By this stone, I first knew that none of us would ever know everything, for within the stone was written the new name given me by the Father, a secret name known solely by Him, the name that revealed to me and none other who I truly was—and was meant to be—in the deepest recesses of my being.

  Fatter than a jumbo hen’s egg, it glowed whiter than the whitest diamond ever imagined on old earth. If any of the old jewelers had ever seen a stone like it, they would have recognized at once that because of its perfection it could not possibly come from earth; and then they would have died from the ecstasy of beholding it. Because of my office as Whitestone Holder, Pergamum Branch, I am freer than those of the other branches to perform my work throughout the universe. Because of this office, I am also freely provided the hidden manna so necessary to my work. To one and all, this stone is known as the Stone of Yes, whether of my own Pergamum Branch or the Philadelphia, Thyatira, Sardis, Ephesus, Smyrna or Laodicea branches.

  Here, in Jerusalem’s throne room, capital of the universe, where El Elyon, God Most High, happily deigns to manifest His Royal Person and His Sovereign Rule, the Stone of Yes absorbed and effused the throne’s emerald light. While alive on old earth, the stone of rejection had seemed my lot, my dearest hopes, dreams, and aspirations blackballed as a matter of course. But here, in this place, I hold the white stone, the Stone of Yes, symbol and key for those whose desires are true and holy, forever purified since standing before the Judgment Seat of Christ. On earth, I’d read that all the promises of God were yes and yes in Christ Jesus. In heaven, where all the promises of God had been reserved incorruptible for me, the Stone of Yes opened the gates to every door I wished, every storehouse, every world.

  Why was He asking me, even rhetorically, if I held the Office of Whitestone Holder? Hadn’t He Himself predestin
ed me to it, ordained me for it, rewarded me with it, empowered me in it?

  To my left, I was aware of the steady, reassuring gaze of Jesus, His eyes beholding me like twin suns. Still, I was offered no insight. Looking up from the Stone of Yes, I couldn’t find my voice to answer. Speaking in that moment would have seemed like a profanation of that holiest of holy places, infinitely worse than the screech of chalk on a chalkboard.

  You who once could not speak are free to speak here.

  In a flash, I saw something long forgotten. In the old life, I had lost my tongue to cancer a year or so before my passing. If I wanted to speak, in those days, it had to be by the few words I learned in sign language. As poorly as I’d spoken before then, for awhile, before starting on sign language, I’d felt entirely cut off from the rest of the world, as cut off as my tongue. His next few words instantly erased those memories.

  I wanted you to speak to me then, and I still do. Feeling enfolded yet more deeply in His presence and love, I said, “Yes, Lord.” No words I’d ever spoken up until then had ever sounded more crystalline pure, more fitting, more right. How could I have ever said, in the old life or the new, anything but yes to Him? I glanced again at the Stone of Yes, and knew it was what He had always wanted for His children.

  Because you are a Whitestone Holder, He said, you shall see a prayer answered, a desire fulfilled, a hope realized that was frustrated while you were yet on earth. This same shall be as perfect to you as the Stone of Yes and as burnished and polished as one of your own creations, Clock Maker. This is why you were summoned here.

  Suddenly released from His enfolding wings, I felt momentarily staggered at the very existence of the throne room and all those in attendance. Was there really anything or anyone outside of Him and Jesus and myself? The four living creatures, turning the full attention of their countless, unblinking eyes in my direction, steadied me. From the twenty-four elders came the sound of hushed conversation; from the angels the musical rustle of countless wings; and from the Redeemed an excited buzz.

  I stood speechless, as speechless as ever on old earth. The Most High had said something to me about an unanswered prayer—an unfulfilled desire—an unrealized hope—none of which were possible in Heaven. The implications left me slack-jawed—and feeling as unenlightened as when I had entered the throne room.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. The words were perhaps the quietest I’d ever spoken. If we’d been a roomful of people on old earth, everyone would have leaned forward, straining to hear.

  To see the fulfillment of my promise, He answered, you will return to old earth.

  I think I stumbled backward a foot or two. Someone’s hand gripped my shoulder. I heard astonished gasps all around me. Old earth? Old earth had been destroyed in the fires of judgment and renewal all those millennia ago!

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  You are Whitestone Holder, He said, pointedly leaving unspoken the words—I am Yahweh.

  All things are possible with God. Most certainly. But my understanding had always been that the past was past and no longer accessible, the way forever sealed. It had never before occurred to me that it could be revisited, except in memory or through one of the books in Heaven’s libraries. Besides, wouldn’t my visiting the past somehow affect the future—my present? Surely, no one could be allowed to tamper with eternal destinies?

  Do not fear. All things shall be as I have preordained.

  Until His pronouncement, I had not realized I was experiencing a pang of fear, something that just does not exist in Heaven. Reverential fear, absolutely, but not a genuine, craven fear of things to come. Did I have reason to fear now, when it was things which had been, not things to come, I was to face?

  What was this terrible fixed gulf that yawned between us? I felt closer to Him on Fair Ranar, in a galaxy 50,000,000 light years away, than I did now in the great throne room. It should not have been possible, yet was. Could the answer to any prayer or desire be worth this?

  Vaguely, I began to remember those things we simply do not remember any more, those things wiped from memory just like our tears of sorrow and grief. Was I really to return to old earth and the old life? From the twenty-four elders, those privy to the councils of God from before the creation of the old universe, I sensed eager anticipation. As for everyone else, men or angels, astonishment seemed to reign. Like me, it was evident they had never heard it might be possible for a man to be sent back in time to the old life!

  In the meanwhile, the reassuring hand was still on my shoulder. Now, as I bowed deeply before leaving the throne room, that same hand dropped to mine, gripped me tightly. For an instant, I looked with astonishment into Leanhar’s eyes, not realizing it was he who had steadied me at the first shock of surprise. His presence meant God had anticipated my reaction; without a summons freeing him of his duties on Ranar, he would never have left his post.

  A rushing, mighty wind drove unexpectedly at us, lifting us like autumn leaves caught in an updraft. With Leanhar’s wings filling like great sails, we were blown from the throne room and palace of the Great King, the motive force more aptly, if prosaically, described as the Holy Wind, as the name implies, than as Spirit.

  Except for the timely handclasp, Leanhar and I would have been driven apart like straws in the teeth of a hurricane. Instead, we were carried aloft as one, our flight dictated neither by my will nor the consummate skills of one who’d flown from the day of his creation; together we tumbled uncontrollably through the sky. On earth I remembered seeing Auntie Em’s cottage fly with more grace and precision than we did in the violence of that moment.

  Jerusalem’s sharp spires, reaching above the city’s equally golden domes, flashed like a forest of unsheathed swords and seemed to rush upwards at us from every one of its hundreds of levels. Though we were both rendered speechless by sheer exhilaration, I don’t think Leanhar, in spite of his vaster experience at flight, was any less disoriented by the experience than I.

  Without warning, the wind yielded and we began our meteoric fall. Miles below, a sylvan park appeared to blink into existence. I know I blinked, for one moment it had not been there and in the next it simply was, a park like innumerable others found in the city.

  We should have fallen for at least several minutes, should have been able to reorient ourselves, to easily stabilize our flight. Instead, we broke through the upper canopy of the trees far sooner than possible. Leanhar’s wings beat mightily once or twice, then dropped uncertainly as we landed, deposited upon soft turf by God’s sure hand, rather than by the angelic will.

  Leanhar glanced around in surprise as much as I did. The place should have been familiar to one of us but was nevertheless foreign to both of us. Its park-like setting was similar to any number of places in the heavenly sphere, Jerusalem included, but here all similarities ceased. The differences, which had not been immediately apparent from the air, soon made us both wonder if we had been transported to some other dimension. The sky over our heads, for one, was lower than any I had ever seen before, whether in the city’s first level, near the twelve foundations, or those reaching into the heights reserved for the loftiest of the King’s servants. For another, the incredible distances familiar in Jerusalem (where perspective is godlike—or at least angelic—rather than merely human) seemed inverted, seemed impossibly close, like I remembered some densely wooded lot from my earthly childhood. Wherever my gaze fell, any possible avenue of escape through the trees was clogged with salal or fern or huckleberry or Scotch broom or rhododendron. As a child, I would have come to this sort of place with my machete and soon cleared out a likely path to ease further exploration.

  Yet, as we began to walk, the brush parted willingly for us, moving aside as though through native sentience or as if by a strong, unseen hand, even as it would in Jerusalem for anyone stamped with the King’s seal. Shortly afterwards, led by the Spirit, we came to an empty space in the midst of the trees w
ith an expanse of champagne-colored grass.

  An eagle-faced angel with gloriously wild, feathery purple hair tipped with bright gold awaited us. In contrast to Leanhar, whose spirit body shines like transparent, yellow gold, this angel shone like lustrously black obsidian. I wondered how Leanhar and I could have approached the clearing without seeing him; like those who guard the City’s gates, his height challenged even the trees around us. A great sword, its broad blade a scabbardless, living tongue of fire, was on his hip. From the sword alone we would have recognized him as one of those fierce ones akin to the cherubim, who guard many entryways throughout the universes. Without a word, he knelt on one knee and unfurled two of his six mighty wings, at the same time extending a long arm in a gesture of welcome.

  I must have hesitated longer than he thought proper. His large eyes flashed like star sapphires, and from the arches of his wings eyes of regal emerald and topaz searched me intently.

  “The holder of the white stone is welcome to enter here,” he said, his voice rumbling deeply. “I have been waiting for you, fellow servant of the Lamb.”

  Leanhar and I both nodded our heads in acknowledgment. From my robes I pulled my white stone and let it lie in my open palm, where it pulsated with rainbow hues. Granted the guardian’s reassuring nod, I replaced the stone and we set foot upon the grass.

  Told in the throne room that I was to journey back through time into the old life, and now witnessing the presence of a gate guardian, I expected a gateway, a portal similar to those used in journeys throughout the universe. Instead, I saw a series of natural pools strung down the length of the clearing. None of them was larger than three or four feet across. Upon closer examination, some of them proved to be shallow, mere inches deep, like depressions in a lawn momentarily brimming with rainwater. A couple of shallower ones were little more than mud slicks awaiting re-colonization by the surrounding grass.

  Where was I to find the gateway?

  Taken as a whole, the wood struck me as vaguely familiar, as if I had been here before, though I knew I had not. On old earth the experience might have been called déjà vu. In our resurrection bodies, animated by the Spirit, no one forgets anything in this life or suffers from a lack of brain cells to remember whatever one wishes—whether that first thrill of awaiting the King’s pleasure at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb those many ages ago—or yesterday’s drink from the River of Life—or a brief encounter with a friend passing in the opposite direction through one of Jerusalem’s twelve pearl gates a thousand years ago. In the heavenly kingdom terms like vague familiarity and vague memory do not exist even as an oxymoron. I had never been to this place; if I had, I would simply remember it.

  What could these pools have to do with my journey?

  A shiver of recognition went through me. Long before leaving old earth I had once read of it in a book, or certainly a place very like it, never suspecting it actually existed. Normally, I smiled at the memory of heaven’s echoes felt so long ago on earth. Directed by the guardian to a pool between two dried out depressions in the lawn, I no longer felt like smiling.

  Instead, trepidation stabbed me as sharply as on the day I’d stood before the Judgment Seat of Christ, awaiting the blazing fire of God’s eyes to test and reveal the worth of my efforts on His behalf. Then I’d stood shoulder to shoulder with countless other believers, from apostles whose names graced the City’s foundations, to men who had not seen the light until they were upon their deathbeds. Here, in contrast, I stood completely alone, my gaze fixed upon what seemed to be a pool of black oil.

  Was I to descend to the old life through that? If gold, silver, or costly jewels could be won here for God’s glory, it certainly wasn’t obvious. I don’t know how long it was before I realized Leanhar’s hand still gripped mine. His voice reawakened me, reminding me that I was not alone as I had imagined. He was with me now and had been with me for most of my life on earth, serving God as my invisible guardian until death parted my flesh from my spirit.

  “You must go—” he said, his words confirmed by the guardian’s nod. The hesitation in his voice disturbed me like no words could. “But I must stay,” he finished.

  “What?” I asked. It didn’t seem possible, or fair! Now that he had left Ranar to join me here, was I still to make my journey into the past alone?

  “You will not be alone, Believer John,” he said, answering the voice of my spirit. His demeanor struck me as almost piteous. I must have shaken my head in alarm.

  “The Leanhar of the past watches over you—you will see no difference.”

  It was true. Long centuries ago he had protected me, cared for me, watched and helped guide my way through the twilight lands to the very threshold of death, and walked beside me as I took my first steps in this world of light. It was equally true that I had almost never felt his presence in my fifty some years on earth. So I guessed he was right—I would see no difference—which was scant consolation.

  “You knew the Lord’s watchful care by faith.”

  I nodded my head and grimaced, something the muscles of my face should not have remembered from the old life. Faith had always been a mystery to me on earth, like trying to catch the wind in my fists. In stark distinction to that, Jesus had said if we had faith as a mustard seed, we could move mountains; to him who believed, all things are possible; that with God all things are possible—spiritual truths which had remained regrettably foreign and alien to my mind even into the first millennium of His reign on earth.

  Was I to slip into the same old dismal ignorance again? In the resurrection life I routinely moved mountains—literally and not just figuratively—by my faith. Didn’t the transformation of worlds require mature faith, more like that of the tree than the seed? Retracing my steps through time, to the time that was no more, to when it was all I could do to simply believe for salvation, was abhorrent and frightening. My heart quailed, a palpable reminder of what lay within the deep dark murk. Though fully clothed in the resurrection body with all its attendant powers, I felt the heavenly life being stripped from me, torn away like so many layers of clothing. Hadn’t I begun to know this stripping away while still in the throne room? Wasn’t the distance between me and God the beginning of it all?

  “No spirit of cowardice can withstand the Overcomer,” Leanhar spoke softly.

  “No,” I answered, still pondering the dark pool and paying scant attention to his paradoxical words. Spirits of cowardice, like all those in thrall to the evil one, dwell forever in the Lake of Fire. Still, the pool’s stygian depths looked forbidding. It might indeed even be some sort of cousin to a black hole: hadn’t black holes sometimes been heavenly conduits by which angels, who are spirits, traveled throughout the old universe? Why not here, in the indestructible heavenly city or wherever we were, as well?

  Beyond was the old life. Was I really to once again immerse myself in its utter darkness?

  “You will have the Light of the World as before,” Leanhar said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The Holy Spirit interceded for you on earth.”

  I nodded, still reluctant to set foot into the pool.

  “The Son interceded for you before the Father in the courts of Heaven.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “The Word of God was yours then as well as now.”

  “It’s not as though I can become lost,” I said.

  “Certainly not. Your salvation is forever secure.”

  “The called are chosen. The chosen are elected. The elect are predestined. The predestined are adopted. The adopted are sealed. The sealed are accepted in the Beloved.”

  I don’t know which of us spoke those words—Leanhar, the guardian, or myself. It could be we spoke them in unison. But I personally capped the litany with my favorite phrase of all:

  “The accepted were redeemed and glorified!”

  Still, I hesitated to step forward into the pool, and downward, and backward through t
ime. Was this what I really wanted to do? I didn’t even know what unanswered and unfulfilled and unrealized thing it might be that God wanted to address. He hadn’t actually told me!

  Was this the only way He could fulfill his promise to me? Perhaps I was resting upon my bed in my heavenly mansion, daydreaming all of this? I certainly hadn’t been languishing in bed when Samuel Draper arrived with his strange summons to the capital city, the New Jerusalem. Regardless of my trepidations (I hated to think of them as full-blown fears, since fears were as banished as tears of sorrow and regret from this life), my journey through time was something God wanted, what King Elyon wanted, the one possible reason for my standing in this wood between worlds.

  At my back a stiff, cold wind began to blow. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that neither the guardian nor Leanhar moved a wing, though their feathers were fluttering, something no mere physical wind could have as an effect upon a spirit. A moment later, my own long hair and white robes billowed in front of me.

  A further sharp gust teased open the black guardian’s great wings. A loud flapping noise, the same as when violent winds tear at the shrouds of a ship’s mainsail, assailed my ears. Almost instantly, evidently helpless to resist, he was launched into the air over my head. Shrieking like an eagle, fierce joy flashed from his face as he was borne from my sight. A split second later my lifelong companion, too, went wheeling helplessly past me and with a tremendous stroke of his wings barely managed to clear the treetops.

  “Adonai is in the wind!” Leanhar cried.

  Indeed. Though standing as if anchored to the ground, my robes whipped around me, mirroring the storm of indecision in my soul. Adonai, Lord and Master, was giving me a choice: He had summoned me to audience but now made it clear to me that it was not His demand I do this thing. It was truly to be my choice.

  At my back, the wind still blew, the same wind that had carried me to this place as a singular manifestation of God and of His will. Then why wasn’t I carried aloft as well? Because the pool called to me, was meant as my destination if not my destiny?

  Couldn’t God have at least made the pool, this pit, more appealing? I wondered. But given the choice between two good things, to return to Ranar and my unfinished labors or into the past and its unfinished business (for unfinished business was what it seemed it must be), knowing God’s will, as evidenced by His audience and His signs, sealed my decision. How could it be otherwise, when performing God’s will was no less joy than that of worship in His very presence?

  While it seemed like long minutes to me, my inner argument was actually concluded in less than milliseconds. With Leanhar’s reassuring words still ringing in my ears, I stepped into the pool and was immediately sucked downwards, swallowed up by an irresistible, swirling vortex. For the briefest of instants, I felt as though some nightmare monster had lunged up from out of the depths of the netherworld to snatch me away in its jaws. A seal taken from sunlit waters by a killer whale couldn’t have felt worse.

  There was no turning or looking back now!