Journey From Heaven

by Joe Derkacht

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  I woke in my own bedroom. The loving, sympathetic eyes of the Good Shepherd stared down at me from the wall facing my bed. Curled around His shoulders, a lamb gazed upon me with equal poignancy. As I looked, even the lambs flocking around Him turned their attention in my direction. Before I had time to ponder my failure, I sensed the presence of Jesus beyond that presence communicated through His living portrait.

  “You’re here, Lord?” I asked, hardly able to believe it.

  “I am,” He spoke kindly from near the foot of the bed.

  Covering my eyes in shame, I said, “Can you forgive me, Lord?”

  “I paid the price in full, didn’t I?”

  I pondered His answer, knowing it was true. He’d spoken similar words from the cross on a hill in the old universe. My understanding had always been that I could never sin again, that certainly sin and sinners could not enter the City of the Great King. And yet I had done exactly what could not be done; somehow, I had managed to disobey God—I had sinned.

  “But you didn’t,” He said, speaking to my anguished spirit.

  “But I never left the wood between worlds! I never stepped into the pool!”

  “The old world became a place of unimaginable darkness to the children of men when Adam handed over his authority to the enemy.”

  I waited silently, knowing He had more to say. As He spoke, my fears and my anguish began to fade.

  “To step into the pool, to journey back in time, you had to enter the world of darkness and confusion even as you lived in it before. To those rare few chosen to return to it, it is not allowable that they should remain as they are now in the world of light, full of the gifts of light and eternity.”

  “I was stripped of everything,” I said. They thought I was insane! I wanted to cry out. Before the words reached my lips, a welter of images answered me, of men cursing Him, denouncing Him as one insane or possessed by devils.

  “Not everything,” He said. “You were stripped just of those things you have learned since you took up your life here.”

  May as well have been everything, I thought to myself.

  “I stripped myself before I went,” He pointed out, which I knew must be the end of any of my arguments. Even in Gethsemane, He could have taken up His powers and crushed all the forces of evil with a single word—but He didn’t, instead allowing the wills of men and of devils apparently to reign for a time in the world, and to crucify Him. Without that, how could His blood have been shed for the remission of sins? How could salvation have been wrought for those who would repent and believe in Him? How could there have been hope for men living in the world of darkness?

  What might have happened, if I had been allowed to make the journey as the same person I was now, endowed with Heaven’s gifts? Would I have illicitly bent the wills of men to my own will, changed things and events preordained otherwise? Perhaps even found myself worshipped by the world? Naturally, nothing like that had been or could be allowed. All things had been as they were supposed to be and remained, then and now, as always, under El Elyon’s sovereignty.

  “But I didn’t have answered what the Father promised me, Lord,” I blurted.

  “You didn’t?” It wasn’t a question. I felt Him rise from His chair, with attendant light dawning in the room. He stood in front of the Good Shepherd, that image of Himself from the days of His life on earth. The One in the flesh smiled admiringly at the Glorified One.

  “Join one of the heavenly choirs today, offer praise and worship to my God and Father. A spirit of gratitude will heal you much more quickly.”

  He vanished before I could protest. Along with Him, the Good Shepherd and His flock disappeared over a sere Judean hill. Why hadn’t He simply taken me by the hand, perfectly harmonized my spirit to His, as I had sometimes experienced?

  “Could have,” I muttered to myself. But He hadn’t. He wished instead that I do as He commanded, which was certainly His prerogative. Groggily, as if suffering from a hangover, I rose from my bed and went first to the room where I kept my musical instruments. A drum would annoy me, right now, I thought. Stringed instruments seemed too complex, too challenging, for the moment. I needed something simpler, something basic. I chose a fine wooden recorder made for me by a friend thousands of years ago, and began playing a tune Cielo and his pupils would have recognized easily, The Old Rugged Cross. As music and words melded in heart and soul, my spirit rose in thankfulness. The niggling dark memories of the old life flapped their leathery wings in swift retreat.

  Stepping outside, I breathed deeply of Heaven’s fragrant, life-giving air and felt strength pour in. With it rose the sure knowledge that I was truly home, that Heaven had been made for me and I for Heaven.

  How good it is to obey, I thought, still playing as I headed toward Zell’s, wanting her to go with me to the falls. How I missed standing beneath the cataract of living waters! The brilliant flowers and bright skies that greeted me along the way sang joy into my soul. With every step I took and at every note upon the recorder, I felt revitalized. The question about the Father’s promise, which seemed more and more a mystery, would have to wait. More importantly, I was to seek out one of the choirs, for praise to the Most High was to be done!

  Surprisingly Zell wasn’t home to share the joy of my return, my liberation from the former life. Still playing The Old Rugged Cross, I walked to the falls by myself. When I burst from the waters, refreshed as if for the very first time by the inundation of God’s Spirit, I picked up my recorder again and played like I had never played in my life. All around me, Heaven echoed with joy and exultation at my return. Angels traversing the skies shouted gladly, acknowledging my triumph over the dark world and its evil clutches.

  Where was Leanhar? Certainly I could have expected to see him as surely as Zell. What about my father or my uncle? While the angels rejoiced with me, it was as if those closest to me knew nothing of my return. How long had I been absent from Heaven’s shores? I wondered. Had it been long enough for them to forget me?

  Answered by the Spirit within, my questions faded quickly. One of the six-winged angels akin to the gate guardians hovered nearby, looking eagerly upon me, an obvious invitation to ask. To my inquiries, where Zell might be, or Nick or Erke, or others of those closest to me, I was told simply to enter the portal. This same portal, just over the river, had been the doorway to Heaven’s main avenues long before my first arrival here. As I stepped toward it, he darted ahead of me, flying as straight as a dragonfly, and I followed, suspecting nothing.

  When I emerged on the other side I found myself miraculously outside of the City, in a place familiar since my childhood. Before me spread a great expanse of water and to the north, the towering hulk of a forested mountain, its shoulders and domed forehead no longer bare as I had once known it. Though the wide Pacific no longer exists as it was once known, nor the detritus of ocean squalls decorated its shores, the arms enclosing the waters were still Driftwood Bay’s, and the mountain was Old Baldy as its Maker had always meant it to be.

  The jolt of finding myself here rather than on one of Heaven’s main thoroughfares was short-lived. As I took in my unexpected surroundings, my escorting gate guardian, his work complete, disappeared into a throng of other angels. The air vibrated with wings, and even more with the music of their wings. A chorus lifted all around me, music soaring with voices old fallen earth had forgotten until the Maker’s word of re-creation. Then I heard a single long sustained note that seemed to continue for minutes, a note I reproduced, joining in with my recorder. And when it finally died away, it was as if all sound had gone out of the world.

  I looked toward Old Baldy and saw a bright star crowning its main peak. As I stared I began walking, inexorably drawn to that light as if nothing else in the world existed. I felt, rather than saw, throngs of men, angels, and beastly creatures, both wild and domestic, parting for me, making way for me as if I were at the head of a riv
er running through deep forest and straight up the mountain slopes, with trees looking benignly down upon me.

  The star at rest upon the mountaintop was the Light of All Worlds. I could not help but be drawn to Him. With growing wonder, I approached the throne He sat upon, and fell on my face as if dead. How could He look at me with such love? How was it the holy angels, even those who were in the highest ranks and had once proclaimed His birth to the shepherds, gazed at me with broad smiles of approval? How was it men and women of my own holy branch smiled proudly at Him, and glanced knowingly at those of the Holy Names branch?

  As I wondered those things, I heard a noise I couldn’t interpret. It began quietly, and swelled like the wind passing through a forest, until at last I recognized the sound. Why were the assembled multitude applauding? Were they really applauding me?

  I felt someone assisting me to my feet, the touch of a hand that poured strength into my trembling limbs. After 10,000 years I should have expected Leanhar to be at my side when I needed him, and once again, here he was. The applause faded like a receding wave of the ocean.

  “What is that in your hand?” The Savior asked.

  “My recorder. I wished to join the—” I began to explain, faltering. No one need explain anything to Him.

  “The choir is here,” He said, smiling like the sun. “Here to listen to you.”

  “Listen—to me?”

  “Yes. But you won’t need the recorder.”

  I looked down at my hand and at the musical instrument gleaming like gold in the light of His presence. He didn’t mean I was to sing for Him, did He? Perform a solo for Him and the assembled multitude, as well? Like anyone else who wishes to sing God’s praises in the heavenly realm, I certainly have a fine voice. But why would He want to hear me, when countless voices more gifted than mine, whether human or angel, stood all around us?

  “I’m not asking you to sing,” He said. Now He was grinning! And the others grinned with Him!

  “Not sing—? But how—?”

  I wasn’t to sing. I wasn’t to play my recorder. Did He really mean it? Was I to whistle for Him and these others?

  Whistle? Was that it?

  Whistling was something I’d done for most of my natural life. And while I often whistled on Ranar, I seldom whistled in Heaven itself. Compared to angelic voices or the voices of the redeemed, and the myriad musical instruments available to us, how could my whistling be anything more than the paltriest of expressions of praise to the Almighty?

  He nodded again, obviously in encouragement.

  So I whistled, at first tentatively. Then as I continued, I began to catch a vision of the old life, of myself at work or walking upon the beach, or hiking Nekahniekan, and of the hundreds of tunes I’d whistled. Then it was that I realized a few of them had come from a heart of true praise and thankfulness, and had risen, unheard and unnoticed by men into the heavens, where they were carried to the ears of angels and reached even God Himself upon His throne.

  I had never dreamed it was possible. Yet the vision continued to unroll before me as I stood in the midst of the great throng of Heaven’s citizens and earth’s lowly but honored beasts. More than once, as I struggled in darkness below, God had listened to me and smiled at my humble gift of worship. As Jesus had promised, those who prayed in secret to the Father would be answered openly: so I who had worshiped in secret, though through this lowliest of instruments, was now honored openly. How infinitely deep, I thought, was God’s work of redemption, that this gift, one I’d never thought of as a gift, could be used to exalt the Redeemer!

  My whistling had never sounded like this in the old life. The sounds that came from my lips were every bit as beautiful as any I’d ever produced upon the recorder, the notes liquid and pure, and as refreshing to the spirit as any mountain stream might be to the eyes or upon the tongue.

  I abruptly stopped whistling, and as the notes faded away, I felt their absence as a distinct loss of pleasure. The multitudes looked curiously upon me.

  “Yes?” He said.

  “I can think of one tune in particular I would like to perform. It’s a favorite on Ranar, as well as in Jerusalem, Lord.”

  He nodded, and I recommenced, this time with Keith Green’s Easter Song. I do believe Cielo and his avian chorus would have been proud of me; I had never whistled it more beautifully. How I wished they could be with me now, here on Earth, praising the Master of the Universe, the Crucified One, who had shattered the bonds of death and hell and risen from the tomb that first Resurrection Morn.

  After awhile, I began to imagine that Cielo and his chorus were with me, that I wasn’t alone in performing my praise—though perhaps multitudes of angels joined in, reproducing my performance as only angels could.

  And then it came to an end, the kind of end that in Heaven isn’t any end at all. Men and women, boys and girls took up the words to the song and sang them again, and were quickly joined by the angels. I joined in by whistling, and together our music soared over earth’s mountains and valleys, and over the surface of her great waters.

  At long last our song faded, even as Sol’s happy light faded in the west. I half expected the Lord to simply vanish from our presence or to rise with the cherubim in attendance and to return in procession to the City. Instead, He remained seated.

  All eyes were on Him.

  “I believe you have another song you love to perform on Ranar.”

  As he said you, he gestured with one hand as if to include someone else. Instinctively, I glanced behind me. In the trees standing at the border of the open glade that held the throne, I saw rank after rank of metallic-winged birds alien to earth. It hadn’t been my imagination after all. Cielo and his chorus really had been whistling with me!

  “We do, Lord,” I said, turning back to Him.

  This time, I gave the signal to Cielo, and he began to play on his flute, while his chorus followed. The song was Majesty. After the first run through, I joined in, and on our third go around, the assembled multitudes fell to their knees, me included, and sang the words.

  Majesty, worship His Majesty.

  Unto Jesus, be all glory, honor and praise!

  Majesty, Kingdom authority,

  Flow from His throne, unto His own

  His anthem raise.

  So exalt, lift up on High the name of Jesus.

  Magnify, come glorify Christ Jesus, the King!

  Majesty, worship His Majesty,

  Jesus, who died, now glorified,

  King of all Kings!

  Majesty, worship His Majesty.

  Unto Jesus, be all glory, honor and praise!

  Majesty, Kingdom authority,

  Flow from His throne, unto His own

  His anthem raise.

  So exalt, lift up on High the name of Jesus.

  Magnify, come glorify Christ Jesus, the King!

  Majesty, worship His Majesty,

  Jesus, who died, now glorified,

  King of all Kings!

  So exalt, lift up on High the name of Jesus.

  Magnify, come glorify Christ Jesus, the King!

  Majesty, worship His Majesty,

  Jesus, who died, now glorified,

  King of all Kings!

  Together, we shouted and sang our praises until the stars shone brightly over our heads. I think it was later, rather than sooner, that I realized Cielo and his chorus sometimes sang the words, something I’d never heard them do on Ranar. Had they never actually sung words simply because my own habit was always to whistle?

  I know King Jesus was pleased. The aura of His joy and appreciation shone forth like the rays of the sun through the clouds of early dawn, enveloping us all.

  “Well done, good and faithful servant,” he addressed me. To Cielo and his chorus, he said, “Well done, good and faithful avians. Your loyalty to the Steward of Ranar is noted, and so you shall stand head and shoulders above your fellows.”

  Truthfully, I didn�
�t know exactly what He meant, unless it was that Cielo and his companions were to be more highly honored than any other of Ranar’s creatures, which made sense to me, considering they alone seemed to approach our own power of worship and praise. If He meant more by His blessing, I would discover it in due time.

  “Your work on Ranar is not yet complete,” He said to me.

  I nodded in agreement. Except for my sojourn in the past, I might even now have been applying her finishing touches. What I had not immediately understood was that this was farewell. As He literally faded from our presence, with the morning sun softly lighting Nekahniekan’s slopes, I knew it was time for me to return to Ranar and the work. I had spent years of exhausting struggle in the distant past, yet I was now fully refreshed.

  Expecting to leave at once, I turned to Leanhar. To my surprise, Leanhar had vanished. Instead, I was met by Zell, Tyrollia, and Tryg, then Nick and Erke, by Lulu, Ruben, Sarah Mc Gilly, Ronald Grunwald, and nearly every other believer I’d ever known on earth, it seemed, and others I’d met in Heaven or on Ranar. Laughing and singing and dancing in celebration, they streamed toward me, taking me by the hands and leading me down the mountain and toward the seashore. My return to Ranar, it seemed, was not as urgent as I had thought.