Decker chuckled again, both at Tom’s unorthodox method of explanation and because despite its unorthodoxy, it was obviously effective. It all made sense.
“Like Scott said,” Tom continued, “God’s not bound by time. He exists outside of it. When you died, you exited time, jumping immediately from your death to the point of your resurrection. I did the same after I was shot. I got here just a week ago.”[318]
“And everyone else?” Decker asked.
“Those who died in the past — from Abel to the last person to die before the Rapture — if they accepted God’s forgiveness, they went immediately from their deaths to their resurrection at the Rapture. Those like Joshua and Ilana, and Elizabeth, Hope, and Louisa, who served God and were alive at the time of the Rapture, didn’t die but were instantly changed. They simply sloughed off their old bodies and were given new ones, so they never experienced death.[319] Those who died after the Rapture and who trusted God are like you and me, going from death immediately to their resurrection in the Kingdom. Most have already been resurrected, but there are still several million who were executed after you on Christopher’s guillotines, who are being resurrected even now, in the same order in which they died.”[320]
Decker realized that it was these whom Jesus had meant a few moments earlier when he spoke of, “others who still wait.”
Tom continued his explanation. “Those who served God and didn’t take the mark and managed to survive until after Christopher’s defeat, were also changed in the same way as those who were taken at the Rapture, for as the Bible says, ‘. . . flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’”[321]
“What about those who took the mark?” Decker asked.
“Satan has never been able to take anyone against their own will,” Hank Asher answered. “No one was forced to take the mark, and no one could take it by accident or without understanding the consequences. God even sent an angel to warn the world what was at stake.”[322]
“Those who took the mark,” Joshua then answered directly, “will be resurrected at the end of the thousand years of the Millennial Kingdom and will be judged by God together with the rest of the people throughout history who have chosen hell and refused God’s forgiveness.”[323]
Decker sighed at the loss.
His great-great-grandmother understood his feelings. “Decker,” she said, with melodic Scottish inflection, “God was not willing that any should perish but that all would come to repentance.”[324]
“Hmm,” Decker responded, which meant only that he was willing to let the subject pass.
“If anyone isn’t here it’s because they’ve chosen not to be here,” another woman said. At first Decker couldn’t see who had spoken, but the others moved aside to allow her to be heard. It was Martha Goodman, “Aunt Martha,” as Christopher had called her.
“They’d never be happy here anyway,” she said. “A wheel can’t have two centers. The universe can only have one God. Otherwise you’d have chaos, hatred, bigotry, war — well, pretty much the world as we all knew it.
“You take my husband, Harry, for example. The truth is he’d be miserable here — though I’m sure he won’t like the other place any better. It doesn’t matter how perfect paradise is, if a man can’t accept that God is God, then he’d never be happy here.”[325] Her voice showed no sign of anger at her husband, just resigned recognition of the truth.
Decker sighed again, this time in sympathy and understanding, for Martha Goodman and for all the others whose loved ones had refused God’s love.
“Is the whole world like this?” Decker asked, as he again surveyed the beauty of his surroundings.
“Almost, but not all,” Joel Felsberg, Rhoda Donafin’s brother, answered. “There are some places, like Babylon, that have been left desolate as a reminder of the evil that grew there.”[326] Though Joel had never met Decker, he certainly knew of him as Christopher’s confidant. He was also aware of the close relationship that had existed between Decker and Joel’s brother-in-law, Tom Donafin.
“Will it be like this forever?” Decker asked.
“Not forever,” Joshua Rosen answered, “but for a thousand years. After that comes the judgment I mentioned. Then, God will create a new heaven and a new Earth. We don’t know many details, but we know it will be even better than this.”[327]
“Where are we now? What part of the world?” Decker asked, shaking his head to indicate he didn’t recognize any landmarks.
“Israel,” Scott answered.[328] “Just as God described to Ezekiel.”[329]
Decker raised his eyebrows in surprise. This didn’t look at all like the Israel he remembered. Things really had changed. “And that mountain?” he asked.[330]
“That’s Zion, the highest mountain in the world.[331] On top is a plateau[332] on which sits Jerusalem and the new Temple, built according to the plan given to the prophet Ezekiel.”[333]
“What happened to the old one?”
“It was destroyed by Christopher’s armies,” Scott answered.
“And the Ark of the Covenant?”
“There’s no need for one.[334] The Ark was the vessel for the physical evidence of God’s covenant with his people. Now the evidence of God’s covenant is within us and all around us. This is God’s promise fulfilled.”
Decker nodded. He had more questions, but his more immediate interest was in being with his wife and daughters. Surprisingly it was Scott Rosen, the once blustering egocentric, who was first to discern this.
“There’s something else you might be interested in,” Scott said. “There’s a river that flows out of the Temple across the plateau and then divides, with half of the river running into the Mediterranean and the other half into the Dead Sea.[335] I think you’ll be amazed at the changes there. I’m sure the rest of us have lots of other resurrections we’d like to attend. Perhaps Elizabeth and the girls would like to show you the river.”
Decker looked at Elizabeth, Hope, and Louisa, who smiled and nodded. “You’ll love it, Dad,” Louisa said.
Decker smiled in return, and when he looked up an instant later, he was alone with his family. “What happened? Where’d they go?” he blurted.
“They had places to go,” Elizabeth answered. “Shall we go see the river?”
Decker’s brows raised and stayed there as his eyes shifted from side to side, marveling at everyone’s sudden exit. “I don’t suppose you intend to walk there.”
“Well, we could, but it’s quite a long way. We could run or we could fly.[336] Or we could just be there.”[337]
“What do you mean?”
“C’mon, Dad,” Hope chimed in as she took hold of his hand. “Just think about where you want to go . . . and here we are.”
Decker sensed no movement, but in that instant their surroundings entirely changed. He now found himself near the base of the mountain that a moment before had been a hundred miles away. A great cataract of roaring water sparkled like diamonds as it fell more than eight thousand feet down the mountain’s steep rock face and emptied into an immense glassy clear pool.[338] The spray from the falls rose nearly half as high as the ledge from which the water fell and, carried by a gust of wind, settled drops of cool mist upon Decker’s face. It felt wonderful, and the taste as he licked the mist from his lips was fresh and clean and more satisfying than anything he had ever tasted.
Hope’s eagerness to come here with her father had apparently caught Elizabeth and Louisa momentarily off guard, for they were not with them, but arrived a second later. “Flying is a lot more fun!” Louisa immediately objected.
Decker took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “So, uh . . . this must be the river,” he managed, not wanting to spoil his family’s fun by his apprehension: This form of travel would take a little getting used to.
From the pool at the bottom of the falls flowed the river Scott had told him about. On its banks grew fruit trees of every kind he had ever seen and many he had not.[339] The air was filled with the sweet smell of tree
s in flower. Others were laden with fruit ripe for harvest.
“The trees bear year-round,”[340] said Elizabeth, who watched as her husband surveyed his surroundings. “And near the river’s source is the tree of life, which is so large that the river flows through it.”[341]
“The, uh . . . way we got here,” he asked, “can we go anywhere like that?”
“Anywhere we want. Is there somewhere else you’d like to go instead?” she asked, eager to share her husband’s joy of discovery.
“No,” he answered quickly, concerned that he might again find himself unintentionally somewhere else. “Maybe later. This is fine for right now.”
There was so much to take in.
“So what exactly is it that we do here?” Decker asked.
“Pretty much anything we want as long as we abide by the two commandments: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Of course, you’ll find it’s a lot easier to follow those rules now. Satan has been locked up until the end of the thousand years, so temptation has been greatly reduced.[342] Of course, humans are capable of quite a bit of evil on their own, so there’s still the need for a government, with Jesus as the head.[343] Soon, after all the others have been resurrected, we’ll all gather, and he’ll place us at different levels in his government, based on how we lived our lives.”[344]
Decker laughed wryly at himself. “Considering my life, I guess that leaves me out altogether.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Elizabeth said. “Jesus bought you with his blood. He has great things in store for you.”[345]
“After that,” Elizabeth explained, “comes the Wedding Supper of the Lamb to celebrate the founding of the Kingdom and God’s love for us.”
“But after that,” Decker probed. “What will we do on a daily basis?”
“Decker,” Elizabeth said smiling and shaking her head to emphasize that there were no limits other than the ones she had already mentioned. “Anything you want. You can do anything from farming to exploring the universe. You can learn to play a musical instrument — a hundred musical instruments. You can write that novel you always used to talk about. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, there’s no failure here. You just have to work at it until you get it right!”[346]
Decker looked over to where Hope and Louisa sat playing with a litter of lion cubs as the mother lion looked on.[347] The sight, which before would have been startling, felt entirely natural to him as he grew more accustomed to his circumstances and surroundings. “Hope and Louisa,” he said, thoughtfully, “they’re the same ages as when they died.”
“We didn’t die,” Elizabeth reminded. “We were raptured.”
“Right,” Decker nodded, acknowledging his brief lapse. “Will they stay the same age?”
“No, now that we’re back on Earth, they’ll grow naturally.”
“‘Back on Earth’? Where have you been since the Rapture?”
“We were all taken into heaven for a time. In heaven there’s no aging. Now that we’re back on Earth, the girls will grow naturally. They’ll never grow old, but they will reach maturity. They’ll take husbands, and have children of their own.[348]
“In fact,” Elizabeth said, “you probably didn’t notice, but Hope and young Tom seem to have taken a shine to each other.”
Decker’s mouth dropped open, and he started at once to both laugh and cry for joy. Tom and Rhoda’s son!” he sputtered. He dropped his face in his hands for several seconds, shaking his head back and forth, before erupting, “That’s great!”
“You can’t say anything about it!” Elizabeth insisted. “Just don’t be surprised if you see him around a lot.”
“No. No. I won’t say a word,” he assured her, still laughing and crying at once. “I just can’t adjust to so many blessings!”
“Being grateful is a good thing,” she advised. “It gives the Father joy.”
The thought gave her a burst of exuberance. “And there is so much to be grateful for!” she exulted with her arms wide. “People and life and colors and flavors and sounds and a billion other things you cannot even imagine yet. And we’ll share them all with our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren and our great-great-great grandchildren.[349] And you’ll live to bounce them all on your knee, never aging but staying young and in perfect health, just as you are today.”
“No sickness, no physical defects, no poverty, success dependent only on our effort. Strange, but it sounds a little like what Christopher promised,” Decker said.
“A little,” Elizabeth agreed. “Except Christopher could never have kept that promise.”
“How was it that Christopher was able to give people the things he did — health, youth, psychic abilities?” Decker asked.
“Youth and health didn’t come from what Christopher gave,” Elizabeth explained, “but rather from what Satan ceased to take, in order to deceive the world. By reducing the parasitic power of evil on the bodies of those who took the communion and the mark, he allowed them to return to a state closer to what existed in the Garden of Eden, where there was no disease or death.”
“So taking the communion really didn’t really help anyone?” Decker asked.
“No,” Elizabeth confirmed. “As for the psychic abilities, those were the deceptions of fallen angels.”
“What about Robert Milner’s powers? How was he able to stop the plagues?”
“Many of the things Milner did, like calling down lightning in Jerusalem, were the result of real powers that came from Christopher and ultimately from Satan. But stopping the plagues wasn’t Milner’s doing. Christopher and Milner simply waited for each plague to run its course and then Milner showed up to take the credit.”
He pondered this for a moment and then moved on to another thought.
“There’s something else about this place that’s very different,” he said. “I noticed it almost right away, but I still can’t explain it. It’s like my whole life before I got here was a dream — a nightmare, really. In fact,” he said, after considering it for another moment, “I can’t recall ever being truly awake before — not like I am now. I think that even then, I sensed the dreamlike quality of it.” He shrugged as he pondered his memories. “Was it a dream?”
“No,” Elizabeth smiled.
“This part may sound crazy,” he continued, “but it’s like the physical limits of my body no longer confine me, and everything around me, the grass, the trees, the earth itself, even the air seem to be a part of me, and I a part of them.” Decker shook his head. Even in the universal language it was a struggle to find the right words to adequately express himself.
He laughed. “It’s a little like going up in an airplane, and you don’t really notice the air pressure changing until your ears pop, and then suddenly you can hear better. Well, it’s like everything has popped: all my senses. I can hear and taste and see and feel and smell and sense . . .” Decker paused.
“And it’s you,” he said. “I have ached for you and longed for you and loved you so desperately both while I was in Lebanon and since I lost you. And yet even all my years without you can’t compare to one moment of the love I have for you now.”
“I feel it too, Decker,” she said.
“I know!” He laughed in amazement. “That’s what I mean! I don’t just think it or feel it. I know it as though you were a part of me. Because you are!”
Decker continued, compelled by his nature to analyze and explain — describing an awareness and a beauty so acute that it’s impossible to describe it in words used on this side of the event. But it is just as well, for were I to describe it here, all who read it and are bound for it would die from longing. And yet I will attempt in these earthly words to express what I can of it, and do so without fear of causing any harm but that sweet stab of pain and longing that C.S. Lewis described as ‘Joy,’[350] a treasure that was so cheaply forsaken for the satisfaction of Eve’s desire to know good and evil, and Adam’s desire for his wife.
Lewis is said
to have called it “real life,” something that has not yet begun for anyone now “living” as we know it in our “shadowlands.” The Eastern mystics toy around the edges and call it by names like “unity consciousness.” It’s a clear-headedness, an alertness, a sensitivity to all that surrounds us, that makes “normal life” and “normal experience” seem like nothing more than a drunken stupor. It’s a consciousness that the gurus and yogis have only dreamed of, though they and we instinctively know it’s there, but which always — save for fleeting moments, and then only in clouded pastel hues — exists just beyond our human reach. It is, as best can be described here, truly being in tune with all creation, synchronized with the heart and mind of God. And it’s only for the lack of this faculty that imaginary things such as novels can seem to take on life. For no one, having experienced a single moment of real life could ever have conceived to question one’s own existence, or could have been forced to rely on the logic of ‘I think, therefore I am’[351] to be certain of it.
“Real life has just begun, Decker,” affirmed Elizabeth, who was familiar both with C.S. Lewis’ writings and, in this Kingdom, with Lewis himself.
“In a very real sense,” she explained, “Adam and Eve did die on that day they ate the fruit, and all of us with them.[352] It’s only in our new lives that we can begin to understand how much we gave away and just how real that death was.”
Decker nodded his understanding and agreement. “When will I be able to see Jesus again?” he asked. “There’s so much I want to tell him; so much I want to ask him.”
“He just told you that he’s always with you,” Elizabeth reminded him. “He meant it. He’s with us even now. Tell him whatever is on your mind. Ask him anything and he’ll answer. Before the words have fully formed in your mind, he’ll answer.”[353]
“That must be how my mother was able to explain my dream about the sinkhole, and what Scott meant when he said that the Ark of the Covenant was no longer necessary because the evidence of God’s covenant is within us and all around us.”
The Christ Clone Trilogy - Book Three: ACTS OF GOD (Revised & Expanded) Page 39