Rise of the Mystics

by Ted Dekker

  The circle was complete—the circle uniting me and my Father, white to white, light to light, love to love. One.

  Now you know.

  I began to weep with gratitude as I hung there in the light’s embrace. Now I knew.

  Now, sweet daughter . . . Be who you are for me.

  A strong current suddenly rushed up from below me and thrust me forward, through the seal, streaking for a glimmering surface, and I thought, I’m entering heaven! I’m entering a new realm far beyond the skin of Other Earth!

  My hands parted the surface first. Then my head. Then all of me, water streaming from my hair and body as I sailed through the air and landed on my feet, five feet from the edge of the lake.

  I stared at the sight before me, stunned.

  I was back in the Realm of Mystics, which was still gray and lifeless. Jacob stood four paces to my right, panting, water spilling from his body. A thick band of Shataiki still clung to the cliffs, encircling the entire Realm, gloating with beady red eyes.

  A hundred paces off and moving away from us walked three horses mounted by Ba’al and Aaron and Qurong. Beyond them, ten thousand warriors were also leaving the drowning pool.

  I saw it all in a single glance.

  As one they turned. As one they fell silent.

  The 49th Mystic was back from the dead.

  39

  I HEARD Vlad say it. I heard his words, “Now, 49th. Now you die.”

  But I didn’t take those words the way Vlad intended. How could he kill one who’d already surrendered her life? He couldn’t. Hadn’t the Fourth Seal shown me that?

  Surrender. Turn the cheek. Forgive. Let go. Love.

  Find love by letting go of everything but love. Find love by dying to self, the small self, the earthen-vessel self so desperate to be a god of its own making, seeking honor, seeking vindication, seeking correction, seeking to know itself through the polarity of law.

  My knowing of the first four seals crashed in on me with those three words: Now you die.

  The auditorium filled with cries of alarm as Vlad ripped a dagger from his jacket. It was shaped like a cross with a jagged blade. That’s what they saw and I saw it as well, but then my perspective shifted.

  The world was moving slowly, like a movie running at a tenth of its intended speed. Vlad was streaking for me, lips twisted, dagger drawn back, intent on shoving the blade deep into my heart. But I saw him moving slowly through air as heavy as water.

  The crowd’s panicked cries sounded far away, as if from another world. Or maybe I was in another world, just watching this one, oddly disconnected.

  Fear fell away like a thick cloud of tiny metal filings falling off an electric magnet that had been unplugged. Shut off the negative charge and the darkness falls. Judgment was the negative charge, because judgment was only a form of fear.

  This is what it means to cast darkness away, I thought. This is how you resist evil. You abide in love because love has no negative charge. No polarity.

  There is no fear in love. There is no darkness in light. Simple.

  So I unplugged. I died to my small judging self once more. I let go of all my attachments to this life just like I had in the storm in Other Earth.

  All of this before Vlad had completed his first stride and my awakening was only beginning.

  What Vlad had intended for evil in all that he’d done—right down to saying, “Now you die”—the light was using for good. All things worked together for good in love, even what I perceived as darkness. Like the devil in the story of Job, even Vlad was only playing his role as shadow with the consent of divinity.

  Did he know that?

  Now he was two steps in, rushing at me, hatred spilling from his eyes. He was screaming something, but he sounded like a mouse squeaking as it poked its head out of a hole in the wall. That’s all Vlad was to me in that sudden shift in perspective.

  Vlad was like a mouse. The shadow of a mouse.

  The room had erupted in a cacophony of confusion and panic, but I was above it all, thinking these thoughts that seemed so simple and clear to me.

  What is shown to be in the one who sees? Tell me. Close your eyes and sing my song with me.

  I let my eyelids fall, and as soon as I did, I heard the note. A single note, sung high and pure in a lake of light far, far away. But that note was also singing in me, because in this world the lake was inside of me. It was inside all of us.

  In one brilliant flash, I saw what was happening to me in Other Earth. Felt myself rushing through the lake, from the light to the green to the black through the red and into the light once more.

  And in that last light, the note again, sung high and pure. The song of love that was me.

  The Fifth Seal blossomed behind my closed eyes, and I saw myself place my hand on the ball of light. Heard myself say the words. “White: True Love is the Evidence of Being in the Light.”

  And with those words I felt the raw power of love rush up my arm and brand my shoulder with a searing heat.

  I didn’t know and I didn’t care what Vlad was doing now, because I was lost in a sea of love in which there were no problems. Love never had nor ever could have a problem.

  My body, suspended, trembled in the Leedhan’s grasp. But it was the infinite energy of love that shook me now, not Vlad’s fear. I was caught up in the rapture of that one pure note called love.

  Warm tears were streaming down my cheeks. I could feel them running off my chin.

  Sing it with me, dear daughter. Sing our beautiful song for the whole world to hear.

  I parted my lips and let the note from the lake inside of me sing. It was hardly more than a whisper, thin and broken through this small earthen vessel’s vocal cords, but it was pure and true.

  The moment that note left my mouth, something in the room changed. My eyes were closed so I didn’t see it, but I could feel the seismic shift that altered the state of consciousness in the hall.

  Still I sang that note, broken but pure, no longer aware of time. I didn’t dare stop any more than I would dare stop being me. The song was love, you see.

  I was love.

  Open your eyes and sing our song, my beloved. Let the whole world see how beautiful they are. You are such a beautiful daughter to me. Sing, dear one. Sing!

  I held the note beyond the need for breath, overwhelmed by its power, and I slowly let my eyes open.

  The whole scene had changed. I was on my feet now, facing the people, and the Leedhan that had held me in its grasp was gone. The power of that single note streamed from me, flooding the auditorium, rushing over the gathering. If they couldn’t see it, they could feel the power, because it was like a wind, lifting their hair.

  To a man, woman, and those few children who were present, tears streamed down their faces. Some were wailing, doubled over. Others lay on the floor, sobbing. The president was doubled over, trembling.

  It was only a single note barely sung by a seventeen-year-old girl who’d been born blind, but it was shaking the world.

  My voice fell silent. Vlad stood less than ten feet to my right. His eyes were wide with shock and he’d dropped his dagger, trembling in his boots. I didn’t feel any grievance toward him. Nor did I offer him any resistance.

  He’d told the world that I was an antichrist, but it was he and those who would come after him who were the antichrist. It was the energy of all who clung to judgment in opposition to love that was the antichrist.

  I was the 49th Mystic, and I had found all five seals. Love was the only power that could undo fear, and I was that love. Inchristi was the light of love. Against the Fifth Seal there was no defense.

  You don’t sweep a shadow from a room; you simply turn on the light.

  “Go,” I whispered to Vlad.

  His body trembled and then vanished into a swirl of shadowy fog. He was gone, leaving his black slacks and white jacket crumpled over a pair of cowboy boots. None of it mattered to me anymore. I was still swimming in a lake deep within me, fl
owing in a love unaffected by shadows.

  I stepped up to the microphone that had fallen, picked it up, and walked toward the front of the stage.

  It was time to tell them what was really happening. They would now learn that they were all the 49th Mystic on a journey from blindness to sight, from darkness to light, just like me.

  Seeing is being in love. I was now seeing and being in love. I was witnessing.

  It was time to do what I had come to do.

  40

  AS ONE they turned. As one they fell silent.

  The 49th Mystic was back from the dead.

  But neither the Horde nor the Albinos yet knew that there was no death. Or that my drowning in the lake was the final surrender that led to the Fifth Seal—not even I knew until that moment, there by the pool with my feet planted in warm, white sand, staring at Ba’al and the armies and the ring of frozen Shataiki that rimmed the Realm of Mystics.

  Talya had always known. All of the Mystics had known. Even I had once known. The 49th Mystic would know the Fifth Seal called love when the world drowned her in the Realm of Mystics. Then the lion would lie down with the lamb.

  I could hear the boy’s song hanging in the air, a faint and beautiful refrain spun from the purest source. It had always been present to hear, but now I had the ears to hear it.

  Something was about to change—I could feel the air itself charged with a desperate need for the sons and daughters of Elyon to be revealed. My skin prickled in anticipation of it.

  Not a soul moved. Not a single Shataiki drew even a single breath. They now knew their own folly in thinking they could crush the light. They knew and they were trembling in that knowing, because their time had come to an end.

  All of this was plain to me as I stood beside Jacob on the sand, eyes locked with Ba’al, who stared in stunned disbelief. I felt no disdain or the slightest ill will toward him, because I was seeing him in the light of love. He, like the rest, was only blinded by judgment because his earthen vessel was bound in judgment. And he, like all, had suffered deeply in that blindness.

  But now he would see. All would see. Every knee would bow, every tongue sing the glory of the one who reigned supreme.

  Still no one moved. No one dared.

  I heard the pounding of hooves behind me first, and I turned. Looked up at the cliffs where the waterfall had flowed from the upper lake only an hour earlier. Teeleh’s large, mangy body clung to the dried cliffs, frozen in place, staring at me with unblinking red eyes.

  Then I saw it. Saw the white horse leap over Teeleh’s head, ridden by a man in a robe dipped in blood, blazing sword of light held high in his right hand.

  I stood in astonishment, watching as Justin’s stallion bounded over the edge of the cliff, sailing high, and as soon as he’d crossed that threshold, the lake erupted with a brilliant green light, blasting up the cliff’s face, vaporizing the little bat called Teeleh before it reached him.

  But the lake’s light didn’t just flow to the top of the cliff. It shot to the sky, shattering the silence with an ear-splitting roar. Behind that roar, I could hear the distinct sound of the same pure note that had become so familiar to me in the lake.

  The sound of a love that knew no opposite.

  I jerked my head to see the light spreading east and west along the cliffs, from the ground up into the sky, so that the whole Realm was surrounded by cliffs made of the lake’s green light, streaming from the earth to the sky. It was as if the lake had been underneath the whole of the Realm and was only now breaking free.

  In one fell swoop, the Shataiki were no more. They didn’t flee; they were ended. The knowledge of good and evil was no more. The shadow had been vanquished.

  With the crashing of hooves, Justin’s stallion landed on the shore to my left, and I spun to see him hurl his blade even as he thundered on, straight toward Ba’al.

  And I thought, I come to bring a sword that divides truth from untruth.

  His sword spun through the air, end over end, and impaled the ground fifty paces from me. A great thunder cracked high above. White light seared my mind, blinding me for a single moment. I gasped.

  And then I could see again.

  Light from Justin’s sword spread out in all directions, like fast-moving ripples in a pond. Only these ripples were made of the lake’s green light, flooding the charred wasteland of that sinkhole that had been the Realm of Mystics.

  At the same time, the blue sky high above shimmered and began to peel back in all directions, as if the sky itself was falling. What had once blinded the world was now being pulled away to offer new sight. And in that new sight, the sky flowed with bright colors—gold, red, purple, green—like the sky I’d seen over the sea after the storm had cleared.

  I knew then what I was watching. The green light was true perception before the knowledge of good and evil had distorted it. The light was the healing balm that made blind eyes see what was in truth.

  The Realm of Mystics wasn’t a place hidden here in this sinkhole. It was everywhere and always had been, to be seen with new perception by those who had eyes to see.

  I was witnessing the teaching of Yeshua right here in three dimensions! And I thought, The Spirit is on me to proclaim good news and sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free and proclaim the favor of Elyon. It had always been Justin’s mission. Now the fullness of that mission was at hand.

  The world suddenly stalled. Justin raced, but I saw it in slow motion. He was bent over his stallion, robe flapping behind him like a banner, chasing the cleansing green light.

  The light reached Ba’al and Aaron and Qurong, slamming into them and then rushing past them, flowing with gaining speed as it flooded the Realm and joined the wall of light flowing up the cliffs.

  It shot to the tops of the cliffs, where it bent at a right angle and flowed over the land above and beyond the Realm with breathtaking speed.

  The green light now covered every square inch of the Realm, but my eyes were back on Justin. His stallion raced even faster now, past the commanders and their armies, through the Realm, and then leaping high for the tops of the far cliffs and disappearing from sight.

  Everything was happening at once, too much to take in.

  White lions bounded from the trees behind me, sweeping by me in Justin’s wake. Above, a thousand white Roush, flying west. And other magnificent creatures as well. Large dragonfly-like birds, wings glinting in dancing colors. Golden elk and deer, flocks of red and yellow parrots. I was sure I saw Judah among the lions.

  In the power of the light, the grayed and charred landscape came back to life. Where the Shataiki and the armies had darkened the land, the trees budded and flowered and began to fill with leaves before my eyes. Green grass sprouted and covered the meadows; the wooden structures in the village shed their charred skin and glowed in bright yellows and blues and greens again.

  I stood in stunned fascination, breathing steadily beside Jacob.

  “Look!” His eyes were on the Horde. On Ba’al and his father.

  They were no longer Horde! Their flesh was cleansed of the scabbing disease.

  But even more, their skin wasn’t Albino. Nor was the Elyonites’ flesh Albino. It was flesh, yes, and flesh-colored, but it shone with a golden hue. Like a glorified body.

  I snatched up my arm and saw that my skin had shifted as well, no longer the pale white I’d known myself to be. No, my skin hadn’t changed, I realized. I was just able to see more than skin. I was seeing beyond the skin of this world. Where once I had seen through a glass dimly, I was now seeing clearly.

  I looked back up. It was as if they had all drowned in the lake in one fell swoop. All. Albino, Horde, Eramite, Elyonite, and undoubtedly the Circle, wherever they now camped. The whole world, brought to true sight once more in the lake’s power.

  But of course, I thought. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. All had been blind, I chief among them. And now all of Other Earth was being healed from that curse.

 
Grace and love had finally come. In truth, the whole earth was and always had been the Realm of Mystics.

  The kingdom of heaven had always been here, as Yeshua had claimed. We were just finally seeing it in its fullness.

  I watched as Ba’al stared at his hands in stunned wonder. Then fell to his knees and wept, arms raised to the heavens.

  It was the end of one age and the beginning of another. The lion was yielding to the lamb in the hearts of all mankind. Conflict had surrendered to peace. Guilt had been washed by innocence.

  Jacob stumbled forward and then was running toward Qurong.

  “Father!”

  Qurong spun back, dazed. His eyes shone bright and his skin sparkled in the glow of the light, which was still flowing up the cliffs and spreading beyond. He saw Jacob and ran.

  They met halfway, throwing themselves into an embrace. Qurong slumped to his knees, weeping, clinging to his son’s waist as if Jacob was his own life. They were tears of joy and love, not regret. The same tears that moistened my own eyes.

  Water splashed behind me and I turned to the lake. It was water once more—the light was streaking up along the cliffs from below the Realm, leaving the pool shimmering and green.

  From the pool rose Thomas, carrying a woman. Chelise, I thought. This was Jacob’s sister! She’d been in the Realm and been killed, but now Thomas brought her back. Which meant Thomas had gone to the pond by the cabin and come back through, leaving me there to speak to the world.

  The me who had the Fifth Seal both here and there.

  As soon as Thomas set Chelise down she caught sight of Jacob, her brother, and Qurong, her father, and was running for them. But first she pulled up, hurried to me, grabbed my hand, and kissed my knuckles.

  “Thank you!”

  “No, I wasn’t—”

  “Thank you, thank you.” She kissed my cheeks. “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Justin and . . .”

  But she was already running for her brother and father again.