The verse left his mouth without even having to think. “Without faith it is impossible to please God…uhh…you.”
“Where does faith come from?”
“Faith comes from hearing your Word.”
“My Word is where, Brent?”
“In my Bible.”
“And?”
Brent had to think for a moment. Where else was the Word? Was he talking about preachers? Radio programs? Where else could he tap into the…?
“Umm…in me,” he said, realizing that he had been memorizing and familiarizing Scripture passages for years. “Your Word is inside of me.”
“And you are supposed to do what with that Word within you?”
Brent sighed. “Meditate on it day and night.”
“Your faith grows in direct proportion to how much of my Word you place within yourself. And I don’t mean just memorizing verses. You must have context for what you meditate upon. Learn my Word with context. Get to know why it says what it says; otherwise you will miss a lot of wisdom.”
Joshua stopped speaking. With his strong arm still around Brent’s back, he used it to guide Brent to face the opposite direction while remaining at his side.
To Brent the view didn’t change much. Same beauty, same grass, same flowers. He did come to realize something though. There was no sun in the sky. He was about to comment on the strange sight, when, with the next blink of his eyes, he found that he was no longer standing in the field. He was standing in a hallway.
He tensed. How could that have happened so quickly?
“In a moment. In a twinkling of an eye. Remember?” asked Joshua.
Brent was startled with the realization. One day, in the hopefully not-too-distant future, Jesus would descend to Earth and all who knew him would be changed “in a moment,” removed from the pain and difficulties of everyday life and be forever with the Lord.
“It’s going to happen that fast?”
“Not much time passes in a twinkle,” said Joshua with a grin. “What do you see, Brent?”
It was obvious to him that the hallway in which he now stood was in a house. The carpeted floor, the pictures on the walls, and the banister above a set of stairs that led down from where he was standing made that clear enough. The hallway became a landing beyond the stairs, with a long railing on the right side. A door to the left, and another set of doors straight ahead, led, he assumed, to bedrooms.
“We’re in someone’s home, I think.”
“We’re in the home of Elizabeth Franklin.”
Brent thought about it, but couldn’t place the name. “Should I know her?”
“No...” Joshua withdrew his arm from Brent’s shoulders and positioned himself to look straight into his eyes. A penetrating gaze pierced Brent’s soul with such intensity that his heart raced. “…but you are about to know Elizabeth in a way that no one else in her world ever has…or ever will.”
Brent stared speechless as a girl with long, uncombed, dark brown hair walked into the hallway from a bedroom to his left. She was obviously a teenager, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. She was wearing white cotton pajama bottoms with Hello Kitty designs all over them and a pink tank top.
He was startled as she turned to walk toward him and Joshua. She didn’t seem to notice either of them as she passed. Brent looked into Joshua’s eyes, surprised.
“She cannot see us. No one can. Not with physical eyes, anyway.”
Brent was astounded. Was this really happening? And what was happening? Brent followed Elizabeth with his eyes. She rounded a corner into another room. The bathroom.
How did he know that was the bathroom?
Brent looked back to Joshua who was studying him. All of a sudden, everything seemed to pause. Brent became aware that he was no longer hearing birds chirping. The house’s air conditioning unit was instantly quiet, as well. Dust particles that had entered a stream of sunlight from a window froze in place. It was like someone had paused a movie and everything had stopped.
“Brent, follow me.” Joshua took the lead as he walked the opposite way of the bathroom that Elizabeth had just entered. He walked past her bedroom and up to a set of French doors at the end of the second-floor landing. Opening the doors, he ushered Brent inside.
Joshua chose this moment to answer Brent’s silent question. “As God, I am able to stop time. Though I can manipulate all time and space, I have chosen to limit myself, so as to not interfere with the properties of its forward and linear movement. Right now I have stopped its movement, but not its direction. I will only ever allow time to progress, not regress. What happens in the past can never be undone. In the midst of this pause, we are simply walking through space without forward-functioning time. Only one time in Man’s existence have I allowed a single action to work its way backward through time, and that was my work on the cross. But even that had no effect on the physical realm.
“The room we stand in now is the bedroom of Elizabeth’s parents. As you can see, her mother, Laura, is asleep. Tell me, Brent, where is her father?”
“I don’t…” Brent stopped. His eyes grew large and his pulse surged. “He’s in his 500SL Mercedes on Logan Parkway heading to his job!” Brent’s brain stumbled over itself, trying to get out of the way of another sentence. “How… How do I know that? How could I possibly know that?”
Joshua directed Brent back into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind them. Seeming to ignore Brent’s question, he made his way down the stairs toward the front entrance of the Franklin home. Brent followed closely behind, stunned by the unexpected knowledge he’d had about Elizabeth’s father. But even that couldn’t distract him from the unmoving dust particles before him in the streams of sunlight. As he and Joshua moved through them, the tiny specks shifted due to their wake, but afterward came to stand frozen in non-time once again.
Brent was in awe.
Reaching the landing, Joshua walked to the front door of the house. Brent took a few seconds—non-seconds?—to look around the home. It was beautiful. The Franklins were obviously not hurting for money. The house wasn’t exactly a mansion, but it certainly wasn’t one’s typical upper-middle-class structure either. 6,348-and-one-half square feet.
What? How…?
Joshua opened the door and motioned for Brent to walk outside. Dumbfounded, Brent just stared at him with an open mouth as he walked past. Joshua had a slightly amused look on his face.
Again, Joshua pulled the door closed, and the two men walked into the middle of the large front yard. Turning around to look at the house, Brent saw the domain’s full stature. It was definitely impressive. A white-brick facade with black shutters, a multitude of windows—including the half-circle glass above the black-trimmed, double-front doors.
Beautiful.
The lawn, shrubbery, and flower gardens surrounding the house and property were immaculate. Brent knew in that moment that Laura Franklin had hired Martin’s Landscape Design and Horticulture to create and maintain the grounds.
“How am I doing that?” he asked, turning to face Joshua again.
Joshua, with a sweeping wave of his right arm, directed Brent’s attention down both ends of the street. There were quite a few homes of similar size and value on both sides of the street with quite a bit of space between each. It was a beautiful, recently-created residential development.
Brent hadn’t even begun to wrap his mind around everything when he saw several other things occurring around him. Strike that. He saw several other things that had been in the midst of occurring when Joshua threw his time whammy over everything.
An athletic blonde woman in spandex pants and a tank top was immobile, mid-stride on the sidewalk to his left, approaching the Franklins’ property. There were five sparrows stopped in mid-flight, having apparently just vacated a small tree across the street. To their right was a Scottish Terrier, all four of its legs spread in full reach as it hung suspended in the air, while apparently chasing a ball that had been thrown by its owner.
To Brent, the whole experience was unfathomable. Yet here he was, seeing it all before him.
“This is Elizabeth’s new environment. The Franklins moved here, into their newly-built home, a little over a year ago.”
One year, three months, and eighteen days,” blurted Brent.
“Yes. Elizabeth goes to Lakeview High School, where she calls a couple of other teenage girls her friends. She is, by the world’s standards, a physically beautiful girl. And it is those standards that have caused her no small amount of grief. She has everything an American girl could hope for: money that supplies her with seemingly endless amounts of clothes and shoes, a new car in the garage that she was hoping to drive soon after turning sixteen, and boys who can’t keep their eyes off of her.”
Joshua’s wording struck Brent as odd. “Joshua, don’t you mean to say that she has a new car in the garage that she is hoping to drive soon after turning sixteen? I mean she may be ‘paused,’ but she’s not dead.”
Joshua again looked into Brent’s eyes. There was no playful smile on his face this time. His eyes were sad and intense. “I said exactly what I meant to say.”
Suddenly Brent’s heart sank. He began to sense deep bereavement in Joshua’s heart.
“Do you feel it, Brent?”
“You are so sad right now.”
“Should I not love her as deeply as I do you?”
“Is there something wrong? Is she dying?”
“She has been dying a little bit every day for the past few years. Her father’s successes in his job have catapulted the family up the economic ladder. It was hard-earned by Tony, Elizabeth’s father, but he and Laura have not handled things well in their family. Their financial success has mutated into a disease called status. Their lives have become all about reputation and enjoying what they call ‘the good life.’ They don’t understand the impact all of this is having on their daughter. And because of that disconnect, Elizabeth has been living a lost life. She is being swept away—drowning in a current too strong to swim in alone. As a result, she has been making very poor decisions for her life. It is because of these circumstances, Brent, that I have brought you here.”
“Oookaaay,” said Brent slowly. He gave Joshua a suspicious look. The feeling of amazement was rapidly turning to dismay.
“You wanted to make all the decisions. You wanted complete control. I am giving you the right to exercise both aspects to your own satisfaction.”
Brent was confused. Exercise the right to make all decisions and to have complete control? “Joshua, I’m not exactly sure what you’re offering, but…”
“Brent, I am giving you my power.”
I watched Tara’s eyes grow large with Joshua’s announcement.
We sat on a bench at the start of a biking and walking trail that ran through the neighboring woods behind our housing development. It was a perfect night to be out and about. The temperature was slightly cool with what Tara called a “stupefyingly-beautiful moon” high in the sky above us.
“You’re telling me that Jesus—Joshua—gave you his powers? God’s powers?!”
It was hard to remain serious. I could feel a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. Finally I just laughed.
“Ahh…” Tara said. “So you’re just playing with me now. Trying to see how gullible I am?”
“No, not at all! I can be serious and laugh at the same time.”
“Well, then…” she began, hoping I’d finish her sentence.
Dead air.
“I want a milkshake,” she said finally. “And the kids don’t need to know that you bought me one.”
Again, I laughed. “Steak ‘n Shake?”
“Yep.”
Getting up from the bench, I gave Tara my hand. She took it and stood to her feet. It took several minutes to get back to the house, but instead of talking we just enjoyed the silence of the night with our arms around one another.
Upon reaching the house, we could see that Jenna’s bedroom light was still on.
“I’ll go let her know that we’ve got an ‘errand’ to run,” said Tara.
“Oh, I know she’ll appreciate that line,” I said with a smirk.
Tara gave me a wink as we walked through the grass and up to the front door.
Fifteen minutes later, we sat across from each other in a nearly-empty Steak ‘n Shake, waiting for our milkshakes. Hers, chocolate. Mine, strawberry and banana. The coolness of the dining area, along with the ice-cold shakes would re-energize our ability to keep the conversation flowing.
“Do you want to wait on the milkshakes before I start again?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said, with emphasis on the ‘p’.
“Okay, well…After almost having to be picked up off the grass in the Franklins’ front lawn, Joshua asked me to follow him back into the house. When we got inside, we sat down in the living room. I sat on the sofa and he on a chair, facing me. He said that he had some explaining to do.”
“I’ll say!”
“Joshua told me that he was, indeed, going to give me his powers, but ...”
“…WITH LIMITATIONS,” SAID Joshua.
Brent sat on the couch, mute. His heart was racing, and he could feel heat rising in his face and ears. He was terrified. If he had awakened standing on a steel girder 700-feet in the air with nothing to grab onto, it might feel similar to the situation in which he was now finding himself.
“Brent, I’m not going to sugar-coat this. I’m about to drop you into a very serious situation. Nothing less would allow you to understand the gravity of my work, every second of every day, from the moment that I set creation into motion. This whole situation which you are about to be subjected to is going to test you beyond anything you’ve been through in the past. More so, even, than the life-and-death struggles you had prior to getting to know me.”
Brent’s thoughts immediately went back to his middle teens. He had been involved—unknown to him at the time—in the occult. Depression and demonic oppression had driven him to the edge of suicide. He still bore on his left wrist the scar of one attempt. He had hated his life, believing that the darkness would never lift. If it hadn’t been for his mamaw and his basketball coach stepping in, he knew he wouldn’t be alive to have this encounter with Joshua. In fact, he wouldn’t have had any encounter with Joshua until the day of his judgment and subsequent placement in a very real lake of fire.
Joshua paused, seemingly to allow Brent the memory of those horrible days. When Brent refocused, Joshua continued.
“One thing that I want you to know, is that I am not going to place on you the full weight of ‘godship’.” He smiled slightly. “After all, I want you to actually survive this.”
Brent tried to smile, but the end result was just increased pressure in his jaw as he clenched his teeth more tightly. He wanted to escape. He wanted to tell Joshua that everything was okay now, that he no longer held any anger toward him. For whatever reason, his mind flittered back to a memory of visiting Lydia at the Air Force base at which she had been stationed. There had been an Open House that day, with the United States Air Force Thunderbirds doing an aerobatics presentation. Afterward, Brent had the opportunity to get into the cockpit of one of the many different fighter jets that had been on display—an F-15 Eagle.
He remembered his fascination with all of the gauges, switches, and levers. How any single individual could fly the thing and keep all of those indicators within acceptable limits was beyond him. Now Brent felt as though he had awakened to find himself thirty-thousand feet in the air with the joystick of that fighter in his hand. No way out, with no idea how to fly, knowing full well that any action he took might result in a fiery end.
“There are limitations to what I’m going to allow you to do and the power that I’m going to give you. You will use my power within a limited sphere of life. We’ll call this your ‘freedom zone.’ Inside this zone, you will have freedom to exercise your power and your own decisions. You will also have opposition.
Outside of this zone, you will have no power at all. So there are limitations to what you will be permitted to do.
“Listen to me carefully. I am going to give you everything that you will need to operate within the situations in which you will soon find yourself. I will be holding back very little from you as it pertains to your sovereignty. However, you will find yourself in situations in which you must hold yourself back. There are rules. Rules that even I must follow.”
That struck Brent as implausible. He again found the ability to use his mouth. “You have to abide by rules?”
“Do you find that so surprising? I cannot allow myself to sin, therefore I cannot violate my own written Word. I chose, even before I began to create, to give Man free will. I will not violate that. Even the angels and the Enemy have free will, and while I have established different rules regarding their freedoms, I must limit myself even in their decision-making processes.
“You are familiar with the verse in which I said, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.’ This is very important to understand. In this experience, you are not going to be me. You are still going to be Brenton Lawton. I am not going to remove your personality. You will be using your own limited knowledge of my Word, my love, my patience, and my grace to make your decisions. You will also still be contending with your own carnal tendencies.
“This test would not fulfill its purpose if I made you perfect in your thoughts the way that I have made you perfect in your spirit through my blood. You will still have the same balancing act to perform that my servant Paul described. He said, ‘So I find this to be a law: when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my body a different law waging war with the law in my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin that exists in my body.’ Do you understand?”
Behind the Darkness Page 8