Standing up, she grabbed the note and the loaded gun and walked out of her room.
Brent placed himself at the downstairs landing, watching as she approached him down the stairs. The sadness in her eyes brought tears to his own.
She reached the foyer and made a hard left to walk through the hall and into the kitchen.
Brent followed.
The house was still surrounded by a phalanx of angelic warriors, protecting against demonic intrusion. But it appeared that the work of the demons was complete. They weren’t needed any longer to assure the outcome for which they had fought.
Where are, you Kyle? Brent could only hope that he would arrive in time.
Elizabeth walked to the kitchen counter and set the note down next to the scribbled phone number of the restaurant at which her parents were spending their evening.
The irony was not lost on Brent.
Again Elizabeth stared at the letter, not so much to read it as to see that it actually existed, that she was really going to go through with the final act.
Brent walked up beside her and began to speak softly into her right ear. She had listened before. She had listened as he spoke the hope of a young man named Kyle becoming a part of her life. How he longed to see the corners of her lips move into another smile.
“Elizabeth, hold on. Kyle is coming! Kyle will be here soon. Just hold on.”
“Kyle,” she whispered. A tear fell from her chin and onto her note, causing the ink in the word life to bleed out.
“Yes, dear one. Kyle. Both Kyle and Jesus love you. They love you, Elizabeth!”
Elizabeth’s body began to shake uncontrollably. Brent thought she might collapse, but she placed her gunless left hand onto the counter to steady herself.
She took a deep breath and released it raggedly through her lips. Then she raised her left arm and used the long dark sleeve of her shirt to wipe away the moisture escaping from her eyes and nose.
She looked to her right, to the French doors that led to the back deck. Walking to them, she saw that the sun had nearly passed down below the rooftops of the other homes.
“The sun has set on my life.” It sounded poetic to her—sad and beautiful at the same time.
Looking outside at the lush green grass beyond the deck, she decided to give her mom and dad one last courtesy. She would make sure not to get her blood on any of their precious belongings.
She opened the left-hand door and walked out onto the deck.
A FRANTIC BRENT Lawton placed himself in the passenger seat of Dan Russell’s Lexus. He needed to somehow get Kyle to Elizabeth more quickly.
“Kyle! Speed! Run lights! She’s going to kill herself! Move it!”
Kyle’s jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on the traffic and signals ahead. He gunned the engine, knowing that the worst that could probably happen was to have a cop take off after him—maybe exactly what needed to happen.
BRENT STOOD OUT in front of the Franklin home, not wanting to see Elizabeth’s progress. There was nothing more that he could do but wait. Wait for a seventeen-year-old man to arrive and rescue the day.
Get here, Kyle! “Get here!”
He listened as Elizabeth settled on a place in the middle of the backyard. She would be easily noticed when the deck lights were turned on.
Brent heard tires squeal in the distance. He’s close!
Again, the sound of tires and an engine being pressed to its limits.
The car rounded the bend, turning onto the Franklins’ street. Reaching the front of the home, Kyle locked the brakes and skidded to a stop. He ejected himself from the car and began to run for the front door of the large house.
Kyle was within fifteen feet when the sound of a 9mm handgun thundered from the back yard.
Every ounce of strength left Brent in that moment, and he collapsed to his hands and knees on the lawn. “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh my God!” The constriction around his chest crushed his heart as he stared into the grass.
Kyle reached the door and pounded on it.
But Brent knew no one would answer. Elizabeth’s pained thoughts were no more.
Brent jerked bolt-upright in his bed. He was still shaking. It was like…like he wasn’t waking up from something, but rather forcefully being ripped away.
He swung his feet to the floor, planted his face into the palms of his hands, and began to weep. “Oh God! Oh dear God! Why? Why, why, why?”
How he wished, as he sat there, that he could feel the memories slipping away as if waking from a bad dream.
But they weren’t.
He looked at the palms of his hands, certain that he would see imprints of the blades of grass from the Franklins’ yard. But there were none.
The events had been real, though. He was certain. They had to have been!
Quickly, he changed into his jeans and T-shirt from the day before. He opened the door and made his way down the steps and to the front door of the house. He paused long enough to put on and tie his shoes, and then he was out the door.
He ran for the back of the farmhouse and to the path that would lead him up to his papaw’s secret place.
Thorns and briars scratched at his arms and tore at his clothes as he raced, fell, and fought his way up. His anger became an energy source, and there was no small amount of fuel.
By the time he was halfway up, he was exhausted. His body begged him to quit. But he wouldn’t relent. He couldn’t. He would make it on nothing more than pure adrenaline if he had to.
Finally, he reached the clearing, that flat ridge on which rested the white boulder. He stumbled to the large rock and fell to his knees, panting, trying desperately to hold onto the meager contents of his stomach.
When at last he was able to find the strength that he needed, he stood to his feet and yelled into the sky, “WHHYYYYY?
“Whhyyyyy? Joshuaaa!”
Brent spun around, looking to the peak of the mountain. Again he yelled Joshua’s name.
“Answer me!”
With the next blink of his eyes, Brent was standing in a wide open field, blue skies and scattered puffy clouds overhead.
Joshua’s boardroom.
The Man stood before Brent, a solemn look on his face.
Brent spoke right away, his emotions a whip that lashed out without reservation. “I am so…” He restrained the urge to swear. “I am so very angry with you right now! You have no idea how much I want to hate you!” He forced himself to stay the remainder of his thought.
Tears filled Joshua’s eyes, then fell down both cheeks. He nodded. “I know.”
It took a moment for Brent to be able form another coherent sentence that wouldn’t be laced with some sort of profanity. He couldn’t remember the last time—if ever—he had had such intense feelings. The closest had been with the death of his mamaw, but this surpassed even that.
“You sent me to her…” But Brent couldn’t finish the sentence. He dropped to his knees, hands on his thighs, and began to rock back and forth, sobs dealing harsh blows to his lungs and abdomen.
Joshua knelt down in front of him. With his right hand, he reached around Brent’s neck and drew him to his shoulder. Then the two of them wept together.
Joshua didn’t let go. He held Brent for several minutes until the waves of grief subsided enough for Brent to breathe again.
Brent sat up slowly. His chest still quaked, but breathing was becoming easier. His chest spasmed periodically, as though he were a small child at the end of a hard cry.
Joshua produced a cloth—a white handkerchief—and handed it to Brent.
Wiping his face, Brent looked at Joshua with pleading eyes. “Why, Joshua? I don’t get it.” His throat threatened to close up on him.
“First, I need you to know something,” said Joshua gently. “I didn’t give you this experience to punish you.”
“But was it real? Was Elizabeth real?”
“I’m going to use you, Brent. I’ve got plans for you, and I need for you to know your limitations
. And mine.”
Brent looked right into Joshua’s eyes, recognizing that he should have picked up on something, but it was lost on him. “Yours?”
“Because I love my creation, I will only intervene so far. I cannot violate free will without making my love less real, less powerful.”
Brent shook his head, still not fully understanding.
“When Judas Iscariot betrayed me, it wasn’t a surprise. I knew this man. I loved him. We were friends. He would even help to further the kingdom of God along with the other eleven. But I knew his heart, that one day it would end. One of the most painful things ever to happen in my life as a man was to allow him to violate our friendship. When he led all those soldiers to arrest me and take me captive, I saw fear and the beginnings of regret in his eyes. But it was his decision—his free will—that brought our relationship to an end.
“Do you see, Brent? I don’t force people against their wills, not even when it could have prevented my own suffering. After my death, during those three days in which my loved ones grieved, I still wanted Judas as my own. It was not my wish for him to take his own life. To this day it pains me. But it was his will.”
Brent was starting to get some clarity.
Joshua continued. “Just as it was not your will to have Elizabeth take her life, what would life have been like for her had you had the power to force her to stay alive? In your mind, you believe that she would have seen the error of her ways and loved that baby and accepted me as her Savior. But in reality, once you had exerted control over her actions, you wouldn’t have stopped. You would have continued to make her do the things that were going to make her ‘happy.’ And those actions would have failed miserably.”
“But what about predestination? Don’t you choose who will go to Heaven? Isn’t that a violation of free will?”
“Only if you see things from a linear perspective. I don’t just see things from beginning to end, I see them from end to beginning. Names that you have read about in Scriptures—the ones that the Bible says are already recorded in the Book of Life are there because I already know every ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Names pre-written are still freely determined.”
Joshua stood up and reached out a hand. “Come. Let’s walk.”
Brent took the offered hand and allowed himself to be helped to his feet.
“I’ve still got questions.”
“Ask them.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand the free will thing better, but that’s not exactly taking away all of my anger.”
Joshua nodded.
“I’ve come to understand that, even though I had all kinds of power to do different things, I was nowhere near to becoming equal to you. But still, I called out to you and I admitted my limitations.
“All those people—Tina, her sister and parents, Colleen, Kyle, and all the people on the prayer chain—were praying to you, not to me. Why didn’t you intervene when you knew that I was going to fail? Couldn’t you have stepped in and done something that I hadn’t thought of? Couldn’t you have saved Elizabeth?”
“Yes.”
Joshua’s answer brought Brent to a stand-still. A wave from Joshua to rejoin him got him moving again.
“I could have saved her. I could have shown up as an apparition. I could have shown up as I am right here before you. But, again, that would have eliminated her freedom to make her own decisions.”
“But I’ve heard stories of when you’ve done it for others,” Brent countered. “You did something like that for my papaw.”
“Different stories, Brent. Different life situations. Elizabeth didn’t want to search me out. I’m willing to introduce myself to anyone who wants to know the truth. She didn’t care to know your will or my will. She chose to believe the lies of the Enemy. She tied her life’s value to the lack of love and attention from her parents.
“People—you included, Brent—are allowed to choose the lies.
“If I were to stop death from occurring until every individual reached a certain age, people would believe that they had all the time in the world to do whatever they wanted. People would live any way that they desired for the sake of gratifying their base natures. Most would only make decisions to know me after having approached their last few days of life.
“Can you imagine Heaven full of unrepentant ‘believers’?
“Think about this, too. How many times must I persist in saving a person’s life while he or she ascribes every rescue that I make to chance or luck?
“Brent, mankind has a fatal condition of the heart called ‘sin.’ Man’s natural tendency is to not seek me out. That wouldn’t change even if I were to choose to give Mankind more time.”
“But some do,” countered Brent softly. “I did.”
“Yes, you did,” responded Joshua. “You were open to receiving based on your mamaw’s constant intercession. If she had not undertaken the responsibility and the time to pray for you, Heaven and Hell would never have come to the forefront of your mind. And if not for those nagging thoughts, what would you have done?”
Joshua let that sit in Brent’s mind for a moment before continuing.
“Elizabeth had a couple of friends who knew that she needed help. They prayed and even expanded the prayer network for her. You tried to get Elizabeth to understand that her life could still have meaning and acceptance and love—both for herself and her baby—but she let fear and the whispers of demons be her guiding voices.
“Brent, here’s what you’ve got to understand. She chose her outcome. She had lovingly been told by her friends about Heaven and Hell. But you see, the fear of her parents’ opinions deafened her to reason.
“You did all that you could have done. Your path to reach her was much the same as the path that I would have taken. Well, except for the whole insulting-Jason-behind-his-back thing.”
Brent grimaced. But only a little.
“Do you want to know the truth, Brent? In this situation, as it was given to you, I would have lost her to the Enemy as well.”
Brent was stunned. “You would have lost?”
Joshua stopped walking and turned to face Brent. “I lose all the time, Brent. Every single individual on this planet is someone that I created with great love and for a reason. I want every one of them to join me in Heaven, to enjoy the New Earth.
“Unfortunately for me…” Again, tears began rise up in Joshua’s eyes. “…even giving my life as everyone’s ransom wasn’t enough to rescue everyone.
“So much loss. So much pain. So many who will encounter a judgment that was meant only for my Enemy—Satan and his angels. What a painful day it will be for the Father, the Spirit, and me when we have to see our creation punished eternally. All they’ve got to do before they die is acknowledge me, decide to turn from their sin, and accept my blood-purchased forgiveness. My grace.” Joshua’s tears fell. “That’s all, Brent. That’s all it takes! But the overwhelming majority of my creation will never accept my love for them.”
Brent’s heart was breaking for the very one who had created it. He stepped up to Joshua and embraced him, hugging him tight. He felt Joshua’s arms wrap around his back. It filled Brent with awe that the Creator of the Universe was accepting comfort from him.
Joshua must have heard his thoughts.
“Why are you in awe? Why would you think that you could not give me comfort? My own Word says that I can be grieved. That means that I can also be un-grieved.” Joshua released Brent and stepped back to face him with a soft smile. “The removal of my grief takes place because of your loving responses to me. I love to be held by my creation as much as I love holding all those who will let me.”
Joshua began walking again, and Brent jogged a couple of steps to catch up.
“Now to another matter that is embedded deeply in your heart,” said Joshua. “Brent, your mamaw was ready to come home. If you will think the situation through, you will find that you and your sister and the whole of your family are much more upset by the way that she
died than the fact that she has come home to be with me. Right?”
Brent would have preferred a moment or two to process the question, but Joshua continued.
“Aren’t you glad of the hope that you have, knowing that her salvation was secure? It gives you comfort about where she is right now.”
Brent looked over and Joshua smiled.
“And that’s because she’s with me. After the initial shock of her death began to subside, it was the how that kept you upset.
“Let me ask you a question to put things into perspective. When you went to the dentist to have that root canal done, you had a toothache leading up to it. But in that dentist’s chair you had to endure some additional discomfort before the relief came. Right?”
Brent nodded.
“Brent, the pain endured here on Earth prior to leaving for your real home is just like that. This sin-filled world is the toothache. The cancer or AIDS or gunshot wound or even a severely-broken leg is the root canal. It is awful for anyone to see; it seems torturous—and trust me, I understand physical pain—but if someone knows me as his Savior, the end result of death is relief. The moment that person steps out of this world into the next, that pain is eliminated and never dwelt upon again.
“I’m certain that you will appreciate the irony of my next statement, so listen carefully. Every believer’s passage into Heaven is the result of Original Sin.”
Brent, indeed, had to reflect deeply on what he’d just heard.
“Do you understand why?”
Brent shook his head.
“Because you were designed and created to live forever. But now, because of Adam’s and Eve’s fall from relationship with me—the result of Original Sin—you and everyone else must face the probability of death on this side of eternity in order to get home.”
“The probability of death?” asked Brent.
“Physical death will persist before and after I return for my Bride—my Church—but there will be that moment in which I will call her home, and death will not touch that segment of believers who are alive on that day.
“You’re going to enjoy it,” said Joshua with a grin. “That is, if you’re still walking around on Earth when it takes place.”
Behind the Darkness Page 28