by Nate Allen
man, well built, and fully bearded. He isn’t very far away at all anymore. His pace quickens down the final decline. He’s maybe fifty feet away from me.
… I know him. It’s my dad, running full speed toward me.
“Andrew!” I can make out his smile despite the distance. He is overjoyed. “My boy!”
My heart is beating at an immeasurable speed. Immediate tears fill my eyes. “Da-dad!” I step toward him, feeling the waves push at me even harder.
Before I can say anything else, he reaches me, wrapping his thick arms around me. He laughs as he squeezes. “My boy,” I can tell that he’s crying. “My son.”
“I’ve missed you, dad.” I whisper, as tears drip off my face. It isn’t pain I feel but an overwhelming sense of happiness. The presence of God was enough; my dad is an overflow that I can barely believe. “I imagined seeing you again ever since you died. I never thought the day would come.”
He lets me go to look at me, “You don’t know the joy I feel right now, son. I never thought I’d see you again. It was very close to becoming a reality. I had already started to accept it.”
“What are you talking about, dad?” my eyes are pulled wide.
“You only had a little bit more time before you would have been lost forever. The deceiver was just trying to run out the clock.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“The timer you were given was not a countdown to the end of the world, but the end of your life. You weren’t dead yet but in a coma. Your injuries were very severe and you only had another two and a half days before you would draw your final breath.”
“Where was I? Hell?”
“It would’ve led to it. It is a final opportunity for salvation. Everyone who ends up in the counterfeit are unsaved people who aren’t yet dead but can’t be reached by the outside anymore. They are people on life support, vegetative states, coma patients. Their spirit is given one more brief window of time to receive Jesus Christ. If they haven’t received Him as Savior before the clock runs out, their “paradise” will lead down into the very pit of Hell.”
I’m suddenly cold at the very thought. “When you say the deceiver was just trying to run out the clock—
“He knows enough about you to know about me. I was never in the counterfeit, in a little ice house fishing. And he knew that you would be convinced that I had the answers. Either laying an attractive woman out at your very feet or a vague description of where the lake was, he was content to do nothing but offer you everything you desired. He just needed you chasing something. But, The Lord, in His goodness, gave you one more chance, one opportunity for absolute clarity. He literally threw you off course by having a boy leap from your vehicle and disappear without a trace.”
“Wow,” it’s barely a whisper.
“You’ve heard that all of Heaven erupts when a soul is saved.”
I nod my head.
“You’ve heard it five different times in your life, actually. I have the dates and times; I have the names of the people who told you.” he smiles at me, the only teacher I want to hear this from. “There is no exaggeration to that statement. Father God’s heart breaks every time a soul is lost. And many are. So, when one is saved, the celebration is great! The celebration for you is still happening, son. If you listen closely, you can hear it.”
The waves now carry the sound of celebration. There are trumpets by the thousands; the percussion is as loud as thunder; a countless number of people are singing; and the woodwinds whistle along.
“I am appointed to take you on a tour.” he smiles as if he still can’t believe he gets to say it. “I left the celebration to come meet you. I’ve been running since you started your prayer. Many don’t ever get to take this trip.” he pauses, to look me in the eyes. I know what he’s thinking. I’m thinking it too.
4
How close I was to never receiving Christ is following me like a ghost. Dad’s eyes, though overjoyed, have a speck of sadness still sitting in them.
“Could you see me my whole life?” I ask as we begin to walk together.
“No.” he says quietly. “Throughout your life, I received little updates through the waves. A sound of your voice here, a laugh there, even small recordings of big events in your life. But, I was never given a full picture.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t for me to know. The knowledge of sadness exists here; sadness itself exists here. But, The Father blocks it from us. Like a good Parent, He bears the weight of it and doesn’t let it spill over.”
“Then why do you look sad?” I ask.
“It’s love, Andrew. You can’t truly love without knowing sadness or loss. When Jesus gave Himself as the sacrifice, He saw all of time. He saw everyone who would receive His gift, and everyone who would deny it. His cries were from much more than the physical torment. Contrary to what many people believe, the Spirit of God mourns those who are lost. His Word says that there will be a day when He wipes away all the tears. That day hasn’t yet come.
“A day is coming where we won’t know sadness anymore?”
“A day is coming where sadness will not exist, son. There will be no knowledge of it in us whatsoever. If something doesn’t exist, you can’t live in the reality of it. It will be wiped away, erased from existence. There are still tears here. There is still loss. The Father doesn’t remove that person from your mind as if they never existed. He lets you mourn them if they’re lost and then fills you up with Himself. If all of this land passed away, leaving only the Spirit of God and nothing or no one else, you have all you need. You don’t truly need me, son. And I don’t need you. We want each other. We love each other. But, The Father’s love is all we truly need. Even if everyone you’ve ever loved in life perishes, you will be full because He is fullness.”
This is an almost impossible thing to grasp. Sadness can exist with fullness? Pain can share space with paradise? It seems like a contradiction. And yet, the waves of His presence continue to surround every part of me, filling me to the brim. Dad’s love is something I’ve desired ever since he passed away, but if he disappeared from by my side, never to be seen again, I would still be full. This is an unfathomable thing to feel. I could be at the bottom of this hill for all time, washed over in the waves and never need anything else.
This very detachment of need from dad makes his company even more welcome. As he and I walk up the steep incline of the first hill, the waves come up over our heads. I am a man walking underwater, entirely consumed by the waves. There is nothing else I want.
“It gets deeper the farther in you go.” dad says, effortlessly scaling the steep road. I continue to find myself nearly being knocked backwards. “Do you remember when you would swim in the deep end of the pool? The whole atmosphere was more condensed.”
“Yeah. The pressure made it feel like screws twisting into your skull.”
“It’s because you weren’t created to live in the atmosphere. You could only get a sensation of it before you had to surface. But, you were all consumed.” he doesn’t expound. He gives me a look, to hint at the obvious. And I understand.
“How far in are we going?” I ask, continuing to struggle with every step.
“Step by step right now, son. I don’t know where the tour will end. I only know where it begins.”
5
We’re at the top of the first hill. The road never dips down into a valley. It plateaus for maybe fifty to seventy five feet before starting to climb again. The level ground we are walking on now is even hard for me to handle. Only one level up and the thickness of the waves have increased dramatically. They don’t look like just bends in the air anymore but like folds of golden light.
Every step I take is heavier than the last.
“When does it get easier?” I’m breathing heavily.
“Andrew,” he looks over at me as if the question was a joke. “You are in the presence of the One Who created everything just by speaking. He spoke the sun into existenc
e and considers it small. The very One Who knows you through and through also created all life, from the human being down to bacteria, and all the chemicals to uphold the fragile make up of existence itself. Without difficulty or even really thinking about it at all, He upholds everything that has ever been and will ever be.” Dad laughs. “It will not get easier any time soon. His power is beyond description, beyond any fathomable idea of Him we can generate.” he pauses for a moment.
“How are you able to walk so easily?” I interrupt. I can barely step forward anymore.
“I’m sorry, son. I completely forgot to grab fruit for you. I was so elated when you received Jesus that I forgot to prepare for the trip up.” Dad runs from the road and down the side of the hill. I don’t know where he’s going. All of the hills are covered in grass and nothing el—
A dark red tree is now rapidly growing at the bottom of the hill. By the time dad gets to the bottom it will be fully grown. It doesn’t phase him one bit. He is accustomed to the way Heaven works; I am still baffled by it.
He reaches the bottom, and plucks some fruit from a low branch. As soon as he steps away from it, the tree starts to shrink. He runs back up toward me, the tree now slipping back into the ground.
Dad moves very quickly, much faster than a run. At times it seems like he is carried on some kind of invisible current. The bottom of the hill was probably thirty feet below me. It took him less than five seconds to