The Heaven Trilogy
Page 44
They led him out, still smiling.
Padre Cadione staggered to his chair and sat hard. It had been a long time since he had prayed more than meaningless words. But that was about to change.
Everything was about to change.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TED DEKKER is known for novels that combine adrenaline-laced plot twists with the supernatural and the surreal. He is the best-selling author of multiple titles including Obsessed, The Circle Trilogy (Black, Red, White), Thr3e, Blink, The Martyr’s Song series (Heaven’s Wager, When Heaven Weeps, and Thunder of Heaven) and the co-author of the best-selling series Blessed Child and A Man Called Blessed. Raised in the jungles of Indonesia, Ted now lives with his family in the mountains of Colorado.
The Circle
Fleeing assailants through an alleyway in Denver late one night, Thomas Hunter narrowly escapes to the roof of an industrial building. Then a silent bullet from the night clips his head and his world goes black. When he awakes, he finds himself in an entirely different reality . . . a green forest that seems more real than where he was. Every time he tries to sleep, he wakes up in the other world, and soon he truly no longer knows which reality is real.
Never before has an entire trilogy—all in hardcover format—been released in less than a year. On the heels of The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings comes a new trilogy where dreams and reality collide. Where the fate of two worlds depends on one man: Thomas Hunter
Each book in the trilogy is also available in abridged (CD) and
unabridged (CD and cassette) editions.”
Discover more at TedDekker.com
A Novel of Good, Evil, and All That Lies Between
Imagine answering your cell phone one day to a mysterious voice that gives you three minutes to confess your sin. If you don't, he'll blow the car you're driving to bits and pieces. So begins a nightmare that grows with progressively higher stakes. There's another phone call, another riddle, another three minutes to confess your sin. They cycle will not stop until the world discovers the secret of your sin.
THR3E is a psychological thriller that starts full-tilt and keeps you off-balance until the very last suspense-filled page.
This novel is also available as an abridged CD audio edition.
Discover more at TedDekker.com
Also Available from Ted Dekker
The future changes in the
BLINK of an eye...or does it?
Seth Borders isn't your average graduate student. For starters, he has one of the world's highest IQs. Now he's suddenly struck by an incredible power—the ability to see multiple potential futures.
Still reeling form this inexplicable gift, Seth stumbles upon a beautiful woman named Miriam. Unknown to Seth, Miriam is a Saudi Arabian princess who has fled her veiled existence to escape a forced marriage of unimaginable consequences. Cultures collide as they're thrown together and forced to run from an unstoppable force determined to kidnap or kill Miriam.
An intoxicating tale set amidst the shifting sands of the Middle East and the back roads of American, Blink engages issues as ancient as the earth itself...and as current as today's headlines.
Discover more at TedDekker.com
Also Available from Ted Dekker
BLESSED CHILD
By Ted Dekker and Bill Bright
The young orphan boy was abandoned and raised in an Ethiopian monastery. Now he must flee those walls or die. But the world is hardly ready for a boy like Caleb. When relief expert Jason Marker agrees to take Caleb from the monastery, he opens humanity's doors to an incredible journey filled with intrigue and peril. Together with Leiah, the nurse who escapes to America with them, Jason discovers Caleb's stunning power. But so do the boy's enemies, who will stop at nothing to destroy him. Jason and Leiah fight for the boy's survival while the world erupts into debate over the source of the boy's power. In the end nothing can prepare any of them for what they will find.
A MAN CALLED BLESSED
By Ted Dekker and Bill Bright
In this explosive sequel, to Blessed Child, Rebecca Soloman leads a team deep into the Ethiopian desert to hunt the one man who may know the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. But Islamic fundamentalists fear that the Ark's discovery will compel Israel to rebuild Solomon's temple on the very site of their own holy Mosque in Jerusalem.
They immediately dispatch Ishmael, their most accomplished assassin, to pursue the same man. But the man in their sights is no ordinary man. His name is Caleb, and he too is on a quest—to find again the love he once embraced as a child.
The fate of millions rests in the hands of these three.
Discover more at TedDekker.com
The Martyr’s Song Series
HEAVEN’S WAGER
He lost everything he ever wanted—and risked his soul to get what he deserved. Take a glimpse into a world more real and vital than most people ever discover here on earth, the unseen world where the real dramas of the universe— and of our daily lives—continually unfold.
WHEN HEAVEN WEEPS
A cruel game of ultimate stakes at the end of World War II leaves Jan Jovic stunned and perplexed. He's prepared for neither the incredible demonstration of love nor the terrible events that follow. Now, many years later, Jan falls madly in love with the "wrong" woman and learns the true cost of love.
THUNDER OF HEAVEN
When armed forces destroy their idyllic existence within the jungles of the Amazon, Tanya embraces God, while Shannon boldly rejects God, choosing the life of an assassin. Despite their vast differences, they find themselves in the crucible of a hideous plot to strike sheer terror in the heart of America.
Discover more at TedDekker.com
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM
TED DEKKER
What happens when we begin to see ourselves as the utopian-like
Christian that God intends instead of like the imperfect
human the world insists upon?
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A MARTYR’S SONG
WHEN
HEAVEN
WEEPS
TED DEKKER
WHEN HEAVEN WEEPS
© Copyright 2001
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.
Scripture quotations noted NIV are from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dekker, Ted, 1962–
When heaven weeps / Ted R. Dekker.
p. cm. (A martyr’s song; bk. 2)
ISBN 978-0-8499-4516-8 (repak)
1. World War, 1939–1945—Veterans—Fiction. 2. Evangelicalism— Fiction. 3. Clergy—Fiction. I. Title
PS3554.E43 W48 2001
813'6—dc21
2001017609
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
07 08 09 10 11 RRD 10 9 8 7 6
CONTENTS
LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
BOOK ONE: THE PRIEST
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
BOOK TWO: THE SINNER
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTE
R NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BOOK THREE: THE LOVER
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
BOOK FOUR: THE BELOVED
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
The story you are about to read begins with some of the events told in Ted’s novel, The Martyr’s Song, and then continues with Jan’s incredible tale of betrayal and love that many claim is Ted’s most powerful story to date.
There is no order to the Martyr’s Song novels, you may read any in any order. Each is a stand alone story that in no way depends on the others. Nevertheless, if there is one book we recommend you start with, it is The Martyr’s Song, the story that started it all.
For LeeAnn, my wife,
without whose love I
would be only a shadow
of myself. I will never
forget the day you saw heaven.
BOOK ONE
THE PRIEST
“Christians who refuse
To look squarely into the suffering of Christ
Are not Christians at all.
They are a breed of pretenders,
Who would turn their backs on the Cross,
And shame his death.
You cannot hold up the Cross,
Nor drink of the cup
Without embracing the death.
And you cannot understand love,
Unless you first die.”
THE DANCE OF THE DEAD
1959
CHAPTER ONE
Atlanta, Georgia, 1964
IVENA STOOD in the small greenhouse attached to her home and frowned at the failing rosebush. The other bushes had not been affected—they flourished around her, glistening with a sprinkling of dewdrops. A bed of Darwin tulip hybrids blossomed bright red and yellow along her greenhouse’s glass shell. Behind her, against the solid wall of her house, a flat of purple orchids filled the air with their sweet aroma. A dozen other species of roses grew in neat boxes, none of them infected.
But this bush had lost its leaves and shriveled in the space of five days, and that was a problem because this wasn’t just another rosebush. This was Nadia’s rosebush.
Ivena delicately pried through the dried thorny stems, searching for signs of disease or insects. She’d already tried a host of remedies, from pesticides to a variety of growth agents, all to no avail. It was a Serbian Red from the saxifrage family, snipped from the bush that she and Sister Flouta had planted by the cross.
When Ivena had left Bosnia for Atlanta, she’d insisted on a greenhouse; it was the one unbreakable link to her past. She made a fine little business selling the flowers to local floral shops in Atlanta, but the real purpose for the greenhouse was this one rosebush, wasn’t it? Yes, she knew that as surely as she knew that blood flowed in her veins.
And now Nadia’s rose was dying. Or dead.
Ivena put one hand on her hip and ran the other through her gray curls. She’d cared for a hundred species of roses over her sixty years and never, never had she seen such a thing. Each bud from Nadia’s bush was priceless. If there was a graftable branch alive she would snip it off and nurse it back to health. But every branch seemed affected.
“Oh, dear Nadia, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?”
She couldn’t answer herself for the simple reason that she had no clue what she would do. She had never considered the possibility that this, the crown of her flower garden, might one day die for no apparent reason at all. It was a travesty.
Ivena picked through the branches again, hoping that she was wrong. Dried dirt grayed her fingers. They weren’t as young or as smooth as they once had been, but years of working delicately around thorns had kept them nimble. Graceful. She could walk her way through a rosebush blindfolded without so much as touching a thorn. But today she felt clumsy and old.
The stalk between her fingers suddenly snapped. Ivena blinked. It was as dry as tinder. How could it fail so fast? She tsked and shook her head. But then something caught her eye and she stopped.
Immediately beneath the branch that had broken, a very small shoot of green angled from the main stalk. That was odd. She lowered her head for a closer look.
The shoot grew out a mere centimeter, almost like a stalk of grass. She touched it gently, afraid to break it. And as she did she saw the tiny split in the bark along the base of that shoot.
She caught her breath. Strange! It looked like a small graft!
But she hadn’t grafted anything into the plant, had she? No, of course not. She remembered every step of care she’d given this plant over the last five years and none of them included a graft.
It looked like someone had slit the base of the rosebush open and grafted in this green shoot. And it didn’t look like a rose graft either. The stalk was a lighter green. So then maybe it wasn’t a graft. Maybe it was a parasite of some kind.
Ivena let her breath out slowly and touched it again. It was already healed at the insertion point.
“Hmmm.”
She straightened and walked to the round table where a white porcelain cup still steamed with tea. She lifted it to her lips. The rich aroma of spice warmed her nostrils and she paused, staring through the wisps of steam.
From this distance of ten feet Nadia’s rosebush looked like Moses’s burning bush, but consumed by the flame and burned black. Dead branches reached up from the soil like claws from a grave. Dead.
Except for that one tiny shoot of green at its base.
It was very strange indeed.
Ivena lowered herself into the old wood-spindle chair beside the table, still looking over the teacup to the rosebush. She sat here every morning, humming and sipping her tea and whispering her words to the Father. But today the sight before her was turning things on their heads.
She lowered the cup without drinking. “Father, what are you doing here?” she said softly.
Not that he was necessarily doing anything. Rosebushes died, after all. Perhaps with less encouragement than other plants. But an air of consequence had settled on Ivena, and she couldn’t ignore it.
Across the beds of flourishing flowers before her sat this one dead bush—an ugly black scar on a landscape of bright color. But then from the blackened stalk that impossible graft.
“What are you saying here, Father?”
She did not hear his answer, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t talking. He could be yelling for all she knew. Here on Earth it might come through as a distant whisper, easily mistaken for the sound of a gentle breeze. Actually the greenhouse was dead silent. She more felt something, and it could just as easily have been a draft that tickled her hair, or a finger of emotion from the past, as the voice of God.
Still the scene before her began to massage her heart with fingers of meaning. She just didn’t know what that meaning was yet.
Ivena hummed and a blanket of peace settled over her. She whispered, “Lover of my soul, I worship you. I kiss your feet. Don’t ever let me
forget.” Her words echoed softly through the quiet greenhouse, and she smiled. The Creator was a mischievous one, she often thought. At least playful and easily delighted. And he was up to something, wasn’t he?
A splash of red at her elbow caught her eye. It was her copy of the book. The Dance of the Dead. Its surreal cover showed a man’s face wide open with laughter, tears leaking down his cheek.
Still smiling, Ivena set down her teacup and lifted the book from the table. She ran a hand over the tattered cover. She’d read it a hundred times, of course. But it never lost its edge. Its pages oozed with love and laughter and the heart of the Creator.
She opened the book and brushed through a few dozen dog-eared pages. He had written a masterpiece, and in some ways it was as much God’s words as his. She could begin in the middle or at the beginning or the end and it wouldn’t hardly matter. The meaning would not be lost. She opened to the middle and read a few sentences.
It was odd how such a story could bring this warmth to her heart. But it did, it really did, and that was because her eyes had been opened a little as well. She’d seen a few things through God’s eyes.
Ivena glanced up at the dying rosebush with its impossible graft. Something new was beginning today. But everything had really started with the story in her hands, hadn’t it?
A small spark of delight ran through her bones. She smoothed her dress, crossed her legs and lowered her eyes to the page.
Yes, this was how it all started.
Twenty years ago in Bosnia. At the end of the war with the Nazis.
She read.
THE SOLDIERS stood unmoving on the hill’s crest, leaning on battered rifles, five dark silhouettes against a white Bosnian sky, like a row of trees razed by the war. They stared down at the small village, oblivious to the sweat caked beneath their tattered army fatigues, unaware of the dirt streaking down their faces like long black claws.