Great White Throne (29 page)

I’VE LOST MY sense of time. I feel heat all around me. The sun no longer fills the sky. The sun
is
the sky—molten flames washing over me and over the earth.
 

My skin starts to burn.

But I’m still breathing, still thinking, as if watching the pain from outside myself. I try to shake the burning sensation away, but it’s only getting hotter. It’s searing my flesh. My skin reddens and cracks and blisters. I’m boiling over, all my emotions and energy screaming in pain, only no sound can leave my mouth. It is bone dry, burned out.
 

Then something cool touches me. I look to my side—a distant memory tells me Naomi was there, on the ground, in a different place. But this is a familiar man, the one who came to Patmos, who saved Naomi.

“Elijah,” he says. “It is well.”
 

His voice is cold water. It is relief, but only for a moment. The heat pulls me up into the flattening, burning red sun. Now the heat scorches me inside. Again I’m outside myself, watching as I fall to my knees, as my body melts away.

“Elijah.”

I look at the man. Brown hair, brown beard, lightning eyes. He takes my face—I must have a new face—in his hands and smiles. Such strong hands. They feel cool.

“I am with you,” the man says.

Then we’ll both burn!
I’m thinking.

“Not if I am in you,” the man answers.
 

Then a voice fills the air: “I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. It is done.”

This voice calms me. It’s deeper than the ocean, and no fire can burn while those words resound. “Watch,” the man says, “the first things have passed away. My Father is making all things new.”
 

The exploded, melting sun has puddled into a flat expanse, like a universe collapsed into two dimensions, into a lake of fire. This lake stretches farther than I can see, and somehow I know it doesn’t end, it has no bottom.

I suddenly realize I’m standing on something that’s not the lake, and I’m not alone. I’m in a crowd. There are more people than I can count around me. I can’t look at the people, but I know they’re there. They know I’m here. We are countless, but we are nothing compared to the burning lake.

From the space above, the blackness of outer space, dotted with a million stars, something darker than black appears. It starts as a dot but grows larger and takes form. It is the dragon, soaring down. No, not soaring. It is falling, as if hurled toward the fire. Its wings flap helplessly. There is no wind for them to catch. Its legs flail. Its neck snaps around like a snake’s as it spins and plummets down.

Then I see a man rising out of the flat, burning expanse. He is below us, and he is enormous—I’m an ant watching this giant. His arms are reaching up, and buildings and machines are in his hands, like tiny little toys. Flames from the lake lap at his chest, smoke rises from his flesh. His face is twisted in agony, but it’s a face I know: Don Cristo, Dajjal, the devil. Everything that was beautiful about him makes me hurt inside. It is the pain of losing what could have been.

The dragon streams down like a comet, flashing past me and slamming straight into Don, plunging them both down into the lake. Red-hot fire splashes over them, waves ripple out, and an immense smell of rot and decay fills the air. Then the lake is smooth fire again.

I feel a gentle breeze on my skin. I hear a faint trumpet. The awful smell is gone as I look up. From where the dragon had appeared, in the distant void, a bright dot of light glows. It approaches me, beckons me. As it comes closer, it takes shape as an immense throne. It is whiter than snow, and so is the robe of the man seated on it.

My feet lift off from wherever I stood. The breeze is now a gusting wind, whipping at my hair, bringing tears of joy to my eyes. The moment the throne and the man are level with me, everything else is gone. The ground, the lake of fire, the stars—they have fled away. Space and time are gone.
 

But the others are still with me.
All
the others. I know, beyond doubt, that this crowd holds every human soul that has ever existed. This gathering completes humanity, but we are not finished.
 

The end of our first journey comes now, in judgment. This certainty proceeds from the throne before us. The great white throne with God upon it. He is like an inverse black hole—a consciousness of infinite gravity but brilliantly light instead of dark inside at His core.

I feel an irresistible draw toward His light. I race at it, faster and faster, until I’m facing the throne. Now it’s just me. Somehow the others are gone.
 

“He has believed in me,” Jesus says, stepping between the throne and me. “He comes through me.”

My being unfurls with all its memories and deeds, as if they’re exposed on the open page of a book before me. For the first time I see the black spots, the sins, without any concealment. Before I can shrink back or try to speak, the sins begin to fade. The light consumes them. The page is blank. Everything is light.

“Now the book of life,” Jesus says, and another book opens before me. Every word in the book is a name, and I can see nothing else. I have no breath, no desire, except that I’ll see my name written within these pages.

“ELIJAH ROEH GOLDSMITH.”

My name is written in fine black script on the white page. I’m in the book. Right here. Right now. I see it, I see me, and immense feelings of relief and hope and joy sweep over me.

“Welcome.” It’s Jesus’s voice. He’s smiling at me. The throne no longer sits behind him.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“Eternity, Elijah. Come, you will see.”

He puts his arm over my shoulder, and he points forward. All I see is white. It’s so bright, I can barely hold my eyes open. “But I can’t see anything.”

“You will, you will.” He gives me an encouraging nudge at the back. “Step into the light. I will see you inside.”

I step forward. I feel like I’m moving through a mirror, passing into a different universe, and suddenly I’m standing in front of an immense wall, clear as glass. A round gate stands before me, and so does an angel I recognize—Gabriel.
 

“Welcome, Elijah. Would you like to see more?”

I nod, and he takes my hand. We are suddenly on a mountain, as if we just shifted
in place. The crystal wall and the gate are far below, with a city stretching as far as I can see into the distance.

“How did you do that?” I ask.

His patient eyes rest on me. “Our bodies are not bound by space here. You can be anywhere you want.”

I don’t understand, but I want to try it. I imagine myself down in front of the gate again. I envision myself shifting again. But I’m still on the mountain. My feet haven’t budged. “It’s not working.”

He points to the mountain under our feet. “You 
want
 to be on this mountain now.”

It’s not a question. He is right. This is where I want to be in this moment, on the mountain, able to see everything.

“Desire is pure in eternity,” Gabriel says. “It is pure because it has no conflict. In Babylon, Lucifer would have ruined what God created to be good, using sin to hold you captive to your desires. But here God reigns, not sin, and we have the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.”

“Can I control my desires?”
 

Gabriel smiles. “Of course. Your desires are your own. But your life before this place shapes what you are here. The greatest saints in the fallen earth have the greatest desires here.”

“What does that mean for me?” His words make me curious—do some have it better than others? How can that be perfect?
 

“The Father created each of us with a capacity, like an upper limit. But in the fallen earth, he enabled everyone to push that limit as far as possible in the mold of his son. The further a person pushed, the greater his capacity grew. But now and forever, everyone’s capacity is fully reached, and no one can know anyone else’s capacity. This means we all live in our fullest potential, our deepest satisfaction, our most conceivable joy.”

I nod, agreeing, feeling as if I lack nothing.

“It is paradise of the soul.” Gabriel sweeps his arm out to the city below. “So, now you stand where you want, in your fullest potential in this moment, and what do you see?”

I gaze out over the endless city. The word “city” doesn’t fit. This is an entire world laid out below, only it has taken the form of buildings and streets. They are made of light and gold, glass and steel, water and tree. “It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. What is it?”

“Some say it is the New Jerusalem. Others say it’s the City of God.” Gabriel closes his eyes and breathes in, then out, like he’s inhaling a joy even he can’t contain. His eyes open in a blaze. “I call it home.”

“How far does it go? How many people live here?”

“This takes time to understand,” he says. “Do you remember the dimensions of your country in the old earth?”

“Yes.” All those memories are there, but they are bland and dim compared to this.

“The city where you once lived, New York. Do you know how far it was from, say, Florida?”

“A very long way. Maybe a thousand miles?”

He nods. “This city has four perfectly equal sides. Each one is about that distance.”

I’m trying to wrap my mind around this, but the angel continues. “It’s a poor comparison, though. Places on the old earth were flat.”

“And what’s this?” I look out at the city again. It has buildings and so it is rises into the air, but the ground beneath it is flat.

“Are you ready for the full view?” Gabriel’s voice hints at a great secret.

“I guess so.”

“Do you 
want
 it?”

My thoughts reach up like a prayer, and they wrap around a desire. This desire is to see the full city, to understand its magnitude. I decide this must be a little of what Gabriel meant by desire being pure. “I want to see it all.”

Gabriel takes my hand. “Then you will.”

My feet do not move, but my vision does. The city seems to pivot and rotate, revealing a whole dimension I had missed. It expands, too, filling the space above and below. I cannot see its edges or its top or bottom. My mouth falls open.

“You see,” Gabriel says, “it is as high as it is wide. This is the new heaven and the new earth.”

It seems impossible, but I remember that people once thought the earth was flat. I feel like Galileo and those early discoverers whose minds first grasped that the old earth was a sphere, not a disc. This city is a cube, not a square. The crystal wall around it is like a perfect glass case. But I’m still confused. “Where is this mountain we stand on?” I ask. “How does it exist outside the city, if the city is everything?”

“We have more dimensions here,” Gabriel says. “We are standing in one of them, and the layers—the height of the city—are in it. With God at our center, we wrap around his presence in these layers. These mountains and the space beyond, they are the remote layers.”

I think for the first time to turn around. Behind me, stretching as far as I can see, is the most stunning landscape I have ever seen. Beyond the rocky mountains where I stand there are great bodies of water, dense forests, and flat deserts. The swirl of colors is overwhelming. The waters are the bluest blues, the trees are the greenest greens. “How far does it go?” I ask.

“It goes forever,” Gabriel says. “At the farthest reaches, in the cold stars beyond, the distance from God’s center is the greatest. There, at that point of greatest separation, the heavens fold back on themselves and return to God. This is the meaning of infinity. It has no end. It loops back. Everything returns to God. In the center.”

I focus on one of these cold stars in the distance. It’s another planet. “Do people live out there?”

“Some do for a time. You may travel as far and as long as you like. But it is our nature to return to God. Even the animals tend to stay close.”

“The animals?”

“Yes, and far more than you will have known on earth. They are His creations, too.”

I feel an urge to turn back to the city. It helps me understand what Gabriel means. I want to explore, but I never want to lose the sight and feel of this purest of lights emanating from the city. “Can we go inside now?”