Great White Throne (32 page)

“Would you like a drink?” Elijah’s eyes are fixed on the river.

Yes.
I’m already walking toward the river. Elijah bends down on its bank, and I do the same. We dip our hands into the water. It’s cool, refreshing. I lift it to my lips. As the drops enter my mouth and slide down my throat, I feel pulsating energy, like that of a thousand lives filling me. The current is electric but without shock—my body conducts the energy and delights in the sensation.

“The river of life.” Elijah rises to his feet. “Reminding us, through the Spirit, that we will never die. Come.”

We walk down the golden road. Birds soar overhead. A breeze caresses my skin. I still taste the water. I still taste life, bubbling up inside me. It’s another one of those perfect moments on the old earth, the kind I tried to hold tightly, but that slipped through my hands all the same. This moment isn’t slipping. It has the feeling of permanence.

Ahead is an immense tree. It towers as high as the buildings, with the column of light behind it. The branches drape overhead, weighed down by the largest fruit I’ve ever seen.

Elijah turns into a building. He pauses in the door, waiting for me. “Naomi is inside.”

BEFORE I FOLLOW Elijah through the door, I crane my neck back to see the building towering above. Its vertical lines merge into one in the distant sky, like a line stretching beyond my understanding.

“Step inside,” Elijah says, “and you’ll be taken to your floor.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

He shakes his head. “I’ll wait here for you. Go on,” he encourages, “you’ll see why.”

I enter and find myself in a cavernous glass room. There are no other doors, no decorations. But the pattern of the floor is different in the center. I walk to it and gaze down at the fine lines forming stars. Then the floor begins to rise under my feet, lifting like an elevator. It goes up faster and faster. Now I’m soaring.
 

As the floor slows and stops, I see a number: 875. Is that what story I’m on? I look up. The glass shaft I’ve been rising in keeps going up. I’m maybe halfway to the top. Four openings are in front of me, each with names above them. The names, like the number, are written in light on steel. The words are in different languages, but I understand them all. One of names is Elijah Roeh Goldsmith.

I step through the doorway under my name. The hallway sparkles as if covered in diamond dust. As I move forward, mesmerized, the hall curves to the left and opens into a room with a gleaming white floor and high ceiling. The far side of the room is entirely open. No wall, no glass. It ends with a ledge and a thin golden rail. A woman leans on the rail, looking out over the city.

I approach, my eyes fixed on her. For some reason, I count my steps. It steadies my movements, stills my thoughts. One, two, three, four—farther than it looked. I count seventy-three when I arrive at the woman’s side. By now I’m certain it’s Naomi.

She turns to me, beaming. She looks just like she did the day I met her. So bright. So beautiful. I know more about her than I ever could through a sync. She wants me to put my hand under her left cheek, with my fingers in her hair, and that’s what I do.
 

I want to kiss her. Can we do that?
 

She answers by pressing her lips to mine. Her every flash of joy and emotion is known to me, and mine are known to her. We’re united.
 

I don’t know how much time passes. A minute, an eternity. It’s like swimming in the ocean on a hot summer day—we’re tossed about in warmth and love, without any sense of time or place.

Then we want to look out at the light. So we do.
 

My hand is over hers on the gold railing. Our sides are pressed against each other. We stare at the column of light. It stretches as far as I can see down and up. Around it are other buildings like this one. People dot the balconies, with this same light reflected in their faces. I expected something amazing. I never expected
this
.

“Why are you surprised?” Naomi asks. Her first words.

I think through the possible answers. It all comes back to distant, and flawed, memories from the old earth. I eventually say, “I guess I had a different idea of heaven.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something more intangible. I figured we’d be floating spirits, with singing angels all around us. Maybe some harps. I didn’t expect to feel your touch like this. I didn’t expect to have this body, and to
feel
God’s presence. It is so lush, so pristine, so … everywhere.”

Naomi tilts her head back, with her face basking in the rays that pour over us. “I think He used the sun as an example,” she says, “but its light was so much less. It left shadows. It was finite, in a single space, with a determined life. And it burned too hot for us to approach.” She breathes in and out deeply. “I love being this close. Just wait until we stand before the throne.”

I want that, but I don’t want this moment to pass, not yet. I turn to her. “Will we stay together?”

She meets my eyes. “For as long as we desire.”

“How long is that?”

She laughs. “For times and times, and then again.”

I think of Bart and Evelyn. “Will you live with me here?”

She nods. “And you will live with me. Maybe in time we’ll want a journey. We’ll travel to the stars.”

“I’d like that.” I take Naomi’s hand in mine, and we walk inside together.

MORE TIME PASSES. Naomi and I share a meal. We laugh together. Later we’re talking again on the balcony, with the light shining over us, when there’s a knock on the door.
 

“Visitors?” I ask.

“When Jesus brought me here, he said someone would come to take us to the throne.” Naomi shrugs. “Don’t know who.”

“Let’s find out.” I go to the door and open it.

“Elijah!” My Mom sweeps me into her arms.

We hold each other, half-crying, half-laughing. Eventually she steps back and looks me up and down. “You’re the man I knew you could be,” she says. “I’m proud of you.”

I’m grinning. “Thank you for coming to me, in my dreams.”

“Thank the Lord,” she says. “He hears the prayers of all—on earth and in heaven. He envisioned your role before he created the earth. All I had to do was my part, trusting in him. We can always trust more than we think.”

I’m studying her young face, in awe. I realize she looks about my age. She seems a lot like she did in my old memories of her. I remember that I felt pain at her loss. The pain was dark, broken. But it’s gone now—all the pain and the emptiness. There’s just the distant idea, a recognition of how things once were and will never be again.

“As I helped you, I too was helped.” My Mom steps to the side, and another woman glides into the room.
 

“Mom!” Naomi rushes past me and embraces the woman.

“We believed you would find each other,” the woman says. Her hair and skin are lighter, but she has Naomi’s green eyes and freckled nose. “Arella and I sensed it when we first met.”

“Elizabeth’s right,” my Mom adds. “You remember when I was in the hospital?”

I nod, again fascinated by how I can still picture the tubes connected to my Mom, the doctors by her bed, but the memory doesn’t hurt anymore.

“That’s where we all first met.”

“Us?” Naomi is looking at me. I’m as surprised as she is.

“Our rooms were beside each other,” my Mom replies. “We discovered we had much in common, including little ones with bright souls.”

“You two were God’s way of bringing us together,” Naomi’s mom says.

Our mothers laugh together. “It was amazing,” my Mom says. “The first time you met, at the foot of my hospital bed, you just stared into each other’s eyes as if the rest of the world had disappeared.”

“Really?” Naomi asks. “Wouldn’t we remember that?”

“You were only eight,” her mom says. “And it was a painful time. We knew that. It’s a special grace of God that young minds could block out those pains.”

“Yes, and we saw more than just your bond.” My Mom gazes at Naomi like she’s her own daughter. “We had visions of what was to come. Nothing too clear. Just enough to know that you both had important roles to play. Naomi, your soul was as pure as a young girl’s could be. Like Eve’s before the fruit, like Mary’s.” She turns to me. “Elijah, the stain of sin was already heavy on you. I admit that I feared your fate, as I did your father’s. I prayed and prayed for him, but some the enemy will hold forever—the vessels of wrath. But not you, praise God. You had the gift of our family. The Roeh, the seers. I knew that, but in those last days on earth, my soul cried out for the darkness to lift from you, so you could use the gift for God’s purpose. Oh, a mother’s worry knew no bounds!” She sighs and turns to Naomi’s mom. “That’s why I needed help. That’s why God gave me Elizabeth.”

“Your mom’s faith was immense,” Elizabeth says. “Her well was deep and wide, but it wasn’t full. She didn’t understand the fullness of God’s sacrifice, she hadn’t learned of Jesus. I just told her what I knew. The Lord did the work from there.”

My Mom continues, “As soon as she told me these things, Christ’s light flooded into me. I was bubbling over with joy, even as my body suffered. It tore me apart that I couldn’t communicate this to you, Elijah. You know how it was those last days. I couldn’t speak, and the treatments were as bad as the tumor itself. But, as with all things, the Lord had a purpose. I died in peace.”

Elizabeth takes my Mom’s hand. “We joined each other in heaven.”

“We prayed unceasing for both of you,” my Mom says. “Because of your visions, Elijah, and your spirit, the Lord granted that I could come to you a few times in dreams. I couldn’t say everything.”

I remember her visits: soaring over New York as the flood came, walking the raised path through a swamp, facing the dragon as only a baby in Jerusalem. Those visions helped me understand my weaknesses. They gave me the right kind of fear—the knowledge that I was not the one in control. “You showed enough,” I say. “But there are still things I don’t understand.”

“What would you like to know?”

I turn to Naomi. “Why did God let Don go so far? Why did you have
his
son?”

A smile spreads over Naomi’s face. “I thought you knew! My son is here, perfect as we are. He is with his grandfather now, and he will grow in time. It’s like he completed the cycle of humanity on earth. The devil tempted and corrupted the first man in the garden. He wanted to craft a final man full of his spirit. But God saved my son. The first Adam and the last Adam will worship God together.”