Effulgence
Roinestad
They are like children sitting in the marketplaces
and calling out to others:
We played the flute for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.
(Matthew 11:16-17 NIV)
Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones,
and seated on them were twenty-four elders.
They were dressed in white
and had crowns of gold on their heads.
Whenever the living creatures
give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne
and who lives for ever and ever,
the twenty-four elders fall down before him
who sits on the throne,
and worship him who lives for ever and ever.
They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created,
and have their being.
(Revelation 4:4, 9-11)
America was even now still a long ways away.
All their lives they had heard of America,
That nation of liberty, freedom, hope,
Founded by the hand of God
By Christians dedicated to Jesus,
He whose name though strictly forbidden
In this place to ever be spoken
Was nevertheless on every mind.
What had happened!
That nation with such resources to get
The forbidden message out to all the world,
How could it have turned away so much
>From the God who raised it up
And instead gone after passing pleasures.
What good had all those pleasures done for anyone!
So many had never heard,
And in this place there was no freedom to speak.
The cruel authorities were everywhere,
Watching, mocking, punishing,
Patrolling on the ground
And from above,
Controlling from without and from within.
The sounds of anguish, despair, and wretchedness
Were all around incessantly.
No one could move from the prescribed sectors,
Every nation, every city, had its place.
The millions of America that had heard
The forbidden message countless times
During their lives,
Yet rejected it,
Were a long ways away
Across the dim space along the vast sides.
Each and every second continually
Yet one more bewildered terrified arrival,
Male or female
Of accountability,
Assailed by their own deeds,
Descended helplessly into the monstrous prison
Whose exterior withstood
The immense pressure and temperature
Of glowing mass of iron and nickel
Thousands of miles deep,
And whose interior
Curved along sides in all directions
Endlessly out of sight below,
Filled by stench of sulfurous gas
And of a hideous rancid spirit of darkness.
In rage
The fierce rulers boasted that none would ever escape,
Vividly ranting about the penetration
Into their morbid blackness,
Two millennia before,
Swearing that it would never happen again,
When once millions were taken from their grasp
By the declaration of the forbidden message
By that Light
Who came, plundered, and ascended,
Taking out with him a train of captives
He gathered
>From that vast globular
Supernatural barrier
At the center of earth
Called hell.
For Christ died for sins once for all,
the righteous for the unrighteous,
to bring you to God.
He was put to death in the body
but made alive by the Spirit,
through whom also he went
and preached to the spirits in prison
who disobeyed long ago
when God waited patiently in the days of Noah
while the ark was being built.
(1 Peter 3:18-20)
But to each one of us grace has been given
as Christ apportioned it.
This is why it says:
When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men.
(What does he ascended mean
except that he also descended
to the lower earthly regions?)
(Ephesians 4:7-9)
Thousands of miles above
The billions of prisoners,
Past the ponderous core of metal
And overlying mass of molten rock,
Up on the thin cooled floating crusts
Were
What remained of their bodies,
As well as their billions of descendants
Yet alive
Who (as they had)
Were almost all so busy
Pursuing pleasure, power, wealth, and fame,
And trying to save themselves,
That they had no interest
In the message
That could not be declared
In that prison deep beneath their feet.
There as well
Among them unseen
Where multitudes of the rulers from below
To oppose insidiously that message above
That wherever declared
Eventuated in those they waited for
Being taken from their grasp.
There in America,
Near the top of a towering skyscraper
A self-made man looked out over the city,
Taking satisfaction in his worldly successes,
Obtained through grueling years of going all out,
And determined now to do better, much better.
He turned from the window,
Took a few steps toward his desk,
And dropped to the floor dead.
The next he realized,
He was standing there
Looking at himself on the floor.
What had happened!
He fought to contain himself.
The obvious struck him,
He was dead,
And as he had always believed
There was life after death!
He tackled the next question head on--
Was he ready for this eternity?
Quickly everything he trusted in to save him
Ran through his mind--
Had he done enough so that Christ would receive him?
He had earnestly tried to repent and be obedient;
He had been baptized in the right way by recognized authority,
He had joined the proper church,
And profusely given time, effort, and money;
He had tried to live an exemplary life;
If anyone had done enough
To be saved by Christ,
Was it not himself?
He mustered all his wits and strength,
Determined to deal with this new situation,
Just as he always had dealt with everything.
But the floor around him was beginning to swirl,
Or rather all he trusted in to stand on
Was beginning to whirl around beneath his feet.
There as though visible were all his ideas,
His religion, philosophy, science,
Spinning around like a whirlpool in an ocean.
In desperation he looked for something to stand on
As he felt himself beginning to sink,
But there was nothing there,
Absolutely nothing
To stand on!
All his ideas of a lifetime were like
Small broken pieces of wood
Rotating around and around him
As he began to plunge into the depths,
Like a man trying to defy gravity in free fall,
So he plunged,
Helpless, terrified,
Screaming.
The many floors of the building were as nothing
As they rushed by like shuffled cards in a deck,
And the surface of the earth rushed up,
But there was no impact,
Only momentary darkness,
As he accelerated
Toward a black speck
In a glowing void below.
For wide is the gate and broad is the road
that leads to destruction,
and many enter through it.
But small is the gate
and narrow the road that leads to life,
and only a few find it.
But everyone who hears these words of mine
and does not put them into practice
is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
The rain came down,
the streams rose,
and the winds blew and beat against that house,
and it fell with a great crash.
(Matthew 7:13-14, 26-27)
A woman heard colossal doors
Close ever so gently behind her
And the panorama of the ocean disappeared.
Rushing wind sprayed through her hair
And effervesced through her soul
As she began to walk down the long bright corridor.
Along the sides
Far over in the distance,
Shining walls rose out of view
Into the radiance above.
Much further
And barely in sight
But directly ahead
Light blazed out into a rainbow of colors
As thunderous peals as from a storm on the horizon
And crescendos from a distant symphony
Slowly increased in intensity
As she continued to make her approach.
Meanwhile,
In another place...
The sirens were hardly perceptible,
Oscillating through rising skyscrapers from the city,
As a man down on the shore,
Destitute, beaten down by life,
Lonely and exhausted and weak,
Sat down for a moment,
Shielding his eyes from the light.
The rays of the sun were flooding everything with white
In a glare blending water with sand.
What sense did his life make?
How often he was wondering about that,
Now that he was nearing the end.
All his life he had heard about Christ
Who was surely the Answer to it all--
But how?
Over and over, a thousand times over,
He had tried to understand.
Words spoken by Jesus kept running through his mind:
Enter through the narrow gate.
I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.
Enter...
The woman could distinguish more of the sounds now--
Like ten thousand stringed instruments
All playing in unison,
Interweaving with another ten thousand,
And another,
With millions of voices rising and falling
Like rivers of waters pouring through the skies
And coming together in rushing torrents.
Though still way ahead,
The blazing light was even now so brilliant
That everything was ablaze
And she could scarcely see to take another step.
Finally she stopped,
Unable to see anything ahead of her.
Gently,
Someone came along beside her,
Took her hand
Spoke reassuringly,
And walked with her into the light.
The man sitting on the shore
Laid his head back,
And in desperation cried out to God for mercy.
He could not understand,
Everything seemed so intricate,
He could not sort it out,
Like lost in an giant maze,
And unless God enabled him to understand,
He knew he would never find the Gate to life.
If all the wisdom, wealth, and power
Of the world could not find it,
How could he ever find it.
He threw himself on the mercy of God.
Then...
Like a great light igniting in a dark place,
Suddenly it was so clear,
So simple,
So obvious,
He understood!
The narrow Gate to life was Christ alone,
And nothing else--
So narrow a Gate
That all else was excluded;
The other gate,
The wide gate,
With its broad road
That had been taking him to an everlasting destruction,
Was he himself
And everything else other than Christ,
Both good and bad,
That he trusted in for salvation;
In that instant
His trust in himself to help save himself
Died
And all of his trust for salvation was placed on Christ alone;
That same instant,
Into his heart came the Lord Jesus Christ,
The Eternal Life,
He who is the very Righteousness of God,
The Light, the Effulgence,
He who is with God
And is God;
The man who cried for mercy
Passed from death to Life!
The woman saw light,
And nothing else,
Everywhere
As she walked along with the man who held her hand.
His voice,
She knew his voice!
With her fingers she pressed down--
There was the wound in his hand!
Then he called her by name,
And gave her such peace.
She well knew that He who held her hand
Was her Life, her Righteousness, her Hope,
He who had taken her place upon the cross
So that now instead of being in the center of earth in hell
She was in heaven in the temple of God approaching her Father.
Therefore, brothers,
since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place
by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way opened for us
through the curtain, that is, his body,
and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
let us draw near to God with a sincere heart
in full assurance of faith,
having our hearts sprinkled
to cleanse us from a guilty conscience
and having our bodies washed with pure water.
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess,
for he who promised is faithful.
(Hebrews 10:19-23)
But you have come to Mount Zion,
to the heavenly Jerusalem,
the city of the living God.
You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels
in joyful assembly,
to the church of the firstborn,
whose names are written in heaven.
You have come to God,
the judge of all men,
to the spirits of righteous men made perfect,
to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant,
and to the sprinkled blood
that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom
that cannot be shaken,
let us be thankful,
and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe,
for our God is a consuming fire.
(Hebrews 12:22-24, 28-29)
Tears were streaming down the face of the man on the shore;
For the first time in his life,
Now he knew the Savior;
It was as though he had met him face to face!
He knew that even though everything else
Should collapse beneath him,
Yet he would remain set upon the Eternal Foundation,
Christ Jesus the Everlasting Rock of his Salvation,
Against whom nothing in life nor death,
In past, present, or future,
Neither self, flesh, world, or devil,
Nor rulers, authorities, powers, or hell,
Could ever prevail.
How before he had wasted his life.
But now the Lord his Life
Would live in him and through him
To bring forth fruit in love and joy and holiness
Throughout all eternity;
Yet in those acts of obedience and service would he never trust,
But his faith would ever be only in Christ.
He laid back again
Rejoicing in his Savior,
Until finally he fell asleep.
All the while,
Looking on
Unseen by mortal eye,
Rulers from the pit below
Raged among themselves
That all their years of work
Had come to nothing
As yet another soul
>From their grasp by the Lord had been taken.
I am the gate;
whoever enters through me will be saved.
He will come in and go out, and find pasture.
(John 10:9)
My sheep listen to my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life,
and they shall never perish;
no one can snatch them out of my hand.
My Father, who have given them to me,
is greater than all;
no one can snatch them out of my Father s hand.
I and the Father are one.
(John 10:27-30)
You know the way to the place where I am going.
I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
(John 14:4, 6)
The music and shouts of praise and joy
Cascaded like the waves of a myriad oceans
As now the woman passed into the midst
Of the assembly of millions and millions
That she could hear but not see.
But though the light was infinitely bright,
She began to perceive the barest hint
Of the hand that held her hand.
Straight ahead and getting close
She heard the resounding rumblings and peals of thunder.
When the man awoke,
He felt invigorated.
Again shielding his eyes
>From the brightness of sunshine,
He laid for a moment savoring the Presence of the Lord
Who now dwelt within.
What ecstasy, what joy, what a feast!
Sitting up,
He drew with his finger
In the sand
The name of Jesus.
The letters glistened in the light
As though written in a field of miniature jewels.
Never had he seen sand that sparkled as did this.
The woman was aware that their path had turned upward
As though going up a gently rising incline.
The thunder was now directly overhead.
She could distinctly see the hand holding her own,
But only blazing light beyond.
The man,
Still shielding his eyes,
Looked up from the sand
At the shining water of the sea.
How wonderfully clear was this water;
He could see into its depths as though looking into the sky.
Their path had leveled off.
She was now able to see the faintest trace
Of the One who walked with her
And of what they were passing by on either side,
As though in widely spaced rows,
But there seemed to be seats
Occupied by those whom she heard
Giving thunderous praise to the Lord.
The man,
Amazed that sand and water were so incredibly perfect,
Spun around on the beach.
There in front of him,
Filling the horizon,
Where had been the city with skyscrapers,
Were rolling lush green hills filled with exquisite flowers.
They were walking slowly now.
The woman saw the hand that held her own
Open
And beckon her to sit down.
She sat in the seat there before her
And felt something being placed on her head.
The man saw
Up the shore
Away in the distance
On a high sweeping hill
A radiant light
And what appeared to be even from where he stood
An enormous structure.
He began to walk along the shore,
Not knowing what would be there on the hill,
But filled with Peace,
Christ within,
And trusting in the Lord.
She was beginning to see further now.
There was her wonderful Lord still standing nearby!
The rows of seats,
With splendor of thrones,
As far as she could presently see
Seemed to curve slightly
As though part of some greater vast circles of seats.
Though still beyond her view,
>From where the center would be
Were coming resplendent streams of light.
The awe, the reverence, the praise, the love, the thankfulness
Within her
For her God and her Lord
Could hardly be any longer contained.
She rose from her seat,
As did millions of others in that same moment,
Falling down in worship,
Laying down her crown
Before God and the Lamb,
Who by grace had called her unto salvation,
Whom she loved with all her being,
Caring not for the kingdoms or domains or worlds,
But to be with her Savior
In her Father s throne.