I
watched His ageless face as He stared downward, and whereas before I
had felt His eyes like fire burning through me, now they took
on the appearance of fire. There was a smoldering divine anger
that seemed to intensify with each passing second.
"Soon,"
He said aloud, I am sure for my benefit.
I
knew without doubt what He was referring to; that Day of Judgment
that was coming.
I
then followed His gaze to try to see at least in part what He was
seeing. And I noticed again the trails of intense light streak upward
through the atmosphere, and I knew that these were souls departing
from physical bodies and entering into the afterlife.
As
I watched, their numbers increased exponentially, quickly becoming a
broad, expansive wave of radiance lifting off from the beautiful but
defiled planet below.
These
were deaths, I knew, but why so many, so suddenly? And there were
none of those wells of darkness intermingled indicating the departure
of unbelievers into the place of torment. All these were heaven
bound.
"Come
My children," He again said aloud. "Come to the place I
have prepared for you."
Then
He turned to me with those eyes of fire and spoke in a voice unlike
any I had heard Him utter before. I began to sense a dreadful storm
approaching; an overwhelming conflagration of divine judgment.
"Who
are those coming in such numbers to Heaven?" He asked me.
"Lord,
you know," I replied, unable to answer any other way.
"They
are My children being slaughtered each day within their
mothers' wombs. The little ones who are sacrificed by the millions to
the false gods of pleasure and convenience and commerce. These are My
children being ripped apart without mercy before birth, or burned
with salt and acid. Those who are guilty of such abominations are as
the defilers of old who built the high places of Baal which were in
the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, who caused their sons and their
daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command
them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this
abomination, to cause their nation to sin."
As
He said this, in a voice suffused with suppressed wrath, I also
sensed something else; a grief that if fully expressed would shatter
the Universe.
And
I watched the wave of light ascend to Heaven, ashamed and undone that
I was of this people.
This
was my world and my nation that condoned such horror and evil and
called it good; that reduced the magnificent miracle of divinely
created life to something banal and worthless, disposable in the name
of individual freedom and personal rights, like so much unwanted
garbage.
This
was my world and my nation that vilified those who would dare declare
this as sin and unborn human life as precious.
This
was my world and my nation that was increasing its condemnation with
every passing moment; with every helpless murdered infant.
I
was horrified, and knew with unshakable certainty that the just and
devastating judgment that was soon to come would be undeniably
righteous, and irrevocably final.
I
was amazed once more that my Lord would have forgiven this world and
this nation even now, after such slaughter of innocents, if its
people would just humble themselves, repent, and ask forgiveness.
But
I knew also that most would not, and thus this world and this nation
was doomed.
And
my gratitude to my Lord intensified that much more, for His mercy in
dying for the sin of this planet, and making escape from His coming
holy wrath possible through faith. For I knew with unshakable
certainty that I was as inherently evil as all the rest, but was
washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb.
And
while I understood the wrath to come was terrible, I longed for the
evil below to be judged, and stopped.
Forever.
© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013
