Journey from Heaven
by
Joe Derkacht
*****
Journey from Heaven
© Copyright 2010 by Joe V. Derkacht
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All names, locales, and incidents are either fictitious or used fictitiously and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons living or dead, or to actual places and institutions and incidents, is purely coincidental.
Scripture quotations are from the New International Version (NIV), the Authorized Version (KJV), or the author’s paraphrase.
Majesty is used by permission of its composer, Jack W. Hayford.
Cover art is by the author, Joe Derkacht.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Dr. Jack W. Hayford for his gracious permission to use the lyrics of his widely acclaimed Majesty in the novel, Journey from Heaven.
Thanks also to friend Louis Serafin, Deputy Sheriff (Ret.), of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, for his insights concerning police procedures in the State of Oregon. Journey From Heaven, however, is not meant to be a police procedural; all mistakes and license taken in that regard are the author’s.
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And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:6,7 (NIV)
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Episode One
They were like a flight of beautifully orchestrated pyrotechnics, seemingly winking into existence as they emerged from the galactic corridor and exploded into the dark space between stars. Once coalesced, the wake of their glory shone greater than the tail of any bright comet. Together they streamed toward the star’s fourth terrestrial planet, a lovely emerald world plowing through the velvet of night.
Intent as I was in my preparations, except for a warning from Leanhar, noblest of those angels who have served me through the millennia, I might have missed their approach altogether. Steward John. Leanhar’s voice sounded in my mind, as only spirit can communicate with spirit. I looked up, my focus immediately on the dark heights far above Mt. Fe. My ears caught the telltale music I was accustomed to hearing at the opening of any of Heaven’s doors. Overhead, the sky had blossomed with new stars—one central light enfolding other lesser lights expressed in brilliant, complementary colors, each as transparent as any precious gemstone.
Like a cascading waterfall they dropped straight toward us, toward myself and Leanhar and my 1200 servants, who’d been laboring all day upon Fair Ranar’s loftiest peak.
In the twinkling of an eye, a bright star stood before us in all his effulgence, surrounded by a coterie of luminous angels. My servants, all 1200 centii and millii, edged nervously away, tension palpably evident in their shifting feet and twitching muscles. With a single tap of my ironwood staff on Mt. Fe’s granite surface, they went scurrying, and as they disappeared down the mountain like flower blossoms driven by the wind, the messenger’s heavenly aspect changed, the mantle of redeemed humanity falling into place. The star became a man.
“Steward John,” he addressed me. Without formally introducing himself, he reached into his robes, pulled out a scroll and handed it over.
Proper introductions were normal protocol, especially when visiting a planetary steward. With the bright aura of the divine presence still upon him, though, and having had an inner warning of his visit earlier that day, I wasn’t much concerned about how things were normally done. I took the scroll and opened it.
OFFICIAL SUMMONS
ADDRESSEE
Steward John Raventhorst
Member, Whitestone Holders
Order of the Overcomers
Pergamum Branch
ADDRESS
Fair Ranar, Northern Outer Trench, Sombrero Galaxy
ORDERS
Report to Capital City, New Jerusalem
to appear before
HIS MAJESTY, YHWH
Though the thrill of being summoned home for an audience with God Himself was a rare one, I perhaps lingered over the words longer than the messenger expected. Strangely, no reason had been given for the summons. Turning the scroll over revealed a completely blank side, which was no help at all. I turned back to the message. The wording struck me as a bit odd. Was I supposed to attach significance to the use of New in combination with Jerusalem? Whether in official communications or otherwise, it had long ago fallen into general disuse. It wasn’t like any of us could ever forget the difference between the truly eternal city and her ancient forerunner. Additionally, I wondered why a member of the Holy Names Branch had been sent (Samuel Draper, as revealed to me by the Spirit), when nearly any angel would have served the purpose equally well, with messenger, after all, being the very definition of angel. For the Glorious Majesty to send a spiritual pillar, one who served directly in the holiest places of all the universe, fairly trumpeted the message’s importance. Would he still really be standing in front of me when I looked up from my reading?
He was. Considering those of the Holy Names Branch never left the holiest precincts, I did almost ask how the summons could be important enough for him to be sent, except I suddenly remembered a few rare instances of seeing others of his kind outside the capital. His explanation, I thought, would doubtlessly be that temple business extended the attendant manifest glory of our Heavenly Father.
Instead of mentioning any of those things, I asked, “Why here—to Fair Ranar—and to me—and why now?” Before he could answer, I thought to ask: “Does He want me to do something differently? He can’t be displeased with my work, can He?”
“I believe He simply wants to prove His kindness to you again, Steward John,” he said, his voice ringing with the same sort of unutterable truth and warmth I’d often experienced in God’s presence, which was natural, coming from a member of the Holy Names Branch. “You know His loving kindness is from everlasting to everlasting.”
Such an answer told me that no matter how close he was to God’s throne, he didn’t know the reason for the summons, either—piquing my curiosity all the more. Astonishingly, though I hadn’t been expecting it, was I to be a focus of the King’s attention, I who’d labored far beyond the capital for what would’ve been considered unimaginable lifetimes to a mortal?
The thought literally dropped me to my knees. Praises bubbling forth from heart and mouth, I began to sing and was quickly joined by Leanhar and my visitor and his attendants in angelic chorus. Melodies infinitely sweeter and purer than any that ever rose from mere fleshly throats wafted over the mountain tops, until I heard and felt the surrounding rocky slopes resonating with joy. As Mt. Fe hummed along in accompaniment, the distant valleys boomed with answering bass notes, and the trees of the fields clapped their hands like the ancient psalmist had claimed. Nearly lost in the great symphony, Ranar’s native creatures brayed, honked, squealed, hooted, and whistled, their animated chorus riding atop our crescendos of praise like surfers on a wave.
For such moments, we all live. Ranar’s skies turned with our voices, the sun falling eventually into the west and the stars rising to the full, only to fade again under a new sun rising over the east. As one, we had offered our worship to God in perfect synchrony, and as one we eventually let our voices trail off into reverent silence. Looking at my visitor, I saw his brightness dimming, until he shone again like the brightness of a noonday sky with the reflection of God’s light.
“Do I come with you now?” I asked, realizing I wished that I might. In my mind’s eye, I already saw the brilliantly hued walls of the great city and its gates of pearl
.
“What is your will, Steward John?” Samuel asked, as he reached into his robes and pulled out a stylus.
I signed the summons as an acknowledgment of receipt, writing St. John Raventhorst, Steward of Ranar. After the passage of the ages, the irony still remained: whether Steward, as I always will be of Ranar and its star system, or Saint, neither title had ever entered my mind in the old life as even the faintest of glimmers. I returned the summons and stylus, both of which disappeared inside his robes.
A moment later one of his attending angels stepped forward, bowed from the waist, and with a flourish extended one hand. A fruit from the tree of life sat in his open palm like a flashing gem. I reached out, not needing to ask if it was for me, and in a spirit of gratefulness began eating. Of the twelve kinds of fruit borne by the tree of life, this was my favorite. Among those of us who once claimed an American heritage, I’d often heard this particular fruit fondly referred to as a “Red Delicious,” a comparison any apple of the old universe would have blushed at; resembling a red Christmas tree ornament more than something strictly organic, it was considerably more delicious and infinitely more refreshing and life giving than a mere apple. It was also the very first type of fruit I saw upon my entry into the city. By it, before my heavenly education began, I first realized that even as a possessor of a redeemed and glorified body, I would never be independent of God’s provision; and which is why, as distant as the shores of Ranar are from Earth, angels routinely deliver a single monthly fruit from the tree of life into my hand.
“If I may...?” Samuel asked.
Understanding he wished a tour of Ranar, I nodded happy assent. Swallowing the last morsel, I strode to the nearby spring-fed pool to wash my hands. My reflection in the water revealed a brightening countenance, a renewed flow of life and strength radiating throughout my body. In the company of someone of the Holy Names, I gave myself no further glance, though the truth was that my reflection has always astounded me as much as anything in this life; I who’d borne Adam’s marred image now bear the image purchased for me by Christ’s own marred face—the image of the Creator Himself, shining through my body, soul, and spirit!
So unexpected, so revelatory, had come that very first glimpse of myself, as I walked through the gates of Heaven, that it amazed me not to have imploded with such a demonstration of God’s love for His children. “Sown in dishonor, raised in glory,” and “mortality swallowed up by immortality,” the words written by the apostle, though absolutely true, were distant mutterings, compared to the reality.
Rising from beside the stream, I placed my ironwood staff into Leanhar’s hands and told him to feel free to remain with Samuel’s angelic attendants, who would welcome a time of fellowship with him. Gesturing for Samuel to follow me, we started down the slope, heading toward a prominence below where I’d been working for the last several days. The distant horizon came to life under the rays of the sun, with snowcapped mountains winking at us like rose-colored diamonds. The intervening valleys were clothed in the green beard of Ranar’s forests. Much closer, unfinished broad terraces climbed toward us in a series of ever rising waves. Here, on this very prominence, a throne of Mt. Fe’s native rock would one day look out, flanked by twin streams of silvery water spilling over the edge like tears pouring down stony cheeks. Our first drop would be a freefall of nearly 3,000 feet. Smiling in unison we stepped into thin air, a rush that never fails to thrill me.
Stooping like raptors, we landed feet first, touching down as gently as snowflakes. Samuel sprang eagerly forward, toward the next precipice, with me matching his every stride. At the edge we leapt into the air, this time soaring like eagles through wispy skeins of clouds, before embarking upon a long, downward spiral, allowing us to enjoy the full panorama of Ranar’s rivers, lakes, and valleys. Tens of miles later we landed at the foot of the mountain and its terraces, and began to walk side by side—as if in procession to the eternal city’s throne room. Hour upon hour, the sun shot broad shafts of emerald-tinged light through the forest corridors and gleamed from grassy carpeting as we continued into the west. The exhilaration I’d seen in Samuel was replaced by holy awe, as he gazed upon the majestic ranks of trees stretching before us, at their towering heights, their burgundy-colored bark and the massive branches of green.
“You have made Fair Ranar one vast cathedral of worship to the King,” he said, pausing to breathe deeply of the forest and its woody fragrances.
I nodded, grateful he’d grasped my intent.
“They remind me of California’s redwoods,” he commented.
“They should,” I said. “All you see here came from the cones of a single redwood. Any differences between these and earth’s are due to the influences of the planet and her star upon their seeds.”
With the mountain falling behind us, we traveled on, running as the fabled Hermes once might have run, sometimes swinging far to the north, venturing into a wide swath of Ranar’s giant gingkoes, and then jogging far to the south, where mighty oaks reigned, before turning again to the west. Often, we chanced upon wild animals—some of them cousins, it seemed, to earth’s deer, antelope, horses, big cats, and even kangaroos—all of them fleet footed and in varieties as bewilderingly diverse as earth’s own. My centii and millii, which he had glimpsed upon his arrival, struck him as especially curious because of their long bodies and multiplicity of limbs and the unblinking eyes that stared from above each furry paw. Like the animals of the New Earth, Ranar’s creatures arrayed themselves in finer colors than any we had known on the fallen earth: the twelve-legged centii, the males greener than grass and the females rosier than rose, while millii males, with their twenty legs, are turquoise and silver, and the females ruby red with spots of topaz yellow. These same richly “clothed” centii and millii, I explained to him, were my chief helpers in shaping Ranar’s mountains to my liking; what joy they experienced, under my supervision, in shattering mountainsides with their great paws!
Eventually the trees we encountered grew older and taller, my labors upon Ranar having first begun here, and we again walked with deliberation, our feet silent upon millennia of shed needles gladly yielding up their nutrients to feed underground life and the trees from which they’d fallen. In the distance we saw rivers of muted colors rushing toward us, soon revealed as tall windblown grasses in soft shades of green, silver, red, and gold. Further on, the bark of many of the trees was clothed in cascading, flowery veils, their fragrances identifying them as roses long before they came into sight. Like those first redwood cones harvested from New California for Ranar’s sake, I’d also diligently searched throughout New Oregon for earth’s most beautiful climbing roses, finally introducing them a thousand years ago.
Reverence crowned Samuel Draper’s brow. He braced himself, looked searchingly into the canopy overhead, and smiled. A holy hush reigned over the world, one that was about to be sweetly broken. A faint chorus reached our ears.
“The birds—” he said, staring up hundreds of feet into the highest branches for their perches and seeing their colors glitter like metallic confetti in rainbow hues.
“Few of them speak like they do on earth,” I finished for him.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Birdsong that is uncannily human. They’re whole orchestras of whistlers!”
“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” I said, enjoying what had always seemed like a wonderful coincidence to me, since from childhood I’d been passionate about whistling.
“I’ll demonstrate something for you,” I told him. At once I began to whistle, letting the sound rise trumpet-like into the trees. Seconds later the birds whistled back, hundreds of them matching the note but at varying octaves. I whistled again, this time a few measures of a tune I had heard countless times in Jerusalem: Keith Green’s Easter Song. Instead of the cacophony one might expect, the birds answered with wild exuberance more typical of a youth orchestra eager to perform under the direction of a renowned maestro.
; Before I could continue with the next few measures, a shadow passed over us, interrupting their concert in a chaotic gabble from the trees. Looking higher into the heavens, we spied a flying creature utterly different from our whistlers.
“The symmetry of a pterodactyl,” Samuel said, watching him spiral down on sail-like wings as majestically pretty as any earthly spinnaker. Other birds scattered without protest from their perches to make way for the newcomer. The branch still swaying under his full weight, he came finally to rest, with tangerine-colored pinions hanging down at least sixty feet. He bobbed his head of lapis lazuli toward us in acknowledgement.
“Watch this,” I said, pointing as the creature reached talon-like hands into the feathers of his snowy breast and pulled out what appeared to be a long, thin stick. With golden eyes glinting knowingly at us, he clamped his beak down and began to play before Samuel had time to realize the “stick” was a sort of reedy flute.
The opening notes to Easter Song had never sounded as beautiful as this on old earth.
“Don’t tell me he can’t whistle,” Samuel said.
“Not a lick,” I answered, matching his own grin. The music continued, taking flight apropos of birdsong. Varying from its original usage, it was much closer to jazz improvisation than to Green’s ancient Christian Rock form. Then again, to the delight of every saint, Green himself has since erected endless, anthemic symphonies upon that same tune.
We stood as if transfixed. At length the music faded, the last notes quickly muffled by the woodland depths. Still looking into the trees, Samuel began to clap his hands in slow, thunderously resounding claps that rang with both appreciation for the performance and praise towards the Eternal Father. Seemingly startled, our bird musician slid his flute back into the hiding place in his breast and launched himself into the sky, quickly disappearing over the tree tops and from our view. Likewise, the chorus scattered, leaping en masse from the trees as if fleeing a shotgun blast, something they would never see or hear upon Ranar.
Taken aback, Samuel glanced at me and laughed heartily. His voice rang with amusement: “They’re as nervous as cats, aren’t they?”
“It’s early in their education,” I said, smiling. “Except for a handful of us and my few cohorts of angels, we don’t have many visitors.”
He laughed, and I laughed with him, the sound as clean and pure as joyously rung bells.
“The one with the flute,” Samuel said, walking again toward the west. “What have you named him?”
“Cielo.”
“Sky.”
“Yes.” I preferred the more euphonious Spanish. “And for his long, indolent flights, and for the blue of his crest,” I said, adding that from the forest floor, the skies often seem to be tinted green more than blue.
“Is he the craftiest of this world’s creatures?”
“The one true toolmaker among them.”
We smiled together, our thoughts in concert. On every world where creatures live, one wiser one exists, one more intelligent, one more skillful, than any other. The same had been true of old earth, where the Most High had planted the Garden of Eden. There the serpent had been the craftiest of all, except for Adam, his master. But Ranar sheltered no fallen angel, no cherub corrupted by pride, whose glorious office had once been that of Lucifer, to possess and to deceive him. Ranar would never suffer corruption; the uncrowned prince of darkness was forever confined to the Lake of Fire, and corruption had passed away with the old universe.
“Cielo will never eat dust for his food,” I said.
Samuel heard the gratefulness in my voice, and nodded his head enthusiastically in agreement.
We came to a lake bounded in the distance by a line of verdant hills. Beyond those hills were the same snowcapped mountains we’d seen from Mt. Fe. Far into the sky over our heads, birds spiraled and soared, their cries recognizably that of our whistling chorus.
Samuel pointed to Cielo floating lazily above the others, triangular wings billowing, and then to another one like him, soaring in from the direction of the hills.
“Ciela?”
“The mate,” I acknowledged with a nod, grinning because he already understood I didn’t care to be complicated, especially when it came to naming Ranar’s creatures. Now Cielo and Ciela spun and swirled around each other as if in thrall to a common center of gravity.
“Will they follow us?”
“They’ll soon be distracted,” I said, knowing he was harking back to earth and its vast animal population, where their devotion to us was no different than it had been for the unfallen Adam and Eve.
Accepting my answer without question, my visitor stepped onto the surface of the water. “No oceans,” he said, evidently abandoning thought of our avian escorts.
“None,” I said, joining him. “Just tens of thousands of lakes, rivers, streams, and underground springs, whose waters, one way or another, irrigate Ranar’s vast landscape. If you wish, I’ll show you waterfalls to shame the old Niagara.”
“Your handiwork or the Creator’s?”
“Some of both. We gladly labor in His strength, don’t we?”
His gaze shifted to my friends in the skies, who had abruptly forsaken their attendance upon us and winged with purpose toward the distant shore. Though we could have swum the distance, we instead began walking, even as Jesus once walked upon the Sea of Galilee.
The sound of what anyone from old earth would have sworn was a distant train whistle commenced blowing before we crossed a mile of the lake’s surface. Samuel glanced inquiringly in my direction, and I gestured with my head toward the sky. Far away, the birds, glittering in the sunlight, began their steep descent, their bright plumage sparkling against the sky as spectacularly as a tornado illuminated by lightning.
As I’d hoped, a large serpentine head breached the lake surface, rising swiftly as if to intercept the flight of the birds. Accompanying that sight, the strangely haunting train whistle sounded again, disturbing even the placid waters beneath our feet. As water streamed down the moss-colored neck and back, the birds flapped their wings in sudden unison and struck the long neck like a clap of thunder.
Beside me, Samuel stretched forth one foot and was off, leaping into a sprint. Knowing what was to come, I followed at a more leisurely pace. In the distance, the apparition from the depths of the lake raced toward the far shore with the speed of a hydrofoil. Neck, shoulders, back, and tail undulated with greater force than a bucking bronco, revealing an underside that rippled muscularly in stripes of red and green.
With wings held aloft and flapping in the wind, the birds, seemingly unperturbed, hung tenaciously to their strangely wild roost: no longer whistling with praises for the Creator, their cries echoed across the water as shrieks of delight.
When I reached the shore, Samuel was dancing around the birds and their victim, its eyes shuttered as if in deep mortification for having collapsed upon the beach. Steam poured from its nostrils and its mighty chest rose and fell with each breath. As the birds whistled, cackled, and trumpeted their victory from atop its head and down the length of its spine, a whistling noise (like a damaged harmonica at this proximity) escaped through its bared, tubular teeth.
My guest’s laughter was musical. His eyes sparkled with unrestrained mirth.
“I worship Him in spirit and truth!” He shouted, punctuating his words with graceful leaps and nearly launching into true flight. “He is to be praised! Praise Him with joy and delight in the works of His mighty hands! Praise Him with the laughter due Him!”
I leapt and danced, too. Until my arrival 5,000 years ago, Ranar had been a world largely of grasslands and the occasional untamed mountain. The birds had inhabited the rocky heights, while Brontonella, and other bottom-dwelling creatures like her, lived in the deep lakes and along their shores in solitude. At long last, Ranar’s potentialities and glories were being revealed.
“Why call her Brontonella?” Samuel asked, after some time. Though not
consciously sharing the name with him, perhaps I had spoken it in our mutual laughter, or the Spirit had whispered it to him.
“She is like a brontosaurus—and she isn’t,” I said, shrugging. Again, why make the naming of something complicated? Snout to tail, Brontonella was nearly 150 feet long and sported a narrow ridge of bristly hair upon its spine, and except for webbed feet otherwise answered to a description reasonably similar to the picture of any brontosaurus I’d ever seen in my childhood.
He nodded agreeably and reached out to stroke her head. At his touch the creature’s enormous, bulging eyes opened in instant adoration, the horizontal pupils expanding until they nearly engulfed limpid green irises. At the same time, her lips curled back and a high pure note of ecstasy escaped through her teeth. The birds, including Cielo their maestro, rose like a cloud into the sky with answering whistles.
Samuel laughed. “I believe I’m falling in love with your world, Steward John.”
I couldn’t help smiling in return. Since those nearest the Master have the greatest revelation of Him and His works, his remark pleased me and in fact came as a seal of approval upon all my efforts. Though my boundless joy in the work might seem sufficient in and of itself, nothing compares to the Master’s approval, whether spoken through an angelic messenger, someone like Samuel Draper, or the Master Himself.
“Have you decided?” Samuel asked, stroking Brontonella one last time before turning to continue our walk. He rose into the air, and I followed. “Do you wish to come with me now to answer your summons?”
I didn’t have to reply with spoken words. He could see the answer on my face, and knew as well as I that it is always the desire of the Redeemed to return to the Heavenly City and her Lord.
Together we rose even more swiftly, until Ranar’s emerald disk spread out before us, with lakes glistering like shattered mirrors in the sun, and we were rejoined by his angelic escort and my own Leanhar. Already, the stars burst upon our vision in a magnificent paean to God’s handiwork, voicing their praises, with Ranar’s nearer sun blending his song with the chorus of heavenly bodies.
Into Leanhar’s capable hands I left my stewardship of the planet. Upon my farewell, Samuel’s attendants took up both of us and we were on our way. The starry hosts, floating lazily around us as we soared above Ranar, began to race toward us like solid streaks of light. Accompanied by the softly crashing, crystalline tones of their wings, our escorts burst forth with song in an angelic tongue, nearly breaking our hearts for sheer beauty—and all became brilliant, cascading, beautiful light surging upon us from every direction. We had been launched into the portal home, that main thoroughfare used by angels for passage through the creation’s multiple dimensions since eternity’s dim past. Adjoining portals, trunk lines to the various galaxies throughout our own physical universe, flew past us like bright, exclamatory flashes of a strobe light…
All too soon, after what seemed like merely a few ecstatic moments, the poignancy of the angelic song fell in pitch; with its fall, the energy from their wings lessened, until they could be discerned truly once more as wings, fluttering as though in a wind. Discrete lights suddenly appeared and were disclosed as individual stars floating around us. In the distance, Sol shone joyously against the velvet blackness of space, his song the sweetest and purest and best of all stars, appropriate for the star chosen by the Eternal One to forever light the home system of the universe’s capital, the New Earth and the New Jerusalem.
We were home. The journey from the Sombrero Galaxy had been wondrous, spectacular, and as always brief, far briefer than any physicist of the former order ever imagined possible—and far less complicated or elaborate, totally unencumbered by spacesuits or starships.
In the new order of things, our joy is not in the journey—but in the place and more importantly that Person Who is forevermore both destiny and destination. As one, angels and redeemed men, we looked along the solar ecliptic for the third planet from the sun and found her quickly, our eyes superior even to telescopes of the old order. Earth’s rotation was just then revealing the golden city, with Sol’s happy light limning the planet’s night side in a perfect circle, as though it were a ring of gold surmounted by a gloriously flashing, cubic gemstone. For me, this view has always been the most breathtaking and meaningful in all the universe, as if the Earth and Jerusalem, taken together, is a great wedding ring hanging in space—the wedding ring of God’s Son, King Jesus.