03 The Rapture by Tim Lahaye

Author:Tim Lahaye
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian
ISBN: 9781414305806
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 2006-07-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Everything in Irene’s past paled to insignificance as she soared into the heavens, the earth shrinking from sight. She had to wonder how the billions of people in the air would ever be able to share the attention of the One they had believed in, the One who had beckoned them home.

But then it hit her. If Jesus’ shout had been heard in the same instant by true believers all over the world as their own names, it proved yet again that He was omnipotent and omnipresent, unbound by space or time. He could do anything and everything all at once.

As Irene’s new, glorified body was transported through Earth’s atmosphere above the clouds, she let her head fall back and spread her arms wide, closing her eyes tight. When the light of glory flooded her being, she had to peek.

High above her was Jesus, His gleaming incandescence

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brighter than a million suns. With arms outstretched He welcomed His beloved, and while Irene remained vaguely aware that she was just one of so many on this same journey, His beautiful piercing eyes seemed to bore into hers alone. She wanted to cry out, to thank Him a thousand times a thousand for forgiving her, for saving her soul, for calling her to Himself. His face shone with love and compassion and welcome, as if her arrival was His highest joy.

Irene immediately felt unworthy, and all she had wanted to express seemed to leak from her mind. She could not speak. She tried to bow, to lower herself, to hide from Jesus’ perfection, which seemed to permeate her own darkness like a beacon.

But He reached for her, lifted her to Himself.

“Irene,” He said as He enveloped her. “My child, My own. I praise you for believing in Me, for trusting in Me, for calling upon My name to be saved. This is what you were saved for, to be with Me. And yet it is only the beginning of a journey that has no end. Come with Me to My Father’s house, for as I promised, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”“

Irene was aware only of blinking, and in the next instant she had been transported into outer space and then into what Pastor Billings had called the third heaven, into the presence of a vast and beautiful crystal city so overwhelming that she could scarcely take it in. This made Soldier Field and Wrigley Field look like toys.

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From certain vantage points, even when those stadiums were full, she had been able to see almost everyone at once. With a mere turn of the head on Earth, her eyes could take in forty, fifty, sixty thousand people. But this. This was something else.

Clearly there were hundreds of millions of others, more than a billion, maybe two. Yet without rising above their heads, Irene was aware of them all. And not just aware.

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