Life.
It had come into the universe with so much potential, so much magnificence. It was an eternal gift given to every creature of that wondrous Paradise of so long ago, direct from the hand of a loving God Who wished to share His love. Yet His gift had been rejected when Man proudly chose self and corruption over perfection and the glory of his Creator’s presence.
That turning from perfection had left only imperfection in its stead, and all the universe had fallen from grace. Every molecule, every atom was an inseparable part of a physical continuum that had turned its back on its Creator. It was cursed, its fellowship with Life broken.
But no more.
Ish put forth His hand and the universes became that which they had once been, breaking down into their purest essence with a heat more intense than that of a stellar core. Pure energy again filled space-time, the elemental power from which the totality of physical existence had once been sculpted.
In the beginning, God created.
The planes of being melded into one. The energies of both universes, Earth’s and Noron’s, were combined into a single, continuous whole. No longer was there a need for two. No longer was there a need for the duality that had served well to glorify the Lord Who had created it.
Now there was only one universe.
Now, as in the beginning, there was—the clay.
The infinite energies of Creation coalesced once again into distinct shapes, giving birth to the stars and planets of a new cosmos.
But this time, there would be no Fall. There would be no Curse. Never again would anyone be lost.
The price had already been paid. In full.
An infinite God had reached down into the corrupt, four-dimensional prison in which man had bound himself, and through His own death had set him free. Man could never have reached up to God, despite his countless attempts to do so. There was one true path by which man could reach his Creator, and one alone—and the only One Who could have bridged the infinite chasm between them had revealed it.
One Door—one Way, one Truth, one Life.
A new, much larger Earth shone among the stars of space, glistening in the light of a new sun and a new, unscarred moon. As before, the planet sparkled magenta while its wondrous hydrogen ice canopy filled its skies, a pearl set among the stars, a jewel against the velvet black of space. The new world had no ocean, nor did it have need of one.
It was beautiful.
And the world became one before Me.
T. G. and the others looked down upon the new Earth from within the new city Ish had made for them, steadily descending from space above. Soon it would make contact with solid ground.
There to stand forever as the City of God.
Those in the City had trusted in Ish, and He had not failed them. On Noron, He had saved His people worldwide during the planet’s final moments, taking them away to safety even as the wave of Darkness appeared to swallow them forever.
Even the unsaved had been removed at that moment to what awaited them, pulled from beneath the viscous Darkness in which they had drowned. They had not ceased to be, had not become as if they never were. The proud Dark never knew, and counted them all among its—his—victims, believing to the end that he had undone Creation, depriving Ish even of those who hated Him.
So self-deluded was the Dark that he had come to believe he held the ultimate keys of life and death. He did not. He never had.
He had fought against his Creator on both Earth and Noron, jumping back and forth between the two theaters, carrying out his war against the Light as the time-flow differential allowed. His demonic agents worked hard on both worlds as well, carrying out his will, hoping they had chosen the winning side in the war.
They had not.
For a time toward the end, the Dark had been bound in a great abyss, and Earth enjoyed a thousand-year rest from his attacks. On Noron the interval was but an instant. And once freed, more determined than ever, he and his agents had waged war again, on both worlds, and lost. To the end, his powerful self-delusion was such that he thought he could supersede his Creator and proudly rule in His place. He was wrong.
But that was a part of what was.
Now a new glory entered the realm of God’s kingdom.
It was called New Jerusalem. For all time, it would be the home of those who had trusted in their triune Creator.
T. G. and Jenni walked along, delighting in the spectacle of the City all around them. Beneath his feet, his eyes soaked in the gleam of a material he knew, one he had seen before only in small quantities, one over which he had puzzled. It glistened in the pure light, its rich amber tone deepening as its depths grew greater, yet always remaining transparent. It made up the very street upon which they walked.
Color was everywhere. Stars sparkled in a thousand hues beyond the crystalline walls. The City was spectacularly beautiful, seemingly more a form of art than a functional dwelling place. Every type of precious stone glittered all around for as far as the eye could see, making up even the very foundations of the immense structure.
They stood upon the wide street of transparent gold, surrounded by buildings of the same flawless material. Light was everywhere, flooding through the glassy streets and walls around them, streaming down from the summit of the great City so high above.
The entire City, almost fourteen hundred miles square and soaring to the same height, was transparent. At no time within its walls would its people lose sight of their Lord. Forevermore they would know His direct presence, and He theirs. Never again would anyone be alone.
T. G. turned to look at Jenni. She wore a seamless, flowing robe that, like his own, was brilliant white. They looked upon each other, knowing they were the same people they had been, yet different.
Upon their arrival in the City, into which Ish had brought them immediately from Noron, each had known at once that the bodies they now occupied were not those into which they had been physically born. In wonder they looked upon their new selves, joyously realizing they finally were as the Creator had always intended them to be. They felt no pain, no displeasure, no discomfort of any kind. T. G. held his hand up, knowing he was as corporeal as ever.
And then some.
He was of flesh and bone as always. Yet there were differences—no longer was the cleansing, nourishing blood of his old body necessary. He would still eat and drink, and with the new City he would enjoy doing so immeasurably, but everything needed to sustain him would henceforth come directly from Ish. He alone was life, pure and free.
He always had been.
They walked along, seeing all around them millions of others who were identically clad. Their fellow citizens were gathered on every story, diminishing to invisibility above them amid the other quarter million levels of the towering City. They numbered some twenty billion, all having their own place, a mansion set aside for each of them.
Jenni was the first to hear it—the roar of cool water rushing past. They rounded a corner and came upon the center of the City, where a mighty river, clear as crystal, flowed from above and outward for as far as they could see. It split into four tributaries, one headed toward each side of the City. Very soon, on Earth, those branches would flow out through the walls and into all the world, where their life-giving, inexhaustible waters would fill the hydrologic needs of the new planet.
Overhanging the river, growing along the esplanade and spreading as wide as a football field, was a lush fruit tree, its trunk thicker and more mighty than that of any sequoia. Its hundreds of thousands of branches lined both banks of the river, hanging to ground level, all laden with colorful fruit. Thousands stood pulling the luscious, juicy delight from its limbs.
One of them was Pretsal. T. G. ran to him and they embraced, their joy flooding outward, almost tangibly.
“Here,” Pretsal smiled, handing a piece of the fruit to T. G. “It isn’t an apple like you asked for, but I think you’ll like it.”
“You heard me?” T. G. asked, remembering the roadside words he had spoken after Pretsal’s physical death.
“No, but I got a message.”
They shared the fruit and Jenni joined them, but all found that they needed only one piece to satisfy their hunger. Neither Jenni nor T. G. really felt thirsty, not yet, but they knelt to drink from the clear, shimmering river. Its almost luminous water was unlike any they had ever known—a pure, liquid life flowing for all to take freely.
There was a joyous reunion as T. G. found himself surrounded by those he loved. Josan, Darafine, Sereen, and the other Disciples of Truth with whom he had shared his adventure in Ish were there with him. Though they, too, had changed, he instantly knew them all and held them close, happier to see them than he had ever been.
Carlene Abelwhite, her face stripped of the effects of age, paused to hug T. G. as she walked past, headed toward her earthly husband, who waited a short distance away.
David, understanding at last what it was his friend had endured and why, sat with his earthly family on the low wall of the riverbank, across the way.
A familiar, long-absent voice called to T. G. He turned to see his father and mother, their arms outstretched toward him, their faces alive with life and light. He ran to them and joyfully embraced them both, treasuring them. His memory of their deaths paled away into nothingness, and the grief it had carried with it vanished as if it never was.
“I missed you so much,” he said, filled with joy. “I had thought I’d never see you again … until I learned better.”
“We’ve been waiting,” Sarah Shass smiled. “We were told of your special place in the Father’s plan … we knew we’d see you again.”
“You were right,” T. G. said, overwhelmed. “Both of you … about everything. You were so right.”
John Shass looked into the eyes of the man he had raised, seeing the life within them, seeing what his son had become.
“We’re together now, son,” the former minister said. “In Him. Nothing will ever keep us apart again.” He delighted in T. G.’s salvation and held his son tightly, knowing what he had endured, sharing the jubilance he now felt. “It is a wondrous new future that awaits us … all of us.”
Searching the crowds, Jenni felt drawn to a another group gathered near the great Tree of Life, and there she found her mother. She ran to her and they embraced, looking up into the wondrous light that bathed them all. Janice held her daughter for a very long time, thankful for the grace of their Lord in saving them both.
“I saw Marcus a short time ago,” she smiled. “He and his brethren, the 144,000 witnesses of the house of Israel … they spread the message of God during the last days. Look … they’ve gathered up there.” She pointed to a level some twenty floors above.
Jenni looked up and saw the chosen thousands sharing the light, praising their long-promised Messiah for all He had done.
Elsewhere among the billions within the city, looking upward into the glorious light of Life that bathed his youthful face with its warm glow, stood a man no longer in pain, a man whose flesh was no longer marred by the savage punishment of hard decades in the wilderness.
His name was Parmenas.
He delighted in the promised City around him, overflowing with the joy of knowing his Creator’s plan had come to fruition, just as he knew it must. He embraced the others gathered around him, the martyred thousands of others who had dedicated their lives to preserving the Truth their Creator had imparted to them. And of those thousands, his eyes sought the ten who, like him, had put pen to parchment in the writing of the books of the Truth—the Voices of Light. Athanarius and Trelivan and the others were all there, basking in the wondrous rest their beloved Creator once had promised them.
Parmenas, delivered by Ish from the torment of his pursuers, thereafter on occasion had spoken humbly with his Savior, learning of the great mystery of the Truth—of the final, ultimate atonement made on another world on behalf of those of two worlds, his own Noron and a strange, faraway place called Earth. All of them, the saved of both worlds, now had an eternity to spend together, to share as they never before had been able, and to glorify the One Who had given each of them the greatest Gift of all—Himself.
Parmenas had heard the spreading story of the last Guardian, the Voice in the Dark, whom every book of the Truth had prophesied would herald the Awakening of their dying world. Where is he? Is he among us? He smiled, praising his Lord and the trustworthiness of his Word, and searched the feces of the gathered Guardians around him. What is his name?
They would indeed meet soon and would share tales of their lives as bearers of the Gift and of the honor each knew in serving his Lord. The chosen of all history—the writers of the Truth, the writers of the Bible, and the prophets and apostles of every age—would have untold eons to gather and rejoice and marvel in the outworking of their Creator’s plan.
But first there was something T. G. wanted to do.
He left his parents and went back to Jenni’s side, then took her hand and looked into her eyes, seeing that an opportunity was slipping away.
“Let’s go on down to our new world,” he suggested, seeing that the City would come to rest on the planet soon. “I want to watch this place coming down out of Heaven. We’ll only get one chance to see it.”
“Oh … yes!” her face beamed, imagining the sight.
No longer bound by the physical laws that restricted the old Creation, they soared into the air and out into space, laughing and holding hands as they swiftly headed out over the high City walls.
Ish smiled as He watched them go, delighting in the joy of his Voice.
The stars shone brightly all around them, a trillion worlds waiting to be explored for the glory of He Who had made them. They dove toward the shining planet below, laughing with delight as they soared ever closer to its protective pink shell. Every turn and barrel roll was a wondrous, joyful experience to be shared. The canopy quickly rushed toward them, and just before they reached it Jenni instinctively closed her eyes and squealed. T. G. laughed, squeezing her warm, soft hand tightly, knowing they would pass through the solid, frozen shell as if it were not there.
At once, they were through the twenty feet of pinkish ice and clear of the other side. They felt the sweet air of their new world against their faces and breathed it deeply, enjoying the rich scents of flowering plants and the tropical life it carried. It was a wondrous, virgin world, yet untouched by humankind.
T. G. and Jenni would be the first to stand upon it.
Wide meadows spread below, covered in clover, flowers, and deep grasses. It was here amid the splendor of direct Creation that the faithful of Earth who had died before the Flood of Noah would eternally live, in a utopia even more breathtaking than the fallen Paradise they had known before.
T. G. and Jenni broke into level flight, unfettered by the bonds of gravity. As they swooped low over the lush, green forests of the new Earth, Jenni reached down and brushed her fingertips against the soft leaves of the towering, uppermost branches. She laughed in delight, watching the treetops blur beneath her.
T. G. watched her long hair as it flowed in the wind and gazed upon her radiant countenance, enjoying her, loving her, cherishing her. He humbly thanked Ish for having given her back to him, knowing he might have lost her forever.
Now they had all the time in the world.