Y.A.P.

Emails like the one below always encourage me. It's impossible to think about two things at once. Keep that in mind as you read the following.              

You are in your car driving home. Thoughts wander to the game you want to see or meal you want to eat, when suddenly a sound unlike any you've ever heard fills the air. The sound is high above you. A trumpet? A choir? A choir of trumpets? You don't know, but you want to know.. so you pull over, get out of your car, and look up.

As you do, you see you aren't the only curious one. The roadside has become a parking lot. Car doors are open, and people are staring at the sky. Shoppers are  racing out of the grocery store. The Little League baseball game across the street has come to a halt. Players and parents are searching the clouds and what they see, and what you see, has never before been seen.

As if the sky were a curtain, the drapes of the atmosphere part. A brilliant light spills onto the earth. There are no shadows. None.

From every hue ever seen and a million more never seen, riding on the flow is an endless fleet of angels. They pass through the curtains one myriad at a time, until they occupy every square inch of the sky.

North, South, East, West.....

Thousands of silvery wings rise and fall in unison, and over the sound of the trumpets, you can hear the cherubim and seraphim chanting, Holy, holy, holy.

The final flank of angels is followed by twenty-four silver-bearded elders and a multitude of souls who join the angels in worship.

Suddenly, the heavens are quiet. All is quiet. The angels turn, you turn, the entire world turns and there He is.. Jesus.

Through waves of light you see the silhouetted figure of Christ the King. He is atop a great stallion, and the stallion is atop a billowing cloud. He opens his mouth, and you are surrounded by his declaration:

I am the Alpha and the Omega.

The angels bow their heads.. The elders remove their crowns.. And before you is a Figure so consuming that you know, instantly you know: Nothing else matters. Forget stock markets and school reports, Sales meetings and football games. Nothing is newsworthy. All that mattered, matters no more...  For Christ has come.

The Gate of Heaven

This is the gate of heaven (Gen. 28:17); oh that you would rend the heavens and come down! (Isa . 64:1); the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God (Ezek. 1:1); the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended (Matt. 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:21–2); you will see the heavens opened (John 1:51); an open door in heaven (Rev. 4:1); I saw heaven opened (Rev. 19:11); if God made windows in heaven, could this happen? (2 Kgs. 7:2; 2 Kgs. 7:19); a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven (Dan. 4:13); you saw a watcher, a holy one, come down from heaven (Dan. 4:23); an angel of the Lord descended from heaven (Matt. 28:2); Stephen saw heaven opened (Acts 7:55–6); Peter saw the heaven opened (Acts 10:11). Day, C. A. (2009). Collins Thesaurus of the Bible. Bellingham, WA.