Judgment Day

Judgment Day

By Coleen Liebsch

I’m not sure when I became 100% positive that I was dead.  I remember thinking, “I can’t survive this…” as a huge ball of fire raced toward me down the narrow tunnel of road.  The flames were consuming my options before my brain could even comprehend what was happening.   Then everything just went black.

My eyes haven’t adjusted to the light, but it’s bright now.  It’s not just bright, it’s getting brighter, and I can’t close my eyes or look away from it.  It is so bright that it’s going to burn my eyes out in a second!  So why aren’t my eyes starting to hurt?  Why is it that NOTHING actually hurts? 

I don’t miss anyone; I don’t look forward to anything.  I quite simply, exist.  As my vision adjusts to the bright lights, I begin to see definitions.  They’re vague at first, like clouds, but then they begin to take form.  I see beautiful architecture and a grand castle far off in the distance.  As I get closer to them, I realize they are actually flocks of angels arranged in a pattern that they believe will be a reassuring view for me.  Thousands of wings are outstretched.  The angels watch me anxiously as I finally realize where I am. 

I am dead. 

The angels begin to move, as if in formation, to create a path.  Their knowing eyes and harmonic voices follow me as I walk the path created by their multitudes.  Their joy and overwhelming love doesn’t just flow through me, it engulfs me.  It is all so beautiful and peaceful that it’s like I simply melted into the perfection.   I no longer worried about anything worldly and had to remind myself that it had ever even existed.  I remembered my loved ones as fondly as I had in life, but so many foreign things joined them in my heart.  It was not unlike becoming adjusted to the bright light.  My heart was so full of love that surely there couldn’t be another drop of happiness added.  And yet, instead of exploding, my heart was unconfined by humanity.  It was infinite.  God had called me home, and I was ready to spend eternity in heaven.

As the path narrows toward the horizon of angels, I notice a figure standing in the middle of everything.   I know instantly who He is, even from this great distance, and my heart again feels like it will explode with joy.   I am on the path that will lead me to Jesus!   I try to hurry my pace but I no longer remember how to run or swim or propel myself in any way.  I simply float peacefully along the path, knowing that Jesus is waiting for me at the end. 

When I reach the Lord Jesus, his outstretched arms receive me, and I know immediately that I am home.  His face was far more glorious than I ever would have imagined, and His essence glowed brightly with the power of the Holy Spirit.  I was home.  I have no perception of how long I’ve rested in Jesus’ arms.  It could be a day, it could be a millennium.  It didn’t matter; I would never grow used to the perfection enough to want a change.  But then suddenly, change is exactly what happened.  When I looked up to view my Lord’s face, I saw that He was crying.

My confusion was total.  Wasn’t this a good thing?  I was finally getting to heaven and it was even better than I ever imagined!  What could possibly be sad? 

Without any warning, a horrible chorus of trumpets blared across the fields of angels and a booming voice from above called out a name that was completely foreign to me.  Suddenly I was walking on what appeared to be clouds, holding Jesus’ hand as He led me toward something.  The fog cleared slowly, but all too soon I could see the end of the path.  Although everything had changed as completely as possible, but yet nothing was really different.  The angels in the background are singing the same beautiful songs, but they are no longer the focus of my existence, and I know where I stand.  I am standing at the foot of the grandest throne that has ever existed.  More beautiful than gold and diamonds, more majestic than any castle ever created, but suddenly I feel cold.  It’s like I still have a body and I’m literally standing inside a cold, stone castle. My feelings of eternal peace are fading.

It is Jesus that addresses God, but the words He speaks aren’t in a language I’ve heard before.  I watch their brief exchange like I am a child watching my parents.  And just like back then, the attention turns back to me all too soon.  There are no human words to describe God’s voice and no language known on earth that expresses His words.  It is as if every cell in my body receives the message at the exact same moment, even though no words are spoken.  I knew that my moment of judgment had arrived.

The trumpets sounding do not fill my soul with a feeling of comfort and reassurance.  It is filling me with a feeling of doom, and I struggle to think back on my life.  It already seems so distant that it is hard to even pinpoint one specific memory, much less reflect on all of my sins.  But I remember something about how it doesn’t matter.  All I need to do is believe in Jesus Christ and my salvation is guaranteed!  I’ve gone to church almost every Sunday of my life, and I never broke any of the major commandments.  Who would deserve it more than me?  But then why do I feel so exposed and vulnerable?

Suddenly images flash through my mind more quickly than I would have thought possible.  As each memory replayed, I have a new awareness of what my actions or lack of actions meant.  For the first time, ever, I see how my life affected those around me.  Jesus is standing firmly by my side but there are tears rolling down his cheeks.  Each event replays from an entirely new point of view.  The events pass quickly, but my thoughts have no problem keeping up. 

As each event replays and each outcome is exposed, God’s judgment is passed.  I don’t need to hear the words “guilty”, “guilty”, “guilty” to know God’s judgment.  I clearly feel each one.  Like the time I committed murder.  I held no weapon against another human being while I was alive, but I committed murder just the same.  I watched the replay of an event that was no more significant in my life as it was happening than a day of rain would have been.   I was running a daycare out of my home and had several competitors in town that I didn’t feel were a good influence on children.  And I was NOT the only person who thought that!  On the day in question, a child from a nearby daycare wandered into my yard while I was outside playing with the kids that I watched.  I looked at the child, wearing nothing but a diaper, and I remember thinking what a ridiculous excuse of a daycare provider I had for competition. 

I remember feeling a little satisfied that something like that would never happen on my watch, and I remember taking the children I was paid to take care of back inside my house.  They didn’t need to see the filthy little boy any more than I needed to see him.  A few hours later, as parents started picking up their children, I heard an ambulance approaching.  We watched down the street and noticed the crowd gathered round something in the road, and the urgency of the ambulance was obvious.  I remarked to the parents that it wasn’t any wonder one of the kids she watched had been hurt.  I told them about the one little boy who had been wandering around my yard most of the morning and they AGREED with my disgust.  It wasn’t me!  It was the daycare lady down the street. 

God’s wordless reply came through every cell in my body.  “I put you there to save the life of one of my children.  When you turned your back on him, you turned your back on me.” 

“But God,” I pleaded, “I didn’t know what would happen.  He wasn’t my responsibility!  How could I have known that?”  But even before God’s wordless response, I knew that I was aware a child that age, wandering around alone, was at a high risk of injury.  God knew my heart better than I did, and I couldn’t even lie to myself anymore.

I watched myself as a young child in grade school.  One of my classmates was a boy that I knew nothing about except his name.  He almost always needed a bath and smelled bad whenever I got close so I tried my best to avoid him.  For some reason though, he seemed to like me better than the other kids and he was always trying to be my friend.  I could never figure out what made him think that I could ever like someone like him but apparently he did.  Every day he brought something to school to show to me or give to me.  I never asked him for anything or accepted anything from him so it wasn’t MY fault that he was

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: Coleen Liebsch
Lektorat: Deborah Merkwan
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 05.12.2012
ISBN: 978-3-7309-9001-8

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