“And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you out of your graves, and I shall put my spirit in you, and you shall live...”
A procession started coming out of the Stone, unlike any procession Duamutef had seen in the glory days of Mizraim. First came a whirlwind, then a great cloud, and a fire turning from inside out that was the color of amber, with a bright, violet-colored heart within that burned more fiercely than the fire around the edges. And from the bright heart flew things like four living creatures, each appearing like a man in part. Each had four faces and four wings. Their feet were not men’s however. They were shaped like a calf’s feet, but which shone like highly polished brass and continually spouted white-hot fire. And they had men’s hands on the undersides of their four wings, with each wing joined to the other. The beings could turn this way and that, without turning, since they faced all directions simultaneously, seeing everything. The Four Tetramorphs had each the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right side. On the left side the four had the face of an ox and the face of an eagle. Two wings were stretched upwards, with two covering their huge bodies. back and forth they flew like flashes of lightning, crying “Holy! Holy! Holy!
"Just then an even more astounding thing happened as Duamutef watched. A bright-red beast with a mighty head and an unending body came blowing steam and rolling forward from the Rock’s Pearl Gate, gliding on golden ribbons that stretched before it wherever it turned. Closer and closer came the beast, and it grew ever larger and more fearsome until only the Rock was larger. A bell clanged, with a sound shaking the earth. Finally, the beast halted, spewing great clouds of steam and hissing mightily.
Duamutef’s eyes widened more and more. He could not comprehend such things, and those with him clung to his hands and heels, staring with him aghast.
“This is the state chariot of the Most High God!” he cried to them, trying to reassure them though he trembled greatly, not sure himself. “It is not a beast that will devour us!”
Beings of every size, color, and magnitude of power and beauty now made their appearance for the Massing of the Colors. They poured out, a vast, unending multitude, from the beast’s compartments. The smallest were greater than any per-aa in Mizraim at its greatest heights of splendor. These appeared to be children, but shimmered like certain gorgeous flies and tiny birds with a myriad of colors unknown to him, and they too were winged like such creatures, with their wings making movements too quick for Duamutef’s eye to catch.
Presently, when all the orders of beings had assembled in rows leading to the red beast, a Man stepped forth, a footstool of flawless, pure shining Emerald appearing beneath his moving feet. He was dressed in a white robe that fell from his neck to his ankles. A golden sash wrapped his spear-wounded chest. His head and hair burned white, and his eyes--Duamutef could not bear to look at them, they were light of a Great Morning Star that penetrated everything that existed. The thing that made him most striking, however, were marks of grievous injury. His wrists and feet were bare and bore wounds, as if big nails had been driven through them recently--for they still bled.
Of all the peoples of every family and tribe and heavenly angelic order, this One singled out only Duamutef, it seemed, for He spoke clearly in the former priest’s ear.
“Fear not.”
Duamutef was overcome, so overcome in spirit he could scarcely stand. At the injured Man’s right hand suddenly appeared a new Carnelian, Topaz, Beryl, Diamond, Onyx, Jasper, Goldstone, Sapphire, Emerald, and Carbuncle--all the Stones of Fire, not one missing. Not knowing what they were, and how much had been sacrificed to defeat their predecessors, Duamutef saw only shining stars of wonderful colors, sparking fire and circling the injured Man’s head in glorious array while emitting indescribably intricate melodies. In the Nail-Pierced One’s left hand was, Duamutef saw for the first time, a set of enormous black keys. These he had taken from the Jailer of the Dark Realm of Death, and He would never again give them up. He would also never have to give up again the scroll in his right hand--the Title to Earth--though it was man who had lost his stewardship on Earth, not God His sovereignty.
“I am He that lives, and was dead,” A-Z said to them, for this was the Nail-Pierced One shining in Duamutef’s eyes. “And, behold, I am alive evermore, amen, and have the keys of hell and of death.”
What the former priest and his followers had seen so far was only the beginning of the glories that now were revealed. Trumpets blasted, and then the heavenly beings and the multitude of redeemed who had come forth from the red beast, turned and proceeded back to their berths.
They began singing, like a river of many, rushing waters, “Blessing and honor, and glory and power unto the Lamb!” as they climbed aboard up crystal steps.
Clanging its bell, the beast started back up, moved and turned majestically. It was heading back into the Unwrought Stone! Duamutef saw, his heart nearly dying within him. But what about him? What about his friends who had believed his words about the Redeemer Who would come for them and harrow them from the depths of eternal punishment?
Tears streamed from Duamutef’s eyes, not for himself, but for his friends who had believed.
The glorious, cherry-red beast proceeded back through the Gate of Pearl that guarded the entrance to the new heaven and new earth.
Just then an angel of great authority, sheathed from head to foot in gleaming red gold, stepped over to the now prostrate, weeping Duamutef, taking him by the hand.
This was Palmoni, the Wonderful Numberer, to whom was revealed many secrets of the Great Weaver’s strategy of numbering within the Book of the War of Heaven and Earth. Also, from his belt hung suspended Heaven’s Primstav, the calendar ruler that numbered on both sides many of the Eternities and marked their chief events. The Keeper of the Primstav was delegated Master of the Wedding Wardrobe, and in that capacity he held out a white robe to the former chief priest of Mizraim.
“Stand!” the angel thundered. “You, and these your friends, have been numbered with the Elect. Enter with us into the Joy of the Lord,” he said to Duamutef and those with him as he handed out more robes, keeping some others on hand for a billion or so wedding guests who had yet to be brought in from the byways and alleys of the now collapsing Universe. Palmoni explained further. “For you believed at the price, O priest, at the price of your own certain ruin. And, redeemed one, you followed the God Unknown to your people, not even knowing the Promised Son Whom you see here. By your faith, righteousness is accounted to you, and your new name is written in the Book of Life and inscribed on a white stone which the Son of Glory will give to you alone.”
What could a man feel in his position? Duamutef could scarcely believe his words. But he no longer hesitated. He leaped to his feet, drew on the robe of a redeemed saint. His followers quickly did the same. Then the priest with a new name ran between fierce, warrior angels standing like a wall of fire to prevent the ungodly passage into heaven, and hands reached out and lifted him and his friends safely onto the last passing coach as it slipped into the Gate of the Unwrought Stone, all the compartments bursting with praise and music, dancing and rejoicing.
Weeping with boundless joy, they looked out the window into the splendor of a Paradise that made the Garden of Eden a mere foreshadowing, the first chord of an unending and deathless symphony.
Among those aboard were Lady Evelyn and Theodore Davis, Dr. Pikkard, Anne, Joseph and Asenath, Judah, Jacob, Benjamin, Abdullah, Meshullam, Nu, Zenobia and Potiphar, Assah, Hanna, Jael, Debora, Lapidoth, Daniyel, Molu, Brun, the Pea of Chezib, Andromeda, Homer, Talulah, One-Legged... But Talulah? Some, like her, were surprising, yet all were there by grace alone, and the number could not be numbered except by, perhaps, Palmoni and Dr. Pikkard. All these, even some who were not yet present and had need to join them, were granted free fares who believed God and fought with faith and valor against the Stones of Fire in the times of Fatal Convergence and through the long travail of Cloud and Avalanche, as in the final Battles of the Rosebud-Dubesor. It was their pain, sacrifice, and sometimes their deaths, that paved the way to the creation of the new crown jewels, once their predecessors had all been defeated and destroyed.
Yet the former priest of Mizraim was not the last to board. The A and Z, Alpha and Omega, Aleph and Tau, Conductor of the Celestial Train, His fully restored crown jewels of living fire showering splendor on His thorn-gashed brow and the keys of death and hell firmly in His grasp, leaped to the end of the caboose as it passed through the closing East Gate.
It was not his last act, however, in the Fourth Heaven. Yeshua, Himself the Herald of the Magnum Mysterium--the Mystery beyond all others--snatched a handful of brightness from his glory and flung it into the darkness. Piercing the whole of the dark mass of the Earth, it flashed completely through, coming out to the surface like a bursting white star. Then it continued into space with speed beyond that of light.
What mission would it perform? Where was it going when all else seemed accomplished? And why was the searching light sent in the form of a shepherd’s staff? Had someone in some far
corner been left out? Yeshua was known for his story about the shepherd who left ninety-nine
sheep to go in search of one that was lost--was this what was happening? Who could it be?
All this done, the War of Heaven and Earth was over for the second Earth. Now the events of the Great White Throne Judgment would transpire for the ungodly, who along with all forces of nether darkness, would then be cast into the Bottomless Pit of the Saggitarian Black Hole--its event horizon preserving forever dark rivers of bisque doll faces, features set with frozen screams, swirling ever around the lip of the vast-rimmed mouth of Hell. Elektra, Rabiscu, Van Goatt, Shickelgruber, Chillingsworth, Nilsson, Pieter, Caesars, Pilatus, Sejanus, Annas and Caiphas, Judas, Bohnen, Harold Carter, some of these quite good in their own opinion yet not in Eternity’s----the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the famous and the nobodies who all, other differences aside, shared the same fatal choice of disdainful disregard of the Magnum Mysterium--their images were all accounted for in the serial calvalcade that spun round and round endlessly, a Carousel that no one would see, since El Roi’s eye shunned it and He would remember them no more.
The Bright Morning Star had come as promised and taken his inheritance away with him. The Great Bronze Door of Hades and Tartarus repaired itself. On the dark side, the ungodly who had closed the door upon themselves by their own choice were now faced with one last Question before the Judgment and the Pit. Who was He? the multitudes of cosmologists wondered. “Who?” Even in this they lied. For all knew. They refused all help, like drowning people swimming away from lifejackets and lifelines thrown to them by rescuers from another ship. Until the bitter end they had knowingly spurned what was written in many places in Yeshua’s Book. Among the many things said of Him was recorded:
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