Day #253 in A Year of Thanks:
I’m thankful for book #3 in the Left Behind Series, “The Rapture.”

Everything in Irene’s past pales 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 has 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 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 of only 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.

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. It was as if, without so much as loving an eye—let alone her head—or even standing in tiptoe, she saw and recognized every one. She knew them. Their histories, their stories, were known to her. She could pause and concentrate on one or another or a thousand at one time.

There was a reason for this, she knew. Irene had never realized how limited her mind had been until now when all things became known. Every story, every person, every insight and intuition, had a purpose. And the purpose was Jesus. Everything here was for and about and because of Him. Irene’s eternal life was for the purpose of worshiping Him. As people’s stories were revealed to her heart and mind, Irene’s entire focus was on the work Christ had done in their lives. Forgiving them. Loving them. Saving them.

No amusement-park imitation of a real experience came close to this. There were no holograms, no 3-D, no pretending. Friends and loved ones left behind would assume her dead, but Irene knew with all of her being that she had never been more alive.

Chapter 17 of this book, The Rapture, starts describing what happens when the true followers of Christ will hear the voice of God calling to them. It describes how they will be snatched out of thin air, all over the world, at the exact same time, and how they transform into their new, glorious body in the air. What you’re reading above is the first part of chapter 18, and I love it. It brings tears to my eyes. All the rapture scenes in this book just move my spirit and lift it when I need it most. I know the rapture just around the corner (I’ve been feeling it deep within my bones since 2022, but even more intensely these days), and while I don’t truly know the day or the hour, this is certainly a reminder for me to stay ready, to keep looking up for Jesus while keeping my eyes on Him, and occupying here on Earth until He shouts and that trumpet sounds. Oh, praise God! What a beautiful and wonderful day that will be for us who have been waiting on Him for so long!

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Year of Thanks