He embraced her, and she wept on his shoulder. Raymie had not seen tears since before the Rapture. It felt strange to console a vibrant woman whose usual countenance was one of sheer joy. Bahira had a chiseled face, gleaming teeth, and huge dark eyes normally full of wonder and humor. Raymie led her to a rock, where they sat.
“I have discovered the reason for the Lord’s silence,” she said.
“You’ve experienced it too?”
“Of course.”
“Usually it’s because we should know the answer to what we’re asking.”
“But that’s not it this time, Raymie. I was asking Him for nothing but comfort. He granted a measure, but His silence scared me. Then it came to me. He too is grieving. As He rejoices whenever a soul chooses Him, the time has come again when some will go the other way.”
“But He is all-knowing, Bahira. Cendrillon could not have been a surprise to Him.”
She shrugged. “But still it must grieve Him. You know, I have only distant memories of fear and sadness from when my father turned hateful toward my mother because of her faith. Zaki and I worried and hid and cried and prayed. It was way too much for people our age. And then, like you and your mother, we were all suddenly in heaven and soon rejoicing at our father’s conversion. Our reunion with him at the Glorious Appearing remains one of my favorite memories. I tell you all that to say how foreign are the emotions I suffer now.”
“But you and Cendrillon were not close.”
“No, but until recently I had no concerns about her either. There are so many brothers and sisters in the Lord here; one can’t be close to all of them. You’ve been a cherished friend for many years, and I hope you know how much I treasure that. And I have others. Your sister has been special to me, and many of the children I’ve prayed with have remained close for decades. But how could I have missed what was going on with Cendrillon? I had no inkling until just recently. . . .”
“But you did get a hint?”
Bahira nodded and moved to the brook, where she knelt and cupped her hands to capture a drink. “She had always been mischievous and a kidder, but she was so involved in all our ministries that I thought I knew her heart. She sang; she told stories; she was wonderful with the little ones, playing with them, looking after them. I had no reason to believe she was not one of us.”
“Me either.”
Bahira dried her hands on the skirt of her robe and sat again. “Not long ago she said something strange, and I didn’t know what to make of it. She said that as her childhood was coming to an end, there were times when she wished that for just one night she had pagan parents.”
“Pagan?”
“The word hit me as strangely as it does you, Raymie. I hadn’t heard it for so long. Cendrillon acted as if she were teasing, but she talked of visiting France or Turkey to see for herself if the nightlife rumors were true.”
“They are true, Bahira. My dad checked it out. It basically consists of kids in their eighties and nineties who crow about having not yet become followers of Christ. They call themselves the Other Light and say their study of the ancient Scriptures makes them fans of Lucifer and not Jesus.”
“But they’re just doing this for attention, aren’t they? Jesus lives beyond the Scriptures. He’s the Living Word. Surely they can’t claim not to believe in a God who has again limited Himself to human form and lives and reigns among us.”
“Dad says they seem for real. Yes, it may be for attention, and perhaps they know better and are planning to change their minds and their courses in time to avoid death at one hundred. I’m surprised the Lord doesn’t squash them like bugs.”
“His mercy is everlasting,” Bahira said quietly. “I know that sounds like a cliché, but He promised longevity, and Jehovah will not judge them as accursed until they reach that age. What did your dad say? Did he see them? hear them?”
“Oh yes. He says they have left the homes of their parents—who grieve them noisily and cry out in pain for others to pray for their children—and have begun enterprises that must be a stench in the Lord’s nostrils. Brothels, nightclubs, black markets.”
“But what have the judges done about such things?”
“Penalties have been handed down. Both France and Turkey have had to reestablish law enforcement agencies and even jails and prisons. But all this has seemed to accomplish is to make these infidels more attractive to other young people. Even with the evil one neutralized for now, the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”
“I worry about the next generation. The world is no longer pristine as it was when the Millennium began. And people are still born into sin. How long will it be before the awfulness of the earth returns, the way our parents knew it, and we have murder and other crimes?”
Raymie shook his head. “I just don’t get it. I suppose because you and I have glorified bodies and minds, it’s hard for us to empathize with people who want to go their own way. To me this is heaven, with Jesus here. What worries me is that by merely giving themselves—their movement—a name, they become organized and somehow legitimatized. The Other Light could become something that young people idealize or even idolize and want to join. You didn’t get the impression Cendrillon was a member, did you?”
“No, but how would I know? To my knowledge she had not yet visited France or Turkey, even though she is French. She did tell me that her cousins had told her of another pocket of TOL in Amman.”
“That’s news to me.”
“Again, Raymie, I hoped she was teasing, but I soon realized she was not. She pleaded with me to go with her to check it out. It would be our secret, and her cousins wouldn’t tell. We wouldn’t have to do anything, she said. Just watch and imagine, pretend our parents weren’t followers of Christ. I reminded her, ‘Cendrillon, I was raptured. I came from heaven. I am more than a follower of Christ. I have been redeemed and sealed. I don’t even have the desire to dabble in this.’
“That’s when she turned on me, Raymie. She accused me of being superior, holier-than-thou. I actually apologized. I certainly didn’t want to lord anything over her. I hadn’t been bragging, just explaining why the temporary pleasures of sin had no hold on me. She said, ‘They don’t have a hold on me either. I just want to see what I’m missing.’ Well, I guess she knows now.”
“Excuse me,” Raymie said, turning away to get a message from his father. When he turned back, he told Bahira of the plan for the three men to visit Cendrillon’s parents. “Should I tell my father what you told me?”
Bahira nodded. “Never fear the truth. The Jospins may not want to hear it, but they must be told. Her funeral can be a warning that saves countless lives.”
As they walked back to their dwellings, Raymie said, “I don’t envy the men this task. How would you like to have to tell parents such truth about their child?”
SIX
RAYFORD HOPED never again to have to face an ordeal like talking with Cendrillon Jospin’s parents. It might have been easier if they had become defensive and moved into denial mode. But these were devout believers who knew the truth. “She’s gone because she was lost,” her father managed, shoulders heaving.
Rayford asked carefully whether they would allow Cameron to make clear at the funeral that there was a way for all Cendrillon’s friends and acquaintances to avoid her fate. The Jospins nodded miserably. “We will have relatives here,” her mother said, “our siblings and Cendrillon’s cousins. I would have assumed they were all believers, but I’m not sure of anything anymore. Oh, it’s all such a hardship on our family. They were here not so long ago. Maybe six weeks. We had an early birthday party for Cendrillon.”
Raymie sat with his nephew, Kenny, and Bahira and Zaki at the funeral a few days later. It was held in one of the recreation centers on Chloe and Cameron’s property and drew thousands, mostly children who knew Cendrillon from COT.
Strange, Raymie thought, but this would spur the return of an entire industry. As children began reaching the a
ge of one hundred all over the world, many would die. Cendrillon’s body had had to be kept in a wine cellar at her parents’ home until the service. And because cemeteries were nonexistent, she would also be buried on their land.
Zaki, Bahira’s younger brother and always more serious than most, seemed unusually quiet and focused. He was apparently studying many in the crowd. Having been raptured along with his mother and sister, he always seemed happy, if not enthusiastically joyous.
Cendrillon’s extended family filed into the front rows just before the service began, and her father was the first to take the podium. “We praise Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,” he began, laboring. “But this is neither the memorial of a life nor the celebration of a home going, for as you all know, there is only one place for the dead now, and it is not heaven. Cendrillon’s mother and I covet your prayers for our healing. We loved our daughter as much as parents could love a child, and we are in pain—deep, inexplicable pain. We have asked her friend and ministry supervisor, Cameron Williams, to say a few words.”
Cameron felt the presence of the grieving Lord with him and believed He gave him utterance. All he could do was present the unvarnished truth: that Cendrillon had seemed a wonderful person and had accomplished many good deeds. “But the sad fact is that either she never saw her personal need for a Savior, or she chose to ignore that need.”
While the Jospins had okayed this, it was apparent the extended family was caught off guard. Cameron caught the glares of some and the seeming distraction of others. “You may think this is hardly the time and place for a message like this, but Cendrillon’s parents agree that there may be no more appropriate venue. I have a challenge and a warning to everyone who has not yet reached the age of one hundred and who has not received Christ as Savior. The one common denominator throughout all ages, from the creation of Adam to the present kingdom, is that all have a choice to make about God: will you or will you not accept what the Scriptures call ‘so great a salvation’? Those who choose Him will enjoy His entire thousand-year reign and enter the heaven He has prepared for His own. Those who do not will be judged, die in their sins, and spend eternity in the lake of fire.
“This is without question the most important decision you will ever make. I ask you directly: have you personally received Jesus the Christ and acknowledged Him as your only Lord and Savior? If you have not, I urge you to do so right now by telling God, ‘Thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for my sins. I confess I am a sinner and ask Your forgiveness. I receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior and surrender my life and future to Him.’
“Now let me close by saying, your choice in this matter is easier than it has ever been. There may have been times in eras past when it took a great deal of faith to believe that Jesus was the sinless Son of God. But after all that has transpired, all the prophecy that has been fulfilled, all the attention-getting events that have occurred—including the Rapture of the church, the twenty-one judgments from heaven over the following seven years, and now this, the millennial kingdom with Jesus Himself presiding as King—you would be lying to say that the Christ is anything or anyone else than who He says He is. If you have hardened your heart against Him, it is not because you don’t believe. It is not because you don’t know. It is because you choose to go your own way rather than His, to indulge in a life centered on your own pleasures and wishes rather than dedicated to the One you know is creator of the universe.
“Should you leave here today without acknowledging Jesus, do not say you haven’t been warned that you will not survive your hundredth birthday and that you will suffer needlessly for eternity.”
Raymie knew it only seemed unique to have a nephew well over ninety years old. As he sat admiring Cameron’s boldness and passion, he couldn’t help but put his arm around Kenny and pull him close. Kenny was the only one of the four young people who sat there without a glorified body and memories of seven years in heaven with Jesus. He had come into the Millennium as an almost-five-year-old and even now still looked like a teenager, aging ever so slowly in this idyllic utopia, but Raymie prided himself on being able to tell who had glorified bodies and who didn’t. Those who did appeared, of course, to not age an iota. The slow effects of time had an impact on the others.
“How about you, buddy?” Raymie said. “You set with Jesus for the future?”
The truth was, Kenny had been taken aback by his own father’s message. Cameron Williams had been a writer, never a preacher or even a speaker. But his decades of ministry to kids had given him an ease and a conviction that made him bold in this context.
“Are you kidding?” Kenny said, smiling. “With parents like mine, do you think I had a choice?”
“Everybody has a choice. Now I want to know.”
“I was kidding, Uncle Raymie. Come on; you know this story just like I know yours. We have something in common.”
“Our mothers led us to Christ.”
“Exactly.”
“And it’s for real with you, right? I mean, I’m not going to be sitting here stunned again in a few years with my own nephew lying in a box up there?”
“Not a chance.”
“Attaboy.”
Zaki leaned over and whispered, “Look at this.”
From all over the building, people were streaming toward Cameron, many weeping. Hundreds knelt as he led them in prayer. Kenny would not have guessed there were this many holdouts in the world, let alone right here in Israel.
“Get a load of these guys,” Zaki said, nodding toward some young men in the family section. They stood and milled about, looking bored at best, distracted at worst. “I wish I looked like Kenny. I’d infiltrate and find out where they stand. But I’ve got that GB look.”
“Glorified body?” Kenny said, smiling. “That is your curse. I suppose I look ancient?”
“You’ve just got some miles on you, that’s all,” Bahira said. “You’ve heard your dad’s Tribulation Force stories. Do something for the cause. Find out if those characters are the cousins who tried to influence Cendrillon. They don’t know who you are. Be circumspect. You may be an old guy, but you still look like a kid.”
Circumspect. That was a new one for Kenny Bruce Williams. He’d never had to be anything other than transparent. Even before he had received Christ, he had not been deceptive. All his life he had been around people who knew and loved Jesus and served Him with their whole hearts. His parents had been martyred, after all, and had been in heaven with God. There was no denying their fervor or what they were about.
Kenny had been ten and living in the kingdom a few years when his mother led him to Christ and prayed with him while putting him to bed one night. “I don’t feel like a sinner,” he had told her. “I hardly remember doing anything wrong.”
“Sin isn’t necessarily just things we do,” she had said. “It’s what we are and who we are. We’re all born in sin and need forgiveness.”
It hadn’t taken much persuasion. Kenny had seen Jesus. If He wasn’t God, nobody was. To Kenny, the decision seemed easy. And while he had heard all the stories of his parents’ and his grandfather’s exploits during the Tribulation, he found living “the life,” as his parents called it, easy during the millennial kingdom. When he was younger, Kenny had actually wished there were more opposition so he’d have something exciting to do. But once he had become a believer himself, working with COT had been all the excitement he needed. Almost every day he had either led a child to Christ or known of someone who had.
Be circumspect. Now there was a concept. A tingle went through him as he separated himself from his uncle and his friends and began casually milling about, edging toward the young people from France who might actually be devotees of the Other Light.
As he reached the family, he noticed two young men about his age who looked a lot alike. He reached for one’s hand. “You a relative of Cendrillon’s?” he said.
The bushy-haired young man shook Kenny’s hand. “Depends,” he sai
d. “She owe you money?”
Kenny couldn’t help but grimace. What a thing to say at time like this.
“Yeah, she was my cousin. Name’s Ignace. This is my little brother, Lothair.”
“Nice to meet you both. Sorry about your loss.”
Lothair, a redhead, was the thinner and taller of the two. He snorted. “That crackpot sure made her sound like a loser. Don’t know who he thinks he is.”
Kenny flinched and hoped it didn’t show. He had never heard people this age talk that way. Little kids, sure, roughhousing, fighting, squabbling over toys, not sharing—that was common. But for almost-adults to be so negative, to talk so mean? That was new to Kenny.
Still, he had to be guarded. “Yeah, well, I don’t know what else he could have said.”
Lothair chested his way close to Kenny. “You’re saying she was a loser?”
“No, I—”
“Did you even know her?”
“Yeah, sure. Not well, but she was from my area.”
“Then you know she wasn’t some big sinner. She hadn’t even been outside Israel since she was a little kid. We couldn’t even talk her into having a little fun.”
“Fun?”
“Yeah, you know. Fun. Something other than singing songs to Jesus to make sure you live past a hundred.”
“I wouldn’t mind living past a hundred,” Kenny said.
“Then you’d better get saved, don’t you think? According to this guy, that’s the only way to make it. Unless you got a pass by coming straight here from heaven. You didn’t, did you?”
“Me? Nah. Do I look like it?”
“You don’t, actually; no offense. Those glorified people all look the same, like porcelain dolls. Hey, anywhere to have fun around here?”