I Am That Seed. I Am Lazarus. and This Is My Record

Have you ever watched a tiny seed transform itself from the inside out into a
beautiful plant? The seed is cast off from the living vine to which its fruit has
clung and then it is buried in the rich soil of the earth. The moisture of the earth
and the warmth of the sun envelop the tiny seed until its shell softens and its
insides expand. At just the right time and in just the right way new life pushes free
from its weakened outer skin and stretches itself upright emerging from the
ground. It is awakened to new life under the watchful eye of the sun, and is rooted
deeply within the nourishing bosom of the earth. From that tiny dead seed will
come an entirely new vine, a new creation, a new life, and abundant new fruit.
I am that seed. I am Lazarus. And this is my record.
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Lazarus by Mike Spencer
Part I
Like a seed which has only one chance to find fertile soil in which to produce fruit, a man
is given only once to live his life and then he must die and face the judgment. Not so for me. I
am the seed that has been grown twice. I have lived and I have died, and now I live again. Does
this sound fantastic? Then let me explain.
I once lived outside of Jerusalem in the time of the Herods. It was a time of difficulty for
the Jews, but then again, when hasn’t there been a time of difficulty for the Jews? It was also a
time of Hope, for it was the time of Moshiach. I was blessed to be counted among the living that
saw his coming and would witness the restoration and deliverance of Israel among the nations of
the earth. I met the Holy One of God as He traveled the roads of the villages surrounding
Jerusalem and taught the children of Israel about the kingdom of God. He came and ate in the
house of my sisters Martha and Mary. I reclined at the table of the Moshiach! But more of that
later, I must not sidetrack myself. First I will tell of my death and then I will tell of my life.
I am a strong man, which is why I am able to do the work that I do to care for my sister’s
vineyard and farm. I am also mute. Since birth my tongue has been bound behind my teeth and
will not form the words that I so wish to speak. I have learned to communicate with my hands,
but only with those who are closest to me and who are patient enough to attempt to understand.
This communication is not perfect, however, for I can only relay basic ideas, desires and needs. I
cannot explain the details of a situation or a problem, and I have never been able to convey my
innermost thoughts and feelings to a person whom I love. This has been my burden from the time
of my childhood to the day of my death. In fact, this burden contributed to my untimely demise,
because I could not adequately explain my condition to those who could have cared for me. You
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see, in my fortieth year I had begun to experience periodic headaches that would build up very
quickly and increase in intensity until I was practically incapacitated. All I could do at these
times was to lie on my cot in my darkened room and pray to God to relieve my pain. I was able
to continue with my work in their vineyard, so I suffered silently, as I had to do. Maybe if I had
tried to let my sisters know a little sooner they could have found a physician to attend to me, or
they could have called on Jesus a little sooner. But as I was to find out later, that was not the will
of God for my life anyway. As it happened, in the spring of that year my headaches began to
occur more and more frequently. I was no longer able to hide them from my sisters and my work
suffered seriously. It was all I could do most days to keep myself from thrashing about on my
cot, I was in such agony. Martha and Mary were very concerned and sent to Jerusalem for the
best physician in the region. He came in three days time and examined me closely. The art of
medicine was not very refined in those days and by the time he came to me there was little that
his art could do for me. I had severe swelling behind my eyes, it was beginning to interfere with
my vision, and I had a fever that was only getting worse with each passing day. As he stood to
leave he shook his head almost imperceptibly and went out to inform Martha and Mary. Bless
their hearts, they wailed as if I was already gone, and Mary, she arose to put on her travel cloak
and hurriedly made preparation to leave.
“Where are you going?” cried Martha. “You can’t just leave me at a time like this, our
brother is dying!”
“I am going to find Jesus, He is said to be beyond the Jordan with the prophet John. You
know how much he loves Lazarus; surely He will not refuse to come when He hears how sick
Lazarus has become.”
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“But you must not travel the road alone, Mary. It is dangerous for a woman, and there is
little light left for such a journey as it is.
“Martha, have you learned nothing? You worry too much and it is not helpful. We must
find Jesus, only He can save our brother now.”
Martha’s face was pained. She knew that Mary was right, but she could not help but be
anxious. What was she to do? She was the eldest daughter and therefore the head of the house; it
was her duty to protect Mary. But she must also try to help her brother.
“Send Ibrahim. He knows these roads better than any of us. And if anyone can find Jesus
it will be him. Call him, Mary, and send him on his way as quickly as you can.”
Mary went to the little hut of their shepherd boy. He was an orphan whom had come to
them several years before, during a great famine that had swept the land, killing his parents but
somehow sparing his young life. Mary found him just outside the door mending a rip in his worn
tunic.
“You must go find Jesus for us, Ibrahim. Lazarus your brother is very sick and will die.
Please take this bag and your cloak and may God give you haste for your journey.” Ibrahim was
on his way before she had even finished speaking to him. Mary watched him as he headed
toward the road. He was a dutiful boy and hurried down the path to the road where he gave one
look back and waved and then was off at a run to find the Master.
I tried to hold on to the hope this gave me. I knew that Jesus could certainly heal me. I
had heard much of his miraculous healings and the casting out of the demons from here to
Galilee. The reports seemed to come in daily from all over the region of his power over both the
physical world and the spiritual. But I could not keep the despair I felt from rising up within me.
Would Ibrahim be able to find Jesus? Would Jesus get here in time? I did not have to wait long
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for the answers. My agonizing prayers for relief and healing from the pain of the headaches went
unheeded. The fasting of the household was seemingly ignored by heaven.
Ibrahim came back the very next day. My sisters excitedly rushed out to greet him as he
came up the path to the house. But I could tell that the news he brought was not what we had
been expecting. I watched him through the door of the house with eyes that could barely focus as
he tearfully told Martha and Mary that he had found the Teacher on the other side of the Jordan
and had told Him all that he had been commanded to say. “I told him that Lazarus is dying. I
said, ‘Please come to the house of Martha and Mary, for only by Your hand will Lazarus be
saved.’”
“But then, where is our Lord, Ibrahim? He should have come back with you; Lazarus has
so little time left!” Martha was terrified.
“I am sorry, but He would not come. He only looked at me with sadness in His eyes and
then turned away. I waited for Him and I begged His disciples to let me see Him again, but I was
sent away. I did not know where else to go so I came back to you. I have failed you, I am sorry.”
Martha was never one to contain her emotions and this news was too much for her to
bear. She threw herself to the ground and began to grab great handfuls of the dust of the earth
and cover herself with it. Her tears formed brown rivulets down her cheeks and slowly turned her
face to ash. Mary turned and made her way back inside. She came to where I had been lying on a
cot placed within the common room and kneeled by my side. She took my large calloused hand
in her small tanned hand and laid her beautiful head upon my chest. I could feel her weeping as I
watched my last ray of hope flicker and die away.
I was in horrible pain that evening. My head pounded with such intensity I longed for
death if only to gain the relief it would bring. Jesus had taught me to look only to God for life.
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He said that in the Father we find our true salvation. He taught us to be assured of His love for us
and that even in death we would live, if only we believed in His grace. But I was still scared of
death. I have lived too long as a Jew upon the earth. I have heard too many teachings from the
Holy Scriptures that make me tremble about the condition of my soul when it goes to Sheol.
When I was with Jesus I was sure of my place there. But on my bed, writhing in such pain, and
abandoned by my Lord, I was unable to trust Him as I should.
I bled out that night from my ears and my eyes. There was a moment, when I felt the
warmth of the blood on my face and neck that the pain was gone and the pressure had been
released. If I could have spoken, I would have proclaimed my thanks to God for the relief I felt.
As my sight cleared during the brief respite I enjoyed, I saw Mary’s face turn white as snow and
she fell back onto the floor. I heard Martha’s predictable scream as she saw Mary fall and then
saw the pool of blood around my head. I longed to tell them that it was okay, that I was going to
be alright, but my eyes closed of their own accord and I could see no more.
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In dreams I have noticed that I feel events more than I see them. That I certainly see the
events of my dreams is obvious, but I must admit confusion as to how that can be since my eyes
are outside of my body and my dreams take place behind them somehow. I do recall the images
of my dreams, but usually I recall the emotions of my dreams much more vividly. It was that
way with my death as well. I felt it more than I saw it, for as with my dreams, my eyes were left
behind in the body and I was somewhere far from that body. Nonetheless I retained a full and
vivid record of the place that I found myself after I died, a place that I have since become very
familiar with and now call home.
I used to ponder what it was like for Elijah to have been taken up as he was in such a
blaze of glory. He was still the occupier of his body and yet he made the leap from the land of
the living, to the land of the Living in Heaven. Now that I too have been taken up, I know. It was
very simple actually, I saw no tunnel, nor a light leading me to a door; I did not hear any voices;
there was no singing, no lyre or other instrument. I just was. I mean to say that I was there. I was
standing, but not on my feet. I had no physical body! I was a spirit, I was ethereal, and I was
made of light and dust from the stars. I was standing alone and exposed in a very, very, large
place. And I was afraid. Is this Sheol? Is this the realm of the dead? What is my fate to be? All of
the fears from my life came back to me and formed a cloud before my eyes that darkened my
view. I saw in the cloud my fear, my distrust of God, my worry and anxiety. I saw my sinfulness,
and my faithlessness. I saw rebellion, greed, lust, hate, and my pride. I saw all that I was in the
flesh, and I saw it in an instant, as if in a mirror, as if in a dream- and I understood without a
doubt that I was doomed. I was to be destroyed.
And then there appeared beyond the cloud a tiny ray of light. It appeared in the way a
sunbeam first appears after a rainstorm. It slowly broke through the swirling mass of cloud and
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shined upon my breast. It was not light after all, for it bore into my spirit body and wrapped itself
around my spirit heart. I was a seed after all. I was changing from the inside out, I was warming
inside and I could feel the moisture and heat and life blossoming in my chest. I felt as if I would
burst as it grew and grew. I was entranced by the power of the change within me and my fears
began to subside. It was wonderful! I watched the fear in the cloud dissipate, and the worry
disappear. Gone also were the pride and the lust, greed and avarice. Gone was all of the darkness
that I had carried for so long. What a feeling I had! Having lived my life with these an integral
part of me I had never really felt the weight that they were to carry. My spirit was light now, it
was free of shame, and it was exuberant! I was exuberant! I cried out in thanksgiving, “Thank
You! Thank You! Thank You!”
I cried out!
I had a voice! And it was a beautiful sound to my ears. I reveled in the sound of it as
words poured forth from my spirit, from my soul, words of praise, thanksgiving, words of love
and adoration. To tell the truth I think most of those words were unintelligible to any but the One
who had brought me to that place. I was speaking a tongue never spoken by any but me before.
And I spoke it with fluidity and with strength; I spoke those words for an eternity.
“You are Lazarus.” I stopped as a new voice overpowered my own. I looked with my
new eyes all around me but saw no one and no thing.
“And you are mine.” The voice was majestic, it was beautiful, and it was musical.
“You will be My messenger to help me as I restore life to the land of the living.”
And then there was a silence that echoed across the land that I was in. I saw the land now;
a land of magnificent trees and crystal clear waters. I saw mountain ranges stretching across the
horizon and vast prairies of grass blowing first one way and then the other as the wind would
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have it. I saw kingdoms; vast domains with castles in their center that were surrounded by
farmlands and industry. I heard the noises of this land as I looked into this vision. I heard the
voices of children laughing as they played and studied. I heard the wails of infants as they were
born into life and demanded affection. I heard the voices of discourse and debate, of
conversation and gaiety. I heard the ringing of hammers on nails and the electric shots of great
machinery. I heard the sounds of Life; of happiness, of contentment, and of humanity. And I felt
the wind on my face, not warm and cool as it was in Bethany, but rather wet. There was moisture
in the wind, moisture that was wind; but which penetrated the soul and left you refreshed. It was
a life giving water. It was Life! I was kissed by the Water of Life. This was not Sheol; I saw that
Sheol was a mistake somehow, or at least my understanding of it was a mistake. I had been
expecting a place of waiting when I died, a place where my soul would rest while it waited to be
restored to a new life with God. I had no expectation of beauty, or of life and strength. I had no
expectation of living in the presence of God Himself!
Beyond the mountains I saw the glow of what I took to be the sun of heaven. It appeared
to be rising. The sky had the look of morning, it was clear and blue, and there was great warmth
coming from the sun that was burning the dew from the ground. I felt the tug of my spirit telling
me to head toward the sun.
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I walked for several hours enjoying the strength of my new spirit body. Did you know
that in Heaven your spirit body never tires? It is true! As I walked and climbed hill after hill I
never grew weary. In fact, I think that I grew more and more energized! I was in love with my
new home and I was content to walk its length and breadth for the rest of eternity simply in order
to explore its treasures and to unlock its secrets. But given an eternity I would only have
uncovered a fraction of what God has implanted there.
I came to a hill that was somehow different than the others. This hill was the perfection of
hill, if such a thing were possible. It was sloped at just the right angle to facilitate walking and
yet you could not see its top. It was covered in the grass of the prairie but a path had been laid
down that beckoned me to follow. I traversed the hill and found myself in the shade of an
enormous tree. Needless to say, this tree was also unlike any I had ever seen before. It was
similar to its earthly counterparts in its bark and leaves and its root in the ground. But its shape
was unnaturally different. The tree before me had the accursed shape of the Roman cross. The
Romans had devised, or had stolen, the cross as a means of torture for the people who were
unlucky enough to fall under their dominion. The Romans had come into Israel in wave upon
wave, overtaking her as the ocean overtakes the beach. They had washed away the civilization
that God had planted there and in her place had erected their own. Theirs was the way of the
sword. Any who refused to yield before their sword felt the keenness of its blade. And the cross
was one of their favorite blades. To the criminal and to the zealot it was a death of excruciating
pain, hence the word ‘crucify,’ which so aptly conjures the picture of the pain it creates. The one
to be crucified had his wrists either tied or staked to a wooden beam. The soldiers would then
raise the beam up and place it on a vertical beam that had been planted in the ground. The victim
would then hang from this ‘cross’ until dead, either from the wounds inflicted before his
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crucifixion at the hands of overzealous soldiers or from the torture of hanging by his arms until
asphyxiated. When the soldiers deemed the victim dead they would break his legs with a heavy
hammer to ensure Death’s grasp and leave the body as a deterrent to others who would consider
breaking Roman law. This was justice under the eagle of the Empire.
This tree then that stood before me, what should I have made of its place in Heaven?
Why would God have planted a tree such as this in His garden, and why would He have
cultivated it so perfectly and given it such abundant life? For as I looked I saw that it was a fruit
bearing tree, literally dragging its boughs down to the ground with the weight of its load. As I
stood, stunned into silence, gazing at the horrible beauty of the tree with its two outstretched
arms and crown of glorious fruit, I heard the voice again, and it said, “Take and eat.”
There in my hands as real as if I had picked it myself lay a small, round, tender fruit that
smelled of the grass and the sun and the wind. When I brought it to my lips I saw a vision of my
Lord Jesus, upon the tree before me, struggling for breath and bleeding from many wounds.
“Lord, no! What is this that I see?”
And the voice of heaven answered me, “This is my Son, the man you knew as Jesus. This
is what He must suffer for you.”
I fell to my knees and begged forgiveness from God for whatever sin I committed to
warrant this punishment upon my beloved Master.
“He does this not to bind you, but to set you free. He willingly suffers to bring you to this
place and to ensure that when the Day comes you will be counted among those who will see my
Sun rise from its stronghold in the east.”
“Please, Lord, help me to see. I do not understand!”
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“My Son and I are one, Lazarus. We are one in our love for you and for your brethren
upon the earth. We do this to bring you home. But I have chosen you, Lazarus, from among all
the men of the earth to be my messenger. You will return to the land of the living and be my
emissary from this day forth until My Son comes again in glory and rises to take His place as the
husband of his beautiful bride. You will go and restore life to the living, and in the hearts of the
weary and the heavy laden. You will be a bringer of hope to the hopeless. You will remind the
people of this cross and of the love that its shadow casts over them. And you will help them to
see and believe that they may turn back to Me and I will heal them. You were once Lazarus. And
you will be so yet again. Go!”
And before I could open my mouth again with another plea for understanding I was alone
again. The cross was gone from the hill, the sky was dark, the wind had ceased to blow upon my
face, and I felt in my throat the familiar constriction of old. I was once again mute.
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“Lazarus, come forth!” The power of the voice I now heard awakened me from my terror
of being alone. It was Jesus!
“I hear you Jesus, but I cannot speak! I cannot move; I am scared.” I screamed these
words in my mind but they were imprisoned behind my chained tongue. I was reduced to the
frantic mannerisms of before. But I was unable to communicate. I was alone, and in a very dark
and evil place. The air was rancid with the smell of decay. There was death on my tongue as I
struggled to take air through the fabric that bound me so tightly. I was weighed down upon the
rocky ground beneath me by some unknown burden upon my chest. “Oh, God, I do not
understand, I am lost!”
And then by some miracle, as if the ones I had just experienced were not enough, I found
myself on my feet, lifted by unseen arms, and carried upright toward the light. I still could not
see, wrapped as I was behind layers of fabric, but I was able to discern that there was a light and
it was getting brighter. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect, nor what to make of these
happenings. I imagined that I was now to enter Sheol after what I could only guess was some
kind of a glimpse of my heaven to come.
“Unbind him, and let him go!” commanded the voice of my Lord. I was descended upon
by my neighbors and loved ones. I heard Mary’s voice weeping loudly, and crying out praises to
the God of Israel. I heard Ibrahim saying ecstatically over and over again, “Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!” I felt many hands grabbing and pulling me and I felt the fabric that imprisoned me
slowly unravel. I was free at last. I stood in shock before a crowd of many people who were
likewise staring at me. What they expected to see, I am not entirely sure, but I found out later
that I had died four days earlier and had been in the tomb for that length of time. They must have
expected me to look as badly as the smell that was still coming from the newly opened tomb.
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I looked myself over to try to make some sense of things for myself. I was clothed in a
white tunic of the utmost purity. I moved my arms around a bit and flexed my hands. My
strength was enormous! I could have moved the stone of my tomb myself had I wanted to! I
stretched my neck and looked around me. The colors I could see! Everything was bright and
fresh as if it had just come from the ground in springtime, and yet the first shoots had appeared
weeks ago. I could see other things as well; things that appeared in my vision but somehow were
not really before me. These visions were attached to the rabbi’s disciples and to the crowd of
people who came with Jesus. I saw pain and sorrow materialize as gray mists that surrounded
their hosts. I saw joy and ecstasy appear auras of color that swirled about the head and shoulders
of my sisters. I saw the hidden things as well; things both honorable and shameful. And around
my Lord, my Savior, I saw peace and love emanating in waves of blue and gold, filled with light
and washing over all who stood near.
“Welcome back, Lazarus, my brother,” Jesus smiled. He stepped forward and grasped my
shoulders. He looked deeply into my eyes and whispered, “You are my special messenger now,
and we have much to discuss.” Jesus took me by the hand and led me away from the crowd. We
made our way back to the house of my sisters and Jesus commanded that the ‘mourners’ depart.
He spoke briefly to His disciples and they turned and left after the others. Together with Jesus I
stood in the doorway and watched my neighbors and friends leave in groups of twos and threes.
Some were silent. Some were talking animatedly. Some rushed away to be the bearer of this
incredible news to the rest of the village. Over and among them all I saw wonder, excitement,
amazement and joy bursting out into the village and countryside in sparks and waves that sped
away into the world.
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I looked at Jesus with the biggest question that my eyes have ever tried to ask and he
returned my look with the greatest amount of love that I have ever received from any man. I
followed Him through the door and sat near Him by the hearth where a great pot was stewing
over the fire. The smell of the stew Martha was cooking was incredible. I could taste it in the air.
I saw the colors of its scent wafting about the room and I felt its tendrils invade my senses. They
created in me a great hunger; it must have shown because Jesus let out a great belly of a laugh
and stood to serve me a bowl full.
“You are hungry brother?” he laughed again. “I guess you would be after four days in the
tomb, being wrapped as tightly as a newborn babe.”
“Four days?” I was astonished. So I had died and they had buried me. Poor Martha. Poor
Mary! She had seen me at the last.
“Yes, four days.” Jesus laughed again when He saw the look on my face. How had he
heard me? I did not speak out loud, I wished I could, I have so many questions to ask!
“Ask Me then Lazarus, and I will give you whatever you desire. I can hear you just as if
you were speaking with your mouth. Your thoughts are ever before Me. Ask Me Lazarus, for I
have much to tell you.”
My mind was racing at a furious pace. He hears me! The joy that this gave me, you must
understand was enormous; to be able to talk to someone, to be heard, and listened to, what a gift
this was! My thoughts filled my eyes with tears and I began to cry. Jesus reached out His hands
to me and wiped them away. His eyes told me again how much He loved me.
I gathered my composure together again and thought of all the things that I wanted to ask.
How could I be alive again? How was it that I felt so strong? How can I see the things that I do?
Where have I been? Was it real?
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“I was in a different place just before You called me out from the tomb. Where was I,
was I dreaming?”
“You were with My Father in heaven. You had died, just like all men, and you were
taken up to the place just outside the rising of the Sun. You were on your way Home.”
“Then how is it that I am here?” I looked at Him in wonder as I saw a rainbow appear
around his head and settle upon Him as a crown.
“My Father has chosen you to be a special emissary of Ours. You alone of all men have
tasted heaven and have been forced to return. For that My Father has wept, but it was necessary
so that you can go after Me and live as a reminder to this generation and the next of the greatness
of God. You will be a friend to the friendless and a lover of the unloved. He has chosen you to
bring life back to those who have lost it to despair and their own stubbornness. You will live to
light the way for the lost that they may find their way once more.”
I thought of the beauty of heaven and the peace that had invaded my spirit while there. I
felt now as if I was weighed down by unseen pressures around me and longed for the cleanness I
had felt before.
“You can’t help but want to go back, am I right? This must be hard for you. To have once
tasted the joy of wholeness and to be thrust back into life must seem an incredible
disappointment. I wept for you too, Lazarus, when I received the news that you were sick. Your
sisters wanted me to come to you and heal you as I have healed so many others. But the Father
would not allow it. I had to let you suffer death. But death is not why I wept, for I knew you
would be in a much better place. I wept because death would not be the release for you that it is
for others, but rather a beginning of life in the body, for millennia. What you are feeling now is
the weight of the uncleanness of the world upon your shoulders. You have been cleansed and are
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rid of that burden, but you feel it pressing in on you from without. You will feel a host of new
things as you make your way through this work. You will experience the joys and triumphs of
man’s relationship to their Father. And you will suffer the pain and destruction of their rebellion
against Him. Use the new strength that you have to seek out and complete your work. Find those
who are surrounded by clouds of despair and apathy. Work yourself into their lives like salt in
the sea and show them the heaven that you yourself have seen.”
We sat for a long while in silence. Martha came and took the bowls. Mary was sleeping
where she had placed herself at the feet of her teacher. My thoughts were still a jumble and I
wondered how I might be able to do this work when I was so obviously confused and unsure. My
body had grown stronger, my senses were keener than I had known possible, but my mind and
my heart seemed to be as weak and ill-equipped as before. Doubt, fear, and confusion began to
rise within me. They came out of my nostrils and through my tunic as smoke from the fire,
leaving their traces of soot upon my face and body. I stood in alarm and tried to shake the smoke
from my body. Jesus slowly stood and once again took me in His arms and stared into my eyes.
“Yes, you are yet the same, Lazarus, as before. You still fear and you still doubt many
things. You are still weak in many ways and you will struggle to fulfill your mission. But you
have been chosen, not because you are different than other men in your weaknesses, but because
you are different from other men in My purposes for you. My Father has chosen you so that
through your death and resurrection He will be glorified. Together we will go to Jerusalem and
announce the kingdom and My reign as Lord. You will sit at My table and stand as silent witness
to My throne. You will take Me to My cross and you will watch as I rise again. And then you
will go into the world as witness and turn the sheep back to the fold of their Father.”
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He released me and I slumped back onto the chair. The smoke had ceased to pour from
me but I was still smeared with its grimy residue. “I’m scared, Jesus,” I whispered silently.
“Do not be afraid. Know that I am with you. I will hear you when you call to Me and I
will always answer you to guide you. Trust in Me, and trust in the power of the Father to do
through you that which He has commanded for you to do.” Jesus’ eyes filled with mirth and He
began to laugh again, which startled me. He was pointing at my ruined tunic and the smudges all
over my face and was laughing like a child. “That’s the last time I give you nice tunic like that
one!”
His laughter woke up Mary and brought Martha back into the room. Martha stood in
disbelief when she saw the mess that I had made of myself. “Lazarus, what have you done? That
tunic must have cost a fortune, and you have destroyed it!” Mary’s eyes opened wide in her
bewilderment, for she had missed the entire thing. She rushed to my side and began to wipe
away at the soot with her dress, which only worked to grind it into my tunic all the more as well
as transfer it to herself. Martha had seen all that she could bear to see and she shouted, “Enough,
both of you! To think of making a mess like this, on this day of all days, and with the Master as
our guest!” She fumed in exasperation. “Out! Both of you, to the water…” She hurried us both
out the door and we could hear Jesus chuckling to Himself delightedly as Martha scolded us all
the way to the rain barrels.
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As I lay on my cot that evening, listening to the sounds of the farm as it settled in for the
night I couldn’t help but marvel at all that had taken place. My mind surveyed the events of the
day; the tomb and the crowds, my conversation with Jesus, my ability to see the auras, my
strength of body and the uneasy weakness of my heart.
Why me? I have nothing to commend me to the Lord. In fact I am probably the least of
men, especially here in this village. I can’t even speak for goodness sake! I don’t even have a
family lineage to call my own. My thoughts traveled back to my childhood and the home in
which I grew up.
I am not a Hebrew; I am not even a native to this area, so I have no connection to the
myriad of peoples that call this place home. I was born far away, exactly where I do not know,
because I was very young when I was taken away. I lived in a small village like this one, but up
in the mountains where we herded sheep and farmed small rocky plots of ground. I was eight
years old the summer that we were overrun by the soldiers. I remember the day very well
because it was the day that I lost everything that I had ever known.
I was already working in the field that morning. I had been of age for work for two years
by then, so I was taken from my mother’s side in the hut and worked all day long next to my
father as we prepared and planted and harvested our crops each year. We stopped working that
morning when we heard the rumble of thunder. My father stood and looked off toward the
horizon, but saw nothing, not a cloud in the sky. The thunder sounded again and with it came the
smell of smoke. My father had grabbed me by the arm faster than I could piece together what
had happened and dragged me across the field back to our house, where my mother was just
stepping outside, concern written on her face.
“Elisia, they are coming, we must move quickly!”
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He then shouted for me to gather our donkey and the large bag from our barn, and to
hurry. Bewildered, I ran toward the barn while my father went to the sheep pen next to the house
and released our sheep, shooing them into the forest that bordered our land.
I heard my mother screaming and turned back toward the house. She was falling as I
turned, her head replaced by the edge of a gleaming sword. I watched in horror as my father
exploded into tears of rage and ran to her, trying to prevent what he refused to admit had just
happened. He vented his rage upon the soldier but was immediately cut down by the arrows of
the soldier’s compatriots coming over the rise at the edge of our land. I was rooted to the ground
and silently screamed in terror. My muteness saved my life that day; for they did not hear me and
they did not look toward the barn right away, consumed as they were with killing my parents. I
woke from my stupor and ran as fast as I could. I did not even consider direction, but ran away,
deeply into the forest, up the mountain, away from them forever. When I finally collapsed, I lay
down on a rocky outcropping, far above my home and my village. I looked toward my home but
it was no more. It was billowing black smoke and ash into the sky. The barn was burning, the
field was on fire, and the farm was ruined. I saw the bodies of my parents staked on the edge of
our land and beyond their bodies I saw the decimation of the rest of our village and its farms.
The soldiers had taken everything.
I spent a very long and cold night up on the mountain, fearful of falling asleep and
jumping at every sound the mountain makes in the dark. At first light, I decided to try and make
my way down and around the village, by traveling through the forest just outside its borders. I
hoped to make it past the soldiers who had camped just below the village and then to freedom in
one of the towns in the south. I did not know the futility of that plan, for the southern towns were
already taken as my little village was. I had heard of these traveling bands of soldiers and the
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havoc they were causing in the region but I paid little attention to the whispers of my parents at
night. In my childish mind they were just stories, I had believed that nothing could touch us,
secluded as we were above the rest of the world on our mountain.
My plans for escape failed. I was picked up by a sentry who had been posted to catch
escapees such as my self. They had quite a collection of captured prisoners in the enclosure they
had erected in the village center. My fellow prisoners were mostly children, who would be sold
into slavery to the aristocracy of the Empire, and a few young women saved for temporary use as
playthings among the officers of the legion. The rest of the town had been slaughtered and they
were still staring silently from their stakes along our feeble village road.
The morning after my capture I was removed from the stockade and tied hand and foot to
several other boys. We stumbled and stutter-stepped out of the village and down the mountain.
We were marched for days and days, getting rest only in the evenings when the men broke for
their meal and their drink. We were given little to eat, barely enough to survive, but mercilessly
enough on which to live. We were moved like this until we finally reached what seemed to be
our final destination, a port city on the great sea. I was forced to stand on the street of this city,
tied as I was to the other boys, as the ships’ captains and their seconds looked us over and felt
our bodies as you would that of livestock before a purchase. The realization that I was to be sold
as a slave terrorized me and brought bile to my mouth. The nightmare beginning with my
parents’ slaughter and the horror of the march to this place was not yet over.
I was sold and chained to the galley of a ship bound for a place called Palestine. The trip
was a hard one. We were packed into the galley lengthwise and not given air or food during the
entire voyage. By the time we reached one of the port cities of Palestine many of us were
considerably weakened and more than a few were found dead. Those of us who remained were
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roughly offloaded into the bright sun of this eastern city and allowed to wash our filthy bodies in
the waters of the sea. And then we began to march once again, this time to a place called
Jerusalem which housed the regional command garrison of the Empire’s eastern legions. I did
not make it to this city. I fell from exhaustion and dehydration on the ascent to its gates and was
simply left for dead. I was so weakened that I embraced death and lay very quietly waiting for it
to take me. People passed me regularly on their way in and out of the city but not a single soul
approached me to help. That is, until that evening when a voice reached out to me and called me
by name. It said, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” And I felt hands take me up and carry me
away. These hands caressed my sores and fed me and helped me to drink. They washed me and
clothed me and I began to hope for life again. How I have wished since that time to be able to
express my thanks in speech to the sisters who found me and loved me, stranger though I was,
Gentile that I am. I am forever in their debt; and I have served them ever since. They taught me
of their God, and they have baptized me into His name and their faith. They gave me a name and
call me brother; and I call them sisters.
As I lay remembering these things I fell asleep with such gratitude in my heart for the
kindnesses that I was shown by those two women and the realization that it was their God, now
my God, that led them to me and opened their hearts to me. I realize now that His purposes for
them and for me were much greater than I had known. I fell asleep wondering what the future
would hold for me in my new life with Jesus.
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Unbeknownst to me my Lord had acquired some very important enemies. In His travels
through Galilee and the region surrounding Jerusalem Jesus had spread the news, as He called it,
of the coming of His kingdom. He pronounced himself Moshiach in his hometown of Nazareth,
when He was invited by the synagogue official to read from the scriptures on the Sabbath. As
you can imagine, from that day forward the officials of our sacred religion have kept a keen eye
on this upstart, as they call Him. Over the past several years since His baptism in the Jordan and
the attending declaration from heaven Jesus has spread His good news far and wide, and has
backed His words up with the most astounding miracles. It was rarely that a week passed in our
small village that we did not hear from a traveler of the awesome and frightening command that
Jesus had over nature, be it physical or even spiritual. Jesus is said to have cleansed men from
their leprosy, straightened physically deformed limbs; He has cast out demons so ferocious that
they have held entire villages captive in fear. But most astounding, and most upsetting to the
powers that be in our synagogues, is that Jesus has claimed the authority to forgive a man’s sins.
That of course is blasphemous, unless one happened to be God, for only the God of
Heaven may forgive the sins of His children. Their motives were not entirely righteous you must
know. They cared very little about the supposed blasphemy against God. But they cared deeply
about maintaining the position of power they had established for themselves under Roman rule.
They feared Jesus starting an uprising against Rome that would bring the Empire’s wrath upon
them and take their little fiefdom away. They had long forgotten the promise of Moshiach and
had ceased looking to the scriptures for an understanding of who He was to be, and as such,
when He came they did not recognize Him. The people, however, recognized in Jesus something
that their hearts had been yearning for through the ages beginning with Father Abraham. Because
they were largely ignorant of scripture and had no teacher to reveal its mysteries to them they
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unfortunately misunderstood His true nature. But they received Jesus as from God and that was a
start. They began to flock to Him, following Him on His journey from place to place. They
pressed in on Him in the cities and villages, they surrounded Him in the country, and they were
desperate to hear the glorious words that fell from His mouth and to glean from His teaching.
They began to call him the Son of David and the Son of Man. He was thought also to be Elijah or
even Jeremiah. It is said that even that old fox of a king, Herod, was trembling at the
implications of a kingdom of the nature that Jesus was announcing.
As I have said, Jesus was making some very powerful enemies among the religious elite.
The synagogue officials from every region in Israel began to travel to Jerusalem to notify the
High Priest of the trouble that Jesus was stirring up and to demand he take action to censor and
silence Him. Unfortunately, when the news of my being raised from the dead, after almost a
week in the tomb no less, reached Caiaphas the fate of Jesus was sealed. Caiaphas declared that
it would be good to sacrifice this one man and any others that stood in their way, even if they
were otherwise innocent, to save the whole of their nation (and their own place in it). From that
day on it became dangerous for Jesus to travel publicly. He was forced to keep to the outlying
districts, but He never stopped spreading His message to the people of His chosen nation.
Jesus left my sisters’ house the next morning, the morning after I was brought back to
this world. He left early and quickly, stopping only long enough to cast His gaze on me before
walking out the door. In that momentary glance I saw more of His future than I ever wanted to
see. I saw the cross from my dream again, only this time it was not beautiful and it was not in
heaven. I saw a bloody stump and a battered man hanging upon a cross piece, bleeding from the
lashes of fury given him by the evil priests and scribes and rabble of Zion. I saw the day turn to
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darkness and heard a forlorn cry shatter the stillness of the night and break the earth in two. And
then my Jesus smiled and turned to go.
I had been expecting to get instruction that morning about my new mission. I was
unprepared for being left alone after the experience that I had just encountered so it took me
several moments to recover my senses. My sisters were both up and working already. They were
saddened considerably by the departure of Jesus. Martha tried very hard not to grumble at the
impropriety of His leaving without even a goodbye, and I smiled at the frenzy of colors that were
battling around her as she tried to submit herself to the will of her Lord. Not having anything
more pressing to do, and no clear idea of what that might have been anyway I settled myself
back into my old routine. I spent that first week getting caught up on the work that had been
neglected due to my illness and subsequent death. That week, and the days following, before I
saw Jesus again was a time of discovery for me. I began to learn the extent of the changes within
myself. I learned to balance the new visual senses that I now possessed with the need to ignore
their potency simply in order to conduct the business of living. I was amazed, and still am, at the
strength in my body to do the most physical of work. I can work from sun up to sun down and
still feel as energetic as at first light. I rarely break a sweat and when I do it is an invigorating
feeling. I feel as if I have the strength of ten men. I feel whole and fully human.
We were visited often by the curious and the faithful. People came regularly to see the
man who had been raised. They were disappointed that I could not speak for myself. For some,
their disappointment turned to anger and disgust; they were offended that they had traveled to
see me and I was just a mute. These visitors pestered my sisters with questions and gave us no
end of diversion those following weeks. I began to see from those visits that my new work for
God would be difficult. I could see in the behavior of the peoples and in their auras that there
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were many kinds of seekers. There were those who sought only to provide evidence for their
own beliefs. They came to see me to prove to themselves that the miraculous clearly could not
happen. Those were the people who used my inability to speak as evidence that I had not truly
been raised. Then there were others who were merely collectors of the miraculous but had no
real desire to apply the implications of those miracles to their own lives. These people were
polite and conversational but they left as quickly as they had come and their lives were changed
not one bit by the experience. And then there were those who came out of a true desire to be rid
of the gaping hole they carried within themselves that longed to be fed by something that they
could not find in the fruit of this world. Those people came to the door with hesitation, they
feared what they might see, and they trembled at the thought that I might be real. They wondered
at my muteness and they marveled at my eyes which danced and seemed to talk to them in words
they could only feel. They sat and listened to Martha and Mary recount the tale of my
resurrection. They looked into the tomb and were lost in the darkness of their other world. As
those people left our doorstep I saw the peace that they have so longed to experience fly into
their hearts from its hiding places behind the veil of this world; and I watched it knead its way
into their lives. In some I saw belief sprout immediately into a tree of knowledge that bloomed in
their souls; in others I saw only a seed planted that one day would be sure to sprout. From those
people I learned a bit more of what my task in the world would be. I am to help those who seek
to find that which they have lost. I can see the seeds, I can see the hearts that are broken, and I
can see how I might be able to massage those dark places that reside in the hopeful’s soul and
help turn them to the Light.
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A week before the celebration of Passover Jesus returned to our village and came to ask
of Martha and Mary their hospitality for the duration of his visit to nearby Jerusalem. That first
night He and His disciples and those of my sister’s house shared a wonderful meal together. I
was overjoyed at seeing Him again and I ran to Him and buried myself in His chest like a child
running to his mother. I was astonished at the joy that I felt and a little embarrassed at the tears
streaming from my eyes. When I pulled myself away and looked at Him I saw my tears echoed
on His own cheeks and his wonderful smile breaking their travels.
“I love you too, Lazarus! Greetings to you and peace be upon this house!”
Martha rushed over from the hearth where she had been busily tending to our meal and
flustered about Jesus and His companions rushing them inside and finding them all comfortable
places to sit. She immediately set about readying a bowl of water and a rag so they might clean
themselves of the dust of the road. I made my way to each of our guests and greeted them with a
kiss and a friendly touch. I could see that peace resided on each of them; they were each wearing
the crown of colors that I saw upon Jesus. I saw something new as well. Each of the disciples
that were present was linked to Jesus by a silver cord that wrapped itself around their hearts and
was tied firmly to the heart of the master. It was very disconcerting to see, I marveled at how
they could move independently of each other, being tied as they were. But then I saw that I too
was tied to this man, firmly and securely affixed heart to heart and blood to blood. As I greeted
the one called Judas I saw something entirely different, however. Upon his head there was no
peace, but rather a void. I saw only darkness when I looked into his eyes and I tasted fear as I
kissed him. I looked to Jesus for an explanation but He shook His head “no”.
Mary brought me out of my awkward trance before Judas when she swept into the room
and created a stir by kneeling before Jesus and kissing His feet. She was wearing only a simple
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dress, the kind she wears for the messiest of chores, nothing that one would expect her to put on
for a guest such as ours.
“Mary, what on earth…? Martha was outraged at her sister. She was fuming with
indignation at what she perceived as her sister’s baseness in behaving once again in such a
shameless manner.
Mary was unconcerned, as she usually is, and sat quietly while removing a vial of
perfume from her pocket. We watched as she broke the seal and emptied the contents upon
Jesus’ feet. The scent that filled the air was of the most precious nard, a perfume that evoked the
Garden of Eden. It was the perfume of kings.
I saw him before I heard him. Or rather I smelled him before I saw him. From underneath
the beauty of the fragrance that filled our home I sensed the decay of one burning with rage.
Judas was boiling inside, as he had been for some time. He was blackened from his fingertips to
his elbows and the markings spoke of his greed and avarice.
“What is she doing? This perfume is not for washing feet! This could have been used to
begin to feed and clothe the poor of our nation.” He moved before anyone could stop him and
pushed Mary from before the feet of Jesus. He stood glaring at her and stooped to pick up the
vial of perfume, shaking his head in disgust.
“Leave her be.”
Jesus stood and touched Judas on the shoulders. I expected His wrath to be spent at the
abuse of His beloved Mary. But He kissed Judas instead and I watched in awe as Judas melted
before the Master. Great tears streamed down his face and he fell to the Lord’s feet and cried
great heaving sobs of sorrow. Mary knelt once more and continued to kiss the feet of Jesus and
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to wipe them dry with her hair. Jesus quietly sat with his hand upon both of their heads, a small
tear of gold visible only to me upon His cheek.
Jesus told us that day of His coming Passion. We were honored to be witnesses to His
prophecy but horrified at the revelation we received that day. As Jesus spoke of His reception as
king in the holy city and of His impending rejection and suffering at the hands of the Jews
themselves, His eyes became great globes of incredible intensity. I saw in His eyes the entirety of
Creation with the center of all time in His Resurrection. He told us that He would die, much as I
had. The disciples looked to me and a thought occurred to them all. Before they raised the
question, Jesus told them that He would then be raised to them once more, just as I had. He
spoke of the power and love of their Father and of the power and love of His Passion for them.
He told us all that if He died then we would live.
He bent to kiss the top of Mary’s head and said, “Thank you my daughter, for you alone
have understood. You have anointed Me for burial, just as you should have. Great is your faith,
My love.”
The next morning Jesus and His disciples set out for Jerusalem and the temple to further
spread His Good News to the crowds gathered for the Feast and for the celebration of the
Passover. I made ready to accompany them but was commanded by Jesus to remain behind.
“This is not your road, brother. Yours is on a different path than Mine and it will come to
you shortly.” With these words my Master turned His face to the road and left me on the
doorstep of my sister’s home. When He reached the end of our path He turned and raised a hand
in the air to bless me. I felt His love come across that short distance as a wave of warm air. It
kissed my face and enveloped my head in its embrace. I raised my hand to Him and He held it
there for a moment before saying, “I will see you soon, Lazarus, you have My peace.”
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I will freely admit to you that I was in no manner prepared for what was to happen to me
next, nor was I in any way expecting it. And during the whole of it I was as terrified as I have
ever been. You might think that one such as myself, one who has died and gone to heaven, who
has spoken to the Father Almighty, who has felt the Spirit of God upon his face, and who had
been raised to life by none other than the Son of God, would have been able to rest in the
knowledge that God knew what He was about, even if I didn’t. But that is not what man does
when faced with the unknown. Even though I had received more from God’s hand than any other
man, I was still a prisoner of sorts in my own flesh and highly susceptible to its weaknesses. Yes
I can read emotions now and I have the strength of many (and at the time I did not know what
else I was capable of), but I still live in the body of a man. I still fear, and suffer temptation to
doubt, and all manner of other things. So when what I am about to describe to you came upon me
I was not a model of faith, but rather a shameful coward. I did not understand what was
happening and I questioned the One who had not only given me my life, but had then given it to
me again!
Almost as soon as my Lord had left for Jerusalem we received visitors at the door. They
came under the guise of travelers looking for the man who had been raised. We were so used to
this by this time that we rather routinely expected to begin our usual discourse and exhibition.
But these were not ordinary seekers. These men had come covertly from the High Priest
Caiaphas. These men had come to begin the work that they would try to finish with the death of
Jesus. They had come to kill me and in killing me to begin to destroy the evidence that Jesus had
left for His followers of the visitation of the Son of God to the children of Israel.
Once the three men were admitted to the house, their demeanor changed immediately.
They cursed my sisters and forced them to the floor while they hurriedly bound me hand and foot
30
and foolishly gagged my mouth with a filthy rag. My sister Martha, God bless her stubbornness,
made a brave, but futile, attempt to resist and succeeded in gouging the face of one of the men
causing a considerable amount of blood to run down his cheek. She was rewarded for this
courage with a backhand that knocked her into the table and back onto the floor. Mary crawled to
her side and covered her sister with her own body just as the outraged man moved to deliver a
kick to Martha’s side. Mary took the full brunt of this kick and collapsed out of breath upon her
sister. All three of us were terrified by this time, and we had no idea why these men had come or
what they could possibly want. The three men turned their attention back toward me and stared
at me with disgust. I am sure that I had never before seen these men and that neither I nor my
sisters were guilty of an offense against them that could warrant this from them. As they glared
at me I could see something of their intentions coming through the vile blackness that was
pouring out of their hearts and clouding the air before me. I saw in them their intention to kill
me. I saw the glint of silver and the blue and white of the robes of the synagogue. And I saw
their fear as they looked into my eyes.
It was then that I discovered something more of the new powers that I possessed in my
new life. Without even trying, without consciously attempting to do so, I sent back into their
hearts an image of the cross I had seen in heaven. I showed them the deception they had received
at the hands of their priest and the Truth they had been ignoring in my Master, Jesus. I showed
them their dark hearts and the cleansing power of the Moshiach to save them. As I delivered
these blows upon them, for that is how they were received, the men were visibly shaken. One of
them, the one with the bloody face, staggered backward and fell to his knees. The other two
quickly turned their faces away and broke the hold that I had on them.
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I discovered something else as well that day. I discovered that the Truth God has given to
me to share with His Creation is one and the same for all of mankind. It inevitably has the same
effect on people no matter whom they are or what they have become. It is extremely potent and
causes each individual whom encounters it to suffer a tangible reaction. I have also learned
however that there exists something in man’s flesh that gives him the power to reject this Truth if
he so chooses. Maybe it is the same weakness that caused me to fear and tremble when these
men came to kill me that causes some men to turn away from the piercing call of the Word to
their hearts. Maybe men fight back against anything that runs counter to their own expectation of
reality. These men certainly rejected outright the power of the cross over them and the
shamefulness that it placed on their hearts. I know that it touched their hearts, and I know that
they were being asked to turn back to God, but they drew from within themselves, from some
hidden reserve of strength, the ability to close off that call and to resume on the path that they
had previously determined.
They were back in front of me, even the man who had fallen to his knees, and they were
even angrier. They each in turn spit in my face and called me a blasphemer and a false prophet.
They accused me of stirring up rebellion in Israel with my false claims of resurrection and with
my blasphemous testimony of Jesus as Moshiach. I knew what was coming before it happened
and I had just enough time to look at my sisters and send to them an image of the cross in the
garden and an image of myself at its foot, standing in its strength and power. I told them not to
fear but to believe, and then I was stabbed in the heart three times, each man taking his turn,
before I was left for dead. They spit once again as I lay on the ground bleeding and left the
house. I sent after them one remaining image of the cross, this time with my Jesus hanging on it
in great pain and looking upon them with great sorrow filled eyes.
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My sisters came to my side and Mary placed my head in her lap. Her tears fell onto my
chest as she bent forward to try and staunch the flow of blood from my heart. I saw for a second
time in my life the look of grief that should only be experienced once by a loved one. Martha
again screamed her grief as only she could, and I trembled as I awaited once more the terror of
the unknown.
How could I die yet again, I wondered. It is only for man to die once and then the
resurrection and by my count both of those criteria had been met! I confess that I had been
wondering about how the rest of my life would play out. I couldn’t help over the past few weeks
constructing a scenario of my immortality. I attempted several scenarios that would account for
the difficulties of living forever, scenarios that took into account the aging of loved ones, the
seeming immunity to disease and hunger, and the unnatural strengths and abilities that I
possessed. I thought that I had figured it out, but then this second death happened, or was about
to happen. As I lay there, in the brief seconds really, before dying, I felt like I had drifted away
from God altogether and that He must have forgotten me and His plans for me. I forgot all that I
had seen and experienced. I forgot His words to me as well as the words of His Son, Jesus. I
forgot. And in my forgetfulness Doubt reared its head and began chewing on my faith. Doubt is a
terror. It bites and chews relentlessly, and it clouds all other thoughts with the waste that it spews
from its mouth. In those few moments I was as unbelieving as the Gentile that I used to be and I
called out vainly for help from any quarter.
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My head was still in the lap of my sister when my eyes next opened. I felt her tears
dampening my chest and could feel the steady beating of her heart. She was leaning over me
still, with her head bowed close to mine. I felt she must be asleep. I felt good again. I felt no pain
in my heart any longer. But what was this? This was not our house. I looked and saw stone walls
of smooth limestone. I saw white linen curtains blowing in the breeze. I saw framed windows
opened to the freshness of a warm breeze and beyond them I saw mountains of grandeur and the
beginning of a sunrise held in check in the land beyond. I was not on the dirt floor of my sisters’
house any longer but on a bed, with soft padding underneath my head. I saw my tools hanging by
the wooden door for gardening, carpentry, and tending the flock. There was a desk and chair next
to the window with shelves of books and scrolls above it. Needless to say, I was astounded at all
this that I saw. Mary began to move as I craned my neck this way and that to take in all that I
was seeing. She raised her head and I realized that she too was not what I was expecting. It was
not Mary at all but Jesus! He had a trail of tears upon his cheeks and His eyes were rimmed with
red from His crying. When He looked at me with His beautiful eyes I saw the love He held in
His heart for me. I felt that love deep down in my own heart. And secretly I was ashamed of my
fear.
“Welcome home, Lazarus,” He said with a small smile.
“Jesus!” I could not believe my eyes! I jumped to my feet so quickly that I tangled myself
up in the linen of the bed and fell flat on my face on the floor. I heard Jesus laugh that belly
shaking laugh He has and I quickly got back to my feet and untangled myself.
“What are You doing here? Where am I? What in the world has happened?” My
questions were endless, and I rattled them off so quickly that I didn’t even realize that I was once
34
again speaking. As that thought entered my head I stopped mid-question and stared at Him in
awe.
“You better close that mouth of yours Lazarus, we have bugs even here!” Jesus was
grinning at me.
“I talked! I can talk? That means that I am back in heaven. But this is not where I was last
time. This is a house. No, this is a building! This is a mansion! Why am I in a mansion?”
“This is your house. This is what I have prepared for you. This is where you will live.
Come let me show you the city.” He stood and led me to the window and I looked out upon one
of the grandest cityscapes ever imagined.
I was at least five stories up in the air, the highest I had ever been in a structure made by
man. I had heard stories of the great wonders of man built by the rich in cities of the west. I had
also heard the stories that chronicled the achievements of the ancients in building temples and
great walls for defense and isolation. But I had never experienced the feeling of standing so high
in the air with only the work of men for support. I used to stand at the edge of our land as a boy
and look down into the valley and marvel at the extent of the world that lay before me. And I
remember traveling to Jerusalem on God’s holy mountain and being awestruck at the view from
its gate over the surrounding region. But in all of these experiences with the height of nature and
her glory I always felt the solidity of God’s earth beneath my feet. Never had I reached such
heights dependent on man’s handiwork alone for support.
I looked above me and saw the wall reach skyward for what seemed seven stories; I could
just make out the parapets of the roof line and the massive flags that marked its perimeter every
one hundred feet or so. I looked to my left and right and saw that the building in which I was in
35
stretched equally far in both directions. It was difficult to make out the length because it seemed
to curve away from me in both directions.
“Is this mansion built to come around upon itself?” I asked Jesus. I could tell by the smile
he had upon His face that He had been enjoying my observations of my surroundings. He was
standing by my side leaning as I was out the window, seeing the wonders of Heaven through my
eyes as if for the first time, and marveling at it anew with me.
“It goes right around in a circle,” He replied. “Your room is in the outer wall of the great
palace of the First Kingdom of heaven. “It will take some time to get to know your way around,
the place is quite large. And, as you can see,” He said, pointing out the window, “it just keeps
getting bigger!”
He was pointing out to the ground where there was considerable construction taking
place. I could make out several quarries that were toward the edge of the cleared land, lying on
what I later learned to be the eastern edge of the First Kingdom. The quarries were not as
monochromatic as I have seen in my travels back home. The stones of our earth, beautiful as
some of them can be, tend to be limited in their range of colors. But the stones of Heaven were
magnificent! From my position in the wall I could easily make out three quarries and each quarry
was in the business of cutting stone of the most vibrant hues. There was cerulean blue stone
being cut into large slabs. There were brilliant shades of orange being cut from the next. And
from the third came royal magentas and purples. The whole eastern border was awash in the
colors of the rainbow and there was steady traffic from these great pits to the growing town that
lay before my window.
Just outside the palace walls and along the highway that encircled its gates lay regularly
spaced settlements. From my window I could take in four of these settlements and, due to the
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magnitude of the palace wall, I imagined that in total there must be at least a hundred completing
the design around the great palace. Great care was taken to branch them off of the palace’s main
exterior arterial highway with mathematical precision. Each settlement spun off of its own main
roadway that was drawn onto the ground in a semi-circular arc that gracefully extended from the
palace and away toward the outlying forested areas to a distance of two or three miles. From this
main roadway there were minor roads spinning off in their own semicircular patterns and from
these grew additional avenues; each designed and executed in such a way that the whole
resembled the veining of a leaf and the rolling and rhythmic movement of the sea.
Within the settlement that lay directly in front of me I could see workers, both men and
women, busily attending to a variety of tasks: roadways were being laid with stone from the
quarry, houses and places of business were being built, green spaces were being cultivated; and
throughout, inherent in each construction and design there was an abandon and freedom of
choice that made the resulting creations come alive. The architectural lines were free flowing,
fluid, and at times almost irrational. The functionality of the spaces and the structures was
purposefully balanced or altogether sacrificed to a higher aesthetic. The final product, it was easy
to see, was a city of beauty and a place of pride and contentment for those who had labored in
love to bring it to reality.
I don’t know how long I was at the window, but I was definitely lost in thought at the
wondrous things that my earthly eyes endeavored to take in. I was brought back to my senses by
the warmth of Jesus’ touch at my elbow and the welcome sound of His words in my ear. “It’s a
beautiful beginning isn’t it Lazarus?”
I nodded in agreement, at a loss for words to describe my feeling over the splendor of all
I had seen. I struggled to make sense of it all. I looked back to the sky and the height of the wall;
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I looked toward its great curve in each direction and out into the lands before me. I wondered at
the immensity of it and the occupation of those who spent lifetimes building places such as these.
I looked back at my tools hanging by the door and thought of my part in the building of this
kingdom. Was I to stay here? Was I to go?
“It is confusing isn’t it, brother?” Jesus took me by the hand and led me to the desk in the
room. He gestured for me to sit and He swung a second chair around, straddling it from behind
and sitting in one graceful movement.
“You have been given a different road to follow than those you will leave behind on
earth. Your road is even different than those who work daily here and now, and those to whom
all of this awaits for their hand in its completion. Yours is the road of a traveler; it is a long road,
a hard road, but a glorious road. And at its end you will find this waiting for you to enjoy in its
fullest.”
I thought back to my second death, and I asked, “Am I dead now on the earth?”
Jesus’ eyes filled with tears, “I am sorry that you had to go through that pain again. I am
sorry that you have much pain yet to come. You are not dead on the earth, only sleeping. It was
necessary for you to suffer the indignity of the wicked men’s assassination in order for you to
accompany Me on the way to My own death. Those men seek to stop the work that I do for the
people I love. They seek to put an end to My ministry by putting an end to My life. Your life is
tied up in mine, and as such they sought to finish you as well. Now that they feel they have
silenced you, they will focus on Me. They will accuse me of great evil and they will be
victorious. I will die at their hands. You will wake, shortly, and will secretly follow Me to
Jerusalem where you will find the brothers and watch as the Day of the Lord approaches.”
“What did you mean just now, when You said, ‘It’s a beginning?’ ”
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“What you saw out the window, Lazarus, is just the end stages of the construction of the
First Kingdom of Heaven. As beautiful as it is and as magnificent as it is going to be, it is still
only a beginning. There will be twelve such kingdoms by the end and at their center will be the
throne of My Father. Each kingdom will be the home to the people of the ages who believed in
My Father’s name and took it as their own. Each kingdom will be home to those who knew Me
and in so doing learned to love My Father and their brothers and sisters more fully. Yes, this is
just the beginning, the sun has not yet risen on the twelfth kingdom, when that happens then the
times will be complete and the work of The Kingdom will finally begin.”
I sat amazed.
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I opened my eyes yet again to the wetness of tears and the cool caress of the hair of a
loved one. I felt tenderness in the hands that rubbed my chest and I could literally see the love
that was pouring out of the body of my sister. Mary’s hands sensed a difference in the object of
their caress and she jerked her head up in wonder. As she gazed at the wounds that pierced my
chest she saw them begin to close and the blood cease its flow. Her eyes widened in awe at the
simplicity of the answer to her prayer and she looked me in the face to see if I would respond in
kind. I smiled and reached out to hug her. She fell onto me once more in a great bear hug and I
soaked in the relief and joy that emanated from her and spilled over onto me.
“It seems that I am back, Mary; and it seems that I will be staying for quite some time.” I
sent these words to her. It was different than the message I sent to the men who had tried to kill
me. To them I spoke in images and touched their spirits with the truth of God. To Mary I was
somehow able to send the words themselves and she heard them as if I had spoken them aloud. It
was as if I released the thoughts of my heart and mind and directed them into Mary’s. Her body
jerked yet again when she heard my voice.
“You speak?” she asked incredulously.
“Apparently so,” I said. “And I have much to tell you!”
Just then the air was rent by a scream from Martha. I had forgotten her in my confusion
over waking again in my sister’s house and in the attentions of Mary. Martha had been lying on
the floor, prostrate in her grief, petitioning the Lord with all her might for understanding about
the great evil my second death appeared to her to be. She had only just ceased her wailing when
she became aware that I was yet alive, and that somehow my wounds had been healed. So she
screamed her surprise and emotion out loud, mixing together her terror and joy, she is a very
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emotional woman, and when she heard that I spoke to Mary, her emotions overpowered her and I
watched as she slowly sank to the floor once more in a faint.
“Same old Martha,” I sent to Mary. “It’s good to be home.”
“Home?” queried Mary. “Have you been away?”
I smiled and motioned that we ought to move our sister to the bed until she was
composed again, and then make ourselves comfortable. I had a lot to tell Mary; and she would
have a lot of questions for me.
We sat by the fire until late into the night, Martha joining us when she had recovered
from her faint. I found that I could as easily speak to both of my sisters as to just one and it was
wholly liberating for me to converse in this way with them. It was such a comfort as well; for
me, one who has been shut up behind a locked tongue for his entire life and who has longed to
share his heart and soul with his loved ones, to be able to open my heart and bare it to Mary and
Martha was wonderful. I endeavored to tell them everything and to answer their questions in a
manner that they could understand. I spoke to them in images and in emotions. I painted pictures
of Jesus as He stood in heaven by the throne of His Father and as He hung on the cross before
the men He came to love. I sent them waves of the powerful love that wafted on the breeze in the
Garden and in the first Kingdom. I recounted for them the conversation that I had with the Lord
and I gave to them the promise that Jesus gave to me, that one day, when all is finished upon the
earth that the Father has designed to be completed, they will stand with me in the center of the
twelve Kingdoms of heaven and worship the High King forever and ever, without fear, without
pain, without disappointment, and with all assurance of love and goodwill each and every day of
our new lives.
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Mary sat quietly gazing into the fire when I had finished my telling; I could sense her
struggling under the weight of the astonishment she was feeling at this news. Martha was not as
patient with her confusion and would not allow even the smallest emotional disturbance to reside
within her unanswered by a spoken word. “But how, Lazarus, can you be here with us this day,
and speaking to us with such vividness and power? I saw you stabbed in the heart those three
times and saw you fall in a pool of your own blood; blood which stains our floor even as we
speak!”
“As my Master said Himself to me when He saw that very same look in my eyes, ‘It is
confusing isn’t it?’ And I admit to feeling the same frustration that you do in understanding it all.
But it must be enough for us to know that Jesus has chosen me to represent Him and His work in
establishing the kingdom of heaven upon the earth. He has informed me that I am to walk the
earth for each of the ages to come and to work as a restorer of the faith wherever He sends Me.
My future is as yet unclear, as are the questions that we have concerning the ‘how’ of it. One
thing is clear however, I cannot be killed that easily!” I laughed out loud, “How many men do
you know could take three knives in the chest and live to tell of it, praise God!”
Mary looked up from her wonder and asked, “What will you do now?”
“I am to follow the Lord into Jerusalem and there I will receive my instructions. After
that I am unsure. The Passover is only a few days hence; I must leave immediately in the
morning.”
Always knowing what needs doing when the time is upon her, Mary said, “We will
prepare your bag for you brother.”
“There is one other thing, sisters, which I must tell you.”
“What is it Lazarus?” asked Martha.
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“I am not to return to you again.” As I sent these words I flavored them with the love and
gratitude that overflows my heart for all that they have done for me. They saved me when the
world was destroying me. They sustained me when the world was leaving me empty. I told them
that because of what they had done for me they would share a great place among those in the
kingdom of heaven. They have worked as faithful servants to the Almighty and as such will
always stand in honor in His courts.
We sat in silence for some time, each of us lost in the thoughts of our own hearts. The
fire slowly died out and the embers were cooling when the first rays of the sun began to lighten
the sky in the east. Mary and Martha stood and began to make preparation for my journey. They
packed me a bag filled with food for the first few days of my stay in Jerusalem, trusting that
wherever the Lord might lead me beyond that, He Himself would provide. They packed my one
other change of clothes, and they each gave me a special memento of their own to give me
comfort in the nights when I was alone. As we sat down to eat our last meal together, a simple
breakfast of bread and cheese, I bowed my head and prayed, “Thank you Father for this new day
and this new food with which we satisfy the hunger of our bodies. Thank you for these, my
sisters, and for all they have done for me. I leave them in Your hands, to protect, and to bless,
and to guide as they travel the rest of their life’s journey to their new home with You. And I
thank You that their road and mine, and Yours also, are intertwined and we will one day meet in
Your embrace.”
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Part II
The road to Jerusalem from Bethany is very long, at most two miles, and I arrived at the
base of the holy mountain just as the gates to the city were being opened for the day’s business.
As I ascended the road to Jerusalem I was stopped in my tracks, overcome by the suddenness of
a voice that came before me and all around me. I heard it so clearly that I could not help but look
frantically around myself for the speaker. It seems that in my extraordinary new life I still had
some unexpected surprises to uncover. What I heard must have been the voice of an angel, for I
can describe it in no other way. Outside of the fact that it appeared disembodied of any flesh and
came at me from all directions at once, it had a tonal quality that was entirely pure and without
blemish. There was no breath in its formation, nor were their lips for it to be compressed and
forced through. This was sound as it was created, pure, fresh, vibrant, and alive. This sound came
in at my ears and my heart at the same time and entered my soul whole. It spoke a word of
scripture to me, the words of the second Psalm, a psalm that speaks of Moshiach and of His
anointing from the Father. It spoke thus:
Why are the nations in an uproar
And the peoples devising a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers take counsel together
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
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“Let us tear their fetters apart
And cast away their cords from us!”
He who sits in the heavens laughs,
The Lord scoffs at them.
And He will speak to them in His anger
And terrify them in His fury, saying,
“But as for Me, I have installed My King
Upon Zion, My holy mountain.”
“I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said to Me, ‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance,
And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.
‘You shall break them with a rod of iron,
you shall shatter them like earthenware.’”
Now therefore, O kings, show discernment;
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Take warning, O judges of the earth.
Worship the Lord with reverence
And rejoice with trembling.
Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way,
For His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!
When it was quiet again and the angel had left me I slowly sank to the ground and laid
my head in the dirt before my knees. I lay there prostrate for quite some time, in awe of the truth
that was revealed to me in a psalm that I had heard so many times before. I understood how the
religious could not accept Jesus as Moshiach. I understood how difficult it would be for others to
accept Him as well. But I also understood that regardless of the difficulties, Moshiach He was,
and Lord He must be. At that time, lying in the dirt before Zion, I did not understand the part of
the kings of the nations and their part against the Son, but have since learned more than I can
admit to wanting to know. At the time I speak of here the truth I gained was that our God had
truthfully revealed Himself and His plans to us, in this psalm and throughout His scripture, but
that man had misunderstood. Man misunderstood the word from God and then built his religion
and tradition upon his misunderstanding so that when the time came for the Son Himself to be
revealed, they were not ready and they rejected Him in whole. This truth came to me as I was
ascending the holy mountain upon which the city of David rests like a gem in its filigree. It came
to me as I was about to watch the Son, the same Son who will one day judge the earth and all her
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peoples, be led to His destruction by the hands and hearts of the very people that He had come to
save. I stood and wiped the dirt from my hands and face and stared at the mountain before me. I
still had many questions, such as what my part in this was to be and how I would know when to
step in and act. Of one thing was I sure, and to that I have since clung, that whatever might come
upon me and whatever the form it might take, the result would be exactly as I had been shown in
heaven. Knowing this and trusting in it has given me the confidence to step forward and see what
would come my way.
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I was dismayed as I approached the great city and recognized how dimly it reflected the
grandeur that I had witnessed in the First Kingdom. Mind you, the city of Jerusalem is no small
marvel, what with its wall and its glorious temple. It stands as a testament to the endurance of the
people of Israel and their persistence to stand through persecution. But nonetheless, it would cast
a small shimmer against the flash of brilliance of its sister city in heaven. If this city is but a
shadow of the heavenly then there must be other things as well that reflect only dimly the glory
of their heavenly counterpart. As I pondered these things I was also struck by the din emanating
from the gates of the city as the day’s work was getting underway. There was already a steady
stream of traffic in and out of the massive gates and a clamor of voices pouring forth from the
vendor’s stalls and market places. Each voice shouted to make itself heard; each voice struggled
to make its need or demand known and recognized. I compared this to the joyful labor I had
witnessed outside the walls of the heavenly kingdom and I marveled at the difference. In both
places important and necessary work was being done, but in one it was anticipated and relished
and in the other it was made odious and stressful. How must we navigate through this life in
these bodies and in these cities then? How can we stand and fight against the ill that seeks to
befall us daily and retain the image of the glory that lies just beyond our comprehension? And
how will these people come to do such when they have not seen all that I have seen, and
understand all that I have begun to understand?
My first order of business was to procure a place for myself to lodge while in the city. I
would be hard pressed to find such a place. The city was overflowing with not only business but
with travelers and pilgrims from the world over seeking to participate in the celebration of the
Feast of Unleavened Bread and Passover. The Feast draws brothers and sisters from wherever
they have been dispersed in the known world. Their languages will be as diverse as their
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countries but their hearts are Jewish to the core. The ones who endeavor to make the journey are
for the most part sincere in their endeavor to adhere to the traditions of their faith. They have
largely forgotten why they must celebrate this feast but they come in obedience to the command
of God. They come because He still calls them.
“Turn in here; I have prepared a place for you.”
The angelic voice rang its crystalline words in my ears. I found myself standing before a
shop that sold wineskins and a variety of other leather goods. The shop was small and set against
the wall of the city and had two small rooms overhead that it appeared were for rent. As I
approached the door I was brushed aside by two men carrying a third on a stretcher. The third
man was dead.
“Unclean, Unclean!” the men who were carrying the body called out before them. It was
unfortunate for any to die during the celebration of the Feast. To touch or handle a deceased
body, regardless if it were the body of a loved one, would defile a person, thus making them
unable to share in the Feast. I stepped quickly out of the way and watched the men make their
way through the thickening crowds of pilgrims and merchants. I wondered to myself how many
would be made unclean by the death of this one man. I wondered how many of those would
adhere to the requirements of the law and withhold themselves from the Feast. Some men see the
Law as a burden and only try to live according to it when it suits their purposes. They love to
celebrate its ordinances and they love to count their works, but when the time comes to repent of
their misdeeds or to pay the price of the consequence for them they move instead to justify their
inaction by diminishing the importance of the Law in the eyes of both themselves and their God.
But God does not speak and then ignore the Words that pour from His lips. God speaks that
which He desires to be and then He proclaims His desire good. It matters little to Him whether
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man can or cannot abide the word of His law. What matters to God is that man seeks to obey His
law.
I went into the shop and stood quietly, taking in the scene as if from the eyes of another. I
saw the proprietor of the leather goods store wringing his hands in dismay at the sudden death
that occurred in his establishment. There was a slight woman standing beside him with a worried
countenance as well. I learned later that her look and his did not originate from the same source.
Hers was one of anxiety over the possible action that might be taken against her own person due
to the unfortunate events that had befallen her husband.
The man’s name was Shimon, and he was such a man that he had long ago given up on
the idea of trying to hold back his more volatile impulses. He was himself raised by an
overbearing and dominating father who thought as little of venting his rage upon his wife and
children as of thrashing his mule for a bout of stubbornness. Shimon had been so brutalized by
his father that he himself had formed at an early age an unnatural indifference to the needs and
desires of others. Having never been shown compassion himself he had little chance to develop it
in himself for others. During his young adulthood he had nevertheless tried to adopt the kindness
and gentleness that he saw evident in those around him. His feeble attempts had succeeded in
gaining for him the hand of his wife and the trust of her father. But through the difficulties
inherent in marriage and the financial uncertainties of the life of a merchant Shimon had often
slipped into his more natural mode of behavior which was to strike first when angry and feel the
shame after. To his credit, he was usually very repentant and his wife, whose heart was indeed
large, if not scarred, truly loved the man she yet believed to be inside of him. But of late Shimon
was gradually becoming hardened even to his inadequate means of handling his emotions. He
had failed to keep them in check so many times that he despaired of ever being able to control
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them at all. His despair soon turned to apathy and he considered it no small loss to feel no
repentance, for what good is repentance if the change that it promises never comes to a man?
The man who had just died was the tenant in the room overhead. He had just come into
Jerusalem the day before and had promised Shimon a month’s rent on the morrow. The morrow
was this morning and Shimon was anxiously awaiting his payment in order to forestall promised
vengeance from creditors of his own who were becoming increasingly vexed at his inability to
repay that which he had borrowed. Shimon had been more and more fretful as the days of
Passover approached and his rooms, irrationally, and inexplicably of all the establishments in
Jerusalem, remained vacant. So instead of feeling anything for the man who had just been found
deceased in the room over his head, Shimon felt only anxiety and severe frustration over how his
windfall had vanished before his eyes as he sat on his stool and wrung his hands tirelessly. In his
mind he tried to work through the figures of his accounts to see if there was some way that the
known result could be changed. He was never good at numbers and the effort only increased his
agitation due to the imminence of the threat from his failure to work them correctly. He had
borrowed upon interest in the shop and had signed the establishment itself away as his only
collateral. He had gambled upon the business of the Feast to finance him out of his troubles. But
now that seemed highly unlikely. The boon that the dead man’s rent would have been had dried
up and blown away before his very eyes. He was now trapped. He felt the futility of his position
rise up within him and he felt it battering against every wall that he constructed to hold it in
check. He was soon unable to restrain himself, he felt he must find a release or he would burst
asunder. And as it would happen his wife moved just then to lay a hand upon his shoulder to
comfort him with her support and allegiance. Her hand felt to him as an ember, it was a burning
touch from the fires of his misery; it reminded him not of the love that they once shared but
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rather of the misery of their life together now. And it was his release. He took her hand and
violently twisted it around until his wife was on her knees before him writhing in pain from the
grip upon her and the unnatural bend of her arm.
“You like this don’t you, Chava!” He spat out her name as if it disgusted him. Giving
voice to his anger only worked to fuel the fires of his rage and he roared his frustration, slapping
her full across her tear strewn face. He struck her so hard that she spun around him even more,
twisting her arm horribly until a loud popping noise filled the shop. Shimon let go of her arm and
watched her fall to the floor. Mercifully, Chava had fainted from the pain of her shoulder being
dislocated and lay for the time, peacefully ignorant of her husband’s crime.
I was horrified to be witness to the battle both within their marriage and within the man. I
was equally mortified by the crushing weight that the troubles of life had placed upon this couple
and the degree to which failure could manifest itself when a man feels he has no help to control
it. Where are the teachers for men such as Shimon? Where are those who know the Almighty,
who could step in and show Him as real to men such as Shimon? Where are they who profess to
know God when there are those who are painfully ignorant of Him?
Putting aside my own fear which strongly inclined me to leave as inconspicuously as I
had arrived, and bowing to the word that had come to me in the street about entering this place, I
stepped further into the small room. My eyes took in the two benches with tools strewn upon
them for the working in leather and course fabric. I saw the vats in the back of the shop for
tanning the leather and the large racks for drying and scraping it. The air was anything but fresh,
but the shop itself was orderly, due in large part to the attentions of the woman who now lay in a
broken heap upon the floor.
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“I can help the woman if you will allow me sir,” I spoke quietly so as not to disturb the
man further. Or I ought to say that I sent him a whisper, planting it directly upon his heart in the
hopes of awakening within him the healing power of repentance and grief once again. For it is
not only for change that man is led to repentance, it is for renewal that man is turned to face his
wrongdoing and to see a better and more excellent way. Through repentance a man comes face
to face with himself, looking upon his misdeeds and mis-character as if in a mirror and sees
reflected back to him the man that could be, that might be, that he most wants to be.
He was startled to hear the voice and his face flushed with the shame and embarrassment
of not only having acted so corruptly once again but having been caught in it as well. His first
inclination was to respond with as much vehemence to me as he had to his wife. In doing so he
had learned to feel justified in his own eyes that he alone was in the right and the world horribly
wrong to judge him so negatively. But in this instance with his wife lying in such a sad state and
his future equally in tatters he had had enough. He slumped himself further into his own misery,
and with a wave of his hand gave me leave to attend to the woman.
As I moved to her side I endeavored to send the woman bits of the peace and love that
my Lord had given me when I was at His side. His love is the best medicine that one man can
possess to give to another. It alone has the true power to heal as it alone can penetrate to the heart
and mend a man from the inside out. I sent to her the love of the Ageless and the Hope that He
alone promises to provide for any and all who seek His face. I sent to her His peace which
pervades the air of the holy city but which is kept at bay by the unbelief and the apathy of its
children on earth.
I knelt by her and placed my hands upon her. It was then that I realized that I had no
further word for her. I was at a loss as to what to do next. Up to that point I had simply done
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what came natural, led I suppose by the very hand of God as I reached out to love a hurting
woman. But to heal her? I had no experience for that. I looked to the man, and he stared woefully
back at me; the deepness of his despair evident in the lines of his face and brow. I looked to
heaven and closed my eyes. I thought of all that I wanted for the man and his wife. I thought of
their sadness, and their weariness. I thought of their worry and their anxiety. I thought of the
man’s anger, his pain, his rage; and I thought of her fear and her loneliness and isolation. I felt
her shoulder with my hands and could trace the bones as they lay so dangerously out of joint. I
felt the tissue swelling under my fingers and the throbbing of the vein beneath as it struggled to
complete its course through new obstacles. I felt compassion for her swell in my bosom and find
release through my fingertips. I heard the man start as he alone saw the colors of the rainbow
bursting forth and smelled the odor of restoration fill his shop. I thought of my Lord as He hung
from His cross and dwelt upon the look I found in His eyes. It was a look of great sadness yet a
look of great contentment as well. I heard Him say, ‘It is done, my son.’
I opened my eyes and caught the unblinking stare of the woman Chava, who was just
being roused from her ordeal. She continued to stare at me as her mind worked furiously to
comprehend her waking in the arms of a stranger. As I smiled at her, she jumped up in fear,
catching the eye of her husband just past my shoulder. He was still sitting as before, but
slumping no longer. There was a light in his eye that his wife mistook for anger and she was
instantly terrified. He looked to the ground in shame and for once in his life he felt it in his heart
of hearts. He saw in his wife, for the first time, a woman that he loved, and he began to
understand that his love was for her; it was to her, it was for her, and it had to find her or he
would perish. He began to weep as he looked upon the body that he had so often used as a
vehicle for his own rage and remembered all the pain he had brought to her. He stood and
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stepped toward her and then fell to his knees at her feet, great tears streaming down his face and
a primeval wail emerging from his mouth.
Chava had stepped back upon seeing her husband; but with the love that only a woman
can possess, even after having been trampled asunder by its very object, she too stepped forward
to meet the new man who was at her feet. Together they clung to each other, the one in abject
poverty, the other in the richness of forgiveness. I left them to their love and stepped outside to
offer thanks to the Father for what He had allowed to pass through my hands and heart into these
two lost ones.
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“You did well Lazarus.” The voice was beside me and in me at once. I knew instantly
that it was my angel friend once more but I could not help a quick glance about myself to find
him.
“Is this where my work will lie in the future?” I sent him the question as I had the
whisper to Shimon, not knowing if I could communicate in like manner with a heavenly being.
“Yes, this and more, brother. Your work will be to go to those that the Lord has desired
to save and to touch them in the quietness of their hearts with the Love that He so desperately
wants to give them. There are those of this world and of the world of the future whom He has
chosen to suffer greatly for His Name’s sake. They will benefit from a host of angels battling
mightily on their behalf in the spiritual realm but they will need the added touch of a brother to
help them to see the light, and in so doing, persevere and triumph for the Lord. You have been
specially chosen to be that loving touch, brother Lazarus.” The sound of the voice was
exceedingly beautiful, as he spoke I was filled with contentment and peace, and I was restored
from the trying ordeal of in the shop.
“Where am I to go next?” I asked.
“You will talk to Shimon and you will make arrangements with him. You will receive
what further instructions you need when the time for words is come. For now stay with Shimon
and Chava until all has been accomplished.”
Before I could respond I began to hear the sounds of the market return to my ears and I
slowly became aware of Shimon at my side and looking into my eyes in the most curious
manner. I had been staring straight ahead while the angel spoke to me, and I looked to him as if I
had passed into a trance or a fit of some kind.
“Sir, you must come back inside and sit down. You are tired, you must rest.”
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As I slowly woke from my reverie I smiled at the concern on Shimon’s face. I smiled
even wider when I realized that it was probably a new emotion for him to be experiencing, the
concern for another. I took him by the shoulders and shook him gently,
“Welcome home, brother Shimon!” I sent to him with exuberance.
Now he looked as if I were even further into a fit of an unstable of mind. Not only was I
found standing stock still and staring into nothingness, but I was speaking to him without voice
and without use of lips and breath. My smile grew all the wider and it was I who took Shimon
back into his shop and sat down with him and his wife to tell them the good news of the Lord.
“I am sent to you from God, Shimon. You have been chosen by Him to take part in the
coming of His Son Jesus.” The words flowed into my mind as I sent them to the couple seated
before me. I told them both of the man Jesus and of His teaching throughout Galilee and Judea. I
told of His desire to bring the children of Israel to a true knowledge of their Father in heaven and
to turn their hearts back to Him. I told them of His coming sacrifice for the sake of those who are
lost in Israel and beyond, and I told them of the coming glory that is built in heaven to welcome
those who would be saved to live with Him and the Father forever.
Shimon and Chava listened with rapt attention. Their eyes were upon me as the words
coming into their hearts filled them with wonder and joy and a peace they had never before
known. They were so young in the kingdom that they knew not how to question what they were
feeling. They knew only that before this morning they had lived under a cloud of shame, despair,
and misery. They had known only poverty and hurt as they struggled to survive the pain that
seemed to come at them both from within and from without themselves. With the healing of
Chava and the breaking of the heart of Shimon to feel compassion for his wife, they had been
turned toward a greater life than they had ever known. They felt release from their burdens; they
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felt severed from the ties that had bound them to those burdens. They felt free, as they had not
felt before. It is freedom that comes with the love of God. He grants all who would turn a face to
Him the ultimate freedom to live as He would have one live. A life that is guided by His desire
and His expectations leaves one free to ignore the desires and expectations of the world. A life
that is guided by His requirements for success leaves one free to fail in the eyes of the world and
gain the riches of heaven. A life that is guided by the Law of God is free to put away the law of
man. They did not know all of this yet, but they could feel it. And the new feeling that they were
experiencing filled them to overflowing with anticipation and expectation.
However, as I spoke and sent the words and images to them I could see the tendrils begin
to form around the edges of their shining faces. I was alarmed to see the ooze, that was seeping
through the fabric dividing the physical from the spiritual world, form into sinewy ligaments that
moved to invade the hearts and minds of the new believers. I saw on the faces of Shimon and
Chava a cloud beginning to cover their previously shining countenances. And with the coming
shadow came the first question.
“But what of our shop, the money we owe, the pain I have caused my wife and children,
we are lost!” The words came quickly from Shimon as the tendrils found an opening and shot
into him to choke out the growing vine of life that had sprung awake in his bosom.
The monster lurks just outside the soul of every man in creation. He waits for his opening
and quickly seeks to take that which belongs to another. He has no fear of defeat; his arrogance
informs him only of victory. And why should he question his own pride when the very works of
his hands show him his success? I had not seen the enemy with my new eyes before. I had only
been witness to the wickedness of man as it poured out of him and covered his actions in a
blanket of filth. This was much different. This filth was alive. It was breathing and it was
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intelligent. It not only seeped and covered, but it sought and devoured. It worked to destroy that
which was growing by sowing its own seeds within the new. Only its seeds were poison; they
were doubt and fear, worry and weakness. As the tendrils wrapped themselves around the
Shimon and Chava I began to panic. With an enemy such as this how can we be saved? My own
fear and uncertainty began to grow and with it the evil ligaments of the demon were awakened to
my weakness. They grew in size anticipating bringing down such a one as me and in an instant
they were upon me, whipping me with their slime and stabbing my flesh with their tips. And then
I began to remember.
“Stop!” I proclaimed the command in a voice of utmost strength. It came from deep
within me. It came from a heart that knew that there will always be help for those who seek it. It
came from a heart that had learned to be ashamed of its own fear. It came from a man who would
not allow the evil in the world or in the spiritual realm a moment’s victory.
Chava was startled and stood in fear. My face was shining like a small moon and my
voice was reverberating around the room. But the enemy had gone. It slipped back into the tear
in space and left us alone, for a time. With its departure came the peace back to the eyes of my
new friends.
“Are you okay, my lord?” Shimon was at my feet. He had exchanged his previous ‘Sir’
for a more reverential title.
“I am not your lord, Shimon. There is only One for that, and only unto Him ought you to
bend your knee.” I pulled him back to his feet and gestured him back to his seat.
“We are now in a battle, my brother and sister. You will be severely tested in your work
for the King. In taking His name you have entered into His service as soldier and servant. He has
powerful enemies and those enemies will seek to destroy you at every turn. But do not fear; they
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cannot be victorious. All you must do when their attack comes is to remember the source of your
strength. It comes not from man, and not from your will. It comes only from the Lord, in His
manner and in His timing. Trust Him always and wait for His will to be done. In this way you
will gain the victory, even though you feel the pain of defeat.”
“I have a request to make of you two.”
“Anything you desire.” Chava spoke first and her husband showed his approval by taking
her hand.
“First, I must stay with you until the start of the Feast. Do you have a room I might use?”
“You know we do,” Shimon said, trying to conceal and control the anxiety once more.
“You are welcome to stay as long as you need and to share with us our meager meals.”
“Thank you Shimon. Remember, nothing passes in this life but that God knows of it and
sends it.” As these words were sent into Shimon’s heart I added the sound and scent of the wind
of heaven. Oh how I wish I could send him its refreshing wetness as well!
“There is more that is required of you, my brother. You will soon be requested for your
other room as you go to the well for water. Shimon, you must grant whatever request that is
made upon you. It will require faith in God, for you will be asked to provide for these men out of
the last of your provision. Will you remember? Will you trust?”
Shimon was deeply troubled. He still had no answer to the questions that had burst from
him before. He still had no surety of his own that the new peace he was feeling inside would be
enough to see him through the coming difficulties surrounding his debt and his shop. But as the
darkness grew around him, his wife moved to intervene. She covered his hand with her own and
bowed her head close to Shimon’s and said, “Father of Might, you have sent your man to us this
day and have asked us only to return the kindness in some way to another. We are afraid, Father.
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We are so little and our power is so weak. Please show us your way and help us to forget our
own way. Please forgive us our wickedness and the ill we have worked toward each other. Make
us to be that which your servant says we are to be.”
Shimon looked to Chava with something akin to awe. He had never been prayed for
before, he had never even been taught to pray. And to have been prayed for by one who ought to
only have hated him with a profound hatred was unfathomable to him. He turned to me and said,
“We will do as you say.”
The remainder of the day was spent quietly. Shimon and Chava spent their time working
at their trade and discussing excitedly the marvelous change that had come over both of them. I
spent the remainder of the day re-familiarizing myself with the city of God. As I walked the
length and breadth of Jerusalem that day I was struck by how the scene that had played out just
hours before in the small shop belonging to Shimon seemed to be swallowed whole by the life of
the city. As amazing as the healing and rebirth of those two had been it had occurred in secret
and remained hidden behind the small walls of the leather goods shop, unknown and unknowable
to any outside. I wondered at the way of the Lord, He who works so powerfully yet so
mysteriously. And I wondered at the works that were yet to come.
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The next morning I reentered the din and raucous atmosphere of the marketplaces and let
myself be pushed along by the stream of business. I was waiting for the Lord to direct my next
steps. My immediate plan was to continue reacquainting myself with Jerusalem and to make my
way to the temple to offer my prayers and a small sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise for the
new lives in Shimon and Chava as well as for my own in the kingdom. To make such prayers
and sacrifice seemed somehow to tarnish the joy that was bubbling over within me and I stopped
to seat myself before the temple’s beautiful façade and its gates to consider how it might be that I
would hesitate to offer that which God Himself ordained as good and right and just? It is His will
that we sacrifice, even in praise and thanksgiving, so that our petition will be made holy enough
to ascend to Him. The temple’s morning business was in full swing. People were hurrying to
procure for themselves clean animals to eat at Passover. Others were bringing doves and pigeons
and what else they might afford to the priests to offer for atonement or for cleansing themselves
or others. The courts were ringing with the teaching of several rabbis’ who loudly proclaimed the
Word of the Lord as they each knew and believed it to be. But overall, the religion of it, seemed
to me only a façade, beautiful as it could be like the temple’s itself, but still only a front that
stood before something entirely other. But what was that other that I was getting only glimpses
of through my ponderings? What was there beyond the veil of religion, beyond the veil of the
temple itself? It was then that I understood. It was then that the image I had seen of the cross in
the Garden and of my Lord hanging so pitifully upon it came so clearly to the forefront of my
mind. This temple and its ritual observances stand in front of the powerful reality that they have
for so long endeavored to imitate. They were ordained to fill in the time before the final time in
which Jesus Himself would serve at its altar as its final high priest who offers not the blood and
flesh of animals but the blood and flesh of His own body. That is what lies hidden behind the
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veil. God will abandon this temple of stone and bronze and gold in favor of the temple within
His Son Jesus that consists of Blood and Flesh and Bone. And He will break that human temple,
destroying His Son in order to cast His blood over all the people in one grand gesture of love and
forgiveness and wrath all at the same time. My offering would therefore be wasted in the religion
of the past. Because I know the Lord of Salvation I need not tie myself to the imitation. I can go
directly to God, with the assurance that I am clean in His sight, blood has been shed for my
wickedness and my offering will be joyously accepted at His feet from wherever I might choose
to offer it.
I stood when I realized the freedom this would grant the world. To be free to forever
worship the Lord of Heaven and Earth whenever one desires to do so is an astounding freedom.
To know that one is forever clean who has heretofore had to atone for each and every
transgression is an astounding gift. I sank right then and there, in the street, before the Jews of
the great city of David, and bowed myself face down to the ground and worshiped. I gathered not
a few curious stares from passersby and was nearly trampled underfoot by a troop of soldiers
double-timing their way back to their garrison.
“Out of the way, you religious zealot. Can’t you wait until you enter your foolish house
of worship before you make such an ass of yourself?”
I felt the vicious jab of the butt-end of the centurion’s spear in the bones of my ribcage,
and I rolled out of the way as his soldiers ran past. There were a number of them who cursed me
in like manner as their leader and more then one who used my prostrate figure as target practice
for their extra phlegm. I had learned as a child how to make obeisance in the face of an overly
powerful enemy and made myself as small as possible while avoiding eye contact with any of the
passing soldiers. They passed me by without further incident and I gathered myself together and,
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with an involuntary grunt from the pain in my side, I regained my feet and dusted myself off. For
the rest of the day I wandered about the city, visiting its sights and finding new places of interest.
I walked the length of its walls and remembered the stories about the building of them time and
again upon the Lord’s restoration of His people to Jerusalem. Toward evening I decided to make
my way back to the shop of my new friends and hear what tale they would tell of their first day
as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
As I walked back to the shop I passed by an establishment frequented primarily by the
soldiers garrisoned in the Antonia Fortress. It was a raucous place, fit for only the most
dangerous of men and those willing to take their chances among them. The door was open to the
house in order to let some of the coolness of the night air to invade and possibly sanitize the rank
staleness of the smoke and brew-filled atmosphere of the tavern. As I passed by I heard a tumult
erupt from inside and the unmistakable sounds of outraged honor and the resulting thuds of fists
upon flesh. There were words spoken, words too ill to be repeated here but which were no doubt
recorded by the keeper of the book upstairs, and then a body thrown, which came flying through
the doorway seemingly as if it were upon wings. I was too slow to move away and the man who
was so forcefully ejected bowled me into the street in a tangled mess of cloak and armor, limbs
and dust. He was in no better of a mood for having been so easily dispatched and when he was
untangled from me raised his burly arm and shook his fist at the place with an oath of unutterable
vehemence. I made to move away in my customary meek manner when the soldier, for that is
what he appeared to be, turned on me and cursed me as well.
He was so drunk that his words slurred together incomprehensibly and it was getting dark
enough where I was not at first aware of the identity of the man standing before me. His curses
slowed as his drink began to take what control over his body he had left and he fell into me,
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wrapping his arms around me, seeking to find some source of strength with which to stand. As
he leaned into me and looked deep into my eyes with his own clouded ones I recognized the
centurion from earlier in the day, the one who had so nearly trampled me with his men.
“Who are you?” the centurion slurred in my face. “Why are you still here, you know what
I think you! Get off of me and leave me be before I show you what I think of cowards such as
yourself!”
As he spit his words at me I realized that he was seeing some face other than my own in
his inebriation. I decided to do what I could for the man and managed to position myself under
his right arm and so support his weight as we headed toward his barracks. My only plan was to
see him safely to the gates of the fort and then to leave him in the care of the night watchmen. I
could only guess as to the punishment awaiting him for arriving in such a state.
As we stumbled along, his discourse became clearer as the coolness of the night air
cleared his mind a little and freed his tongue.
“What kind of man are you? You aren’t a man! If only I was stronger in those days, if
only I knew what you would do, I would have taken measures to stop you forever. But look at
me now, coward, what do you think of me now? I am no longer the boy you once tossed away
from yourself so easily, now I am a man who could easily break you in two.” At the end of this
impassioned speech his head once again drooped to his chest as he concentrated on moving his
feet forward.
Who was he speaking of? And why was he speaking to me? I decided to see if I might be
of help to this obviously hurting man, so I ventured to break in on his reverie.
“I do not know of who you speak but I do know of One who is more man than you could
ever dream He be.”
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The centurion’s head popped back up and he looked to me with eyes wide in fright.
“Who are you?” he asked.
I must keep reminding myself as I tell you this narrative that in the flesh I am quite mute.
And although I can communicate quite effectively through other quite supernatural means I have
learned to take it slowly when introducing this to a new ‘friend.’ My words had broken through
the clouds of haze that the alcohol had formed around the man’s heart and soul and had pierced
his very marrow. They had split his drunken shell in two and allowed the real man to peek
through.
By this point in our stumbling along we had arrived just outside the fortress’ gates and
were standing before the well where the men get water for their table as well as their horses. I
guided my companion to the edge of the well and tested his stability before moving opposite him
to stand and face him. I was confident that the dimness of the light would conceal that I did not
move my lips when I spoke to him. I was also confident that the message that I would give this
man would be heard with ears not of flesh but of spirit. My words would make their way into the
man’s very center and awaken in him the sleeping man of God.
“I am Lazarus; I am a friend. You have been talking about someone who has hurt you. I
know of One who will never hurt you and who promises to cleanse every wound.”
The centurion looked closely into my face, but could see little, due primarily to the poor
light but made worse by the strong drink. “Who are you?” he asked again. “You are scum! You
are nothing but a dirty [imprecation] Jew, and from the looks of you, a [imprecation] poor one at
that. Don’t talk to me of friendship; I am not your friend.”
I was not intimidated by the centurion’s rough speech. I had heard plenty of that in my
life from the laborers and merchants from which we conducted business on my sister’s farm. Far
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be it from me to recoil from such a blatant display of obvious inward filth. I recoil far more from
the behavior of those who hide their despicable inward condition behind sweet smelling
religiosity.
“Nevertheless, I am your friend,” I responded back. I discovered with the centurion an
ability to look into a man’s heart when I sent words to him. I am somehow able to linger within a
man and look around to see what there is to see. I quickly discovered that this is not something
that I enjoy doing; no matter how useful it has come to be. I saw in the centurion’s heart a small
boy who cowered before an intimidating figure who stood silhouetted against a bright sky. The
towering man was indiscernible but for his menacing posture and his indomitable strength. To
the boy the man was such a source of fear that he blotted out all other influences. This fear had
worked so in the boy’s life that his only thought was to survive it somehow. As the boy grew he
became convinced that only through his own physical strength would he ever be rid of the man
who had so hurt him as a child. He grew and became a man himself, joined the army as was
required but stayed in its ranks due to the power over others that it afforded him. The man of his
nightmare was long since dead, but the memory of him the centurion fought daily, both in his
spirit and in those who evoked in him the same fear that the man once evoked. He was consumed
with defeating the menace but was being consumed by the impossibility of his quest.
I reached out and touched the boy in the centurion and turned the boy’s face to the light
that shone so brightly behind the immense figure in his soul. I showed the boy that the light
alone would be strong enough to defeat his enemy. I showed the boy the way to the light by
stepping around the image of his fear and putting himself between its brightness and the man. Oh
the change that came over the child’s face! The boy was lit brilliantly in the light of the sun and
his countenance shone with its rejuvenating rays. The young boy turned and looked back at the
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menace of a man and was shocked to see only his father standing where the colossus once stood.
His father was spent and tired, worn out by years of drink and wickedness. He now appeared the
small man that he always had been; a man who was bent by the weight of a life spent foolishly.
And he was holding out his hands to the boy for mercy.
I pulled back from the centurion then and watched to see what would happen next. The
centurion was silent for a long while with his head turned to the night sky and his eyes moving
back and forth quickly, as if thinking furiously. I watched as the drunken shell broke asunder and
the sober man stepped up from between them. The centurion looked at me with eyes clear and
bright and held my gaze while he stepped up to see me. He stopped directly in front of me and
peered intently into my eyes and asked yet again, “Who are you?” As he touched my cheeks with
his rough hands and grasped my own hand in his he said it again, “Who are you?”
“I am a friend. I only want to help you.”
“Well, I think that you have, although I am sure I do not know how. What you have done
to me surely cannot be! But yet, I know it to be true because I feel it must be!”
I hesitated to speak again, partly because he was so close and I didn’t want the revelation
of my abilities to interfere with his awakening, but also because I have been slowly learning that
the adage ‘Less is More’ is especially apt when it comes to speaking. It turns out that I was right.
The centurion had plenty to say.
“I have never told anyone what you somehow have learned. I have hated that man since I
was such a small child that the hate of him was as much a part of me as my own hands. My
hatred of him and my fear of him overshadowed every aspect of my life and it drove me to prove
my ‘manhood’ in ways that I do not even want to describe. I only wanted to be rid of him, and to
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do that I figured that I must defeat him. I was never able to. By the time I was strong enough he
was already dead. I have lived since with only the memory and the fear which drove me.”
“But now! I am free of him! Somehow I am free! How is it that I see him differently?
How is it that he is no longer such a source from which I derive all my pain, but rather an object
toward which I ought to direct all of my mercy?” During the whole of this discourse he had
never ceased to take his eyes off of me. I had to respond, I prayed that he would be able to
receive it.
“It was the light,” I sent back. I sent an image of the early morning light that is rising
over the garden in heaven. I let him feel its coming warmth and its life giving rays. “When you
looked into it in your soul you saw the truth of the man your father was. The light is the Truth of
your Father in heaven and it alone has the ability to heal you. If you look to it always, to the
Father from whom it originates, you will forever and always be assured of not only peace in life
but salvation eternally.”
His eyes disclosed his astonishment at hearing my words before ever my lips had moved.
His hands went to my lips and then to his own ears. “You speak, but yet, you don’t,” he
stammered.
I smiled and said, “There is nothing wrong with your ears soldier, only with my tongue. I
am mute. I have been so from birth.”
“But how then do you…” His voice trailed off as I sent him the picture of my
resurrection and the ministry of healing and restoration I had been given for the world.
Now it was he who smiled and then stuck out his arm to grasp mine in his, “Thank you
Lazarus, I am in your debt. My name is Sebastian.” He vigorously grasped my forearm and
mauled me with a great Roman hug.
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“Please tell me more of this Light,” Sebastian said.
I gave to Sebastian all that I knew of the Light of the world. I began with my knowing of
Him in Bethany as servant to Him and His disciples. I gave to him the essence of His teachings
and the love that He commands to transcend all other commands of the Lord. I gave him the
promise that the Light, the man Jesus, gave to all who would believe in Him and follow Him, the
promise of eternal life in the kingdom of heaven.
“And He is here in the city, Sebastian.”
“He is here, now, even as we speak?”
My eyes clouded over and I paused to consider the weight of my next words upon the
new life of the centurion. “Yes, even now. He is here to give to all of His children His greatest
gift. He is here to finish that which His Father started so long ago. He is here to save the world.”
“I must see Him,” shouted Sebastian energetically.
“You will, you will.” The spirit came upon me then and showed me again the death of the
Lord. I saw the scene as from above and saw the ring of spectators standing at the foot of the
cross. There was one there who alone looked as if he ought to be other than he was. It was
Sebastian, dressed in imperial Roman uniform and kneeling at the foot of the cross in abject
poverty, worshiping the Father of Light’s only Son.
“I must leave you now, Sebastian. You will see the Lord, and you will mourn the sight.
But you must remember the Light. Do not forsake the way you have been shown. Follow the
Light and He will lead you home.”
I left Sebastian to wonder at my words and at the new lightness he felt welling up in his
chest. I wondered myself at the way the Lord would work inside a centurion of the Roman guard,
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a man whose presence in Israel is symbolic of her eventual destruction. As I walked back to the
shop I thanked God yet again and offered my sacrifice of praise through lips that never moved.
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The next day I awoke to a sound that I am sure has not been heard in the shop of Shimon
the leatherworker for quite some time. Even to ears unaccustomed to his habits in the morning
the sound was different enough to rouse me from a very deep sleep. I sat up in my bed and
groggily tried to wipe the sleep from my eyes. When my vision had cleared I sat for a moment
listening. I smiled. Is that singing that I hear? From below, in the workshop I heard the deep bass
of Shimon’s voice rumbling through the floor boards. I heard the sounds of his work as if in
accompaniment. He was busily working a newly tanned piece of leather onto one of his forms
and singing to himself as he worked. I could just make out the words:
“I love you Lord, and I am yours.
I praise you Lord for healing me.
I praise you Lord for forgiving me.
I love you Lord for being mine.”
It was a beautifully simple tune and Shimon half sung and half hummed the words. I
stood and stretched, anxious to begin my own day and anticipating at least as much of a
marvelous day as the previous. I went to the stair and down into the shop. I was greeted by
Chava who was very busy herself with her morning chores. She had set out a breakfast of fruit
and bread and was sweeping furiously in the corners of the shop.
“I have been up since before the dawn and I am amazing myself with all of the work that
I am getting done this morning!” she exclaimed when she saw the bemused expression upon my
face. She came to me and led me to the table where I sat and watched her serve me a generous
portion of their food. Shimon came over to greet me good morning and as Chava passed him she
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laid her hand tenderly on his shoulder and flashed a loving smile as she rushed back to finish her
sweeping.
“She has not looked at me in that way since before we were married, and now, overnight,
she acts as if her love has never diminished. I cannot thank you enough for what you have done,
Lazarus. You have brought us back to life. We are so happy right now!” He sat there and beamed
as happily as a child, without a care in the world.
At that moment there came the sound of a crash and a scream of pain. We both jumped
from our seats and turned toward Chava. She had been moving some of Shimon’s tools and
stored materials from the corner of the hearth when she tripped and fell headlong into the fire
which Shimon had just stoked furiously in order to heat one of his mixtures. As she fell she
unfortunately managed to get her hands out in front of herself in a protective posture and they
landed in the midst of the coals. She screamed both from the fright of falling and then from the
searing pain of the fire. To make matters worse her head hit the stone of the mantle and she was
knocked unconscious and collapsed into the fire. It was this last fateful event that caused her the
most damage. Had she remained conscious her fear and shock at being in the fire would have
instinctively caused her to jump back out of it as quickly as she had fallen in and her burns
would have been slighter. But as it was she lay for at least several seconds with her hands buried
in the hottest part of the fire and her body on top of them pressing the hot coals deeply into her
palms. Shimon was at her side as quickly as possibly and with the strength that accompanies fear
he pulled her body from the flames and into his lap. He cradled her as gently as a baby and
surveyed the hurts that had come upon his loved one. The flames had burned Chava’s hair
completely from one side of her head and her face on that side was seriously burned. But her
hands gave Shimon the biggest shock. As Chava curled up in Shimon’s embrace she held them
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out unnaturally before her. They were a blackened mess of ash and ember, flesh and blood.
When Shimon moved to examine them Chava pulled them back with a shout. “They hurt, oh
they hurt,” she moaned into his chest. Shimon looked to me for help, and I bowed my head to
pray. But there was no leading from the Lord this time. There were no words or images to send
to my new friends. I reached out and laid my hands upon Chava and closed my eyes again.
“Please, Lord, let me help this woman, she is in much pain.” But again there was nothing. I
opened my eyes and looked at Shimon. He was pleading with his own eyes, “Heal her!” But I
could not.
“We must help her as best we can. I can clean her wounds but I need water. Quickly, can
you get some?”
Shimon stared blankly at me and then looked to Chava. I saw his shoulders straighten as
he took the weight of her healing upon himself. He leaned over and kissed her tenderly on her
forehead and told her that he was going to help her. I moved to take Chava in my lap and Shimon
stood and hurried out of the shop with an empty water jug under his arm. I closed my eyes again
and continued my prayer. Chava was passing into unconsciousness. The extreme pain of the burn
was bringing her blessed respite in sleep.
Shimon hurried to the well and filled the jug to the brim. He placed it on his shoulders
and quickly headed back to his wife. He was overwhelmed by the suddenness of the tragedy that
had befallen them. His mind was racing trying to understand the wonderful joy that had filled his
home at sunrise and the deep pain that filled them both a few hours later. How was he to make
sense of the contradiction that this was? And how was he to understand the inability or
unwillingness of Lazarus to bring relief to Chava as he had done only yesterday? But what
troubled him the most was the fear that in his new life as a child of God, he would be yet subject
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to all the terrors and burdens of his old life as a man. Will my life be filled with the same
confusion and torment as before?
His thoughts were interrupted by the shouts of two men who suddenly appeared in his
path. Shimon saw them just as he was about to collide with them, but was too late in rearing in
his thoughts or his body and the three men crashed heavily into one another. Shimon’s water jug
fell to the ground and spilled its contents onto the earth but did not break. The men stood slowly
and brushed themselves off and then reached out a hand to Shimon who lay dazed for a moment,
uncertain of this new thing that had literally fallen upon him. When he was on his feet his
mission came back to him in a hurry and he looked frantically around for his jug. Finding it
empty he groaned aloud and rushed back to the well. The two men stared thoughtfully after him
and with a nod of conviction they set out after him.
When they reached the well Shimon was already pulling the bucket to the top. One of the
men took the bucket from the hook and emptied it into the jug. Shimon was surprised by this
gesture but was too much concerned about getting back to Chava to recognize it in any way. He
put the bucket back onto the hook and lowered it down into the well.
The man who had helped with the bucket spoke first, “You seem distracted friend, may
we be of help?”
Shimon just grunted and reached to unhook the bucket. The man again reached out, took
the bucket and emptied it into the jug. Shimon said, “I thank you for your help, but I must not
linger here, Please forgive me.” He hoisted the water jug onto his shoulder and rushed off once
more to his wife.
The two men looked once more at each other and without a word they too headed off
after the man with the water.
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As they came alongside of him the first man spoke again, “We were sent into the city to
find a room in which to celebrate the Passover with our Master. Where is the room that you have
prepared for us?”
Shimon looked at the man with something bordering on incredulity. Who were these
men? And could they not see that he was in a hurry? Did he look as if he had been preparing a
room for strangers? His frustration broke out upon them, “I have no time for your foolishness!
Who, the [expletive], do you imagine me to be? For that matter, who, the [expletive], are you?
Get away from me before I do more to you two than run you over.”
In his new heart Shimon felt ashamed at speaking this way to two strangers. As he
brushed past the two silent men he wondered at it and at the disparity between the way that he
knew he should have responded and the way that he had responded. As he ran on it occurred to
him that that disparity was very similar to the way that he had expected his new life to be and the
way that it was being experienced that very day. How can the two coexist?
The two men quietly resumed their following of Shimon. They were wondering at the
man, and at his burden. They were startled by his vulgar language and were beginning to doubt
that the Master had known what He was talking about. But due to their experience with the
surprises their Master had exposed them to thus far they knew better than to return to Him
without at least following through with His directions. They came to the gate leading out of the
city and watched as Shimon turned into a small dwelling. They went to the doorway and watched
in wonder as they saw the scene inside.
Shimon went directly to his wife’s side and resumed his place at her head. I had moved
her to the couple’s cot and had tried to make her as comfortable as possible. I had not attempted
to clean her burns for fear of doing more damage than good. I was glad to see Shimon finally
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return with the cool water. I was surprised to see the two men who had followed him into the
shop. But I did not question them, even though I recognized them as the Lord’s disciples, I went
straight to my work ministering to Chava. Carefully, I cleaned around Chava’s face and neck and
happily discovered that the damage there was slight. I next began the terrifying work of cleaning
her hands. Although I had some experience in doing such work from my life on the farm and I
believed that I had a hand for it, I had never been faced with injuries as serious as Chava’s
brutally scorched hands. As I slowly soaked them in the coolness of the towels I despaired to see
pieces of her skin come away with the cloth. Thankfully she was still asleep but even in her
unconscious state she moaned from the excruciating pain that the cleaning was causing her.
When I had begun to make progress in cleaning them I decided that they would need to be cared
for further with ointments and poultices that I had no experience in making. I beckoned the
disciples over and used my old skills at communicating with hand gestures to ask them to
procure the help of a doctor. Without a word one of the men left the shop to seek out the needed
help. Shimon stared blankly at the remaining disciple and at me and then to his wife. His whole
being seemed to cry out, “Why?” I reached over the unconscious form of his wife and took his
hand. He looked deeply into my eyes and I sent to him all the love I possessed. “It will be alright,
the Lord is with us.”
Shimon lowered his eyes from mine and bowed his head in silent prayer. I left him to his
ministrations of Chava and joined the remaining disciple who stood just inside the door. As I
approached him he held out his arm in greeting and smiled at me. We embraced and then Peter
praised God for my being a help to the man and his wife.
“I am glad to see you Lazarus!” Peter said. Peter was one of the twelve that Jesus had
chosen from his followers to be His closest disciple. I had first met Peter and his companion,
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John, as well as the rest of the twelve and more than a few of the Lord’s other followers, when
they had first passed through Bethany and ate and slept in my sisters’ house. “Will the Lord ever
cease to amaze us?” he resumed. “He simply told the two of us to go to the city to find the place
that had been prepared for Him to eat the Passover and here we find you, this house and its
tragedy, and who knows what else!”
Peter knew that I was mute and had not yet learned of my new powers, so I remained
quiet. Shimon joined us and together we sat at the table and waited for John to return. We did not
have to wait long. The ‘doctor’ that served this portion of the Holy City was an elderly woman
who the people simply called Grandmother. She was a small, stooped and exceedingly wrinkled
woman whose expertise in healing had brought her renown all across Palestine. She quietly
entered the shop and with only a nod of recognition toward Shimon she proceeded to apply her
craft to Chava. Her hands worked slowly but masterfully and with the utmost tenderness. She
mixed an ointment from the ingredients found in her bag and carefully applied them to the
broken and blistered skin of Chava’s hands. With the care only a true grandmother possesses she
wrapped the wounded appendages in white linen and stood to leave. After a word of instruction
to Shimon and the handing over of the ointment she left the shop. Shimon kissed his wife again
and returned to join us at the table. John came to us as well and together we prayed for the
healing of Chava.
When we finished there were tears in Shimon’s eyes and I wiped them away with my
fingertips. He held my hand and smiled. Peter and John looked on in wonder and Peter spoke. “I
am pleased to meet you Shimon. I am Peter and this is my brother John. We are followers of the
Christos, Jesus. It was He who sent us to you; it is He whom you have prepared a room for.”
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Shimon’s eyes widened as he heard the name Christos. He came alive as the Light filled
his heart; he looked as if about to burst. “But, I have no room prepared. I did not know!” His
words tumbled forth out of his confusion and the fear of failing to meet an expectation of his new
Lord.
“We gathered that you did not know of our coming when you so quickly bowled us over
in the street,” John said with a sparkle in his eyes. “You were carrying more of a burden than that
water jug. We apologize for hindering you in your way.”
“And I apologize to you for my words, please forgive me, they were spoken before I
could bring them under control.”
Peter said, “All has been forgiven. What remains however is to see to the instructions of
the Lord. It must be you whom we were to meet, you had the jug and here we find our friend
Lazarus. There must then be a room prepared.”
“But it is not so!” Shimon burst out. “We have a room yes, but no preparation has been
made for its use. Lazarus here will tell you that just yesterday it was occupied by a man who died
in that very room. Since that time I have not had a chance to enter it and prepare it for a single
guest, let alone a party of guests.”
I listened in silence, thinking to myself of the events of the day. That Jesus knew of
which He spoke was apparent to me. He speaks and things happen, that is the way of God. There
was nothing to do but to go upstairs and see for ourselves what could be done. I pushed the
bench away from the table and went toward the stairs. As I began to climb I was joined by
Shimon and the two disciples. They too had reached the same conclusion.
At the top of the stairs we passed my room with its single cot and lone table and pushed
aside the curtain to the only other room in the establishment. I had not entered this room the
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previous day out of respect for the man’s belongings which I assumed must still be there. So I
was surprised when I opened the door and I saw a spacious room, easily twice the size of my
own. As the other men entered the room their surprise echoed my own, but theirs came from the
sight that was before them. In the center of the room was a low, long-planked table covered in a
fine linen cloth and adorned with a pair of brass candlesticks. There were more than a few
cushions strewn along the sides of the table and a large basin at its head for the washing of hands
before the meal. Somehow, this room that had been reserved for the use of a dead man had been
transformed over night into a room ready to use for a feast.
“It has been prepared, just as He said,” exclaimed John, the first to speak. “You see
Shimon, all along, you had the preparations laid for us, only the Master neglected to tell you!”
John happily left the room and made his way down the stairs. “I am going back to tell Jesus!” he
shouted from below.
Shimon and I continued to stare at the table and the room. Peter too made to leave,
smiling to himself at the way of the Lord. As he was leaving he turned to tell us that they would
return toward evening to share the meal together. He invited Shimon to join them. “You too
Lazarus,” he said. “Jesus would love to see you again and to check out His handiwork!”
I smiled and said, “He may have other plans for me, Peter, but we will see.” Peter grinned
and left after John. I could hear them both talking excitedly in the street. I had a foreboding about
the meal they would share, a foreboding that I don’t think the disciples had quite yet realized.
“How did this happen?” Shimon asked, shaking his head. “It must have been Chava,
early this morning. But how could she have known?”
“With the Lord, all things are possible,” I sent back. We had to wait until Chava was
stronger before we heard the tale of her being woken in the night by the voice of an angel who
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told her what she was to do. While we were yet sleeping Chava had worked hard removing the
dead man’s belongings and fashioning and arranging the furniture that we saw in the room.
Together we went back downstairs to attend to Chava who was beginning to wake up. It would
be a long recovery for her, and a painful one, but with the attentions of Shimon and the medicine
of Grandmother, it would be a bearable one.
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Part III
Late in the afternoon, when Chava was again sleeping peacefully, I went outside to await
the coming of the Lord and His disciples to the shop. I settled myself in the shadow of the gate
and was content watching the comings and goings of the merchants and people of the great city
of Jerusalem. As I waited I listened as well as watched. At first all that I could hear were the
voices of the frenzied masses. I heard the shouts of the sellers and the shouts of the customers. I
heard the cursing of the disgruntled and the occasional laughter of the joyous. I quickly noted
that in all of the sounds and in all of the pieces of conversation and argument that I was privy too
I heard little of the Passover. Outside of the bargaining going on and the preparations being made
for it I heard nothing about the Feast itself. It was as if the Feast were only a celebration for the
sake of celebration. And as it approached it appeared to be a celebration that not too many were
pleased to have to celebrate. “Oh, the cost of it!” “How am I too get this work done today and
prepare for our meal tomorrow?” There were complaints rendered against the waste of it in both
time and resources. There seemed to be resentment at the necessity of having to do it at all.
And above the crowds I saw a gathering cloud forming from the fumes of these negative
energies. Like the tendrils of the beast that attacked Shimon, his wife, and I in the shop, this
cloud was drawing its strength from the people’s selfishness, anxiety, and worry. It was the
physical embodiment of all that they held most dear in their hearts. That it should exist and draw
strength from the Chosen Ones of the Holy City was deeply troubling to me. I wanted to shout to
the people, “Remember! Do not forget what your God has done for you!” I wanted to remind
them of His faithfulness over thousands of years in spite of their continual stiff-neckedness and
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complaint. But I had no voice with which to shout. And they would not hear me anyway, not
with the ears of their hearts.
As I sat I prayed for the people of Jerusalem, and I praised the Lord for His love for
them. As I prayed I watched the cloud grow deeper in color and more venomous in appearance.
It was filling the skies above the city and its center was directly over the temple. But as I
watched I saw a curious thing begin to happen. The cloud was under attack from some unknown
quarter. It was being sliced at and cut from below by a sword made of light. The sword was
swinging in broad strokes, with each arc of its blade a new rent was made in the belly of the
beast. As I watched the shredding continue the light became brighter around me until I was in its
midst and aglow with its intensity. I soon discovered the source of this enemy of the darkness, it
was my Lord Jesus. He had arrived at the city and it was the truth spouting from his lips into the
souls of his followers that was causing such a disturbance to the apathy of the city. He was
approaching the gate surrounded by a throng of followers. I recognized Peter and John with
ponderous looks upon their faces as Jesus spoke to them privately. Andrew and Phillip were
surrounded by children, laughing and singing songs. There was Barnabas deeply engaged in
conversation with James. I saw the two Judas’ arguing with each other and Matthew intervening.
I saw James of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Bartholomew walking in the rear. They were
leading the Passover lamb they had procured and carrying wineskins and baskets of bread. The
feast was underway! I am once again at a loss for words as I think of the joy that seeing Jesus
raised in me. I alone knew what was to happen this night, although He had told his disciples
many times, and yet I was still filled with joy inexpressible. As they approached the gate I hid
myself in the crowd and watched as they made their way to the leather goods shop and knocked
upon its door.
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Shimon answered quickly, he too somehow felt the darkness overhead and felt the light
begin its attack and was waiting expectantly inside for whatever good or ill might befall him
next. When he saw His Lord face to face his own face lit up like a thousand moons and he fell at
Jesus’ feet in rapture. Jesus knelt beside him and embraced him and whispered the words that
every believer longs to hear, “I am here Shimon, and I am with you always.” And with that
promise Shimon stood up and ushered the Son of God into his humble abode and led the way to
the room where the banquet was laid.
I stayed outside and observed the people hurrying about their business. I watched as the
streets slowly emptied and the candles were being lit and the fires kindled. I smelled the sweet
scent of roasting meat and imagined the taste of the wine in my mouth. I saw the cloud above me
roiling in its dissatisfaction with the piety of the night and I smiled at the thought that one day,
all such manner of beasts will be removed and the world will be at peace when the kingdom is
restored.
“Be vigilant,” said the voice in my ear. I was brought out of the light sleep that I had
slipped into and I saw the door of Shimon’s shop open quickly and a figure emerge into the
night. It was Judas Iscariot. He had the tendrils of the monster around his neck and he was being
dragged away from the shop and his Master under their direction. I shouted to his heart, “Resist!”
But he ignored my plea. I prayed to God that one of his own was falling prey to the evil one.
“Save him,” I whispered.
“He must go his way, Lazarus. But follow him,” came the answer.
I followed Judas to the temple courts where he secretively ducked into the entrance of the
court of women and waited furtively in the shadows of one of its walls. Soon another man joined
him and then another. As I waited Judas was met by three men all of whom were dressed in the
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robes of the temple and whose beards alone would have identified them as the rulers of the
Pharisees. What business does a disciple of the Christ have with the Pharisees, I asked myself.
My answer was quick in coming. I could not hear the words that passed between them but I
could see the bag of money that went from the jeweled hand of the Pharisee to the slender hand
of the disciple. And I heard the awful sound that that money made as it hissed itself into place in
the grasp of the betrayer. At the moment the bag changed hands the beasts that were clinging to
Judas rose up in a frenzy and left him, spiraling into the sky shrieking their pleasure at having
claimed such a victory. As they went, Judas seemed to shrink and his whole countenance
diminished as he bore the weight of his transgression without the support of his demons. The
Pharisees, standing as straight and as confident in themselves as ever, turned as one body and
headed back to their lair until the appointed hour should come. Judas, left completely alone now,
went off into the night and I saw him no more.
I was distraught at what I had seen and I worried at what it might portend. But if my Lord
was actually to die this night then what I had seen must be God’s will to happen. I went back to
the shop and retook my seat at the wall, lost in troublesome thoughts of death and crucifixion.
The door to the shop opened and, as the light spilled into the street, the disciples of Jesus
followed Him as He made His way toward His place of rest. I did not follow them, for I knew
what must occur next. My Lord was betrayed and I needed not to see it happen to understand it.
Judas had sold Him into the hands of the evil one and Jesus would be taken this very night, tried
and convicted of blasphemy by the very epitome of blasphemy themselves, the Pharisees. As
Jesus made His way to the end of His road I rose also and made my way out of the city to the
mount of skulls where I had foreseen His death to occur. And while my Lord was praying in
Gethsemane, I was awake with Him and praying on Golgotha. He was in the garden, tormented
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by His own apprehension, fear, betrayal and abandonment; I was alone on the hillock praying for
His strength and for the hand of His Father to save Him. But I was foolish in my prayers, for
Jesus wanted this to happen more than His Father Himself did. Jesus willingly took this on
Himself so that He might save the very men who would destroy Him in order to feed the evil
within themselves. I stayed the night outside the city, sleeping little, and troubled constantly by
visions of the horror going on within the city walls. And all the while, above me, the cloud was
growing, in size and in vehemence. The time was upon us.
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I heard the procession before I saw it. The sun was well on its way to its summit when I
heard the shouting and saw the crowd stream out of the city gates and make its way to surround
the mount of crucifixion. Jesus was in the front of the procession bent under the weight of a large
piece of timber. He was carrying the cross piece of the Roman Cross, an instrument of torture
and death, made all the more horrific by forcing the condemned to carry it himself to the place of
his crucifixion. He was followed by two other men, each bent under the weight of their own sin
and each looking as forlorn and forsaken as the Lord. Surrounding them and running between
them was a small group of children. These were the street urchins of Jerusalem and watching
criminals make their way to the mount was one of their favorite pastimes. As the men staggered
along the way the children shouted taunts and threw stones and jeered at them loudly, all the
while running to and fro between them. Nothing made them laugh and cheer more happily than
when one of the men stumbled and fell, bringing the timber down on his own head. When this
happened, and it happened frequently, a Roman guard would step forward and whip the man
mercilessly until he regained his feet.
Seeing this barbarity for the first time I was ashamed at myself for my previous apathy
toward its victims. I had never witnessed it before but I had been aware of it, and I had even
condoned it to a certain extent, as all of its victims were, for the most part, guilty of the crime.
But seeing Jesus, who had never wronged anybody in His life, and certainly had never wronged
his Father in heaven, beaten and burdened as He was, made me cringe in pain for Him. I cried
out in a tongue I did not know I possessed and pleaded with God to take away His Son’s pain. I
removed myself from the top of the small hill where I had spent the night and moved to the rocks
strewn along the edges that the people used as seats to watch the proceedings. I waited for the
worst, which was yet to come.
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As Jesus made His way up the hill, He fell frequently and with each fall, He felt the
weight of the crosspiece upon His tortured head and back, the laughter and jeers of the children,
and the whip of the guard. And each time He stood back up with His head bowed in submission
and continued His travail to the summit. When they reached it, the people spread out around the
wooden beams that were waiting in their holes across the clearing of Golgotha. The four guards
whose detail it was to perform the day’s punishment went to work lowering three of these beams
to the ground and affixing the crosspieces from the condemned backs to them. While this was
being done I watched the face of my Lord. He simply stood upon His wavering legs and held His
peace. His head was still bowed to the ground and His eyes were kept downcast. He folded His
hands in front of Himself and waited for it to be done. The two other men fidgeted nervously,
glancing around themselves as if seeking some way of escape or a last minute reprieve. But there
was no escape, and no reprieve. Under the Roman system of punishment, a sentence handed
down must be carried out.
The three guards now moved to take their prisoners to the crosses. Beginning with the
man on the left of Jesus, they stripped him of his tattered garments, exposing his nakedness to
the jeering crowd and then laid him down upon his cross tying his feet firmly to the beam that
would stand upright and each of his arms to the crosspiece that would span the top horizontally.
They stripped Jesus next and lashed Him to His cross in the same manner and then likewise the
remaining criminal. At this point the centurion stepped forward and handed to one of the guards
a rough piece of wood upon which had been written ‘King of the Jews.’ The centurion’s face was
troubled, and he did not look at Jesus as he passed him. “By order of Pilate, this must be affixed
to the one they call Jesus,” he commanded.
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It was Sebastian! How is it that he had been chosen to perform this duty today? How can
he permit this to be done to his Savior? I wanted to rush to him and plead with him to end it, but
something held me back. This is in God’s hands I thought, if God wills it, who is man to put an
end to it? But how hard this must be for that soldier! As Sebastian returned to his post he passed
the side of Jesus again and was halted by a quiet word from Him. Sebastian’s step slowed
imperceptibly but his face revealed the content of the word that passed between them. He was
taller now, he was lighter somehow, and his face was clear. The crucifixion would go forward.
Once the men were securely affixed to their crosses the soldiers retrieved from their
packs the instruments of their torture. Two of the soldiers carried iron spikes; one for each of the
condemned’s feet and two for their hands. The other two soldiers carried the hammers with
which to drive those spikes into the tender flesh and brittle bone of the undersides of the wrist
and the ankles of the feet. Jesus and the man on His left had to wait and listen as the soldiers set
to work on the third criminal. The soldiers made no move to prepare the man, or offer him
comfort; they went about their work as if it were as commonplace to them as the building of a
fence or a house. With particular skill and efficiency they drove the heavy iron spikes into and
through the flesh of their fellow man and embedded them into the blood stained wood of the
cross. The man screamed in agony and jerked violently as he tried in vain to remove his arms
and feet from the pain. They proceeded to Jesus next giving Him the same agony as the other in
exactly the same amount of time. When the last man was thus nailed to his cross they began to
stand their victims upright. Using ropes and brute strength the soldiers hoisted the crosses
upright and settled them into their respective holes in the ground. Once in place they hammered
flat stones around the base to secure them and left their victims to struggle upon the nails that
held them so cruelly in place. The soldiers retreated to their positions before the crosses and after
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putting away their tools of destruction settled themselves to their drink and dice. Sebastian
quietly stood his post, standing at attention, and staring soberly at Jesus.
For a man who is attempting to record his story I am in no position to be at a loss for
words. But, how could anyone describe this? Even though I had the foreknowledge of it
happening through my visions of heaven and the tree in the garden, even though my Lord
Himself brought it before me and told me that it must take place, I cannot tell you how I felt
about it when it happened in front of me. It was too real. I was not prepared to see Jesus in the
flesh, to hear his screams of pain, to hear the beating of the hammer upon the nail and the tearing
of flesh and the breaking of bone. I did not expect to see the people he loved gathered around
him in their dirty clothes and unwashed bodies shouting at Him derisively when He was at His
lowest. I did not expect to see the complacency of the Roman soldiers as they performed their
outrageous tasks. It was too real. And it created in me a great sense of despair over my future
with this man Jesus. For, I watched Him die that day on the mountain of skulls. I watched the
man who had called me back from the dead and who had met me in heaven and given me a life
of unbelievable magnitude, come before me, beaten and brutalized, stripped naked before the
eyes of men, nailed through hands and feet and affixed inhumanely to a cross of wood. How can
this be, I asked myself. How? What now?
I sat there that day and forced myself to watch the struggle between life and death as it
played out upon the crosses. I won’t tell you of the ministrations of the women to Jesus, or of His
final words to them. Nor will I tell you of His own struggle to retain the faith He held so dear in
the will of His Father. For those accounts you may turn to the Word He left behind, written to all
men, that they may learn and remember that which was done on their behalf. But I will tell you
of the vision I beheld upon the mount, when the darkness fell like a cloak upon the earth and the
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sun was blotted from the sky for a full three hours. During this time the ground shook, lightening
flashed across the heavens and the clouds above roiled in anger. I saw the place of the skull
extend upward into the heavens and pierce the clouds. As it did so the rays of the light of heaven
burst through the rent in the sky and shone mightily upon Jesus. He was lifted up before God and
man and suspended between heaven and the earth as an offering from the one to the other. The
man Jesus gave His life to please His Father, and the Father God gave His Son Jesus to save
mankind. The beast that was over the city all this time had since spread to the cross and was
growing thicker at every curse and taunt flung upon the Lord. Its tendrils had woven themselves
into the fabric of the people’s garments and had added extra weight to the crosses and hammers
so as to increase the pain of their victims. But when Jesus was lifted up the eyes of men were
turned away from their own wickedness and sinful pleasure in the suffering of another. They
were forced instead to look beyond themselves and consider the God who had made the earth
and the sun and the sky and who at a word might remove them forever. At this the beast in the
cloud shrieked and turned a violent shade of red in its fury over being so painfully neglected.
For, in order for the beast to survive it must cause mankind to forget. For it to live, man must
deny their Maker and turn instead to the creatures of their own sinfulness. For the beast to be
victorious it needs only to remove men from the worship of the truth and turn them to the
worship of its lies. As the Light of the Lord shone down upon the Son of God the cloud itself
was pierced through the middle. Its demons were scattered and they flew in reckless abandon to
the darkest corners of the world; their master’s plans being thwarted and their seeming victory
tendered a crushing defeat. Into their place around Golgotha poured the host of heaven
brandishing their swords of fire and gleaming in their garments of silver. They cordoned
themselves around the base of the mountain and permitted no unclean thing to approach. They
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had come to secure the peace that was so expensively purchased. They had come to minister to
their God. I sat in awe at the things I saw underneath the reality of the physical things that were
before me. My assurance in the will of God was instantly reestablished and I was once again
ashamed of my weakness of faith.
When the ninth hour of the day arrived the heavens closed back up and the light of day
was permitted to retake its place in the heavens. Most of the people who had been jeering and
abusing Jesus and His companions were now beating their breasts and tearing their clothes in
repentance; but not so the Pharisees. They had come to see this thing accomplished, and like the
Romans, even if they were wrong they felt they must never change their course. One of their
leaders now approached the centurion and reminded him of their Sabbath day custom of
removing all criminals from the crosses before nightfall. To do this meant that they must hurry
the death of the victims, for man has a tenacious grip on his life and even through torture such as
was exhibited in crucifixion man can live on for a surprising amount of time. The centurion gave
the orders and his soldiers picked up their hammers to break the legs of the men still alive. You
see, a man crucified in the Roman manner must use his legs to push himself up onto the small
wooden plank affixed behind his thighs, a semi-seat placed there not for comfort but to prolong
his agony. He must do this in order to fill his extended chest cavity with air, because without the
use of his legs he will quickly suffocate as his body hangs on his arms and his lungs are
compressed so as to not be able to fill with air. The soldiers broke the legs of Jesus’ companions
but when they came to the King of the Jews they saw that He was already dead and they reported
as such to Sebastian. Sebastian went to Jesus and quietly examined Him himself. It was true,
Jesus was no longer of the realm of man, but had passed on, giving His spirit into the care of the
Father in whose trust He had firmly placed Himself. And then the centurion did a strange thing.
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Maybe he did it to convince the Jews that their blasphemer was truly dead, or maybe he did it
simply out of habit, following a Roman rule concerning the treatment of men who had died upon
the cross, but he took his spear and with a quick and purposeful thrust, drove it deep into the side
of Jesus. When Sebastian pulled his spear from Jesus’ side he was covered in a flow of blood and
water that streamed from the open wound. He stood there momentarily under the flow of Jesus’
life’s fluid and realized at once what the purpose of this death was for. He was literally standing
beneath the blood sacrifice of a perfect lamb. He was being painted with the blood of the
sacrifice in order that the avenging angel might pass over him and he be spared. His role here on
the mountain would forever provide the believer with a picture of faith in Jesus and the very real
nature of His sacrifice for mankind. Sebastian fell to his knees with arms outstretched and
proclaimed loud enough for all to hear, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!”
I lingered on through the removal of Jesus’ body from the cross, the wailing of his
mother and the flight of his friends. I watched as Joseph came forward and carried the body away
to give it the burial it deserved. I stayed alone on the barren mount, tired, and weakened by the
enormity of it all. And then I wept.
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I did not know what I was to do next. But I knew that I must leave. I left behind me that
day everyone who had been close to me. I left my beautiful sisters Mary and Martha and my
home with them in Bethany. I left behind the new friends that I had found in the city, Shimon
and Chava and Sebastian. I would see them no more after this. Knowing that they were safe in
their new lives in Jesus was a comfort to me. Knowing that one day I would see them again in
the Kingdom was a great hope for me. But leaving them behind forever while I traveled to the
end of the ages has proved to be a great sorrow for me.
Picking myself up from the dust of the ground where I had thrown myself in my anguish
and exhaustion from the terrible day of the Lord, I looked into the sky over Jerusalem and saw it
clear of clouds of any size or type. The evening sky was a brilliant deep shade of blue and the
first stars were beginning to show their testimony of the Creator. The gates were closed by this
time so entering the city once more was not a possibility. The observance of the Passover
Sabbath would have begun and the feast of Unleavened Bread commenced. This was a holy
Sabbath, a time to remember and to praise the God of Heaven for His steadfastness and mighty
power to save. I was filled with joy and exuberance at the thought that from this day forward the
salvation of the world was granted. From this day forward the hand of the Lord that had so
mightily pulled Israel free from the hand of Pharaoh had now pulled all of her sisters and
brothers from the hands of damnation. With the death of the Son, the life of mankind was forever
assured. Did the inhabitants behind the walls realize what had been done for them this day? Were
they even now considering the man Jesus and the wonder of His death? If not, then they would
soon, for a light would soon come that would slowly begin to spread throughout the Jews of
Jerusalem. A light would spread from the hearts of the apostles to the chosen of Israel. A light
would spread from the hearts of the people, people such as Shimon and Chava, Jews who were
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once lost to their religion but now were found to the nation itself, and then beyond. A light would
spread even from the hearts of the pagan, who with a turning of spirit would confess Jesus as
Lord; a heart like the strong Sebastian who was made weak before the cross and will forever be
one with His Lord God. A light would soon spread.
Knowing that all of this would take place, I saw that my place must then be elsewhere. I
turned my face to the east. I have since learned that whenever I am in doubt about where to turn,
I turn first eastwards, toward the rising sun. I turn to the light and I begin to make my way. I did
so on the day that Jesus was killed. I took the road east and I traveled upon it for the rest of that
night and the whole of the next day. I was alone on this road due to the religious observances of
the Jews. No one would be traveling on such a day, especially with it being a feast day as well.
Toward nightfall I found myself a sheltered spot upon a hillside and I settled in for the night. I
had walked a long way and was very tired. I had eaten nothing and had little to drink. I had
seemed to be pushed from behind, forced onward by an unseen hand that was compelling me to
continue even though I was long past able to. When the hand finally ceased its pushing I fell into
a deep and extremely sound sleep. I was lying upon the hillside facing the city of Jerusalem
which I had left behind me. I slept the night through and woke with the first rays of the sun upon
my back.
The sun dried my damp clothing and warmed my chilled skin. I lay for a while basking in
its restorative energies. As I lay my eyes studied the landscape and I tried to focus my eyes on
the Holy City up on its little mount so far in the distance. In my mind’s eye I thought I could see
her walls being illuminated by her watchman and protector, the sun. And then something like
scales dropped from before my eyes and I was able to discern the city as if I was merely just
outside of her wall, let alone many miles away. It seemed that God wanted to make sure that I
95
was able to see something that He had planned for His city on that morning. With my new sight,
I could clearly make out the hillock where Jesus had been crucified and I looked to His burial
place where he had been laid so carefully by Joseph. I must say that I did not wholly understand
how the death of the man could save the lives of the world. I know what it is to be dead and I
smelled the decomposure of my own flesh when Jesus brought me up from the grave. Right now
the body of Jesus would be starting its journey back to the dust from which it was made and His
spirit would be rejoining His Father in heaven. But is that all there is to it? Is the death of a man
enough to change the utter wickedness of the heart of man forever? Is it enough to kill a perfect
lamb, once, for the good of many, and have it be enough to wash them clean of their sin?
I was wondering about these things when a loud crack split the air above my head and I
felt a blast of hot air hit me square in the face. Its force was enough to cause me to cower under
its impact and when it had finally passed I found myself curled up like a child with my arms
hugging my knees with my head between them. I looked out carefully from my hiding place and
saw a flame of lightning shooting from a grand and open pit outside of Jerusalem and searing the
sky with its heat. It shot straight up from a furnace of flames surrounding and engulfing the
territory of the burial place and it vanished from sight past the dome of the sky and, I thought,
the globe of this world. Slowly the flames around the opened grave subsided and all was quiet
and as it was before. Curious, to say the least, I stood and tried to get a better look. What was this
new thing I wondered?
“He is risen, Lazarus!” It was my friend the angel! I had not left everyone behind as I had
thought!
“Jesus is risen?” I asked. “Just like me?”
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“Not just like you, son of man, but for you, and for all men. He has been raised by His
Father, who has now given Him the whole of Creation to rule and to judge.”
I was astounded by these words as you can well imagine. Jesus had been restored to His
former glory at the right hand of the Father in heaven. He risked it all to come to us at the word
of the Father and He condescended to become man in order to please His Father. He submitted to
death at the hands of men in order to complete the will of the Father. And the Father did not
forsake Him, but raised Him up and made Him the ruler of all things.
“It is to Jesus now that every knee shall bow. And it is the name of Jesus that must be
confessed in order for man to be saved. Hallelujah to the King!” The angel shouted this last in a
voice like a trumpet and when he did the earth beneath me shook and the grass under my feet
struggled to stand upright. At the sound of this praise from the heavenly servant of the Lord all
of nature seemed to take notice and attempt to stand tall.
I myself fell back upon my backside and actually rolled a bit down the hill before I had
recovered myself. I heard the uproarious laughter of the angel and he said, “Forgive me, Lazarus,
but it is a great day and I am so filled with awe and wonder at the glory of it all that I am having
a terrible time controlling myself.” I felt a strong hand lift me up and set me back on my feet and
felt myself enveloped in a cool and wetness that I recognized immediately. It was the life giving
water of the winds of the garden. “You are deeply loved, Lazarus,” the angel said. “And now you
must go. Continue on to the east until you come to the way by the side of the road. You will
know it when you see it and what you must do will be shown to you. Goodbye!”
And with that, the angel was gone from me, and I was alone once more upon the hillside.
I began again my journey to the east, with my face firmly fixed toward the light of the sun. As I
traveled I could see the result of the light that Jesus had brought into the world as it began to
97
spread through the world’s considerable breadth and width. In this vision I saw the world laid out
flat as if it were a map upon a table with its nations and boundaries clearly marked throughout
the vastness of time, both past and future. In its exact center there stood a pillar as straight and as
true as ever a mason could hope to have set it. Having been set by the hands of the master
Carpenter and Stonemason Himself, its accuracy was not only perfect, but assured. From the
base of this plumb line there began to radiate a burning ripple that expanded across the map of
the world in wave after wave. The burning did not incinerate the world but rather marked it
definitively as covered. As the radiation I noticed that the boundaries of the nations shifted and
the names written upon them flashed incessantly, changing rapidly as each new wave hit them. I
saw that this light that was spreading so fiercely throughout the world was in fact the light that
Jesus had brought to the Holy Land and the very same light that I had seen so incredibly rend the
sky. It was spreading from the point of His cross and His resurrection throughout time and place
and it appeared to have no intention of stopping until it had covered every square inch of the
earth and had penetrated into every live souled person upon the face of it. As I watched it spread
I looked into the flames and saw terrible persecution in its wake. I saw innumerable crucifixions
of the saints who were crying out the name of Jesus and I saw unspeakably worse horrors than
these perpetrated upon His children. I saw great battles waged for and against His Holy Name. I
saw great evils conducted by those who wore the robes He had given them to wear and to
cherish. As the flames covered the whole of time I saw something that was growing much deeper
than the horrors just described. Underneath I saw the rebirth of soul after soul and heart after
heart. I saw the strength of the bride of Jesus grow by the addition of thousands, and then
millions, and then trillions of believers to the roles of Heaven. I saw the church being born and
its purity under girding all that was carried on above it and beyond it. I saw that this underlying
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church and its holiness was the real work of the Lord in His redemption of the world. It was His
church that He was leaving behind, to grow and to mature and to become one in His name. It was
the church that he would come back for when the fires of His Light had finished their course and
the time for judgment was at hand.
I closed my eyes at the last. It was too great a sight for me to take in. When I opened
them again I found myself before a simple wooden gate. It was like many others that I had
passed along the way. It was the gate of a sheepfold and it was standing open. I moved forward
to close it lest some poor farmer might lose one of his flock, but as I reached out my hand to
touch it I was pulled through it as if caught in the vortex of a hurricane. I was powerless to move
as I was sucked into the swirling grip of the wind about me. I shot straight up into its fury and
was suspended above the ground, caught in the air and perched atop the cyclone as it tore across
the earth below. I looked down in terror as I traveled in this most disconcerting way and I saw
the land of Palestine quickly passing and strange new mountains and waters coming and going
before my eyes. And I saw other sights as well, sights that at the time I had no way to understand
for they consisted of objects and devices that I had never before seen or could have conceived.
And then it stopped. The wind slowed and ceased to blow. I fell and landed hard in front of the
very gate that I had just left. And I sat upon my knees, trembling, not from fear or hurt, but from
the sheer exhilaration and confusion of it all.
“Hi,” a small voice spoke softly behind me.
I turned and beheld a little girl of about six years of age. She was sitting upon a brightly
painted contraption with two of the strangest looking wheels beneath it that I have ever seen. Her
hair was yellow like the sun and her eyes were blue as the sky on an early spring morning. She is
a child of one of the northern Gentile peoples I thought to myself. But how came she to be here?
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Her clothing was no less wonderful to my eyes. She was wearing a pink tunic, but one with no
covering for her arms and no covering for her legs. Her ‘pants’ as I learned they were called
came only to her knees and left her shins and feet uncovered. And on those feet were a very
strange pair of sandals that blinked at me whenever she changed her position. Something told me
that I was not in Judea anymore.
“Hi,” I answered back.
“Are you new around here mister? You look kinda… lost.” She said this last word slowly
as if trying to convey more of a meaning than the word alone would allow. She too was taking in
my garments as I had hers. And from the look on her face she was just as confused as I.
“I guess I am new here. I think that I just arrived. Can you tell me where here is, because
I am sure that it is not where I thought I would be!” My words sounded so strange to me, as did
hers, and yet I could understand them perfectly. What is this new tongue that I have been given
to speak, and where is it that I am speaking it?
The tiny child’s face furrowed into a look of discomfiture when she heard my voice but
did not see me form the words themselves. Hesitating, she responded, “This is Bethany. Bethany,
Pennsylvania. And you are sitting on my front walk.” And with that, and a toss of her hair in my
direction she maneuvered herself and her contraption around me and through her gate and into
her front yard.
As I watched her go I then began to notice the rest of my surroundings. I had landed on a
very hard stretch of stone, called ‘concrete,’ and was clinging to a white picket gate that marked
the entrance to a large white house with a wooden porch running the length of its front and a
pretty garden of colorful flowers in bloom about its edges. As I looked in wonder I saw that it
100
was accompanied on either side by similarly adorned and apportioned houses of various colors
that stretched along both sides of the road in both directions from where I sat.
_____________________________________
But this account must end here, for I fear I have gone too far as it is. The story of my
sojourn and work in the land of Bethany, Pennsylvania must be continued in another volume. It
will have to suffice to say that in this new land and in this new time, I met with the servants of
the Lord whom I saw coming to life upon the map that the Lord had so long ago set on fire. As I
walked among these people and endeavored to help them in their weaknesses and lack of faith I
uncovered yet more of the glory of God and saw firsthand the incredible lengths to which He has
gone and will go to bring all of His people home.
So, until we meet again, dear reader, I am humbly yours, Lazarus.
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I Am That Seed. I Am Lazarus. and This Is My Record

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I Am That Seed. I Am Lazarus. and This Is My Record

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Have you ever watched a tiny seed transform itself from the inside out into a

I am that seed. I am Lazarus. And this is my record.

this sound fantastic? Then let me explain.

and hurriedly made preparation to leave.

Lazarus has become.”

little light left for such a journey as it is.

find Jesus, only He can save our brother now.”

unheeded. The fasting of the household was seemingly ignored by heaven.

so little time left!” Martha was terrified.

watched my last ray of hope flicker and die away.

abandoned by my Lord, I was unable to trust Him as I should.

familiar with and now call home.

flesh, and I saw it in an instant, as if in a mirror, as if in a dream- and I understood without a

doubt that I was doomed. I was to be destroyed.

You! Thank You! Thank You!”

new eyes all around me but saw no one and no thing.

expectation of living in the presence of God Himself!

me to head toward the sun.

uncovered a fraction of what God has implanted there.

“Lord, no! What is this that I see?”

is what He must suffer for you.”

warrant this punishment upon my beloved Master.

Sun rise from its stronghold in the east.”

“Please, Lord, help me to see. I do not understand!”

you will be so yet again. Go!”

of being alone. It was Jesus!

kind of a glimpse of my heaven to come.

and washing over all who stood near.

away into the world.

and stood to serve me a bowl full.

tomb, being wrapped as tightly as a newborn babe.”

Mary! She had seen me at the last.

have much to tell you.”

Where have I been? Was it real?

around his head and settle upon Him as a crown.

had felt before.

the way to the rain barrels.

strength of body and the uneasy weakness of my heart.

which I grew up.

stepping outside, concern written on her face.

“Elisia, they are coming, we must move quickly!”

The soldiers had taken everything.

secluded as we were above the rest of the world on our mountain.

call me brother; and I call them sisters.

would hold for me in my new life with Jesus.

implications of a kingdom of the nature that Jesus was announcing.

then my Jesus smiled and turned to go.

help turn them to the Light.

for a guest such as ours.

Garden of Eden. It was the perfume of kings.

vial of perfume, shaking his head in disgust.

“Leave her be.”

tear of gold visible only to me upon His cheek.

He told us all that if He died then we would live.

their fear as they looked into my eyes.

had previously determined.

called out vainly for help from any quarter.

“Welcome home, Lazarus,” He said with a small smile.

of the grandest cityscapes ever imagined.

heights dependent on man’s handiwork alone for support.

to curve away from me in both directions.

lay before my window.

love to bring it to reality.