Rise of the Mystics

by Ted Dekker

  Ba’al was now jumping and leaping and hugging his guard like a captive released from endless suffering. A suffering he’d lived in for far too long. Now he was free.

  Beyond him, thousands of Horde and Elyonite warriors stood in wonder, gazing about as if seeing for the first time. They were only now beginning to cry out, realizing what had happened.

  They were cries of awe. The shouts of stunned disbelief at such fortune.

  But it wasn’t fortune. It was Justin’s power, which was far greater than any could have possibly imagined. Greater even than the first Adam—Tanis—who’d first embraced blindness in this world forty years earlier.

  Thomas rushed up to me, eyes on his flesh, then on the light still racing up the cliffs, then on me, eyes wide.

  “Justin . . .”

  “Came,” I finished.

  A smile of wonder slowly curved his lips. “Was there ever any doubt?”

  I hesitated, lifting my hand to see it again. I almost thought I could see through it to the light coursing through my veins.

  “Far too much,” I said.

  He nodded, eyes on me. “And the other world?”

  Ba’al was now running toward me, eyes bright, grinning like a newborn child. Ba’al, whom I would embrace like a mother because Ba’al had been all of us.

  Now you know, my precious daughter. Now you know.

  I took a deep breath, overwhelmed by a love beyond the knowledge of good and evil.

  “The final judgment against all judgment is finished here,” I said to Thomas, eyes still on Ba’al. “I think it might just be beginning in the other world.”

  And then I was running for Ba’al.

  41

  “SET IT down, Mike.”

  The pilot glanced over his shoulder at Steve and nodded.

  The helicopter banked to the left, angling for the wide flat rock on the cliff’s most eastern rim. We were high over Eden, Utah, now hardly more than a wasteland in the sinkhole that had once housed Project Eden. Even the buildings that had survived the explosive charges five months earlier had been demolished, leaving nothing but rubble.

  A month had passed since the world watched me at the World Security Summit. I’d shown them the only thing I knew to show, which was a love that held no record of wrong. Only that and the seals glowing on my arm, explaining each for the whole world to know. The audience had watched me in stunned silence, except for those who already knew what I was saying. Their streaming tears were born of a love that joined with my own as I spoke the truth that would divide the world.

  I spoke the words simply and without fanfare, just a girl on the stage sent to speak truth about the Way, the Truth and the Life. The words were gentle, but the power flowing from me thundered through their hearts. It was a message for all, regardless of religion, race, nationality, gender, or age.

  It was the same forgotten way that Talya had drawn me into, symbolized by the Five Seals of Truth glowing like the sun on my arm and from my heart.

  I said it all, and when I was done, I left that overwhelmed audience and exited through the side door. Karen was waiting, weeping like a child, not because of the words I’d spoken but because of the power that had filled the air. Because of the love.

  She took me back to the hotel, and I stayed there for three days. The FBI came and took my full statement twice, just to be sure. The NSA came and asked me a hundred questions about DARPA and the bombings, using a retinal scan that would tell them if I was lying.

  But my eyes fried their machine.

  I didn’t watch television, so I didn’t know what the world was saying and I didn’t care. Instead, I cared for the maid. Her daughter had been killed in one of the bombings, so I shared my love with her and she wept in that love.

  And I cared for the bellman and the room service attendants and everyone else I saw while I was in the lobby or in the halls. Many of them teared up as soon as our eyes met, because most of the world had seen what had happened, either live or when it was played back, over and over.

  After three days, Steve came for me. Steve, who I loved like a father and whose mind had been as fried as my own.

  He was no longer with DARPA, and I stayed with him in West Virginia for the next two weeks. We spent most of the time talking about life. All of life. Especially the part of life that couldn’t be seen with natural eyes.

  It was then that he’d told me Congress was offering me restitution. Anything I wanted.

  The helicopter settled on the rock slab above Eden, Utah.

  “How long?” the pilot asked, turning back.

  “Two hours?” I said.

  He nodded. “Okay. Back in two hours.”

  I scooted out after Steve, ducked under the whirling blades, and hurried to the lone pine that had managed to stake a claim on the otherwise bare cliff. Thirty seconds later the helicopter was in the air, and within a minute we could barely hear it.

  Steve hooked his thumbs in his belt and stared at the sinkhole. “Well, there it is.”

  “There it is.”

  We stood in silence for a minute. I couldn’t remember most of my time in Eden—DARPA had taken those memories. I could only remember the scenes around the church where I’d faced off with Vlad. And the hospital near my old house where I’d first encountered him in the flesh—everything tied to the discovery of the first three seals.

  But the church along with my house and the rest of the buildings were no more.

  “You’re sure this is what you want?” he asked. “I know you don’t care about money, but twenty million dollars could go a long way out there.”

  I had no idea what twenty million dollars could or couldn’t do. It was just the limit they gave me when they said anything I want.

  “You think twenty million can rebuild this place?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Half of it would go to clearing it out and rebuilding infrastructure. A power plant, roads, fix the tunnel . . . Sure. With plenty to spare.”

  “Then yes. This is what I want.”

  “They’ll be clamoring to come see you, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Half the world. The half who were ready to hear what you said.”

  “What kinds of people?”

  “Everyone from theologians to mothers who have hurting children.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I mean, yes, I felt deeply for them all and I would never turn anyone away, but I wasn’t anyone special. Specialness wasn’t part of love because it meant something else was less special.

  “You could also build a top-of-the-line research facility here. Maybe get more funding. I could run it for you.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  “Really?”

  “Why not? The more we learn about how these earthen vessels work, the better, right?”

  His eyes brightened. “Yeah. Yeah, that could be amazing!” Now he was pacing, pointing down. “Right there, where the hospital was. Quarters next to it. Only open-minded researchers devoted to the Way. Physicists, neuroscientists, biologists, the whole lot. A center for spiritual awakening.” He spun to me. “What do you think?”

  I chuckled. “I think you’re excited.”

  “’Course, we’ll need more money. And security. A lot of security.”

  “Security? What for?”

  “For the other half of the world,” he said. “The ones who think you should burn for heresy.” He paused. “I shouldn’t say ‘the other half’ because it’s only a few, but the judgmental few make a lot of noise. They still think their outrage is a form of love. Security’s a must.”

  It was the first time I’d heard anything about any resistance to what I’d said, and for a moment the thought bothered me.

  But then I let it go. After all, who was I?

  I was my Father’s daughter. I didn’t have the slightest interest in defending what needed no defense, either ideologically or physically. At least that’s how I felt.

  “No security,” I said.
>
  “But of course you need security! The country’s falling apart out there. With the president’s impeachment and the collapsing economy, the nuts will come out of the woodwork, blaming it all on you. Not to mention religious zealots who took issue with the way you speak of Christ.”

  “Christ is love,” I said. “It’s foolishness to those who haven’t experienced that unconditional love themselves, so they get upset and justify their judgment by what they were taught Yeshua meant. It’s okay. They’re only trying their best.”

  “Still, as they say, prophets are always martyred.”

  “No security.” I had no concern for my life. Besides, in some ways I’d already lived two of them—one here and one in Other Earth.

  The thought set butterflies free in my belly. Good ones. Tomorrow was the Day of the Bride there. After I’d emerged from the lake, my dreaming had once again become linear. Every time I fell asleep here, I woke there, and vice versa, just like at the beginning.

  When I fell asleep tonight I would dream, and when I dreamed I would be on the cliffs overlooking the old Realm of Mystics. I still sometimes wondered if Other Earth was a real physical place or a metaphorical vision of this world. Did it matter?

  What did matter was what story of life I chose to live in every moment. Was I holding grievance or was I in love? Was I blinding myself to the world by judging myself and others?

  To what perception was I binding myself—the seen in polarity, or the unseen Inchristi?

  One thing was certain: the power of Christ made manifest was far, far greater than anyone, even the most devoted follower, could imagine. I had experienced it in both worlds. There, in a lake that shook me to the bone. Here, in the lake deep within me.

  Here, everyone was on the same journey that I, the 49th Mystic, had taken, and most were still just beginning to awaken to their new birth—a process that would probably include a great tribulation of some kind or another, both in the heart of each and in all the world. Religion formed in fear, regardless of its name, had blinded some as much as agnosticism had blinded others.

  There, all had risen as Mystics, and all were my friends.

  Which reminded me, I should find some close friends on Earth. I would, maybe here, in the very place I’d grown up.

  Karen could be one of those friends. But I’d have to visit her in prison.

  “It’ll be hard to secure proper funding without assurances of reasonable security,” Steve was saying.

  “Then we’ll have to do it without proper funding.” I looked up at him and grinned. “Vlad didn’t stand a chance against me. You think people with guns scare me?”

  His brow arched and he smiled. “Well, there is that.”

  “So we have a deal? Do you want to help me?”

  “Just like that?”

  I shrugged. “Why not?”

  He looked at the sinkhole that had become as much a part of his life as it had mine. “Yeah. Why not?”

  I grabbed his hand and pulled him over to a boulder. We sat down, overlooking Eden.

  “Okay. Tell me again how it could look.”

  MY EYES slowly opened as I pulled myself out of one world and entered another. On Earth, I had just fallen asleep in a hotel room in Salt Lake City after spending the day visiting Eden with Steve. We’d run around on the cliffs like children, spinning wild dreams of how we might rebuild.

  But I was in Other Earth now. I’d been up late, sitting around the fire with Jacob, Thomas, Samuel, and Talya, laughing at the antics of Paulus and Maya earlier in the day.

  Paulus, who was once known as Ba’al, changed his name when Talya told him about the ancient mystic whose life had been radically changed on a road to a place called Damascus. Like Ba’al, Paulus had been determined to slaughter those in the light.

  Now Paulus had taken to much mischief with Maya, the little Horde girl who’d spoken such truth to me when I was Horde. It seemed that Paulus didn’t yet know how to swim, and Maya was trying to teach him in the pool that Jacob had drowned in.

  “You have to move your arms, Paulus!” Maya cried, hopping around the bank as Paulus floundered.

  “I am moving my arms!”

  “Above the water, not under it! Like this!”

  “I will sink if I lift my arms!”

  Talya had curled up in a ball on the grass, howling with laughter, and the rest of us were laughing with him as much as at Paulus.

  Of all the Mystics, only Talya was still with us. And who was Talya, really? How could he know so much about Yeshua and Paulus? He finally told me.

  Talya was actually a young man in the deserts of northern Arabia in the year AD 43. He lived with his mother, Maviah, and her husband, Saba, who had both known Yeshua well. In fact, Talya was in that desert now, dreaming of this world when he slept there and dreaming of that ancient world when he slept here.

  Talya was a dreamer like me, you see?

  And he knew of Paulus not only from the many texts of his journeys and teachings, but because Paulus was with him in that Arabian desert now, and had been for several months. Paulus had gone into the desert following his encounter with the light on the road to Damascus. He’d been caught up in the heavens and seen the truth of being one with Christ, which he would later write extensively about in his letters.

  It was a beautiful mystery. The only one that finally mattered.

  Thomas’s wife, Chelise, had been killed in the Realm along with the others, but it wasn’t her time to pass on. The Mystics had always known they would be killed and they saw no problem with it. But it wasn’t time for Chelise yet.

  She would see her son Samuel reborn. And so she had.

  As had I. And I’d embraced him in a fierce love. Neither of us mentioned his betrayal—it no longer existed.

  None of us had any remorse. Nor could we court condemnation. Instead, we rested in a realm flowing with love.

  And what a staggering love it was.

  “Will it be like this on Earth?” I’d asked Talya.

  “Of course,” he said. “Though not necessarily the same physical form.”

  “It’ll happen so suddenly?”

  “A day is as a thousand years in the sight of the divine,” he replied. “Even now in that ancient world, Paulus truly expects Yeshua to return in his lifetime. Every generation does. We know from history that Paulus was wrong about this, but I let him think what he will. He doesn’t know that I dream of this world.”

  I’d never heard that about Paul the apostle. But it made sense.

  “As for the other world you live in,” he continued, “only know that as all surrender their small need for prophecy to follow a particular linear pattern based on man’s interpretation, they will make a thousand years only one day in the journey of their own hearts. Those prophecies are as much the story of each soul as the story of a species. Both are true, but this is the deeper truth. All face the antichrist in their own hearts. Metaphor, my dear. Metaphor is the finger that points to the truth beyond the earthen vessel’s mind.”

  Just like the journey I’d taken here in Other Earth, I thought.

  Other Earth, where I was now, having just awakened, suddenly aware that I was alone in a cave.

  I jerked up, gasping. The day was bright outside. It was late! I flung myself from the bedroll and sprinted to the opening, feet bare, hair tangled.

  The first thing I saw was Jacob, resting back on one elbow ten paces away, talking to Aaron, chewing on a piece of grass. He looked up at me and smiled.

  “She rises from her dreams.”

  The next thing I saw were the throngs of people lining the cliffs, some seated, some standing. They’d arrived yesterday and through the night, millions. All the inhabitants of Other Earth, gathered here for the Day of the Bride.

  Justin had never left and Justin had come and today Justin would come. This was the mystery of Justin. He wasn’t bound by time. Only metaphor could approximate his life beyond death.

  “She rises with a bird’s nest on h
er head,” a voice said behind me. Talya.

  “And dust on her dress.” Samuel, chuckling.

  I glanced down and noted my dusty white dress, and I brushed the cloth absently. Appearances meant little now, but in my excitement for this day, I’d slept in the white dress, thinking it a good choice for a celebration called the Day of the Bride.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Samuel and Talya sat on a boulder, legs dangling, both smiling at me.

  “Good morning, Samuel. Talya.”

  “Morning is long gone, my dear,” Talya said.

  But my mind was on the old Realm beyond the lip of the cliff. I ran over the grass and peered down.

  The meadows were filled with people, more than I could have imagined. There was nothing special about the Realm now—the whole world was decorated by colored forests and lush meadows, all unique and wonderful in their own ways. The lake’s light had swept over the earth like a tsunami, transforming every inch of desert, every structure it touched, every rock and tree.

  Every day new tales came, describing new discoveries. White sand that held its form no matter how you shaped it; blue fruits the size of cabbages, dripping with intoxicating juices; seas made of liquid crystal that could be breathed; magnificent creatures in those light-filled depths.

  All wonderful, but far more so the Bride. And the Bride was here.

  Here were those made in the likeness of Elyon, gathered for Justin. The land existed for them and was loved by them.

  I hurried back and settled next to Jacob. “You let me sleep.”

  “But of course.” He stroked my cheek. “Did you find Eden there?”

  “I did! Steve and I are going to rebuild it, just like I said.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “There’s an Eden there?” Aaron asked. “Like this one?”

  “Not quite.”

  I shared all my dreams with Jacob—they were just stories to me—but the concept was new to Aaron. It was interesting, living in two places. Here, I felt no worry, no fear, no annoyance of any kind. But in my dreams, I was still bound in the old polarity. Here, I felt only love. There, fear still tempted me on occasion until I forgave it. There, the world thought of me as either a prophet or a devil.