Death

          This is it; I am dying. I feel all the strength and life ebb from my broken body. I’m trying to hold my eyes open and fight off the darkness that is threatening to overwhelm me. My skin grows cold as a chill takes over; I need more time; my body is slipping away. Fearfully I think what if I have made the wrong choice? What if there is a God?
          The quiet voice in the back of my mind speaks up and whispers that I should know better. “Of course there is no God,” it hisses. “Death is just death; it is nothing.”
          My heartbeat quickens as pain shoots through my body. I try with every fiber of my being to hold on, but I am slipping. Dark spots are momentarily dancing before my eyes before they overwhelm my vision.
          I feel nothing, and then an unknown presence surrounds me. My very being filled with fear not because of the unseen presence but because of something else that is quite near, or because of the absence of something that used to be quite near; something I had never really noticed before. I shiver and stiffen, then a brilliant light floods my eyes and I see the most wondrous being before me. On his right a younger man is seated, hovering nearby is an angel, and before Him lay an open book. I fall before Him, for in that moment I know that He is God.
          I uneasily watch Him leaf through the pages of His book, but He already knows what is written. Not once does He look at me; my body begins to shake as He lifts up His head.
          “Depart from me, I know you not.”
          His voice echoes in my ears. An absence envelops my spirit, “No,” I cry, “my Lord!” My eyes meet with the younger one, and I see the tears course down his face. My eyes fall to the marks on his hands and feet, and I know that this was the Jesus I had scorned. “No,” I cry in anguish as I am sent from the presence of the one and only God and into a dark land. I wept bitter tears, my sobs joining in with the cries of many.
          “To see God and be forever separated from His presence,” a voice wails.
          “To have not accepted Jesus’ sacrifice,” another cries.
          I scream, “What has happened, why am I here,” but in truth, I already know the answer.
          “The angel of death brought you here because you were not covered by the blood of Christ,” a beautiful being sneers as he looks me over. “But you know this. You finally saw the truth when my fetters were removed from your eyes.”
          In shock and astonishment, I exclaim, “The angel of death! Your fetters!” Instantly the thought of a dark hooded figure appears in my mind and vanishes with the knowledge that the angel of death was the one who was hovering near the Lord. I also now remember the moment when the scales fell from my eyes and I was filled with a new kind of knowing.
          He smirks at me half-heartedly in a somewhat self-satisfied way. “The fetters that I helped you fashion every day of your life to cover your eyes and ears, to blind you from the truth; for you see I am with Lucifer, the Great Deceiver.”
          I recoil in horror. “Is there no hope? Is there no way that we might have another chance to be with the King,” I shriek to the masses, already knowing that we all had missed our chance to choose Jesus as our Savior.
          “You made your choice.” the fallen angel spits out. “We have all made our choice.”