had the strangest
dream last night.
I rarely have dreams anymore. But when I do, they are epics that seem
to take all night. I wish I had a VCR in my head -- some of these dreams
would make good feature-length films. For example…
Last night, I had a dream about the end of the world.
Well, not exactly the end of the world, but close to it. It was actually
about the rapture.
For those of you not steeped in Christian terminology, the rapture is
the event when Christ, preceding the end-of-the-world events, takes all
of the living Christians up to heaven. All of those who are left will have
to deal with the Antichrist, plagues and wars, etc. This is the whole basis
of the Biblical book of Revelation, as well as the fictional "Left Behind"
series that is amazingly so popular now.
Anyway, to begin, myself and a bunch of other Christians were huddled
in a clothing store, of all places. I have no idea why it was a clothing
store -- maybe it was a subconscious realization of how much I hate clothes
shopping. But this evil guy was after us -- I don't know if it was some
kind of government official, or a demon, but I remember one person in our
group said that they thought it was Satan himself
Though we were in danger, we were sure that we would be OK -- you know,
that faith thing. And with the Satanesque guy bearing down on us, the coolest
thing happened.
We ran outside, and stairway appeared from out of nowhere, so high that
you couldn't even see the top of it. We climbed up the stairs, and found
ourselves in heaven. Except heaven didn't look like anything I've ever
read -- there were gently rolling hills, and lots of green, leafy forests,
and there was, most strangely, a road winding through the hills with cars
leisurely driving back and forth.
In other words, heaven looked an awful lot like Pennsylvania.
There was even a big parking garage, on the side of the road, that looked
a lot like Three Rivers Stadium. Seriously.
'm not sure why I'm
suddenly having dreams that concern Armageddon. It could be that my wife
is two or three books into "Left Behind", but I haven't read any of those
books. I have no desire to, either. I figure that, even if those events
do happen in my lifetime, I won't be here to see all of that occur anyway.
(Yes, I'm a premillennialist, if you want to look that up.)
Maybe it's because I've been trying to get to my own heaven of Pennsylvania,
but some kind of evil spirit is keeping me here.
Amazingly, I just happened to put the Tracy Chapman album on before
I wrote this, and the first song is called "Heaven's Here On Earth." I
don't quite agree with her sentiments, but when taking into account what
I've been writing about, it's striking:
Look around
Believe in what you see
The kingdom is at hand
The promised land is at your feet
We can and will become what we aspire to be
If Heaven's here on earth
If we have faith in humankind
And respect for what is earthly
And an unfaltering belief that truth is divinity
And heaven's here on earth....
