Witness

Revelation 11:3, “And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”

I had a dream that changed my life.  Many times my dreams are inspiring, frightening, confusing or fascinating.  I don’t claim many of them to be divine messages or prophetic.  This one is different.  This one shook me to the bone.  I remember every detail as vivid and as detailed as my deepest, dearest memory.  I will remember every sensation and moment.  And more than anything I will remember the turbulent feeling of what it feels like to die.

About a year and a half ago I went to sleep on a cold Rochester night.  Within the watches of that night I was transported to what I felt was a beautifully grand place.  It was a wide, spacious room as majestic as the most epic cathedral.  Up front where the pulpit stood were great murals depicting the crucifixion of Christ in renaissance fashion.  I remember the feeling of sun streaming in from the western side through the glorious stain-glass windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling and from wall to wall.  It was one of those mid-morning sunlights that stream in on an angle and spotlight all the motes of dust doing their dance through the air.  I remember basking in it’s warmth and remembering it a such a contrast to the dark, unending winter we were having.  The images glowing through the stain-glass were of cosmic origins; galaxies and stars, meteorites and planets.  I felt it depicted this place not as a house of any single Catholic church, but rather the house of God’s creation.

I remember wanting to look more in depth and in awe at the beauty of the stained glass universe, but my attention was called elsewhere.  I looked around and saw row after row after row of seats.  They were theater seats like in a grand old movie house.  Everyone of them empty except for two taken in the back by myself and a dear friend of mine.  We sat beside each other wordlessly yet delighting in the place we were assigned.  We sat as we were given one single instruction.  “Watch and witness”.

So I watched.  So I witnessed.

The sense that it was a grand theatric presentation designed to depict a cosmic play was greatly impressed on me.  It reminded my of a play within a play, such Hamlet’s attempt to capture the king’s conscious. However this play wasn’t designed for my conscious, but simply for us to watch and for us to witness.

Up front before the alter there was a great dragon.  This dragon was not of flesh and fire, but rather of fabric and craft.  It was a dragon one would see on the streets of Chinatown during a Chinese New Years parade.  It danced and spun, and ebbed and flowed around the front of this cathedral in front of the alter as if in distain to the place of holiness that was meant for it.  It was indifferent and ill-reverant.

As I watched it dance I was enamored by it near hypnotic beauty.  It’s fierce head bobbed back and forth and waves of movement flowed down it’s spine as it seemingly floated to a unheard beat.  I watched further and began to see an interesting thing.  It has scales that shone in the unlit veranda of the alter.  On one side it was a jet black as dark as sin, and on the other a dazzling light.  “This is trying to depict the cosmic battle between what is good and what is evil” I spoke to myself and felt my fellow witness concur.  As we watched, the scales would wave back and forth, up and down the great dragons spine; at first being a field of pure white and then a plane of deepest black and then fighting as waves against each other for purchase.  It was like it was trapped in a endless battle as it floated through this cosmic theater.

It was then that I first noticed the “actors”.  As the fabric of the great dragon bobbed back and forth, and the scales displayed it’s loyalty first to the good and then to the evil in a continual dual, the bottom of the would-be creature displayed legs of a multitude of beings.  It displayed their legs but not their feet, of which they had none.  They floated as spiritual beings up and down the length of the dragon as it literally floated around the stage.  What first stood out to me was the feeling of a great deception.  These entities (for I was convinced they were not and had never been human) controlled not only the hypnotic movement of the monster, but the battle between what was symbolic of both the good and the evil.  They were the same actors working for the same purpose.  This sent a chill up my back and I wanted to yell out that it was not as it seemed.  It was a great deception.  But I never had the chance.  Act one had finished and Act two was about to begin.

The room grew ominous.  The dragon kept dancing, but no longer was there a sense of distanced observation.  The great theater was coming to us.  Gone was the beauty of a splendid creation and witnessing of a marred human history.  Gone was the sense of being apart of this as only watchers.  That is the difference between being an observer and being a witness.  A witness is part of the story.

Behind us floated an ominous being.  He was the one who presided over every nightmare I have ever had.  He was the eternal stranger.  He was the hater of our souls; a being of proud rebellion and diseased thought.  We sat glued to our chairs as he wandered back and forth like a lion seeking whom he shall devour.  We sat as he sized up his prey.  Although I didn’t turn my head, I knew not only who he was but what costume he wore.  He wore the robe and sickle of the grim reaper, but this wasn’t death incarnate.  This was the personality of Lucifer.  It was clear he wanted us as his prey, but not for our own sake.  It was the part he played in this theater; he was the antagonist set to steal from the Creator that which He loved.  It was this twisted beings obsession.

Yet in this dark motif, I felt no fear.  I felt the ominousness of the situation, but it was simply something else I was asked to witness.  So I sat patiently and waited for the scene’s climax to reveal itself.

That is when he struck.  Like a cobra his long nailed fingers reached into my back and grasped ahold of the very breath in my lungs.  I will never forget the feeling both unworldly and perverse as my very spirit depicted my breath was pulled out of my lungs like a thread through my back and out of my body.  It was smooth and fast and rancid.

In an instant, I was dead.

However death was not the end.  For a moment I saw a different perspective of the great theater hall as the cosmic deception continued it’s perverse dance upfront.  I saw the triumphant face of the enemy of our souls as he claimed victory over this witness and I saw my own body collapse into it’s seat in this great cathedral…

and then, in a heartbeat it faded, and I was in another place.   Act two was complete, and the final Act was commencing.

Around me, close on every side were streams of curtains, silk and of an luminous ivory beige that were cascading in an unfelt wind.  It was beautiful and curious as well as claustrophobic.  I was convinced it was symbolic of a spiritual place.  In an instant I had been plucked from this world into the next and the only feeling I had was anger at a great injustice that had just been done.  My only thought was this…

“He cheated!”

“Cheating and lies are what he does.” came the voice of my divine defender.  My anger subsided as I knew that I continued to be in the hands and will of a loving God. This was yet part of that which I was to witness.  The great deceiver was not my battle to be fought, this I was reassured.  His fate was already confirmed and his time in that theater was numbered.  He would dance his deceptive dance and seek out those he would seek to destroy during his allotted time, but his victory was lost to him, and his bill would soon come due.  He would rage, but he had already been defeated.  He would use death as his weapon, but death itself was defeated.

This was never more evident to me as I stood in that room as the silk screens danced and flowed peacefully around me.  My anger melted away and my peace in the presence of my eternal friend flooded my being.

“Your time as a witness is concluded.  The theater has ended.  Now you may choose.”

“What are my choices?”

“To go on, or to return.  Either way, I will be with you.”

I choose to return.

And my eyes opened.  I lay in my bed on a winter morning in Rochester as the sun streamed into the window of a brand new day.  I noticed the beams of sunlight coming through the window spotlight all the motes of dust doing their dance through the air.  I breathed in deep honestly not knowing if I had been dreaming and simply awoke, or was literally returned from the dead.  It has been so real and so present and Spirit of God remained thick like the perfume from an unseen censer.

I felt like Christian as he left the house of the Interpreter in Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.  The message that it left me was as evidently explained to me as the symbolic play unfolded.  I re-read through the scene from the book of Revelation that spoke of the two witnesses, which this was clearly a reference (Revelation 11).  No, of course I do not claim that it was a calling to be one of those divine servants that will play such a crucial role in the end of days, but it was a calling none-the-less to the church of this age.  You see, just as the Anti-Christ will be ushered into his dark role by the spirit of many anti-Christs, so must the two witnesses be ushered into a uncompromising obedience by the Church willing to stand up in times of trial to be a witness.   The world, the flesh and the devil will continue to glamor through it’s dance of “good verses evil” that is really just two sides of the same lie.  The enemy of our souls will continue to roam to and fro in search of who he may devour.  The church must not be caught up in such things.  We must continue to follow our King from a different kingdom to proclaim the message of Christ, and that message is, “the Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

So Church, here is the warning from my dream, for you to take or leave… the great play progresses towards it climax and this world seeks to enamor you.  Your calling is not to be a comfortable bystander, nor a conscientious objector.  Yours is not just to observe. Yours is not to either fear or compromise to an earthly king, or kingdom.  Do not be enticed or bound in their system.  You have a heavenly calling.   Don’t be chained by your wallet, or your fears or even your comfortable life.  In the power of the Spirit, proclaim the good news to the poor.  Proclaim freedom for the prisoner and recovery of sight for the blind.  Set the oppressed free and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

It’s still the year of the Lord’s favor, but that will one day, perhaps soon, become the Day of the Lord.  Work while the sun shines.

Be a witness.