CHAPTER 47

I awoke suddenly (or so I thought).

I looked all around me in disoriented confusion as I sat up in bed. I was not in the Temporary Throne or in Heaven. No sign of Joseph and his brothers, either.

No longer was I in the presence of the LORD. I felt an imposing anxiousness of fear rolling over the place where I lay. (It was not my room.) I began to quiver with fear, and then shake with coldness as if I lay in the middle of a night-mare and could not wake up. I wanted to cry out to God, but could not.

I closed my eyes (for I could not see anyway) and I began to listen to my most unfamiliar surroundings.

Was I in a cave? An unfamiliar house? A grave? (“Lord, please don’t let this be a casket,” I thought with great fear.)

Fear! I had been in great awe in the presence of the LORD; but never in fear. (The dream must be over; but what is this horrible nightmare?)

I heard from a great distance a muffled sound of wailing voices – crying and crying out, shouting in anguish and seemingly loud whispers of the weakest of pleas. What was this? Where was I?

I could smell something, too – an unfamiliar far-off stench, a choking reminder of the most unpleasant things from stagnant seashore and pungent pollution from the mills from when I once held my breath until I drove by… What was it?

A chilling memory of black and white photos came to mind as I thought of opening a steel garbage can not knowing what to see and smell inside.

It was Auschwitz! It was carcass upon carcass.

I screamed at the sight and sound and smell of death. I did not wake up.

To be continued…

A Temporary Throne is an original work of Roger Harned,
© Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved by the author.