“Oh, I do believe it happens. Have you heard of D. L. Moody?”
“Vaguely.”
“He was an evangelist in the 1800s. The Billy Graham of his day. A great man of God. He had two little grandchildren who died. One was a boy named Dwight, who died in infancy. The other was a little girl, Irene, who was three years old or so. Their father was Moody’s son, Will.”
Millie listened attentively, as if receiving the facts from a new case to be considered.
“When Moody was on his deathbed, his son, Will, heard him mutter, ‘Earth recedes, heaven opens before me.’ Then he looked at Will and said, ‘It is beautiful. God is calling me and I must go. Don’t call me back.’ ”
The hum of the car was smooth and calm, like they were riding on air. The stars were particularly bright in the desert sky.
“Moody’s wife was summoned,” Holden said. “Moody was able to tell her she had been a good, dear wife. And then he seemed to fall into unconsciousness again, but as he did he whispered, ‘No pain, no valley. It is bliss.’ ”
“Who recorded all this?” Millie could not help delving into issues such as witness accounts.
“Several family members,” Holden said, “most notably his wife. In fact, she set down the facts the same day they happened. Moody came out of sleep and saw the people around him. And then he looked at them and said: ‘What does it all mean? I must have had a trance. I went to the gate of heaven. It was so wonderful. I saw the children!’ ”
“Children?”
“Irene and Dwight. He told Will he saw them in heaven. Will began to cry. Moody comforted him. Will said he wished he could go to heaven to be with his children. And Moody told him, ‘No. Your work is before you.’ A short time later, D. L. Moody died.”
Millie looked at the headlights, illuminating just enough of the highway to see a short way ahead, but no more. “May I ask another question?” she said.
“Of course,” said Holden.
“What do you make of the experiences of the other sort?”
“You mean a vision of hell?”
“Are there many of those?”
“Oh, yes. Experiences of demons and fire and things like that.”
“So what do you think?”
“Same as with the white light. I believe that there is such a place as hell, though I don’t know the exact nature of it. I do believe it is separation from God, and some people who have almost died have been given the gift of seeing how horrible it will be.”
“Gift?”
“Sure. The gift of time. In most cases these people become believers in God. I think God is in control. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that God rules over everything, including death and hell.”
Millie tried to make sense of that, tried to allow for a new reality, but her mind simply did not allow it. It was too big a jump.
“Do you want to tell me about your death experience now?” Jack Holden asked.
Millie’s chest tightened. “Am I that transparent?”
“You don’t have to.”
Millie felt that if she did, she would be opening a door she would rather keep closed. But another part of her prodded her on. If she didn’t say something now, she might never have the courage to do it.
“I’m claiming clergy privilege now,” she said.
“I consider all of our conversations privileged,” Holden said.
She knew she could trust him. “I did have a vision,” she said. “It was like a very vivid nightmare. It was not the good kind of vision, but the bad kind.” She described in detail what she had seen.
When she finished, Holden was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I have no reason to doubt that what you experienced was real, and that when you called out to God to help you, it was a real prayer. A prayer that was answered.”
“But people in distress are bound to call on God. It’s a reaction.”
“God does not turn a deaf ear just because it’s a reaction.”
“There is one other thing,” Millie said, looking out into the desert darkness. “This vision, if that’s what it was, happened at exactly the time you and my mother were praying for me. Exactly the same time.”
Jack Holden’s face, even in the darkness, seemed to open up with intense curiosity. “How do you know?”
“The doctor told me the time at which I flatlined. Then Mom told me what time it was when you were praying. Accounting for the time difference, it was on target.”
“Well now.”
The car hummed along in silence for a while. Exactly what she needed then, silence. Millie had unloaded more of her inner life in the last few minutes than she had in the last ten years.
Then Holden said, “For a long time I’ve felt that God is weaving a pattern for something big.”
“What do you mean by weaving?”
“There’s a verse in the Bible,” Holden said. “Romans 8:28. I’ve memorized it in several translations, but my favorite is from a man named J. B. Phillips. His version goes like this: ‘We know that to those who love God, who are called according to his plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.’ I always liked that. God weaving a pattern. We can’t see the final product from here. But God can.”
“All right,” Millie said. “I’ll bite. What’s this pattern?”
“I’ll be blunt here. I think our country has fallen into spiritual darkness over the last fifty years. A large part of that has to do with our courts, I’m sorry to say. Do you want me to continue?”
Bristling, Millie said, “Go ahead.”
“You know, of course, that it was Justice William O. Douglas who wrote, in a 1952 opinion, that we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”
Millie knew that to be true.
“But the courts have systematically removed that central tenet from public life. It is the crux of the Declaration of Independence. This country was founded on the belief that our rights come from the Creator.”
This was a familiar argument, though Millie had not heard it for some time. “What Jefferson meant by that has long been debated.”
“Debated by those who don’t wish to acknowledge its truth,” Holden said. “And when people say, well, it’s just an appeal to reason in deistic terms, that betrays an ignorance of the rest of the document.”
“How so?”
“In the last paragraph, Jefferson says America is appealing its cause to the Supreme Judge of the world. Capital S, capital J. And he asserts in the last line that the country is relying on the protection of Divine Providence. Capital D, capital P. No one then, absolutely no one, could have doubted that this was the God of the Bible. Now fast forward to 1980, and the Court holds that public schools cannot post the Ten Commandments. Does that make sense?”
“The development of Establishment Clause jurisprudence, as you know – ”
“Forget the legal jargon. Does it make sense?”
