though he were talking about a good movie he’d seen. “But the men, they
had to fight. And Dad, I watched you. You have to fight too.”
Try hearing that and staying on the road. Suddenly, the sound of the tires
whirring on asphalt seemed unnaturally loud, a high whine.
And here was this issue of “heaven time” again. Before, Colton had
talked about my past, and he had seen “dead” people in the present. Now
he was saying that in the midst of all that, he had also been shown the
future. I wondered if those concepts—past, present, and future—were for
earth only. Maybe, in heaven, time isn’t linear.
But I had another, more pressing concern. “You said we’re fighting
monsters?”
“Yeah,” Colton said happily. “Like dragons and stuff.”
I’m not one of those preachers who camps out on end-times prophecy,
but now I remembered a particularly vivid section of Revelation:
In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and
death will flee from them. The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for
battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like
the faces of men. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’
teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their
wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had
tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men
five months.^1For centuries, theologians have mined these kinds of passages for
symbolism: maybe the combination of all those different body parts stood
for some kind of country, or each one stood for a kingdom of some sort.
Others have suggested that “breastplates of iron” indicate some kind of
modern military machine that John had no reference point to describe.
But maybe we sophisticated grown-ups have tried to make things more
complicated than they are. Maybe we are too educated, too “smart,” to
name these creatures in the simple language of a child: monsters.
“Um, Colton... what am I fighting the monsters with?” I was hoping for a
tank, maybe, or a missile launcher... I didn’t know, but something I could
use to fight from a distance.
Colton looked at me and smiled. “You either get a sword or a bow and