He is Alive!

(as the angels lingered in prolonged, tormented waiting . . . their Lord engaged in battle with the spirit of death himself . . . )

 

The shaking ended. Light did not return. The Archangel Michael felt himself disappearing into the black, blank void.

In the darkness there arose a cry. Its words were indiscernible, but it was an unmistakable cry of triumph!

“But who is victor?” Michael called aloud.

The cry of triumph, born in the bowels of the earth, had billowed its way across the earth and was now ascending heavenward.

“Such a cry will, of itself, distroy all! It is a sound unlike anything I have ever heard before.”

At that moment the deafening cry reached heaven’s open portal.

“The voice — who speaks? The victor — who?”

Then . . . light! Brighter than angels’ eyes have ever seen nor dreamed.

“That light, I know it. That voice, I know it, too! It is the voice of the Carpenter!

“The cry is His!

” O Lord of all, Your thundering is so great I cannot understand Your words.”

Then it came, riping its way into the vaults of heaven.

 

“I AM VICTOR OVER DEATH!”

 

Blinded in light, deafened by a shout of ultimate victory, there was only one thing for Michael to do, one place for him to be. The tomb!

At a speed never before achieved by any angel, Michael joined an innumerable throng of angels who were encircling the tomb even as the cry of victory continued its triumphant proclamation across the universe.

What ensued was shouting so tumultuous that, in the ages that followed, it was rumored among angels that even the voice of the cherubim and seraphim could be heard joining in the exaltation. While a vacant heaven was bathed in the healing light of glory, on earth the citizens of heaven raised praises to their Lord in a bedlam of chaotic joy!

“Death is dead. That serpent Lucifer has lost his fiendish friend,” announced Gabriel. “Victory won within the bowels of the earth is about to be revealed within the tomb!”

[from The Triumph by Gene Edwards]