Mary: You have to love God.

Sharon: I love you, Mary.

Mary: That isn't enough.

Sharon: Baby, it's all I have. If life is a gift, if it really is a gift, and there really is a heaven...

Mary: There really is a heaven.

Sharon: Then why should I thank Him for the gift of so much suffering, Mary, so much pain on the earth that He created. Let me ask Him why.

Mary: Tell God you love Him.

Sharon: I can't.

Mary: If you don't tell God that you love Him, you can't go to heaven. Tell God that you love Him. Mommy!

Sharon: No.

(From the 1991 movie 'The Rapture' starring Mimi Rogers as Sharon.)

"Come on, Skylar! You can do it!" Wendy grasped Skylar by both arms, her eyes pleading. Zaki stood just behind her, looking on in concern. For more than nine hundred years, Zaki and Wendy had always been together, like two peas in a pod. All their Natural friends through the ages had speculated on what their relationship might have been had they been Natural rather than Glorified. Most surmised they would have fallen in love and married years ago.

Now on the eve of Skylar's hundredth birthday, they pleaded with their friend to give her life to Jesus.

Skylar just shook her head. "I can't!"

"Of course you can." Zaki's deeper voice spoke. "It's really simple. All you have to do is admit you're a sinner, believe Jesus died for you, and confess Him as savior. It's as easy as ABC!"

"But it isn't." Skylar felt tears forming in her eyes. "You say it's easy, but it really isn't! You have to not only accept that there are millions of good, decent Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, and atheists burning in hell right now because they didn't believe in Jesus, while a mass murderer can repent the night before his execution and make it into heaven, but you have to be glad it's that way!"

"Skylar, nobody is glad they're in hell," Wendy argued. "But it was their choice to make, and they made it. You can't blame God."

"But for even the worst person in the world, there was a limit to how much sin they committed," Skylar argued. "So why does hell have to go on forever?"

"God's ways are not our ways," said Zaki.

"Please, Skylar, this is your last chance!" Wendy begged. "If you don't do it tonight, you won't wake up tomorrow!"

Skylar just shook her head. She was afraid, certainly, yet at the same time, she realized an insincere commitment made solely out of fear wouldn't count.

She stayed awake as long as she could that night, eating spoonfuls of coffee right from the jar and washing them down with energy drinks. Her system became so overloaded with caffeine she began to shake, and her nerves felt like they were on edge.

I'm not going down without a fight, she told herself.

It must have been around midnight when she felt the first flame shoot through her body, and all of a sudden, she was on fire. She realized she was no longer in her room; rather, she'd passed into a place of complete darkness. She felt as if she were suffocating while every nerve in her body screamed in agony.

Then suddenly, it was over. There was no darkness, no heat, no pain. Just...emptiness.

She opened her eyes to find herself lying on a hard table beneath a bright light. A quick glance around told her she was in an examination room. Something inside her, a vague memory from long ago, told her she should be afraid, but strangely, all she felt was a mild curiosity.

"Welcome back." One of the two men dressed as doctors said. They stood at the foot of the table she lay on, looking important in their white coats with stethoscopes around their necks. They looked youngish, as did ninety percent of all doctors.

"Where am I?" asked Skylar. "What happened?"

"You passed over." The man who spoke was tall, with dark hair and eyebrows and a goatee. "We just brought you back."

The memory of Zaki's and Wendy's faces swam in front of her. It seemed an eternity since she'd last seen them, but what had happened in the interim?

"Why did you bring me back?" she asked.

"We need you," the second doctor said. "We have work for you to do."

"What kind of work?"

"Follow us."