Poetry

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Jesus had stood outside His creation
and had viewed the whole span of time's perturbations.
The whole history of man before Him had lain,
with all of its struggles, and sorrows, and pain.
He had to the centermost moment now come,
that Adam's great failure might at last be undone.

Once, in the garden, a tree had been given
on which hung divine life, the first fruit of heaven.
The two had rejected the life-giving tree
for a tree whose fruit was death and misery.
Now here stood a tree of quite different appearance,
but its fruit, like the first tree, would make all the difference.

It stood at the center of all that would be:
the fulcrum of time, a rough wooden tree.
Like the tree man rejected, whence came the strife,
on this tree would hang God’s eternal life.
Jesus looked at the tree and heaved a great sigh,
for He knew that He, on that tree, must soon die.

The crowd that gathered seemed scarcely human,
full of rancor and wrath for an innocent victim.
All the sin of their lives they upon him now hurled.
He accepted each one and those of the whole world.
With cruel iron spikes they nailed Him to the tree
and lifted Him up for the whole world to see.

The pain was so great that His vision went black,
but in a tormented whirl it slowly came back.
Jesus looked down through the blood and the pain
upon those whose evil He now felt unrestrained.
He cried to the one whose compassion He knew
"Father forgive them, they know not what they do!"

"Fool!" cried a voice that was foul and fell,
a voice that Jesus knew all too well.
"Your death is at hand, it's too late to forgive.
Once you are dead, then death will live,
and these worthless humans whom you hoped to save
will all follow you right into your grave!"

"Yes,” he replied, “they will all this day die.
I die for them all, in my grave they will lie.
You have believed your own lies about death,
that it will be the end when I breathe my last breath.
You’ll think you have won when you seal my tomb,
but it will turn out to be not a grave, but a womb.

"I do not plan to stay long in the earth,
and when I come forth, it will be a new birth.
Not just for myself but for all Adam's race,
my grave will be the door to God's grace.
To those who receive my death as their own
I will give my new life as a gift from the throne."

Satan replied, "you can't win this game.
I see in the end that you are now quite insane.
You forget the enormous weight of their sin.
You can't carry it all and remain one with Him.
If you take all their sin it will drag you to Hell,
and the strength of those gates I know very well."

"You know sin's weight and the strength of Hell's gates,
but you don't know the strength of God's loving grace.
I'll take all their sin and I'll take it to hell.
As to which will be stronger, three days time will tell.
I will do what the Father has called me to do,
and in the end I believe that He will hold true."

Satan drew back to watch it all start
as the whole sky turned black, as black as his heart.
All the sin of the world was being drawn to that hill,
and Jesus took it all in as an act of His will.
He was soon overwhelmed by guilt and despair,
but still it kept coming through the sin-darkened air.

He who had known no sin all His life
was becoming the source of all sorrow and strife.
No other man could have paid such a price
to become one with all vile and vice.
No other man could have born such a weight:
the sum of all lies, all evil, all hate.

His face was disfigured by pain, blood, and worse,
for in His soul now resided the whole of man's curse.
He looked up toward a heaven that was silent and vacant
and cried "Father! Why have You now Me forsaken?"
Then He said "It is finished!" and the Lord of Life died;
and the women who watched fell prostrate and cried.

He fell through eternity into the abyss,
the one place in creation no good could exist.
In His bosom He carried all the sin of mankind
as He battled with death and left life behind.
He came to rest by a sea, dark, dead, and rotten,
where no joy is remembered, no sorrow forgotten.

He knew this was the place where all men would be
if they died in there sins as He died on that tree.
But He had taken all of their sin on the cross,
now He stood on the shore of infinite loss.
He took up His burden and with a great heave,
He cast all of Man's sin into the dark sea.

He turned and beheld them, a crowd so morose,
every face told a story of tragic pathos.
Here were the dead who before Him had died,
but it was also for them He had been crucified.
They were staring at something never seen in that place.
When they looked upon Jesus they saw joy in His face.

Jesus said "I have come to set you all free.
Your sins are forgiven if you will just follow me!"
At first they were puzzled by the words He had spoken;
then someone cried out "the curse has been broken!"
Soon the great joy they had seen on His face
washed over that crowd as Hell flooded with grace.

As the crowd gladly parted, Jesus walked to the gate,
a gate built to withstand all evil, all hate.
Satan had tried for untold generations,
through demonic forces and dark incantations,
to destroy those gates which he saw as a prison
so his kingdom could spread beyond that dark region.

Now Jesus stood in that infernal night,
not to let darkness out, but to let in the light.
The gates shook at His presence, for He brought from above
the one force that could break them: God's eternal love.
By the power of a perfect sacrificed lamb,
the gates fell to the ground as He shouted "I AM!"

His voice filled the chasm between Heaven and Hell
and echoed through time to the moment man fell.
It reached into the future, to all who’d believe him
to deliver from hell all who’d receive him.
He ascended from hell, the stone rolled from the grave,
and Jesus rose from the dead with all those he’d saved.



From “Within the Veil (Eternity Found)” by Van Burbach - Chapters 14-15

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