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The Maze - Sixteen joy, and his life’s path seemed laid out before him. All he had to do was follow it. But the path, as the Bible warns, is narrow, and the way is hard. Whatever was directing his journey had still more sur- prises in store. Driving home alone late one night after attending a study session, Ted experienced a dramatic shift in both time and space, with disturbing consequences. As he drove down the freeway, he suddenly began to lose all his energy. He had not been sick before, but now he was feeling dizzy and lighthead- ed, and he panicked, afraid he would pass out and have a wreck. The freeway was crowded with traffic, but Ted was so disoriented that he couldn’t keep his eyes open. Then he com- pletely lost consciousness. When he awoke, he was slumped in the seat. The car was still moving forward, but his hands weren’t on the steering wheel. Ted grabbed the wheel in fright and tried to shake off his dizziness, looking around in amazement that his car was still on the pavement. When he realized where he was-or rather, where he was not-he was even more shocked. At the moment of losing consciousness, Ted was near the airport, but now he was at least ten miles farther down the freeway. And he had no memory of driving that stretch of road. He couldn’t understand why the car hadn’t wrecked or why his hands weren’t on the wheel when he regained con- sciousness. Sweating, nauseated, and still very weak, Ted pulled off the freeway into a convenience store parking lot. For a few moments he sat shakily in the car, hoping the spell would pass. His stomach was churning, and he was desperately thirsty, so at last he went into the store for a drink before try- ing to drive the rest of the way home. “T could have died,” he told Marie the next day, “I should have died. And I don’t know why I didn’t. How on earth could my car have stayed on the road like that? I was ten miles away from where I passed out!” Just thinking about what might have happened brought back the fear and the shaky feeling he had felt that night. And he was still weak and nauseated. Masquerade of Angels 152 The Maze - Sixteen “Honey, I don’t know what to tell you,” Marie said. “You’ve been through things I can’t even begin to explain. All these new things in your life, and new spirits, must have been working overtime on you.” “Are you really sure it’s the spirits messing with me?” Ted asked dubiously. “T’m not sure of anything,” Marie admitted, “but what else could it be?” Ted was at a loss to understand. When his health improved he went back to his usual routine, meeting weekly with the study group. Together they continued to meditate and receive psychic messages, but now, after the incident on the freeway, there was an entirely new element in Ted’s read- ings. He began to see visions, different from anything the spir- its had shown him before. In the past, he had been given messages for specific people, and long before that he had dreamed of disasters and deaths affecting people connected with his family, but now he got visions of widespread destruction. The first time it happened, Ted felt that he was seeing up into the heavens, where a multitude of people were gathered. And coming through the throng was a person that seemed to be Jesus. A great stairway opened up from the heavens and reached down to the earth. Jesus came to the stairway and began his descent, with the crowd of people following after him. When Jesus reached the earth and began to walk upon it, Ted saw that the land was burned and scorched, as if bombs had exploded and destroyed the terrain. Fire raged all across the land. But as Jesus passed through it, everything behind him was transformed back to its normal state, green and beautiful, with birds and butterflies in abundance. Ted had no idea what the vision was trying to tell him. The images of destruction were profoundly disturbing, yet he didn’t recognize what part of the earth he had seen. And he didn’t know if the vision was to be understood literally or symbolically, for it was unlike all the other visions the spirits had shown him. Masquerade of Angels 153