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In a world where terrorist attacks lead to government crackdowns on religious freedom, Matthew Light stands firm in his faith. With a powerful terrorist organization rising against them and the public opinion quickly turning, Matthew's faith is tested on every level as he and his family rebuild their church - and their lives.
Will the Light family be able to withstand the enemy's attacks and rebuild their church, or will they be swept away in the tide of religious persecution? Follow Matthew Light and his family in this gripping story of survival and faith.
If you enjoyed the suspense and action of This Present Darkness, you'll love the Light family as they fight for their faith in Light of the World. Buy now before the price changes!
What readers are saying about the series:
"This story had what looked like magic, but it really is the hand of God."
"A glimpse into the supernatural realm that a true believing family faces."
"Every chapter made me want to keep reading and loved the ending!"
"This is a fantastic book!"
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Enjoy a sample of Light of the World!
Chapter 1 - Suffocating Stars
The forest swayed in the gentle breeze. Matthew looked up as the bright star light flickered through the canopy. He focused on the light. Each twinkling star was like its own lighthouse, drawing in his gaze.
As he stared, trees disappeared, as if stepping aside to give him a better view of sky above. The bright lights pierced the black void.
But the emptiness of space wasn’t a void. Matthew looked up, curious. To his amazement, the darkness remained, but he felt a difference. A new pulse from the horizon creeping into view. The former void of space was no longer black because of a lack of light, but a consumption of it. As if a black hole broke free of its circular confines and spread like an ink, clouding the clean water of the night sky.
At first, the new darkness weaved between the shimmering stars like shadows filling darkened corners of a room. But as it encircled a star, it slowly pressed into it from all sides. Each surrounded star slowly faded as its light fought the shadow. Matthew looked on as the new darkness pressed on, spreading across the sky. The unrelenting contagion took over the sky, one star at a time. It was patient, as if enjoying the silent penetration and suffocation.
Soon there was more darkness than light as the blanket pulled over the visible universe.
Matthew brought his eyes back to Earth. The forest that had once surrounded him now faded away, one tree at a time. Each tree withering to a twig before falling into dust. He noticed the fading trees matched the stars. As the darkness strangled the life of each star, one-by-one, a matching tree on the Earth lost its life. Matthew spun, looking around himself. He now stood in the middle of a barren plain. A circle of empty ground where there were once trees continued to expand around him. Moments ago he felt the cool breeze, heard it rustle lush green leaves, but now the air had a rotten, sulfur-like smell as it blew away the black ash of the withering trees.
He turned his attention back to the sky. The new darkness was covering the last of the stars. The bright night sky was gone, the blanket of hungry darkness now fully pulled over.
Matthew stood in the silent, pitch-black night. He turned, looking in all directions for a sign of life, but nothing.
There was no light.
He stood alone in the silent darkness.
Then, a noise.
A faint rumble in the distance grew, gradually turning into a roar. It was raging rapids all around him, a deafening noise of standing in the middle of a powerful waterfall. Then, in the pitch-black night, he felt it before he saw it. The roaring water hit him, shoving him off his feet.
He didn’t need to see it to know what it was. He’d seen this before. The sea of darkness from his vision. The same sea of darkness that haunted, yet encouraged, his grandfather, Isaiah.
But now, there was no floating Bible. No family waiting. No safety from the rising black waters at his waist as he tried regaining his footing.
Waves erupted from the water, like geysers to the heavens, and came at him from all sides. First, from below, hitting his chest. Then, from behind, then the side, crashing down. His feet skidded on the wet ground below, struggling for balance, but with every inch of success, the waves seemed to grow stronger, larger.
They crashed down on him, then countered with an uppercut. Like giant arms from an unseen bully, they pushed his head down, smacked his body left and right. It toyed with him as the pressure built and the waters rose.
The suffocated stars flashed in his mind. The darkness slowly surrounded them, gradually squeezing the life away.
The sea of darkness kept rising. He felt three hundred and sixty degrees of pressure crushing him.
Then, amid the struggle, he felt something in his right front pocket.
The light from the artifact shone through his jeans pocket, like a seam of perfect light, the small piece of the Ark of the Covenant, making its presence known.
Soon, he felt a second piece in his left pocket.
Then another in his back right pocket. And yet another in his back left pocket.
Each pocket shone brightly, but Matthew still couldn’t breathe. The water tossed him left and right, pummeling him in the vicious darkness.
And then, without knowing why, he felt himself gather each piece and bring his hands together, squeezing them tight.
In an instant, the pieces melded together, and he held on to them for dear life.
A split second after he gripped the Ark, as if he squeezed a trigger, a brilliant light flashed in the sky. Like shot from a cannon, a new star flew across the sky. It was bigger and brighter than any of the previous stars.
Through the chaos of the waters, Matthew looked up and watched it soar up from the horizon toward the highest point in the sky.
As it reached its zenith like a firework, it erupted in a dazzling explosion of white light. But the center point didn’t fade as the light expanded. It grew stronger.
In what seemed like a millisecond to Matthew, the explosion brought the former stars back to life–a flame thrower reigniting candles. As the sky lit up, the water that suffocated Matthew evaporated. Matthew stood, still holding his small piece of the Ark as the barren ground turned green and trees sprouted, shooting up in a burst of life.
Then it was over. Everything was back, brighter than before.
But as the immediate growth and revival ended, so did Matthew’s life.
He lay clutching the Ark.
Dead.
That is when Jeremiah woke up.
His dream ended as the world renewed, life restored, but his best friend died.
Ever since J accepted and felt God enter his heart, ever since he laid his hands on two of his dying friends, bringing them back to life, and ever since he walked through a door of light that transported him across the globe, he stopped dreaming of the train and being devoured by a dragon.
His new nightly dream saw the darkness through Matthew’s eyes. As if J were Matthew, he felt the fear of the blackness eating the stars in the sky and the intense pressure of the water crushing him.
And every night, the dream ended the same way, with Matthew’s death.
Matthew pulled his truck into the garage and took a deep breath. The girls weren’t running out to meet him. He had an extra second to clear his mind before going in. They were most likely watching a movie or playing in the backyard, and whichever one, Matthew was thankful.
As he moved around his truck, he picked up the small recycling bin that overflowed with soda water cans and cardboard boxes and took it to the side of the house. Breaking down the boxes and dumping the cans into the larger recycling bin designed for city pickup, he heard the girls laughing over the tall shadowbox fence. Their laughter put a smile on his face and shifted his thoughts away from the exhausting work day.
Moving through the garage, he put back the small bin and took out his lunchbox and laptop bag from the passenger side of the truck. Sliding the strap over his shoulders, he felt the warm sensation where the Bible inside his bag brushed against his hip. The Bible, containing the hidden piece of the Ark of the Covenant, went with him everywhere.
Before entering the house, he walked to the end of the driveway and checked the mail. After flipping through the advertisements and a medical bill, he found a card from Aunt Millie, the church accountant. The smiley face stickers and crayon unicorns covering the envelope put another smile on Matthew’s face, just like the girls’ laughter.
This wasn’t a formal church letter, such as their giving tax statement for the year. This letter was from his oldest daughter’s, Beth’s, newest pen pal. For a school assignment, Beth had written to her Grandma Mary, Matthew’s mother, starting a regular exchange of letters. A series of letters between the two gave Beth a fun way to practice writing. Soon, Mary recruited Aunt Millie to join the conversation.
Something shot across Matthew’s vision and he looked up from the colorful envelope. Trees blew in the wind. Down the street, a couple walked two dogs. Then Matthew saw what caught his attention: a car roughly one hundred feet away was at a stop sign, now beginning to drive again. A giant black shadow moved with the car. Its edges flowed like dark waves, an opaque water moving as if part of the car. Matthew knew the shadowy figure wasn’t with the car, but attached to the driver inside.
The car passed out of sight. Matthew stood looking down the street, then turned to walk up the driveway and into the house.
Looking through the living room windows, he watched his two daughters, Beth and Lyn, run barefoot in the yard. Their joyous play pulled him like a magnet. Normally, seeing their dirt-black feet made him cringe. It usually meant a new, freshly dug hole was somewhere in the yard that he’d have to refill. Every time he mowed the grass, he’d notice the dirt patch until the grass regrew. But seeing their smiles quickly made his thoughts of a perfect lawn melt away. He gave their cat, Porkchop, a scratch behind the ear as he napped on the top of the couch and went to the door.
“Mmmmm, I smell mud pies,” Matthew called out as he slid open the sliding glass door.
“Daddy!” Both girls called in unison as they ran up to hug him.
“Wait, I don’t see any! Did your mom already eat them all?” Matthew asked. He flashed a look at Liz. She gave a mock laughing expression without looking up from her laptop.
Make-believe mud pies were their current favorite game. It drove Matthew nuts, repeatedly filling the holes and trying to get the girls to the bathroom without leaving clumps of dirt on the floor and black smears on the white walls. To Matthew’s surprise, Liz grew used to the dirt-filled time out back, and even encouraged the free, unstructured play.
“Mud pies have been canceled.” Beth said matter-of-factly.
“WHAT?” Matthew exaggerated. “You mean no watery hole that you splash in and scoop out mud? No, no, no!”
“Pink unicorns don’t eat mud,” Lyn said as she put her index finger on her head like a horn and ran towards her sister.
“How was your day, hun?” Liz called out as she typed. She was propped on her elbows, laying on a soft gray blanket in the shade of an oak tree, working on her latest fashion blog post.
“It was alright.” Matthew replied, his voice flat. “Better now.”
Liz stopped typing and looked up at him. “Again?”
Matthew nodded. “All day. And on the way home. And again, at the end of the road just now.”
“You can’t stay quiet on this,” Liz said, closing her laptop.
“Come on, Dad!” Lyn pulled at Matthew’s arm. “It’s freeze things!”
“Freeze tag unicorn.” The older Beth corrected.
“Freeze things!” Lyn belted.
“Freeze tag, but you have to run like a unicorn.” Beth explained.
“How does that work?” Matthew asked.
“Like this!” Beth said as the two girls bent down and took off on all fours, mimicking a horse’s neigh as they trotted in circles.
Matthew laughed and shook his head.
“Well, how can I say no to that?” He said as he unbuttoned his dress shirt and kicked off his shiny black shoes.
“I don’t like this, hun,” Liz said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t either,” he replied softly, “but what can I do? They’re everywhere and it’s like they know I see them. Every time I watch them, someone looks at me like I’m crazy. I’ve been avoiding our staff meetings lately, and that seems to only add more work from all the follow-ups.”
“Talk to your father, please? Promise me you will.” She had her laptop under one arm and the blanket over her shoulder as she moved into the house. “I’ll get dinner going.”
As Liz slid the door closed, Matthew looked through the door and towards the front of his house. Through a window he could see down the road. The little red dot of a stop sign seemed to wink at him from the distance, like a beacon across dark waters.
He pulled his eyes away from the stop sign as Beth slammed into him with a giggle.
“You’re frozen!” She screamed before running away. The two girls laughed.
“Unfreeze me!” he called to Lyn.
“No!” she cried out, laughing as she followed her sister.
“You can’t talk! You’re frozen!” Beth laughed.
Matthew stood silent, holding back his smile and trying to push down the thoughts of the demons he now saw regularly. They loomed in and out of his vision ever since the shadow above Nancy Pawly, the one that came out in the courthouse, put him in the hospital last spring. He could still see the menacing red eyes of that overwhelming shadow when he thought of it. That first shadow he saw differed from the others he saw day-to-day. The daily ones varied in size and shape, and seemed weaker than the large red-eyed monster, but all contained an endless black color and feeling of cold, as if void of life and warmth.
Lyn ran by and smacked his leg, unfreezing him.
“Yes!” he cried out.
He took off and spent the next thirty minutes forgetting about the pressures of work, his supernatural visions, and the Ark he carried daily to keep the demons at bay. He enjoyed his time as a father, running around on all fours, neighing like a horse in socks, slacks, and an undershirt. The game changed occasionally and sometimes Matthew turned into an imaginary zombie, picking the girls up as he ran by and pretending to suck their brains out of their ears. The girls happily accepted the transformation. They laughed when they lost their brains, as long as the act resembled kissing the side of their face repeatedly.
Soon, the trio sat in the shade of the back patio.
“I’m going to have to carry you two to the bathtub.” Matthew said as he looked at the girls’ dirt covered feet.
“One more game?” Beth cried.
Matthew shook his head as Liz opened the sliding door behind him.
“Time for din–” He started asking before seeing Liz held out his phone.
“It’s J. He’s called twice already,” she said.
“One more game ladies, then I’ll call you in,” Matthew said as the girls cheered and ran off into the yard. Lyn stomped in a shallow puddle, a former mud pie bakery where the girls had the hose pouring into a newly dug hole. He pulled the phone to his ear as he rolled his eyes, seeing mud splash up on her orange dress.
“You can’t cancel a good mud pie,” Matthew said into the phone.
“What?” J responded.
“Nothing, just with the girls. What’s up?”
“It’s them.” J said.
Matthew’s eyes widened.
“And they’ve hit the US.”