Prodigal: Nice light!
Me: Yes, it is just right.
This is from Imagine Heaven by John Burke
Today I met God,” whispered four-year-old Akiane to her mother.
“What is God?” asked her mother, Foreli, who was raised as an atheist in Lithuania.
“God is light–warm and good. It knows everything and talks with me. It is my parent.”
The family had never talked religion, never gone to church, they didn’t even own a TV, and so this shocked Foreli. “Who is your God?” questioned her mother.
“I cannot tell you.”
“Me? You cannot tell your own mom?”
“The Light told me not to.” Little Akiane held firm. “You won’t understand.”
About the same time Akiane claimed to have visits with God, she began to draw. But her drawings at age four or five surpassed high school-level art students-it seemed miraculous. After drawing “her angel,” she explained, “She doesn’t smile in my picture, because paper is not white enough to show how white her teeth are, and I wanted to show how she talks to me with her eyes (through her thoughts). You see, where God takes me, He teaches me how to draw.”
Akiane claimed God took her to Heaven where she saw a “house of light with walls like glass” where God lives, a place of beautiful grass, trees, plants, and fruit. She claimed God gave her fruit in Heaven: “It taste good, better than anything you’ve ever tasted. The Light gives me fruit.”
“What fruit?” asked her mom.
“To breathe.”
“What do you mean?”
“To live…God says many will need to eat that. The tree will always be there on a new earth.” Though only four years old, her descriptions matched what Scripture describes (Ezekiel 1:22, Revelation 2:7, 21:11, 21), but her mother did not know this.
“I am good there, and I listen there,” explained Akiane. “Everyone listens there–God is there….The music there is alive.” Akaine’s talk of God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit combined with her supernatural gift for art eventually led her family to faith. As Akiane grew, her miraculous artistic abilities expanded from drawings to paintings, and at age seven she began composing miraculously mature, spiritual poems.
By age eight, Akiane’s paintings of Jesus were gaining world wide recognition. She claimed to see Jesus in Heaven and painted the renowned works The Prince of Peace and Father Forgive Them as a result. Every major news program in American and many around the world began to recognize her as the only binary child prodigy alive (for art and poetry). She says the purpose of her amazing art is “to draw people’s attention to God, and I want my poetry to keep their attention on God.”
At age nine, she painted another picture of Jesus in the cosmos. Her mother asked her about a planet. “Oh, that’s the new earth. I just felt that I had to include it. I don’t remember where, when, or how, but the earth will change. All I know if that everything will be different. There will be no fear, no hatred, and no hunger or pain. Only love” (Revelation 21:4).
“Is your Jesus looking at the galaxies?” her mother questioned as they looked at the painting.
“He is talking with his Father in heaven…about the future of our world. I think Jesus will come back in full power very soon. In the back of him you can see the whole birth process of our new universe.”
World-renowned by age ten, she began to get tough questions. One day someone asked Akiane why she had decided on Christianity rather than a different world religion. “I didn’t choose Christianity,” Akaine replied. “I chose Jesus Christ. I am painting and writing what God shows me. I don’t know much about the religions, but I know this: God looks at our love.”
At an art exhibit, one man confronted her. “I am a Buddhist. You called Jesus the “Prince of Peace,” yet in his name so many people were massacred. How do you explain that?”
“Jesus is peace, just like calm water,” ten-year old Akiane answered, “but anyone can drop a stone into water and make it muddy.”
The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb (Jesus) is its lamp.” (Revelation 21:23)
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
