As Oliver looked up, in fear, at the 300 hundred foot tall warring angel out the window; the messenger angel was weaving the words of God into a dream for Nolan. He watched the events as if he were outside of them. The world was falling into great trouble and Nolan saw one catastrophe after another. All the people of the earth were afraid. Soon they followed a terrible leader who promised to help them, but he didn’t help them. Instead, he went around killing everyone who opposed his power. He was especially interested in killing Christians and Jews who rejected the new government.
As the world fell into this great trouble, those who opposed the leader, the ones being killed, formed secret groups to help each other. Nolan looked down on the earth from above and many lights were shining on the ground, each one was a secret group. Then he zoomed in and saw that several of these secret groups were using church camps as their base. To the public and the government, they ran as they always had. But secretly they were providing food, clothing, and a safe hiding place to many of the refugees.
The refugees were different than refugees of the past who had to leave their country. In this vision there was no country to go from or to, the refugees were not welcome anywhere and were being hunted everywhere. There were many groups taking in refugees from the world and they used many different means to do it. But for Nolan, the message was clear, pay attention to this camp. Learn how it can be used as a place of refuge. Interestingly, Nolan wasn’t the only one who had this same dream. He was the only one in his bunk, but ten other kids in the camp had dreamed the same thing.
As Nolan dreamed, Oliver looked back at the messenger angel, then once more as the warring angel. When he did, the warring angel looked right at Oliver, eye to eye. It was so terrifying that Oliver both peed his pants and fell off of the top bunk. As he yelled out in pain, Nolan awoke from his dream and the angels vanished from visibility. The whole cabin was now awake as the counselors checked on Oliver. They were relieved to see he wasn’t injured but disconcerted that he had relieved himself all over the bed and his clothes. This child was in the 4th grade, he was too old for this. They got Oliver cleaned up and in the morning they called his parents to come pick him up. He clearly wasn’t mature enough to handle himself at camp.
Practice Outlaw 