A dying man's last request was simple: pray for me. What happened next was something no human eye had ever seen.

"Now you know how we were deceived," Eve told her children, finishing the story of the Fall. "Guard yourselves from transgressing against the good."

While she spoke, Adam lay in the next room, bound to die within a single day. The sickness had fastened onto him and would not let go. Eve went to him and asked the question every wife dreads: "How is it that you die and I live? How long must I endure after you are gone?"

Adam comforted her. "Do not worry about this. You will not be long after me. We will both die together. When I die, anoint me, but let no one touch my body until the angel of the Lord speaks concerning me. God will not forget me. He will seek out His own creation." Then he gave her one final instruction: "Arise and pray to God while I give up my spirit into the hands of the One who gave it to me. For we do not know how we will meet our Maker -- whether He will be wrathful, or merciful enough to pity and receive us."

Eve rose, went outside, and fell on the ground. She began to pray -- not gently, not quietly, but with the raw desperation of a woman who had broken the world and knew it.

"I have sinned, O God. I have sinned, O God of All. I have sinned against You. I have sinned against the chosen angels. I have sinned against the Cherubim. I have sinned against Your fearful and unshakable Throne. I have sinned before You, and all sin began through me in the creation."

While she was still on her knees, an angel appeared and raised her to her feet. "Rise up, Eve, from your penitence. Your husband Adam has gone out of his body. Rise and behold his spirit being carried aloft to his Maker."

Eve stood. She wiped the tears from her face. The angel said: "Lift yourself from the earth and look."

She gazed steadfastly into the sky. And what she saw was beyond anything she could have imagined.

A chariot of light, carried by four brilliant eagles -- so radiant that no mortal born of woman could describe their glory or bear to look upon them. Angels processed before the chariot, and when it reached the place where Adam's body lay, it halted. The Seraphim surrounded it. Golden censers appeared between Adam's body and the chariot. Every angel carried censers and frankincense, and they blew upon the incense until the smoke veiled the very firmament.

Then the angels fell on their faces before God, crying out: "Ja'el, Holy One -- have mercy, for he is Your image, the work of Your holy hands!"

Eve beheld two great and terrifying figures standing in the presence of God. She wept with fear and cried out to her son Seth: "Rise up from the body of your father Adam and come to me. You must see this. No human eye has ever witnessed what is happening now."

The first man was dying. And all of Heaven had come to watch.