Through the Flames (4 page)

J
UDD
was awakened early Sunday morning by a phone call from Bruce Barnes. “I’m concerned about Ryan,” Bruce said, “and I’d like you to help me check up on him.”

“He’s still upset about his parents, of course,” Judd said. “But he seemed a lot happier last night. Why are you worried about him?”

“Well, I have no doubt his decision was real,” Bruce said. “I just want to make sure it wasn’t something done totally out of fear. He was afraid something might happen to him, that Lionel’s uncle’s friends or enemies might catch him and kill him.”

“Yeah?” Judd said. He wasn’t following Bruce. “Does it make a difference? I mean, a big part of my reason was fear too.”

“Yes, Judd,” Bruce said, “but you also understood, if I recall your story correctly, that you were a sinner and needed God’s forgiveness.”

“And you don’t think Ryan thinks that?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying I didn’t hear him say it. That doesn’t mean his conversion didn’t ‘take,’ but it’s important to our faith and to our walk with Christ that we realize what he has saved us from. True guilt and sin have been washed away.”

“You want me to ask him?”

“Not directly. I can probably do that better, being so much older than he is. I would have asked him last night, but I didn’t have a chance to be alone with him, and I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of you and the others.”

Judd had to think about this. Maybe Ryan did have different reasons for finally making the decision he made, but not everyone came to Christ for the same reasons, did they? Of course, in the end they did. Everybody has the same problem—sin that keeps them from God. And it was by seeing and admitting that that Judd made his decision. But he also wanted to be with Christ and with his family when he died. And he wanted to avoid hell. Getting forgiven for being a sinner was a huge reason for him to do what he did, but the other stuff—being assured of heaven and staying out of hell—seemed almost as important. Did that mean his
own
decision had been based on fear? And was something wrong with that?

Bruce concluded by telling Judd that he was merely trying to be sure Ryan didn’t think God was just some sort of a heavenly fire insurance salesman. Staying out of hell was one of the benefits of trusting him, but going from darkness to light, from death to life, from unforgiven sinner to sinner saved by grace, that was the crux of the decision.

On the way to the church that morning, Judd couldn’t help prodding Ryan a little, just to see what he was thinking. Was he just the member of some new club with the only friends and “family” he had left? Or did he understand what had really happened to him? Maybe it was too much for someone his age to grasp. And yet, Judd reminded himself, when he was twelve, he knew the score. He simply had not acted on it and didn’t really believe it was all that crucial. Needless to say, he did now.

“So, Ryan,” Judd tried, “how does it feel to be part of the family?”

“Great,” Ryan said. “I still miss my parents, and I know I always will. And I’m still hoping they somehow became Christians before they died. But I’m glad I’m going to heaven.”

“Isn’t it great to have our sins forgiven?” Judd said.

Vicki shot Judd a double take, which made him assume she sensed he was fishing for something. Lionel was not a morning person. He had leaned his head against the window in the backseat and seemed still to be sleeping.

“I guess,” Ryan said. “I wasn’t that much of a sinner, though.”

“Oh, really?” Judd said. “You were the almost-perfect kid, huh?”

“No. But the only time I did bad stuff was when I was mad or something. I was never bad on purpose.”

Now Vicki got into the discussion. “Never lied, never cheated, never stole, were never jealous of anybody or wanted revenge? Never gossiped?”

“Nothing that was really that bad,” Ryan said. “Honest.”

“But I’ll bet you’re glad that we don’t get to heaven because of the good things we do.”

“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I might have made it. I was really a good kid.”

“But you said yourself you weren’t perfect, and only perfect people can get to God. And anyway, how can you say you might have made it? You
didn’t
make it. Christ came and you were left behind, just like we were.”

“I know,” Ryan muttered, and he stopped talking. Judd was afraid he had scared Ryan off.

“I’m just saying,” Judd said, “no matter how good or bad we are, no matter how much our good outweighs our bad, the whole point is that we fall short. We all need to be forgiven. That’s what it means to be saved.”

“So I’m not saved because I wasn’t really a sinner? I mean, I guess I was a sinner the way everybody’s a sinner, but because I didn’t see myself that way?”

“How do you see yourself now?” Judd asked.

“Saved.”

“From what?”

“Hell.”

“But not from your sins?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I’m telling you, man,” Judd said. “We’re all still sinners. But we’re saved from our sins. Unless you’re perfect—”

“I know I’m not perfect. But I was never that bad a guy.”

“I
was a bad person,” Vicki said. “But my dad always said it was the people who don’t see themselves as that bad who are the last ones to realize they need God.”

“I knew I needed God because I didn’t want to die and go to hell,” Ryan said.

“And you would have gone to hell even as good a guy as you were, right?”

“’Course.”

Judd thought Ryan was actually getting it. He would leave Ryan’s training to Bruce. Judd knew he himself had much to learn. He and Lionel were the only two of these four who had been raised in church and had heard it all before. But now, with new eyes and new understanding, and—needless to say—a whole new life situation, he still felt like a baby when it came to the Bible and stuff about God. He could only assume Lionel felt the same way.

It was as if Judd couldn’t get enough of what Bruce had to teach, and he couldn’t wait to see what Bruce would talk about that morning. He had to park several blocks from the church, though they arrived several minutes before ten o’clock. The church was packed. Lots of people looked desperate and scared.

The four kids found the last seats together in the balcony. Chairs were set up on either side of the center aisle right next to the pews, and hundreds of people stood in the back.

Right at ten o’clock, Bruce began. The big pulpit on the platform was empty, and no lights shone up there. Bruce had placed a microphone stand in front of the first pew and spoke from there, holding his Bible and notes.

“Normally we at this church would be thrilled to see a crowd like this,” he said. “But I’m not about to tell you how great it is to see you here. I know you’re here seeking to know what happened to your children and loved ones, and I believe I have the answer. Obviously, I didn’t have it before, or I too would be gone.”

Bruce then told the same story he had told the kids, and his voice was the only sound in the place. Many wept as he spoke of his wife and children disappearing right from their beds. He showed the videotape the senior pastor had left, and more than a hundred people prayed along with the prayer at the end. Bruce urged them and anyone else who was interested to begin coming to New Hope.

He added, “I know many of you may still be skeptical. You may believe what happened was of God, but you still don’t like it and you resent him for it. If you would like to come back and ask questions this evening, I will be here. Rest assured, we will be open to any honest question.

“I do want to open the floor to anyone who received Christ this morning and would like to confess it before us. The Bible tells us to do that, to make known our decision and our stand.”

Judd leaned forward and peered down to the main part of the sanctuary, where the first to move was a tall, dark man, quickly followed to the microphone by dozens of others. “That’s Raymie’s dad!” Ryan whispered loudly.

The man introduced himself as Rayford Steele, an airline pilot, and Judd was captivated. As Rayford Steele told his story, of people disappearing off his plane over the Atlantic in the middle of the night on a flight to London, Judd’s mouth dropped open. He had been on that very plane.

Most of the stories were the same as Captain Steele’s. These people all seemed to have been on the edge of the truth because someone had warned them, but they had never fully accepted the truth about Christ.

Their stories were moving, and hardly anyone left, even when the clock swept past noon and forty or fifty more still stood in line. All seemed to need to tell of the ones who had been taken. Judd felt the same need, but he knew it would be a long, long time, even if he could get down to the main floor and get in line. Instead, he just listened.

At two o’clock, Judd’s stomach was growling. Bruce finally interrupted, apologizing for having to bring the service to a close and teaching a simple chorus. Judd found himself overcome with emotion as he thought of the years when he had not enjoyed church at all. For how long had he ignored God, and how many times did he simply not sing when the congregation expressed its love for Christ? Now he sang through his tears, never meaning anything more in his life. And never did he miss his family as much as right then.

Judd and the other three returned that evening for the meeting of people who were still skeptical or had questions. Though he was no longer a skeptic, he sure had lots of questions. He was sure he would learn something. Many of the people were angry, wondering why God did things the way he did them. Bruce told them he wouldn’t begin to try to explain God or speak for him, but that he was convinced God had given everyone ample opportunity to have been ready for the Rapture.

Others had question after question, and what Bruce couldn’t answer from his education and recent reading, he promised to study and report back on later. Bruce concluded the long evening meeting by urging everyone present who had not made a decision for Christ to not put it off. “We never know what the next day, the next hour, the next moment may bring. I confess I never liked preachers saying that, trying to scare people into becoming believers by convincing them they were about to walk in front of a bus. But in this day and in this situation, people are dying all over the place. People you know. People you love. Captain Rayford Steele, who told his own story this morning, got some news from one of his flight attendants today that I have asked him to share this evening, just to illustrate this point.”

When Captain Steele stepped to the microphone, he admitted that his story was about a man he did not even remember. “He was on my flight to London, the one during which so many passengers disappeared right out of their clothes. His name was Cameron Williams, and he was a writer for
Global Weekly
magazine.”

Judd flinched. He remembered that guy. He had been the one who had helped the old man with his luggage in first class, and then had gone off looking for the man when his wife discovered only his clothes in the seat beside her. He was also the first one to jump down the evacuation chute when the plane had landed. He had flipped over forward and done a somersault, scraping the back of his head.

“I found out today that he eventually made it to London, but that he was killed in a car bombing.”

Judd shook his head. When would this end? People he knew and loved, people he had met or simply seen across the aisle on a plane—all dead. For whatever problems he had with his parents and his younger brother and sister, his life was tame compared to what the world had become. Who could keep up with it?

Captain Steele begged people to not wait. “You may have more questions,” he said. “Ask them. Don’t make a decision as important as this one without knowing for sure that you can believe with all your heart. But once your questions have been answered, don’t risk your life and your afterlife by thinking you have all the time in the world. You don’t.”

The next day Vicki asked Judd to pick up a copy of
USA Today.
“I was sure never a news junkie before,” she said. “But now I’m reading, watching, listening to everything. I want to know what’s going on, who’s who, and what’s what. We have to be on the lookout for the Antichrist so we don’t get fooled like so many people will.”