I had been the pastor of the new Calvary Chapel for six years, and a substitute teacher for the Fresno Unified School District for four years. Only one child from Sunday school and his parents switched churches, and that was Freddy. I could say they switched because they were eager to be taught the scriptures from me, but that wouldn’t be true. They lived closer to the new church, that’s all. He was now seventeen. I hadn’t spoken to the Stanwick’s since I left the church. Occasionally I wondered about Tinkerbelle, who was now a young woman, one who might not remember me, and that’s probably a good thing. But I hoped she missed me like I missed her. A kid like her can do that to you, have an everlasting effect on your thoughts and reflections. If I ever suffer dementia or Alzheimer’s, I’d guess that those afflictions couldn’t erase that girl’s memory from my ruined brain, for the better or worse.
Rarely I sermonized about prophecy, about the end times. It can be a frightening topic, and one of much debate, as there are differences of opinion regarding many parts of Revelation. Some interpret the verses to be literal, as others think of them as figurative or metaphorical. I consider every word of that book to be literal. Since the novel Left Behind came out, and its sequels, End Times prophecy had a surge of interest; consequently I had received many requests to sermonize the topic.
It was Friday night and I was in my apartment at my desk, before my computer. I had come down with a cold that Wednesday and was combating it with Nyquil and Tylenol. I figured I’d be in better shape come Sunday. I was hammering away at the keyboard, typing up my lecture, having just taken a shot and a half of that nasty-tasting green formula of Nyquil. It may quell cold symptoms, but boy does it make you drowsy. It was ten o’clock at night, which was just about the time I go to bed, but I wanted to finish my lecture. I was writing about the rapture, The Great Deceiver, Satan’s pet the Antichrist. As sobering and portentous a topic as it is, I couldn’t have chosen a worse time to write it, as I was nodding off at increasingly shorter intervals.
I fell asleep at my desk.
I awoke Saturday morning to a starry screensaver and a vague idea of what caused me to be at my desk instead of bed. I felt marginally better, cold on the decline, but was suffering a wicked neck ache from the peculiar angle at which my head rested against the desktop.
I moved the mouse and my seven pages of work appeared before my eyes. I scrolled up to the beginning and prepared to read it wholly, before deciding to get some food in me and take a quick shower first.
As I showered I recalled the dream I had just awoken from. It was the first time I had dreamed of Paul. I had all but forgotten him, by choice. Six years I had successfully removed him from my thoughts, and all it took was one lousy dream to undo that. In the dream he had aged, had become a good looking young man. He had lured the young woman Brooke to the riverbed, where he decided she was plenty old enough to have some fun with. He used the same lines on her that I fed poor Marie all those years ago, and like Marie she succumbed to his wit and charm, and her blood was added to the dirt as I watched in horror it happening. I watched as if it were a movie, powerless to come to her aid.
I toasted a bagel and in sweats and tee-shirt sat at my desk. I read what I had written, eating my bagel. It was evident where the Nyquil had taken hold of me, as the typos became more and more frequent, and there was some nonsense interspersed in the body of my work. There was a section that was a string of letters where ostensibly I had fallen asleep with my finger pressing the P key. Three lines of P with a few K’s ending it. I didn’t recall having woken to recommence my writing efforts, but I had written a few pages more before ending abruptly.
Most of what I had written—especially the latter portion of it—would have to be deleted as it was nonsense. But the effect of these medicine-induced ramblings was profound. It opened my eyes to the darkest idea I ever had, and that is where I had written Paul Klein in the place of the Antichrist. I didn’t believe he was, but it was meaningful that I had written it. Perhaps I was already dreaming of Paul leading Brooke to the riverbed when I typed it; I couldn’t say. But once that seed was planted in my head it wouldn’t leave. That I was pondering the possibility of Paul Klein being the Antichrist hinted at the impossibility of it. God wouldn’t allow mankind to learn of who this evil man is before it was time to know who he is, just as He wouldn’t allow us to know when the rapture is, and when Jesus’ second-coming is. That I flirted with the idea of Paul being the Antichrist was all but proof that he was not. If he was, that idea would have forever eluded me. And besides, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the notion of the Antichrist being a youth, just as it’s difficult to picture Jesus Christ as a teenager. In the scriptures Jesus went from being a youth to being a man, his adolescent years not touched upon. Can you picture it?—a young Antichrist? Would he be a sweet little babe, coloring with crayons and telling his mother he loved her? I couldn’t imagine it. And when would the Antichrist first consider his destiny? I doubt he’d be in first grade learning the alphabet as he secretly knew that one day he’d be the vessel which Satan controlled.
Paul was on my mind as I wrote what I did, that’s all. Even the string of P’s and K’s intimated that was the case: they were his initials. If Paul wasn’t the Antichrist (each time I write Paul and Antichrist in the same sentence it feels more and more absurd), couldn’t he be something else? Something not as consequential, but still significant and maybe even profound? He had known things back then when I was a young Sunday school teacher, things he couldn’t have known without someone or something enlightening him of things. The door of intrigue that was Paul re-opened.
I prayed for guidance. I didn’t want to obsess over that miserable kid again. I asked God to remove him from my thoughts.
I got to work re-writing my lecture. It took the rest of the morning and a few hours of the afternoon to finish. I read the final product, made a few adjustments and corrections before printing it out. It was going to be a wonderful message to my congregation; I was proud of my work. And I believe God had answered my prayer to remove Paul from my thoughts because I didn’t think of him again that day.