Chapter Twenty Three
My cold was gone Sunday morning. I was feeling mighty fine as I drove my Tacoma to church.
I was pleased to see a great many new faces in attendance that morning. People come out of the woodwork following a pastor’s promise to speak of the apocalypse. Parishioners tell friends and family who wouldn’t otherwise go to church. And those who typically attend church only on Easter and Christmas suddenly find time to make it for this rare occasion.
Today was to be different from most Sundays, in that my one hour sermon was to be an hour and forty-five minutes, just fifteen minutes bridging my morning and afternoon sermons. One hour is hardly enough time to cover all that needs to be covered, and it’s a bad idea to divide such a lecture into two parts with a week separating them. People have short memories. It needed to be one long uninterrupted sermon. It’s more impactful that way.
I planned to sermonize an hour and half, with the remaining fifteen minutes used to call forth all those who haven’t accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior to come up and accept Him before all. Typically those who come up are those semi-annual church-goers. There are always a good number of people seeking to accept Christ following the message of the second-coming and apocalypse. Atheists might consider this to be a scare tactic, soliciting new parishioners, but you must see it as a positive thing, as those who were lost have now been found. The end of the world is a scary thing, and preaching about it should give urgency to repent and accept Christ.
After singing a pair of hymns I wasted no time delving into the sermon. I felt God guiding me through it, bestowing me the ability to articulate my points well. As I read from my several pages, I frequently glanced up at the crowd, met eyes with various people, several of whom were new faces, and continued along my message.
It was during one of those glances that I spotted a familiar face at the back of the room, leaning against the wall with her arms folded under the bodice of her white dress, one leg hooked behind the other. There were so many people present that this girl wasn’t alone in standing at the back of the room, but she was by far the most recognizable to me. Meeting eyes with her wrecked my train of thought. For a prolonged moment I was speechless, my auditors curious at my abrupt cessation. Puzzled heads were turning to the direction of my gaze. I broke eye-contact with Maggie and looked down to my papers and apologized, picked up where I left off. From then on, every time I looked up from my papers my eyes would jump to Maggie. I feared that her presence would inhibit my sermon in some way, out of distraction, but it did not—at least not since that initial distraction.
Honestly I thought there would come a time when I looked up to find that spot at the back wall unoccupied, but it didn’t happen. I took a brief pause to sip a bottle of water, while arguing with myself that whom I witnessed was someone other than Maggie; someone resembling her but not the angel who had blessed me with her presence twice, and not since that night at the Fresno State Fair.
It was half past eleven, and I was wrapping up the sermon. I spoke of Paradise, of the believers’ ascension into the Promised Land. I said there is no time like the present to repent for your sins and accept the Lord as your savior. Like I had done on several occasions—at least once a month—I asked my congregation if anyone here would like to take this opportunity to do just that, to come up and turn their hearts over to the Lord. Sometimes only one or two people come up (never has nobody come up), but I had never been so blessed as I was today, to see better than ten wayward souls stand from their seats and places against the back wall to make their way to the front of the church. I began singing Glory Hallelujah as they ventured forth, and the mass sang along joyfully, their hands in the air, palms upward, swaying with their eyes closed.
My smile blinked away when Maggie pushed away from the wall to make her way down the aisle.
When the hymn ended there were eleven people surrounding me. One man dropped to his knees and bowed, wept. The others then did the same. A man and woman held hands. They were husband and wife, new to the church.
“Praise the Lord!” A man cried from the pews. Others echoed that sentiment.
Only one of the eleven before me was not weeping, and that was the girl whom I now knew to be Maggie. She was on her knees, praising God ardently. I stepped around the lectern and knelt beside a young woman who was nearly collapsed on the floor. I touched her head and said God bless you.
Another hymn broke out spontaneously. I made my way to the others, the eleven who were making the biggest decision of their lives, and knelt beside them, touched them, praised God for reaching them. I passed over Maggie to the next man and woman, the married couple, and God-blessed them. A man on the floor before me looked up at me and confessed to being a sinner, said he had long lost his way. I assured him that God would forgive him if he’d but open his heart and let Him in.
I erected and began walking to the lectern, throwing a glance down to Maggie, who just at that moment looked up at me with those piercing green eyes which seemed to emit a light of their own. She held out a single hand toward me, palm up.
Nervously I stepped to her and knelt, her hand now inches from my chest.
“Do you wish to let Christ into your heart?” I said and took her hand, placed my other hand on her shoulder, closed my eyes.
God has chosen you, she said inside my head. Just as you seek lost sheep to bring to your flock, another seeks to take those sheep away from God. Recall those mirrors in the Fun House, your distorted reflection. He is a distorted reflection of you. Like you, he has been chosen, but not by God. Your purpose will present itself before you in visions and compulsions. Embrace them, as they are from God. You shall do what He wishes, when the time comes.
“Why me?” I said inside my head. “God doesn’t need me to help Him. Don’t get me wrong… I’m honored, but God could just strike him dead if He so chooses.”
God will not strike him dead. That isn’t to be the course of destiny.
“Is he…? Is Paul the… Antichrist?”
If he were, it isn’t your place to know. Paul isn’t the first man to consort with minions of hell, or The Great Deceiver himself, nor will he be the last. Continue what you are doing, preaching the gospel to the masses. It is your calling, Aaron, for now. But when God tasks you, you will do as He wishes.
“I will. I will do all that He asks of me.”
I opened my eyes to the sweet smile of Maggie. With one hand on her delicate shoulder, the other touching hers, she disappeared.
To my parishioners I was a pastor kneeling down and touching someone or something that wasn’t there, had never been there. I scanned the crowd as I stood. They were praising Jesus, hands in the air, and not one countenance appeared perplexed at my recent activity.
They were two incredible, momentous hours, as would be the succeeding two hours, where I would have now-fifteen souls around my lectern, supplicating to God.