39
Penny Hasid was back. She led JC Smalley to a thick steel door located between the accommodations and the business area. Inside, she flipped on the lights. JC’s mouth dropped open. A fully functional twenty-five-meter indoor firing range greeted him, equipped with soundproof and bulletproof walls, paper and mannequin targets, and bullet traps behind the targets. A shooter’s dream!
JC felt a little ashamed of his earlier thoughts. “Wow, I’d no idea. This is great!”
“You can fire any pistol or shotgun, and rifles up to 7.62 millimeter. No hot loads though, those are too powerful for the bullet traps, and the bullets will ricochet.”
Penny opened a cabinet and pulled out an ammunition can with JC’s name on it. Inside were two holstered pistols: a Ruger nine-millimeter and an old service .45 caliber. She handed him another box. “Here are a hundred rounds of each. If you need more let me know. Cleaning kits are on that wooden table. You can shoot any time the range is free.”
She showed him his spot in the cabinet, and he noticed a lot of other ammunition cans and ammunition. “In the cabinet, you can find ear and eye protection, which are both mandatory here.” She pointed out the switch by the door. “Up is a blinking red light outside the door and it means you’re here. Down means you’re shooting, and the light is steady. When you leave, put it back in the center. Down turns the ventilation on, and let the air clear before you turn it off.”
“Great. Thanks!”
“Just one last thing, now that you have your phone back. We need to trade numbers, so we can get ahold of each other.”
40
Together, Maggie and Matt examined Jenny. They saw no visible damage—no teeth marks, her bones and joints all seemed intact, and rigor mortis had not set in. The pin holding her blanket together had also held her body together, but the flap over her face had not protected it very well from the shark’s digestive fluids. Matt held her by her ankles to let any water drain from her stomach and lungs. They redressed her body and wrapped it in the blanket.
Matt was still thinking about the shark. “Most of those water bottles looked new, like they were from our plane. Some looked really old. The labels were gone, and they had really thick caps like back in the eighties. I was wondering why the dolphins decided to help us out, because God showed me what to say right before the shark came up the last time. I think the dolphins kept the shark from emptying out her entire stomach. The water bottles must have come floating up through the tail of the plane, and the shark got them at the same time she got Jenny.”
“How do you know it was a she?”
Matt discarded three humorous answers, then said simply, “That one was huge. We didn’t even see the whole thing. The males are a lot smaller than the females.”
The shark was gone, and Maggie didn’t care to think about it anymore. “Jenny’s body is intact.”
“Yes. I think it would have been terrible for you to see her crushed and broken.”
“She wasn’t trapped in the plane. She wasn’t tossed around violently like everything else was, including us. She wasn’t cut apart by the broken metal while exiting the plane. The shark swallowed her whole.” She started to cry. “I think God was letting me see her whole one last time, maybe to protect my memory of her.”
“Thank you,” she added, to Matt or God, or both.
“Maggie, let me piece together all the messages God gave me for you. Are you ready?”
“Yes. You told me lots of wonderful things, but all I have to go on is my experience. And my experience is telling me Jenny is dead.”
“You are about to have a new experience. Everything I heard from him for you, says that Jenny will live.”
“Why isn’t God telling me himself?”
“Because you don’t have ears to hear, or eyes to see, yet. He will give you those in due time. In the meantime, he gave you me. For the time being, I am your ears and eyes.”
“So, I am to die for Jenny to live, and I am to live for Jenny to live.” She was trying to process this, and not finding much success. “When is the due time, when he will give me eyes and ears to see and hear?”
“When you die … Wait, Maggie, stay with me! I told you I would explain, and this is my start of it. When you go into your garden and plant a petunia seed, what happens?”
“The seed germinates, and a petunia plant comes up.”
“No, the seed dies first, then it germinates. If you dug up the seed right before it germinated, you’d just have a dead seed.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve actually done that, when I was little and couldn’t wait.”
“Right now, you’re like the seed. Do you know about Adam and Eve?”
“Yes, in the garden of Eden. God made them first, and we’re their descendants.”
“Good. God made them perfect, Maggie, without any predisposition to do wrong things. But they were tempted.”
“The serpent.”
“Right. The serpent told them a lie, and they believed it and acted on it, without asking God about it first. Now, God had the same standard for them as he does for us. When they ate that fruit, their act of disobedience caused their nature to change, and now they were prone to bad behavior. It got into their DNA, so to speak, because now their children did have the predisposition to be selfish, to lie, steal, murder, and the like.”
“Sins.”
“Yes. It broke God’s heart, but he had a plan. People by their very nature commit all these sins, and so disqualify themselves from heaven. God loves the people he created, like you loved Jenny, but infinitely more. God could have decided to relax his standard, but he had promised death to Adam and Eve if they ate the fruit, so he bound himself to keep that promise. It wouldn’t have been fair to let Adam and Eve start the whole human race, and then have them be the only ones in hell, would it?”
Maggie was beginning to have a glimmer of hope; perhaps the plan would apply to her. “What was his plan?”
“His plan was to get people back their original nature, the nature Adam and Eve lost by eating the fruit. That would requalify them for heaven. The problem is, there is a price for that, and it is so steep that people can’t pay it. They are already condemned to death, so they have nothing to offer. But his love for us is so great, that he decided to pay it himself.”
Maggie unpinned Jenny’s blanket, rearranged it, and repinned it. “You said God did come as Jesus and died as a person. How could he have paid the price then?”
“God arranged that Jesus, as a man, should have the same nature as Adam and Eve before they ate the fruit. You might think that would make it easy for Jesus, not having Adam’s new sinful nature. But he was tempted like no other person on earth. Jesus faced any temptation you can think of, and resisted it every time. And because of that, as a human, he was qualified for heaven without having to pay the price for himself. And so he could pay the price for us.”
“Adam and Eve fell for it on their very first temptation.”
“The hardest temptation he faced was seeing the cruel and humiliating death that awaited him. He was tempted to chicken out and avoid it. Do you know how I think he succeeded?”
She was taking in his words with rapt attention, and her face clearly said she had no clue. So he went on.
“I believe, in his mind he looked forward about two thousand years, saw a certain Maggie Trillbey, and said to himself, ‘She is so worth it, to go through all this just for her!’ ”
“Just me?”
“Maybe. No, me too for sure, and lots of others. But it brought him such joy that he willingly endured that death. Then after they killed him, they put him in a tomb, hiding his body behind a big rock. But his death satisfied God’s standards, and by raising him from the dead, God declared his death would pay the price for all humanity. Since he paid the price for all people, God made him the owner and ultimate authority over every person. That’s what we mean when we call him ‘Lord’.”
“So the price has been paid?”
&
nbsp; “Yes, but it doesn’t guarantee you the nature Adam was created with. To you, that would be a new nature, one that for you didn’t exist before. Let me tell you, that new nature is absolutely wonderful! It is what will allow you to hear from God directly. God will put his spirit in you, and you will have a new relationship with him. But sadly, not all want that new relationship, because entering into that new relationship means that we recognize his complete authority over us and our accountability to him.”
“As you’ve been talking, I find I have a stronger and stronger desire to have that new nature. It seems to be the same drawing I was trying to describe to you when you first came on the plane, but even stronger.”
A sudden thought occurred to her. “Matt, isn’t God already the boss, and aren’t we already accountable to him?”
“Yes, but some refuse to acknowledge that. They have various reasons, but in the end it all comes down to them wanting to be their own god and not accountable to anyone.”
“Well, when I was my own god and not accountable to anyone, I did some really dumb things, and just made a mess out of my life. I thought I was being smart and mature, but I see that I would just continue to be like that unless I get this new nature. How do I do that?”
“It would be a secret transaction, just between you and God. You would have to die. You are just the seed, as I mentioned, because the petunia has not yet sprouted. Don’t worry about the death part though. You will not even notice it. I didn’t. But you will surely notice the coming alive part. He will change your life. Forever!”
“I think I’m ready. What do I do?”
41
JC had asked Penny to get him some supplies, explaining the use of each item. After she left, he spent the next hour at the firing range, getting acquainted with the pistols he was issued. He wasn’t as good a shot as he remembered; the mind plays funny tricks sometimes. He used up all the ammunition, and spent the rest of the time disassembling and cleaning the weapons before putting everything away.
Dusty Mae came by his suite after he returned, and asked him to stop by her office after the VTC. He asked her if there were an unused office he could use; he didn’t feel comfortable conducting business in his living quarters.
“Yes,” she said, “it’s a small conference room we don’t use much. There’s plenty of table space. We also have a small drafting room if that would suit better.”
JC looked at them both and chose the conference room. It was located off the main hallway, and had a window in the door to allow those in the room to check for hall traffic before opening the door.
Penny came back with a globe, undersea maps of the North Atlantic, a cloth measuring tape graduated in millimeters, and his ID card for access to the building and the offices. “We had the globe and maps here, but I had to go to JoAnn’s around the corner in Norridge to get the tape. I’ll be right back. I have to get the credit card back to Walter.”
“I’ll be in the conference room, room 926. Dusty Mae set me up an office there.”
When she got back, JC had moved what he needed to room 926, and had set up a spreadsheet table on his laptop to record distances in millimeters and convert them to ground miles.
“Okay, Penny, the reason I’m doing this is that a MiG can fly only about thirteen hundred miles on a full tank.”
He measured the circumference of the globe and recorded it in the spreadsheet, 1,014 millimeters. Then he googled the circumference of the earth, 24,901 miles. “Now we just measure on the globe, do the math, and we can figure out distances on the earth.”
JC measured carefully and put a dot on the Atlantic Ocean to mark the spot of the fire reported by the Air Force jets. “Wherever the MiGs came from, they had to get there and back on whatever fuel they left with. They don’t have in-flight refuel capability, so let’s see what is within six hundred and fifty miles of the dot.”
“They flew around for at least a half hour in the middle of that, right?”
“Good, Penny. Yes. And I’ll need another table to convert miles on the surface to millimeters on the globe.”
“May I do that? I’m fairly familiar with spreadsheets.”
“Sure.”
She finished the new table as he was measuring the distance to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the closest land capable of having a runway.
“Twenty-seven millimeters to Halifax. Plug that in, Penny.”
“That makes six hundred sixty-three miles. Six hundred fifty miles is only twenty-six millimeters.”
“So they must have extra fuel pods, external fuel tanks. Question is, who would have those: the MiGs, fuel tanks, machine guns that may not be standard, or some other weapon system, ammunition, and the ground support system for all that?”
On the seafloor map, he found the depth of the ocean at the spot of the fire to be fifty-four hundred meters, well over three miles.
JC put another dot on the globe at twenty-six millimeters from the spot of the fire. Using a compass he found in the drafting room, he scribed a circle on the globe representing the maximum distance round-trip the MiG could fly without extra fuel. All that was in the circle was ocean.
42
“Are you doing all this for Jenny’s sake?”
Maggie thought a moment. “I was at first. Now I realize there is more at stake, much more. Ever since you started telling me about this, I haven’t been thinking of Jenny.”
The numbness in her psyche was starting to dissipate as she looked down at the lifeless body of her daughter. She started to become puzzled at her lack of sadness for Jenny, until she became aware of a stronger emotion pushing that out of the way—hope. Hope for herself as well as for Jenny.
“Matt, if there hadn’t been a Jenny, my desire to belong to God would have been just as strong!”
Where did those words come from, she wondered, about desiring to belong to God?
“I’ll tell you what to do, but first you need to know your part of the transaction. You must believe, in the innermost core of your being, that God raised Jesus from the dead, since that is the evidence that the price is paid. This is not the same as believing it in your mind, since then you would have to have proof of some sort. This is believing with no proof. God himself, by his spirit, will provide the proof as you say the words. So you won’t be saying it because I said so, but because God said so. And you must receive him, Jesus, as the master and ruler of your life, since God made him to be that.”
Matt was almost finished. “This is about trusting God for what he has said. This transaction between you and God will result in you having the authority to call him a new name. God considers this his most important attribute in his dealings with people. That new name is ‘Father’.”
“God the Father. Yes. I’ve noticed when people use God’s name to curse and swear with, they never use the word father to refer to him.”
“Yes, God the Father. He so wants people to trust him, that he demonstrates it by this intimate relationship. When we are little, we trust our fathers …”
Matt had been watching her closely, and his voice trailed off as he saw her face take on a look of horror, changing swiftly to shame, revulsion, and fear. Then tears.
“I’m sorry.” He thought briefly. “Do you remember, when you first landed in the water, how panicky you were? How you were beside yourself with fear, for you as well as Jenny? How you fought me in the water, even though you couldn’t swim? I kept on telling you to trust me, that I would keep you safe. And all of a sudden you did. You trusted me with your life. The way you relaxed took me by surprise, and we both went under. You continued to trust me, to believe I would do what I said, even when the evidence said otherwise. That’s the kind of trust I’m talking about with God.”
“I hardly knew you. But you had a kind of authority about you. Deep down, finally, I believed you would keep me safe.”
“Okay. If you understand your part and are still willing, then you are ready.”
“Yes, I am,” she said eagerly.
“I said the transaction was secret, but it starts out in public, with your words. Really, you are just responding to God. He has been calling to you, exciting you, getting you ready for this exact moment. So talk to God now. Don’t worry too much about what to say, he will help you. As eager as you are, he is much more eager. I can just see him waiting with a bill with your name on it in one hand, and a stamp in the other that says, ‘Paid in Full’!”
“God, I believe with all that is in me that you raised Jesus from the dead,” Maggie said. “And … Wow, I really do believe! And Jesus, I receive you as the master and ruler of me and my life, my Lord. I need you. I messed it all up, but now I want to belong to you.”
And there was more. Matt was watching in sheer wonder. As she talked to God, she said things that he had never told her about. And that she had never told him about. Turning from her own ways and choosing to follow his.
She was silent for a long time. He knew what was happening by watching the changes in her facial expressions. He thought about the misery of the months since Helene died. He realized he was watching a process that far made up for any distress he had experienced.
Maggie opened her eyes, finally, and started giggling. Soon it turned to laughter. A deep, contented laughter that Matt recognized from his own past. And the joy! Her face was as radiant as the sun.
“I saw Jesus! He hugged me. He grabbed me and threw me up in the air. He was laughing, gleeful. And oh, the music! It was coming out of him. We were like a bride and groom at their reception. Then he said ‘Look!’ and showed me his hands, and I knew that I had done that to him. I started to weep convulsively. He said, ‘Don’t weep. I chose to do this for you, because you’re my friend. I heard all the words coming from your heart, and I forgive you and receive you. You belong to me now, and I also belong to you.’
“He breathed on me, and said he would live in me and through me by his spirit, and he would show me the Father. He was so warm and lively. He called me his sister! It seemed to last a lot longer than my telling it to you right now. Just before the scene changed back to here, he told me I would see wonderful things as long as I kept my eyes on him.”
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