Blessed Child

by Ted Dekker

  He dropped the mike. A loud thump followed by a muffled, rolling sound filled the speakers. He looked to the sky and lifted both hands. “I love you, Father,” he said softly. Light rushed from his mouth and streaked to the sky.

  Hot wind suddenly slammed into his body, and he caught his breath. He took a step backward on wobbly knees. “Oh, God! Oh, dear God!” Something was up. He felt as though he had been swallowed by the static.

  A boom suddenly crashed overhead. White light blasted down from the vortex of that whirlpool and swallowed the stage and everything on it.

  Jason’s body was picked up and thrown back a good ten feet. He saw it all in the split second that he was airborne: the shaft at the light’s core, as round as a pillar swallowing Caleb; the bucking of Caleb’s little body; the collapse of the boy’s frame back to the artificial turf.

  The crowd gasped as one behind him.

  Then Jason landed on his seat.

  He stood slowly to his feet. The boy’s body lay unmoving. Jason glanced at the crowd. Donna stood with her mouth open. The blue light still swirled around the stadium.

  Jason walked to the body.

  He was still three paces from that dormant form when Caleb suddenly sat up to a sitting position, as if his upper torso were on a spring. Jason stopped. A hundred thousand sets of lungs gulped air in the same instant.

  The blue light suddenly vanished from the stadium, as if someone had pulled the plug. Pop, it was gone.

  Caleb blinked once, wiped some blood from his eye, and then stood to his feet.

  Leiah was the first to scream. She rushed Caleb, threw her arms around him, and began to hop up and down with him. Jason already had his arms wrapped around both of them when the full meaning of what they had just witnessed hit the crowd. To say they erupted would be to compare it to a physical detonation. It was more than that. It was the explosion of throats and hearts and minds all in one fell swoop.

  Caleb broke free and began to hop. He thrust his fists above his head and skipped across the stage.

  Then he began again, hopping vertically now. He lifted his face and cried to the sky. “Jeeesuuusss!”

  Like a swelling wave, the cry swept through the stadium.

  “Jeeesuuusss!”

  Caleb stopped and faced them, as if only now aware of their presence. He ran up to the microphones. “Look to your hearts!” he cried. “He will give you new life as well. That is his greatest power.”

  The weeping began almost immediately—wholesale, like a flood across the stadium. They had seen. They had heard. Now they understood, Jason thought.

  God was bringing them back to life.

  Caleb suddenly jumped off the stage and sprinted to the front line where a man knelt with his face in the grass. Beside the man a woman lay facedown in full repentance. A small boy sat in a blue wheelchair between them. His legs were wrapped in metal braces.

  Caleb pulled up in front of the boy and then Jason recognized him. It was the small boy from Caleb’s first failure. It was the blond child who’d been placed on the Old Theater’s stage by a desperate father. And as far as Jason could see, his was the only wheelchair in sight.

  Caleb snatched up the boy’s hand and pulled him. The blond boy stared wide-eyed as his torso came out of the chair. Then he was standing; it was really that simple.

  And then he was stumbling behind Caleb, pulled to the stage. He was running and Jason began to laugh.

  The child was staring at his own feet when they reached the stage—a natural enough reaction, considering what had just happened. Consequently he ran straight into the uprights with enough force to break any boy’s legs.

  But today a break was not in the plan. He stumbled onto the stage and sprang to his feet with a cry of surprise. He spun back to his parents and cried out again—a high-pitched squeal of delight.

  The father looked up and saw only now that his son was missing. The mother rose. They stared toward the stage, aghast. And then their faces wrinkled with emotion. They fell into each other’s arms and began to weep loudly.

  Caleb grabbed the child’s hand and together they began to hop, delighted and laughing. It was like ring-around-the-rosies, and it could just as easily have been, but either way, it was because of the Holy Spirit’s power.

  Jason sighed and sank to his knees. The blue sky was gone, but then it wasn’t gone. Not really. The kingdom was right here, beyond the thin skin of this world. His heart was there in that kingdom, and that was all that really mattered. That was the point of it all.

  Still, his body was here, wasted with exhaustion.

  Caleb and his new friend were jumping back and forth on the stage. People were prone all over the field, crying out to God. They were kneeling between the seats and in the aisles. They were jumping and hopping, and their cries shook the stage. It was Coastview Fellowship Church all over again—only this time with 102,000 people who had never known until this day that God was so real. So very, very, very real.

  A balloon rose through Jason’s chest and he began to sob. He knelt on the trembling platform, lowered his head, and began to weep.

  He was in rapture. He was in heaven.

  The kingdom of heaven.

  40

  Three Months Later

  JASON SAT ON THE KNOLL overlooking the small village and watched Caleb picking through the rubble that was left of the monastery he’d grown up in. Leiah sat beside Jason, her hand in his. A light, cool breeze off the Simien Mountains to the south lifted her hair. The small stone house fifty yards behind the construction sight would be their new home for a few years at least. A poetic conclusion, he thought. They’d met divided during the monastery’s destruction; now they would live united during its rebuilding.

  Only one road led into the Debra Damarro—the same one he’d navigated the Jeep over just four months ago. The authorities had agreed to restricting access on the road during the monastery’s rebuilding—two years at least. They’d put a manned gate where the dirt road met the main road leading to Axum. One day they would open the monastery to the public, but the reconstruction would allow a buffer, so to speak: a few years to take a collective breath. Countless thousands would make straight for the boy, given the opportunity. But the time for multitudes had passed. Caleb was a child, and it was time for him to live like one. Perhaps one day he would emerge again.

  Jason’s mind drifted back to the weeks following the event at the Rose Bowl. It had taken a month to sort out the details, but in the end they were quite plain: God had reached out to the world in a unique way that had even the most ardent skeptics tossing and turning at night.

  The Rose Bowl meeting had continued until daybreak. Nothing more was said from the platform; no more spectacular healings or earthquakes or winds followed; no light shows or fireworks. Just the wonderful, heartbreaking, overpowering sound of wailing and laughing and abandoned worship that took on a life of its own. It could easily have been a crusade under the power of the Holy Spirit.

  Jason had walked around in a sort of stupor, alternating between tears and wide smiles. When he asked Leiah if he’d said the right things, she just hugged him around the neck and whispered in his ear, “I’m not sure you said anything. God was speaking.”

  Of course he knew that, but hearing her say it made him laugh, and he hugged her until she gasped for breath.

  Caleb was most definitely alive. There was dried blood in his hair and on his cheek, but a doctor examined him and pronounced to the cameras that he couldn’t find a scratch. And yes, the blood on the platform was real blood. Caleb’s blood. When they found the bullet lodged in plywood at the back of the stage, they found the boy’s blood on it as well. And practically the whole world had seen the impact of the bullet itself, replayed a hundred times in slow motion. A week of forensics put the last doubt to rest. The bullet was real; the footage was real; Caleb had been shot through the head with a .308 round and killed.

  And no, the boy walking around now was not—could not be—an impos
tor. Caleb was most definitely alive. End of story.

  The facts couldn’t be dismissed easily. Even Dr. Caldwell, though sticking with her original statements that attributed Caleb’s power to psychokinesis, spent most of her time sputtering and stammering on the talk shows. Her explanation of how a dead mind could muster up the power to bring itself back to life had played to polite smirks. The rest of the scientific community offered very sparse comment. Mostly none at all.

  Theologians, on the other hand, were speaking freely. In a unique way the event had unified even those of traditionally opposing stripes. It seemed trivial to argue petty doctrine in the face of such an obvious display of truth. No one could argue that God was not glorified. Caleb was clearly not the Antichrist or any such thing. If anything, he was a foretaste of things to come; at least, some pointed to the book of Revelation and said so. Maybe he was somewhere in the book of Revelation.

  Either way, Christians from all walks were dispensing with their differences and crossing party lines to boldly proclaim the simple truth of the matter. And the truth was clear enough: God was indeed real; God was indeed sovereign. The revival that swept through the land had a unique way of overshadowing the few spectacular meetings with Caleb. Hearts were being healed, and nobody seemed particularly upset with the fact that hands were no longer being straightened, at least not a thousand at a time.

  Some research groups estimated that upward of five hundred million people worldwide had changed their beliefs concerning God in the aftermath of that night at the Rose Bowl. They weren’t coming right out to say it, but most people understood that “beliefs concerning God” was too mild an expression for the phenomenon. Accepting Jesus Christ as God was more like it. The world had never seen such an incredible awakening to spiritual truth.

  Caleb had performed no more miracles. The small boy in braces had been the last. At least no miracles that Jason knew of. When Donna finally did get him in front of the camera four days after the event, he simply told her that neither he nor Caleb were really so unique from any other follower of Christ. They all had the same power, and it had much more to do with the healing of hearts than the healing of bones. God had made a statement; Jason would let that statement stand on its own.

  The fact that Caleb still carried the bullet wound on his belly was not lost on them.

  Charles Crandal was out of business. Permanently. Pure and simple. The footage of Roberts pulling the gun with Crandal frowning at Caleb dropped the candidate’s poll numbers by a full thirty points in the days that followed. He’d withdrawn from the race on November 5, two days before the election. A week later his body had been found next to Roberts in an old Nationwide Motel outside of Washington, D.C. They both had bullet holes through the head.

  The sniper who’d shot Caleb was still at large. Whether or not he was a part of the antichrist gang, tied to the circumstantial sighting of the black-hooded member near that first gun found, no one knew yet. But Jason guessed that either way, the shooting led back to Crandal and that in the end it had come back to bite him.

  Jason turned to Leiah and saw that she was looking at him. “We’re back to where we started,” he said. “So how does it feel to be slipping back into obscurity?”

  “Wonderful.”

  “We’re coming back very different people than when we left.”

  She looked down and he followed her eyes. They were on her forearm. Her skin was a light brown and perfectly smooth. “In more ways than one,” she said.

  He reached his left hand to her cheek and her lifted face. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  Her eyes flashed bright blue. She leaned toward him and he kissed her lips tenderly. He pulled back and smiled. “Mrs. Jason Marker. It still sounds remarkable, don’t you think?”

  “And to think, if I hadn’t come along when I did, you’d be a bleached skeleton in a Jeep.”

  “So you saved me. I’m glad we got that straight.”

  They chuckled and looked down at Caleb, who was climbing from the ruins and heading their way.

  “You know, I still wonder who it was all for,” Jason said. “From God’s perspective, I mean. Was this whole thing orchestrated for the sake of tearing down Crandal, or was it for all the people who got healed?”

  “Or was it for the sake of the world, a reawakening of the church?” Leiah added.

  “For that matter, was it for Caleb’s sake or our sake?”

  “Why not all?” Leiah asked.

  “But why did God do this? He must have had a primary purpose.”

  “Maybe they were all primary.” She grinned at him. “We certainly were.”

  “You have a point.” Jason watched the boy walking toward them. “And he was primary. It’s hard to imagine that within three months he’ll be our boy.”

  “He’s already our boy,” she said. “The rest is just paperwork.”

  “I feel like we’re adopting John the Baptist or something,” Jason said.

  She laughed. “He’s just a boy. A dirty boy, by the looks of it,” she added, looking at his dust-streaked face. He carried a handful of rock and approached with a smile. “The monastery is his life now.”

  The state had ordered Nikolous to deposit any “profits” from the meetings into a trust in Caleb’s name. The Greek had manufactured close to five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of expenses, but even so he’d been forced to fork over nearly nine million dollars. The man never did yield to the truth that surrounded him. He’d staked his reputation on a position that was evidently too painful to reverse, that Caleb’s power was psychic.

  At any rate, the money had been paid, and according to Ethiopian law, Caleb’s status gave him full control of those funds—something to do with his position in the church. He’d decided to rebuild the monastery. The construction was slated to begin in three days.

  “Selam,” Caleb said, using the native tongue.

  “Selam,” they both replied.

  The boy dropped to his haunches beside Jason and let the rock fragments spill to the earth. His dark hair lay in tangles on his shoulders.

  “Caleb, I have a question for you,” Jason said. “For whose sake do you think all that has happened in these last four months was allowed?”

  Caleb lifted his aqua eyes. “You think there is only one reason?”

  “No. But if it were mostly one, what would it be?”

  “Well, if there is one reason, then it was to show the world the power of Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit. How many worship him who once did not?” The boy thought awhile; then a grin spread across his face and he smiled at them. “But then the reason would also be you two.”

  “Us? Why?”

  “Because, I saw this before.” He motioned to them sitting together. “This marriage.”

  “You did?” Leiah asked, surprised. “When? When did you see . . . this?”

  “In the Jeep,” he said. “I saw it in the Jeep leaving the monastery.”

  Jason blinked. So it had been designed from the beginning. A lump suddenly rose to his throat and his eyes misted over. The sensitivity was a condition that seemed to have settled on him back in the meadow before the Rose Bowl. Now it was telling him that his Father loved him very much. His Father in heaven.

  Leiah kissed his cheek. “I love you,” she whispered.

  He put an arm around her. And then the other around Caleb. “Well, it was good of you to tell us, Caleb,” he said, looking down the hill with a smile. “We could have avoided the whole trip to the States and married in Addis Ababa.”

  “But then the other things wouldn’t have happened,” Caleb said. “And without them, you would not have found marriage. I think.”

  They sat still, facing the Ethiopian breeze under a warm sun.

  “I agree,” Leiah said.

  “Me too,” Jason agreed.

  And that was the end of it.

  Jason lay back on the grass and faced the sun, feeling as content as he could remember.

  Leiah lay bac
k beside him, smiling.

  Then Caleb dropped to his back beside them and giggled. Jason wasn’t sure which felt warmer just now—the sun on their faces or the love in their hearts.

  A WORD FROM BILL BRIGHT

  THERE IS AN OLD ADAGE which states that our stories do not simply reflect society, they shape it.

  Although I have authored more than sixty books over the years, I have come to the conclusion that a good novel on biblical themes can reach many more people than most theological works. God Himself, upon coming to earth in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, chose stories as His primary mode of communication. He used fiction. We call them parables, but they are stories either way—the story of the Prodigal Son, the story of the Sower, the story of the Unjust Judge, and many other similar stories.

  Fiction works in a unique way, of course. It’s more like a megaphone, trumpeting the truth in grand terms to bring inspiration, than like expository teaching. Fiction uses major themes in a story to speak boldly, and I believe the truth woven throughout this novel is one for which the church is desperate.

  It is the truth that God is indeed alive and still moves in supernatural ways today, whenever He so desires and for His purposes, through the lives of those who love, trust, and obey Him. It’s the truth that the source of God’s power is found in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, not in man’s devices. It’s the truth that what we see with our own eyes on a day-to-day basis isn’t the half of it. There is indeed a supernatural reality all around us that is just as real as the world we see.

  And most importantly, it’s the truth that, when seen through spiritual eyes, a healed heart and transformed life are far more spectacular than a straightened hand or restored sight. These were the themes of the New Testament church, and they must be the themes that guide our lives today. As dedicated believers, we are on a grand adventure that bristles with power and excitement. But I have been saddened again and again at the lack of enthusiasm and zeal among many who claim to be His followers. A lack of first love among His body—the Church.