Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  John looked at the overcoat he still held in his lap. “And so I said, ‘I’m just like Dad,’ because . . . what I was doing when you came in . . . that’s what your grandfather used to do, all the time, so much that it drove me bananas.” He looked at Carl. “And now . . . I’m wondering if I’m going to end up like him—a prophet who can’t help but speak, and . . . I don’t want to, and I’m scared of what’s happening to me.”

  “What if it’s God?” Carl asked.

  John gave that some thought, then looked at the coffee table again, tired, beaten, despondent. “Well . . . I would almost prefer that to . . . uh . . .”

  “But didn’t Grandma say God was talking to you?”

  John recalled it. “It would be nice if He was. Maybe we could discuss this whole thing; maybe I could negotiate to get my brain back.”

  Carl pressed it. “But . . . all the things you’ve seen, and what you were saying tonight . . . Dad, it’s all true.”

  John gave Carl a testy look. “Son . . . an entire shopping mall being devoured by a black . . . vacuum cleaner?”

  “But maybe it meant something.”

  John nodded with recollection. “I believe you were the one who gave the interpretation. People running from annihilation and death or something . . .”

  “And what you said tonight . . . You believed it, didn’t you? You were crying, Dad. You had to believe it. You had to mean it.”

  Now John found himself staring at Carl. “You . . . uh . . . you want it to be God, don’t you?”

  Carl considered the question, but could only look away, unable to answer.

  “Hey, come on,” John prodded. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t blame you.”

  Carl turned back toward his father and cried, “Don’t you believe anything?”

  “Well . . . sure I do. I believe in God.”

  “So tell me about Him. Where is He? Does He care about us? Does He even give a rip?”

  “I don’t know, Carl.”

  Carl pointed toward the city. “That’s not what you told them.”

  “Oh, come on. What I told them was just . . . Well, I don’t know what it was.”

  Carl’s eyes were filling with tears. “Well, do you believe what you told them or don’t you?”

  Forced to think about it, John knew the answer. Of course he believed. Every word he’d spoken to the city that night was his own. The pain was from his own heart, the thoughts from his own mind, the conviction from his own soul. But all these things had been buried and neglected, so far from his mind, for so long that their sudden resurrection caught him unawares. His answer surprised him even as he spoke it. “Yeah, Carl, okay, I believe it. Every word of it.” Then he added, “I just don’t know what stirred it all up.”

  Carl’s eyes softened at the answer. “Maybe God is talking to you!”

  “Hey, easy now, easy! Listen, everything I said tonight is out of the Bible. I learned all that stuff in church, it’s in my head, it’s buried in there somewhere. So I wouldn’t say God sent it straight to me tonight on a lightning bolt.”

  Carl nodded toward the city. “So why were you telling it all to them? What was that all about? And what was Grandpa doing?”

  John dug hard and deep for an answer. “Carl . . . I need time to think about it. It’s not like a guy can go through something like this and just—wham!—have it all figured out.” With great hesitance, he continued, “What if it really is God? I mean . . . I can’t even fathom that. Can you imagine what it would be like to come around a corner one day and boom—there’s God, right there. I mean, let’s consider what we’re saying.”

  At any other time the notion of actually bumping into the living God would have brought a chuckle and a not-so-serious discussion. But right now, in this place, in this time, it brought a stunned silence. What if . . . ? What if . . . ?

  Carl ventured, “But haven’t you known God before? You went to church with Grandma and Grandpa all those years.”

  John only shook his head. “I don’t know, Carl. Hey, blame it on me—maybe I didn’t pay enough attention—but right now it doesn’t seem like the same thing. In church we talked about Him, we sang about Him, we read about Him, we gave testimonies about Him, we had emotional fits and shouted hallelujah . . . But what would we have done if God came right into the room and we all met Him face-to-face? It’s one thing to feel the sunshine, but it’s another thing to fall into the sun.”

  Carl asked in all seriousness, “Are you afraid of Him?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  Carl thought it over. “I don’t know Him, and right now I’m feeling pretty small. Yeah, I guess so.”

  John looked down at the overcoat again. “But I do believe in Him, Carl, and if you really pressed me on it, I’d have to say I believe everything I ever learned in Sunday school and church. It’s just that I’ve had it all tucked away for a long time and I’m not clear on it . . . except for one thing, and for now it’s all I can say to you: Because I believe in God, I believe that Good, what’s right, is worth fighting for. Sometimes, at least for me, what’s right is a little hard to nail down, but I do believe it’s worth fighting for, and I think God is pleased when we do.”

  Carl’s eyes teared up again. “All right. That’ll do for now. Thanks.”

  THE NEXT DAY Carl stood before a fresh canvas and found himself actually painting something. Trees. A forest scene. A stream. Mom Barrett’s big maple was visible through the windows, just now building to a finale of red, gold, and yellow, and today it struck him: This is beauty. Yesterday he would not have seen it. Beauty had been an elusive concept, a vague, unknowable ideal, a myth conceived out of vain wishes. But today there was beauty. It was really there, in and of itself. Before it slipped away or his eyes closed to it again, he hurried to bring it inside with his brush.

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON JOHN called Mom Barrett to arrange a time alone with her, a time they could talk without outside interruptions.

  “Well, how about right now?” she asked.

  “Is Carl there?”

  “No, he’s gone for the day. He’s got some artist friends he wants to meet with, so I don’t expect him back until tonight. You ought to come over now.”

  “But what about evening service at the church?”

  “Son, you’re more important. Come on over.”

  He got right over there, and he and Mom sat down at the same round table in the dining room where many a family conference had been held.

  “How’re you feeling?” Mom asked, and John knew it wasn’t a mere formality.

  Considering that they were alone, and that neither one of them would live forever, and that one of the family had already passed on without a chance like this one, John figured it was time to be as open as he could be, to take some risks and get some things said and heard.

  “Well, Mom . . .” John pulled out a crinkled sheet of paper on which he’d scribbled some notes. He wanted to make sure he covered everything before the opportunity was lost—or before he chickened out. “I’m feeling like . . . Well, Mom, I need to talk things out.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  John looked at his notes. “Uh . . . first thing you ought to know is that the brass at the station are expanding the show. Tomorrow the Five Thirty goes to one hour, from 5 to 6, with some big TV and print promotion, more exposure for me and Ali Downs, and a raise.”

  Mom was genuinely pleased. “Oh, that’s very exciting.”

  “Yeah . . . exciting is right.”

  Mom took a careful look at him. “You don’t seem too excited.”

  “Well . . . you remember the last time I came in here by myself . . . after I had that flashback or whatever it was at the mall?”

  She chuckled. “Oh, I sure do.”

  “You said that maybe God was talking to me.”

  “I still think that.”

  “Okay. Well then, two things: How do you know it’s God, and secondly . . . did Dad ever have experiences like I’
ve had?”

  Her eyebrows raised just a little. “You mean there’s more?”

  He nodded. “A lot more.” He looked at his notes. It was confession time. “I was alone in my apartment one night . . . the night before I had lunch with Dad, the last time I ever saw him alive, and . . . I heard all these voices outside . . .” He then recounted everything: the voices in the night, the time he heard Tina Lewis “screaming,” the weird scripted question that wasn’t in the script, the vision in the shopping mall (which she already knew about), and then the strange experience of just the other night. “I was preaching, Mom. I mean, I just about sounded like Pastor Thompson used to sound . . .”

  “Pastor Thompson?” Mom almost laughed. “Ohhh, yes. Yes, I remember his preaching.”

  “I do too. Yeah, I listened once in a while—and that’s what I sounded like. It was unreal. But it hit me, and I told Carl—Carl was standing there, wondering what in the world I was doing—I told him . . . I remember I said, ‘I’m just like Dad.’”

  Mom went “Mmmmm . . .” and gave a slow, thoughtful nod.

  “Mom . . . I’m getting a raise, I’m getting more exposure, more responsibility, and do you know, Ben Oliver—that’s my boss, he’s the news director for Channel 6—Ben Oliver called me into his office this week and actually wanted to know if I was losing my marbles. He’d heard about some of this stuff, and Mom . . . the pressure’s on, and I’ve got to know . . .”

  “John, you’re not losing your marbles.”

  “Well, that’s nice to hear, but how do you know?”

  Mom was already on her feet. “Let me get something to show you.”

  While John sat there worrying and wondering what to say next, she went to the back hall closet, rummaged through the photo albums and scrapbooks, and returned with an old spiral notebook. “Remember this?”

  He began to recall it as she slid it across the table to him. He recognized his own handwriting—the juvenile version—on the cover: The Private Journal of John Barrett, Junior. He hadn’t seen this in years, but Mom, of course, saved all this stuff.

  “You used to guard this thing with your life,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “But—I forget when it was, maybe when you turned thirteen or so—you quit guarding it and left it lying around until I put it away in the closet.”

  John began to page through it. It was like a time capsule. Here were the thoughts, feelings, and scrawlings of John Barrett Jr. during the ages of nine through ten, along with some doodles, some drawings, and even a few stories, including “The Lazy Dinosaur Who Wouldn’t Work,” “Who Ate My Apple?” (complete with illustrations), and “Sam’s Big Feet.”

  John felt he was holding a real treasure, of course. “Incredible.”

  “Find July 19th, 1959,” Mom said.

  Even as John turned the yellowing pages to the journal entry he’d made on that date, the memory, some thirty years old, came back to him.

  It read, “Tonight I heard God speak and I saw a vision of the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. Tonight I gave my life to Jesus. I am a new creation in Christ, and whatever God wants me to do, I will do it, because I told Him He could have my life and He could use me. Haleluyah! I can’t wait to see what wunderful things God will do in my life.”

  Mom was ready to make her case. “I remember that night, and Dad always remembered it. I remember how you went forward at the Sunday night meeting and prayed at the altar, and Dad prophesied over you.”

  John nodded as the memory slowly reassembled, pieces at a time.

  “You see, son, we can forget our promises, but God doesn’t forget. A thousand years is as a day with Him, so what’s a mere thirty-two years?”

  How comfortable it would be, John thought, how nice, to retreat into his usual skepticism, give Mom an indulging smile, and walk away from her theory. Had there been no rude intrusions into his soul and mind by . . . whatever it was . . . he could have done that. He was well practiced at it. But now, with the journal entry before his eyes, he remembered that night in the summer of 1959. He remembered his prayer and the intensity of that moment—the little church, the close, sweaty smells, the smooth, lacquered surface of that prayer rail, the praying saints, Sister Ames playing at the piano. He could recall his vision, hallucination, whatever, of that little lamb standing right in front of him, so real he thought he could touch it, its eyes so gentle and lucid. He could hear once again Dad’s prophetic words, the cadence of Dad’s speech and the timbre of his voice.

  And it struck him how last night felt so much like that night thirty-two years ago.

  “I remember I said, ‘Use me, Lord.’”

  “Well,” Mom said, her hands folded on the table, her expression gentle, “you asked me how I know it’s God, and this is one reason. You’ve been fighting it, I know, but I think God is holding you to your promise.”

  John figured he should at least explore Mom’s theory. “So . . . if you’re right . . . am I going to end up like Dad?”

  Mom was wondering if she should be offended. “Oh? And how is that?”

  “Well . . . that last time we had lunch, he told me he’d heard the cries of lost souls. Has he ever had experiences like mine?”

  “For years.”

  John’s mouth dropped open. “For years?”

  Mom nodded.

  “Well, how come I never knew about it?”

  She gave a little shrug. “You were never around. You were away at college, and then you took that radio job in Wichita . . . and then the TV job in Los Angeles . . .”

  “But he never told me. He never said a thing about it.”

  “What if he had?”

  The answer was clear, and it was only under Mom’s unrelenting gaze that John admitted, “I would have said he was crazy.”

  She nodded. “You have been known to say that.”

  John had to know for sure. “Was he, Mom?”

  “What you really want to know is, are you crazy?”

  “I have no doubt that I got it from him. I just want to know what it is.”

  She shook her head. “John, you didn’t ‘get it’ from him. You don’t inherit it like . . . like your noses being the same or something. It’s more like a legacy. Dad wanted you to have a ministry like he had. Remember when he gave you his coat?”

  John almost did a double take. “His coat? That old overcoat?”

  “That was the prophet’s mantle.”

  “The what?”

  “The prophet’s mantle. That’s what Dad called it. He got the idea from the story of Elijah. You know, when Elijah’s time to leave the earth approached, he took his mantle and put it on the shoulders of Elisha, his successor.”

  John remembered. “Come on,” Dad had said, “humor your religious old man.” John considered the Barrett estate and how everything—the bank accounts, the stocks, the house, the business—had been cleared of debt and put in Mom’s name before Dad was killed. “Do you think Dad knew he was going to die?”

  She thought for a moment. “That’s one thing he never shared with me, which I can understand. All I know is, when it did happen his house was in order and he was ready.” Then she added, “And you had his coat.”

  John had heard enough. He wanted to close the subject. “Okay. All right.”

  “I’m not finished, John.”

  By the look in her eye John knew he was going to get an old-fashioned talking-to. “If we’re going to ‘talk things out’ like you want, I’ve got a few things to say too. Son, if all you want to believe is that you’re crazy like your old man, then . . . are you listening now? . . . you could be missing your very last chance to get right with God. Now I agree that what’s happening to you is extreme, but if I’m right, and if your father’s prayers and my prayers are really being answered right now—if God is speaking to you, you would be the greatest of all fools if you harden your heart against Him. You hear me?”

  She was going to get an answer out of him if she had to sit there all day.

&n
bsp; He obliged her. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, now here’s another thing: I’ll grant that you’re fooling your public. They see you on that TV and they think, Well, here’s a man who knows what’s happening, who’s in control of his life. But, John, you aren’t fooling me, and I guarantee you, you aren’t fooling God.

  “You’ve cut yourself off from life, John. You’re like a branch cut from a tree, and you’re going to wither up and die if you don’t get reconnected. You know all those voices you heard? How do you know one of them wasn’t your own? Are you listening to me?”

  One thing about Mom’s lectures, John could never get too old for them. This was Mom at her best, as only she could be. He wouldn’t have taken it from anyone else. “Oh, I’m listening, Mom. You’re . . . uh . . . you’re doing just fine.”

  Mom paused to let it sink in, then began again. “John, I’m sorry I have to be so blunt with you, but . . . well, maybe that’s part of being a prophet, or a prophet’s widow. You get used to being direct and saying what needs to be said because no one else will do it.” She leaned forward and spoke gently, urgently. “And, John, that means you can make enemies. There are people out there who will not appreciate honesty, who will not want to hear the Truth. They’re the ones Jesus said would flee from the light lest their deeds be exposed. They don’t want you exposing what they’re doing. But that’s what a prophet has to do sometimes. He has to lay bare the secrets of men’s hearts so they’ll know they’re sinners and get right with God, and that can be a miserable job. You can make enemies.”