The Vanishings
Page 9
The big kid let his bike fall near the front door and hurried in. Ryan was in no hurry. He didn’t know who or what he was looking for. By the time he got into the building, the kid who had been on the bike was talking to a man in his thirties with curly hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
“Can I help you, son?” the man asked, seeing Ryan over Judd’s shoulder.
Ryan couldn’t get the words out. How were you supposed to ask if it was true, if Jesus had taken his people to heaven?
“Did you lose some family?” the man said.
Ryan nodded. “They died,” he managed.
“No, they are in heaven with Jesus.”
“They didn’t get taken,” Ryan insisted. “My dad died in a plane crash and my mom in a car accident.”
Bruce approached and reached for Ryan. The boy felt self-conscious, but he let the man hug him. “My name is Bruce Barnes,” he said. “I’m the only person left from the staff of this church, and I know exactly what happened. I’m going to teach a small group of young people here soon, and you’re welcome to stay.”
“You’re going to teach?”
Bruce nodded. “I know what happened because I missed it. I have a tape from the senior pastor that will help explain. Is that something you’d be interested in?”
Ryan nodded. So did the big kid, whom Bruce introduced as someone from the church family named Judd Thompson. They shook hands. Ryan didn’t know any other kids as old as Judd, except for a few cousins in California.
Bruce said he was expecting two more kids to show up. “I got a call from a girl named Vicki Byrne. I invited her, and she called back later to say she had invited a boy named Lionel Washington. When we’re all here, we’ll get started. I want to tell you my story.”
When Vicki and Lionel arrived, Bruce took the four of them into a small office where he had set up a VCR and a TV. “You’re not going to understand everything the pastor says,” Bruce said, “but still you’ll be astounded that he knows what’s going on, even though he’s gone. More important, you need to know that I have the same story you do.
“I lost my wife and my young children. They disappeared from their beds, and I knew immediately that I had been living a lie. I had been to Bible college and was a pastor, but I always thought I could get by, living for myself and never making the decision to receive Christ. Judd, I know you and your family. I’m surprised to see you here, but I’m not surprised the rest of your family is gone. You know what happened, don’t you?”
Judd nodded miserably. Bruce asked the others to share their stories. They cried when they spoke, and they cried when they listened. They had been thrust together by a tragedy none of them could have ever expected.
“I know it’s hard for you to grasp right now,” Bruce said, “but I have good news for you. The question you all must have now is whether there is any hope for you. You missed Christ when he came, but you are not lost forever. We’re going to live through some awful days and years, but the Bible is clear that there will be a great soul harvest during this time. People can still become believers and be assured of heaven when they die.
“That won’t take away your sorrow, your grief, or your loneliness. I can’t even imagine a day when I won’t cry over what I’ve lost. But now I don’t apologize for telling everybody who comes in here how they can receive Christ. It’s really quite simple. God made it easy. If you want to hear this, just say so, and I’ll walk you through it.”
Vicki raised a hand. “Are you saying that if we had done this before, we wouldn’t have been left behind?”
Bruce nodded.
“And now we can still get to heaven when we die?”
He nodded again. “Everybody want to hear this?” They all nodded. “First,” he said, “we have to see ourselves as God sees us. The Bible says all have sinned, that there is none righteous, no, not one. It also says we can’t save ourselves. Lots of people thought they could earn their way to God or to heaven by doing good things, but that’s the biggest misunderstanding ever. The Bible says it’s not by works we have done, but by his mercy that God saves us. We are saved by grace through Christ, not of ourselves, so we can’t brag about our goodness.”
“But I didn’t do anything good,” Vicki said. “I didn’t even try to get to heaven because I didn’t really believe any of this.”
“What do you think now?” Bruce said kindly.
“I think I was wrong.”
“Me too,” Judd said.
“Me three,” Lionel said.
Ryan said nothing, but it was clear to Bruce he was listening. This was all brand-new to him, except for what Raymie had tried to tell him.
“The punishment for sin is death,” Bruce continued. “Jesus took our sins and paid the penalty for them by dying so we wouldn’t have to. He died in our place because he loves us. When we tell Christ that we know we are sinners and lost and then we receive his gift of salvation, he saves us. A transaction takes place, a deal. We go from darkness to light, from lost to found. We’re saved. The Bible says that to those who receive him he gives the power to become sons of God. That’s what Jesus is—the Son of God. When we become sons of God, we have what Jesus has: We become part of God’s family, we have forgiveness for our sins, and we have eternal life.
“After you watch this video our pastor left behind, I’m going to ask you something I never wanted to ask people before. I want to know if you’re ready to receive Christ right now. I’ll pray with you and help you talk to God about it. It may seem too fast for you. This may be new to you. I don’t want you to make a hasty decision when you’re still in shock over what has happened. But neither do I want you to wait too long, to put this off when the world is a more dangerous place than it’s ever been. Maybe you missed Christ the first time around because you didn’t know any better. But now you know. What could be worse than knowing and then still dying without Christ?”
The four kids sat there, each grieving in his or her own way. Judd had been humbled. Vicki felt a fool. Lionel felt a sadness so deep he didn’t know if it would ever go away. Ryan was puzzled. Raymie had told him all this, and Ryan had thought it was stupid. He didn’t think so anymore.
As they watched the video of the senior pastor, now in heaven, telling what was going on and how they could come to Christ, each felt a sudden closeness to the other. Bruce told them that if they became believers, they would be brothers and sisters in Christ. They could become each other’s family.
They would discover their connections later. Judd would one day realize that Ryan was the best friend of the son of the pilot of the plane he had been on. Vicki knew Lionel through his sister, but she didn’t know that his mother had worked for the same magazine as a man who had been on the plane with Judd.
For now they were simply four kids from the same town who shared a common horror and grief. Bruce seemed to have in mind for them a future as a small group. That sounded good to each, especially in their gnawing loneliness.
When the video ended, each sat stunned that the pastor had known in advance all that was now taking place. Clearly this was truth. Certainly this demanded their attention and a decision. Each sat staring as Bruce posed the question of the ages.
“Are you ready?” he said. “Will you receive Christ?”
About the Authors
Jerry B. Jenkins (www.jerryjenkins.com) is the writer of the Left Behind series. He owns the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild, an organization dedicated to mentoring aspiring authors. Former vice president for publishing for the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, he also served many years as editor of Moody magazine and is now Moody’s writer-at-large.
His writing has appeared in publications as varied as Reader’s Digest, Parade, Guideposts, in-flight magazines, and dozens of other periodicals. Jenkins’s biographies include books with Billy Graham, Hank Aaron, Bill Gaither, Luis Palau, Walter Payton, Orel Hershiser, and Nolan Ryan, among many others. His books appear regularly on the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street J
ournal, and Publishers Weekly best seller lists.
Jerry is also the writer of the nationally syndicated sports story comic strip Gil Thorp, distributed to newspapers across the United States by Tribune Media Services.
Jerry and his wife, Dianna, live in Colorado and have three grown sons.
Dr. Tim LaHaye (www.timlahaye.com), who conceived the idea of fictionalizing an account of the Rapture and the Tribulation, is a noted author, minister, and nationally recognized speaker on Bible prophecy. He is the founder of both Tim LaHaye Ministries and The PreTrib Research Center. He also recently cofounded the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy at Liberty University. Presently Dr. LaHaye speaks at many of the major Bible prophecy conferences in the U.S. and Canada, where his current prophecy books are very popular.
Dr. LaHaye holds a doctor of ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary and a doctor of literature degree from Liberty University. For twenty-five years he pastored one of the nation’s outstanding churches in San Diego, which grew to three locations. It was during that time that he founded two accredited Christian high schools, a Christian school system of ten schools, and Christian Heritage College.
Dr. LaHaye has written over forty books that have been published in more than thirty languages. He has written books on a wide variety of subjects, such as family life, temperaments, and Bible prophecy. His current fiction works, the Left Behind series, written with Jerry B. Jenkins, continue to appear on the best seller lists of the Christian Booksellers Association, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Times.
He is the father of four grown children and grandfather of nine. Snow skiing, waterskiing, motorcycling, golfing, vacationing with family, and jogging are among his leisure activities.