by Gene Edwards
Visit Tyndale’s exciting Web site at www.tyndale.com.
TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
A Tale of Three Kings
Copyright © 1980, 1992 by Gene Edwards. All rights reserved.
Designed by Erik M. Peterson
Cover photograph copyright © by Dan Eckert/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.
This book was formerly published by SeedSowers (Christian Books Publishing House), Newnan, Georgia 30263.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.
Dedication
To the brokenhearted Christians coming out of authoritarian groups, seeking solace, healing, and hope. May you somehow recover and go on with him who is liberty.
And to all brokenhearted Christians: May you be so utterly healed that you can still answer the call of him who asks for all because he is all.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface to the Second Edition
Author’s Preface
Introduction
Prologue
PART 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PART 2
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Book Discussion Guide
About the Author
Acknowledgments
To Helen, Carman, and Patty for aiding in the preparation of this manuscript.
Preface to the Second Edition
When I first penned A Tale of Three Kings, I would have been encouraged to know it would live long enough to go through two or three printings. I utterly underestimated the number of devastated Christians out there. A far broader audience than I anticipated has taken up this book. It is an audience made up of Christians damaged by such things as church splits and individual “Christian to Christian” clashes.
I have been a little awed by the reception of this book and the fact that the reception has been worldwide. The number of Christian workers who have ordered this book in bulk, to be passed out to their people, has been only short of phenomenal. That A Tale of Three Kings has been turned into plays and has been read publicly from pulpits turned awe to amazement.
Obviously, there is a great deal of pain and hurt out there in Christendom that is rarely addressed or ministered to. I hope this book, as well as Letters to a Devastated Christian, Crucified by Christians, and The Prisoner in the Third Cell, will minister to those needs.
Author’s Preface
Why this book and what is its purpose? The answer can probably be traced to my mailbox. As one who receives correspondence from Christians all over the world, I noted some years ago a growing number of letters from Christians devastated by the authoritarian movement that had become so popular with many evangelical groups. A reaction to this totalitarian concept eventually set in. A mass exodus was soon under way. The stories being told by these spiritual fugitives are often terrifying and sometimes unbelievable. I am not at all sure if it is the doctrine itself that is causing such widespread carnage or the inordinate practice of this doctrine. Whatever it is, in all my long years as an evangelical Christian minister, I have never seen anything that has damaged so many believers so deeply. The wreckage appears to be universal, and recovery from it is almost nil.
This book reflects my concern for this multitude of confused, brokenhearted, and often bitter Christians who now find their spiritual lives in shambles and who are groping about for even the slightest word of hope and comfort.
This book, I trust, will serve in some small way to meet this need.
There is one thing, dear reader, this book is most certainly not intended to be. It is not intended to be additional fodder in your cannon to better blast your adversaries, whatever your view. I would beg you to be done with such ancient and brutish ways. This book is intended for individual healing and for private retreat.
I trust this volume will sound a note of hope, even if that note is heard ever so distantly.
Gene Edwards
They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not . . .
Hosea 8:4
Introduction
Well, dear reader, how nice to be with you once more. It is a privilege to spend this time with you. Thank you for meeting here, and I suggest we hasten into the playhouse, as I see that they have already dimmed the lights.
There are two seats reserved for us not too far from the stage. Quickly, let us take them.
I understand the story is a drama. I trust, though, you will not find it sad.
I believe we will find the story to be in two parts. In part 1 we shall meet an older king, Saul by name, and a young shepherd boy named David. In part 2 we shall once more meet an older king and a young man. But this time the older king is David and the young man is Absalom.
The story is a portrait (you might prefer to call it a rough charcoal sketch) of submission and authority within the kingdom of God.
Ah, they have turned off the lights, and the players have taken their places. The audience has quieted itself. The curtain is rising.
Our story has begun.
Prologue
The almighty, living God turned to Gabriel and gave a command.
“Go, take these two portions of my being. There are two destinies waiting. To each unborn destiny give one portion of myself.”
Carrying two glowing, pulsating lights of Life, Gabriel opened the door into the realm between two universes and disappeared. He had stepped into the Mall of Unborn Destinies.
Gabriel spoke: “I have here two portions of the nature of God. The first is the very cloth of his nature. When wrapped about you, it clothes you with the breath of God. As water surrounds a person in the sea, so will his very breath envelop you. With this, the divine breath, you will have his power—power to subdue armies, shame the enemies of God, and accomplish his work on the earth. Here is the power of God as a gift. Here is immersion into the Spirit.”
A destiny stepped forward: “This portion of God is for me.”
“True,” replied the angel. “And remember, whoever receives such a great portion of power will surely be known by many. Ere your earthly pilgrimage is done, your true character will be known; yea, it will be revealed by means of this power. Such is the destiny of all who want and wield this portion, for it touches only the outer person, affecting the inner person not one whit. Outer power will always unveil the inner resources or the lack thereof.”
The first destined one received the gift and stepped back.
Gabriel spoke again.
“I have here the second of two elements of the living God. This is not a gift but an inheritance. A gift is worn on the outer person; an inheritance is planted deep inside—like a seed. Yet, even though it is such a small planting, this planting grows and, in time, fills all the inner person.”
Another destiny stepped forward. “I believe this element is to be mine for my earthly pilgrimage.”
“True,” responded the angel again. “I must tell you that what has been given to you is a glorious thin
g—the only element in the universe that can change the human heart. Yet even this element of God cannot accomplish its task nor grow and fill your entire inner being unless it is compounded well. It must be mixed lavishly with pain, sorrow, and crushing.”
The second destined one received the inheritance and stepped back.
Beside Gabriel sat the angel Recorder. He dutifully entered into his ledger the record of the two destinies.
“And who shall these destinies become after they go through the door to the visible universe?” asked Recorder.
Gabriel replied softly, “Each, in his time, shall be king.”
PART 1
Chapter 1
The youngest son of any family bears two distinctions: He is considered to be both spoiled and uninformed. Usually little is expected of him. Inevitably, he displays fewer characteristics of leadership than the other children in the family. As a child, he never leads. He only follows, for he has no one younger on whom to practice leadership.
So it is today. And so it was three thousand years ago in a village called Bethlehem, in a family of eight boys. The first seven sons of Jesse worked near their father’s farm. The youngest was sent on treks into the mountains to graze the family’s small flock of sheep.
On those pastoral jaunts, this youngest son always carried two things: a sling and a small, guitarlike instrument. Spare time for a sheepherder is abundant on rich mountain plateaus where sheep can graze for days in one sequestered meadow. But as time passed and days became weeks, the young man became very lonely. The feeling of friendlessness that always roamed inside him was magnified. He often cried. He also played his harp a great deal. He had a good voice, so he often sang. When these activities failed to comfort him, he gathered up a pile of stones and, one by one, swung them at a distant tree with something akin to fury.
When one rock pile was depleted, he would walk to the blistered tree, reassemble his rocks, and designate another leafy enemy at yet a farther distance.
He engaged in many such solitary battles.
This shepherd-singer-slinger also loved his Lord. At night, when all the sheep lay sleeping and he sat staring at the dying fire, he would strum upon his harp and break into quiet song. He sang the ancient hymns of his forefathers’ faith. While he sang he wept, and while weeping he often broke out in abandoned praise—until mountains in distant places lifted up his praise and tears and passed them on to higher mountains, until they eventually reached the ears of God.
When the young shepherd did not praise and when he did not cry, he tended to each and every sheep and lamb. When not occupied with his flock, he swung his companionable sling and swung it again and again until he could tell every rock precisely where to go.
Once, while singing his lungs out to God, angels, sheep, and passing clouds, he spied a living enemy: a huge bear! He lunged forward. Both found themselves moving furiously toward the same small object, a lamb feeding at a table of rich, green grass. Youth and bear stopped halfway and whirled to face one another. Even as he instinctively reached into his pocket for a stone, the young man realized, “Why, I am not afraid.”
Meanwhile, brown lightning on mighty, furry legs charged at the shepherd with foaming madness. Impelled by the strength of youth, the young man married rock to leather, and soon a brook-smooth pebble whined through the air to meet that charge.
A few moments later, the man—not quite so young as a moment before—picked up the little lamb and said, “I am your shepherd, and God is mine.”
And so, long into the night, he wove the day’s saga into a song. He hurled that hymn to the skies again and again until he had taught the melody and words to every angel that had ears. They, in turn, became custodians of this wondrous song and passed it on as healing balm to brokenhearted men and women in every age to come.
Chapter 2
A figure in the distance was running toward him. It grew and became his brother. “Run!” cried the brother. “Run with all your strength. I’ll watch the flock.”
“Why?”
“An old man, a sage. He wants to meet all eight of the sons of Jesse, and he has seen all but you.”
“But why?”
“Run!”
So David ran. He stopped long enough to get his breath. Then, sweat pouring down his sunburned cheeks, his red face matching his red curly hair, he walked into his father’s house, his eyes recording everything in sight.
The youngest son of Jesse stood there, tall and strong, but more in the eyes of the curious old gentleman than to anyone else in the room. Kith and kin cannot always tell when a man is grown, even when looking straight at him. The elderly man saw. And something more he saw. In a way he himself did not understand, the old man knew what God knew.
God had taken a house-to-house survey of the whole kingdom in search of someone very special. As a result of this survey, the Lord God Almighty had found that this leather-lunged troubadour loved his Lord with a purer heart than anyone else on all the sacred soil of Israel.
“Kneel,” said the bearded one with the long, gray hair. Almost regally, for one who had never been in that particular position, David knelt and then felt oil pouring down on his head. Somewhere, in one of the closets of his mind labeled “childhood information,” he found a thought: This is what men do to designate royalty! Samuel is making me a . . . what?
The Hebrew words were unmistakable. Even children knew them.
“Behold the Lord’s anointed!”
Quite a day for that young man, wouldn’t you say? Then do you find it strange that this remarkable event led the young man not to the throne but to a decade of hellish agony and suffering? On that day, David was enrolled, not into the lineage of royalty but into the school of brokenness.
Samuel went home. The sons of Jesse, save one, went forth to war. And the youngest, not yet ripe for war, received a promotion in his father’s home . . . from sheepherder to messenger boy. His new job was to run food and messages to his brothers on the front lines. He did this regularly.
On one such visit to the battlefront, he killed another bear, in exactly the same way as he had the first. This bear, however, was nine feet tall and bore the name Goliath. As a result of this unusual feat, young David found himself a folk hero.
And eventually he found himself in the palace of a mad king. And in circumstances that were as insane as the king, the young man was to learn many indispensable lessons.
Chapter 3
David sang to the mad king. Often. The music helped the old man a great deal, it seems. And all over the palace, when David sang, everyone stopped in the corridors, turned their ears in the direction of the king’s chamber, and listened and wondered. How did such a young man come to possess such wonderful words and music?
Everyone’s favorite seemed to be the song the little lamb had taught him. They loved that song as much as did the angels.
Nonetheless, the king was mad, and therefore he was jealous. Or was it the other way around? Either way, Saul felt threatened by David, as kings often do when there is a popular, promising young man beneath them. The king also knew, as did David, that this boy just might have his job some day.
But would David ascend to the throne by fair means or foul? Saul did not know. This question is one of the things that drove the king mad.
David was caught in a very uncomfortable position; however, he seemed to grasp a deep understanding of the unfolding drama in which he had been caught. He seemed to understand something that few of even the wisest men of his day understood. Something that in our day, when men are wiser still, even fewer understand.
And what was that?
God did not have—but wanted very much to have—men and women who would live in pain.
God wanted a broken vessel.
Chapter 4
The mad king saw David as a threat to the king’s kingdom. Saul did not understand, it seems, that God should be left to decide what kingdoms survive which threats. Not knowing this, Saul did what all mad kings do. He
threw spears at David. He could. He was king. Kings can do things like that. They almost always do. Kings claim the right to throw spears. Everyone knows that kings have that right. Everyone knows very, very well. How do they know? Because the king has told them so—many, many times.
Is it possible that this mad king was the true king, even the Lord’s anointed?
And what about your king? Is he the Lord’s anointed? Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. No one can ever really know for sure. Men say they are sure. Even certain. But they are not. They do not know. God knows. But he will not tell.
If your king is truly the Lord’s anointed, and if he also throws spears, then there are some things you can know, and know for sure:
Your king is quite mad.
And he is a king after the order of King Saul.
Chapter 5
God has a university. It’s a small school. Few enroll; even fewer graduate. Very, very few indeed.
God has this school because he does not have broken men and women. Instead, he has several other types of people. He has people who claim to have God’s authority . . . and don’t—people who claim to be broken . . . and aren’t. And people who do have God’s authority, but who are mad and unbroken. And he has, regretfully, a great mixture of everything in between. All of these he has in abundance, but broken men and women, hardly at all.
In God’s sacred school of submission and brokenness, why are there so few students? Because all students in this school must suffer much pain. And as you might guess, it is often the unbroken ruler (whom God sovereignly picks) who metes out the pain. David was once a student in this school, and Saul was God’s chosen way to crush David.