Solomon's Porch (31 page)

“Well what, sir?” a young aide asked.

“Let me put it this way, son,” the President said, as he slipped into his familiar light Virginia drawl, “if Marine Corps General Enrique Vargas tells you that a chicken dips snuff, you better go grab that bird and look up under his wing for a can.”

“You take this seriously then, sir?” the second senior advisor asked.

“I do. We’ve had some dealings with Special Agent Austin as well. Remember, two years ago I believe, that ugly business down in Texas?”

“That’s right,” the first senior advisor agreed. “It was Austin who caught that guy, Barrigan, the one who was funneling all the illegal money into the Congressional races.”

“Austin refused to be bullied or influenced by anyone,” the President confirmed. “Letting the chips fall where they may could have cost him his career if the charges didn’t stick. Austin’s an honest man.”

“And a gutsy guy,” the first senior advisor added. “But sir, I mean come on, sir. All these claimed miracles and healings? Don’t tell me you believe in demons too, Mr. President. And this business of bringing a dead man back to life. It’s absurd.”

“Is it? Is it really?” the President said, raising his eyebrows quizzically.

“Yes, Mr. President, it is. It must be.”

“Could have sworn it was you and the Mrs. who went to church with Ellen and I what, at least two Sundays a month for the past five years? Maybe it was your long lost identical twin.”

“Sir, of course sir. I believe in God. I believe in Christ. But if the Almighty had something to say to the planet, wouldn’t He be a bit more choosey? Why use these amateur middlemen? Don’t we have Popes and Bishops and Reverends for that?”

“I can see you need to brush up on the Scriptures, my friend,” the President said as he held up a Bible. “This book is filled with prophets God chose to raise from among men of the lowliest stations in life. Joseph was a prisoner and a slave, King David was a young shepherd boy, a nobody, from nowhere, St. Matthew was a thief, and St. Paul hunted down and killed Christians like stray dogs before his conversion.”

“But sir, I mean really, sir … ”

“Why don’t we just see what Carson does next,” the President said, turning back up the volume on the TV set. “All I’m saying is I don’t smell a hoax here. Something very real may be going on at Parkersboro.”

“Not for much longer,” the second senior advisor muttered under his breath. Ten minutes earlier, at his direction, acting under the authority of the President, a contingent of federal officers was finally dispatched to Parkersboro to pull the plug on the whole affair.

“So now you know who they are,” Alex said to the camera, as the taped portion of the broadcast ended and the program went live once again. “Seven men each with his own history, sufferings, and testimony of faith. Over the years I’ve interviewed Presidents, Kings, billionaires, even a Pope, but never have I met more righteous and extraordinary men. Regardless of their past sins, they are gentlemen of the highest character. I would gladly die to protect any one of them from harm.”

Alex then turned and began slowly walking from his position just off stage left and on to the platform itself. He kept talking as he moved.

“But if I were one of you out there in the viewing audience, I would be skeptical, more than skeptical in fact, regarding the statements and claims made here tonight. After all, is it not an unfortunate daily occurrence that we are lied to? Even, sadly enough, by many so-called men of God whose only true interest is advancing themselves in some way, in getting rich or in promoting a secular political agenda. Perhaps the one thing most lacking in our common spiritual lives is credibility.”

“So tonight, right here and right now, God is going to act. He wants to remove any doubts you may have that He is real and that these men serve Him. The Lord wants you to believe, to follow His lead. For His reasons, He has chosen this place and this time to make a bold and dramatic statement to the world.”

“Say that again?” Martz asked the studio chief. The message was repeated.

“That’s impossible. I mean come on, man. Lovely idea, I’ll grant you that, but cut me a break. They really said that? They’re going to look like damned fools and us along with them.”

Martz chilled for a second and took a deep breath. Even a failed stunt delivers if it’s big enough, he reassured himself, and if the initial ratings estimates for “Miracles” were anywhere near accurate, the network was looking at Super Bowl type audience numbers. Opportunity was knocking, Martz just hoped it didn’t come crashing through the door.

Then he thought again about what his studio chief told him. “What the hell,” he mumbled to himself.

“Audrey.”

“Yes, Mr. Martz?”

“Is that security guard we have out front, you know the geezer everybody calls gramps, is he armed?”

“Armed, Mr. Martz?”

“Does the putz have a gun?”

Audrey thought about it, recalled what the guard looked like and said, “I think so, Mr. Martz.”

“Bring him and his sidearm on in here then, will you please?”

“Sir?”

“Just do it, Audrey. Just do it.” Martz had no desire to explain his request. The whole thing was ridiculous.

Peter and the disciples assembled in the center of the stage and formed a circle. For them, every detail of the experience; the clear, cool night, what everyone was wearing, the glare of the TV lights, the hum of the electronic equipment, even the placement of objects around the porch were parts of a familiar scene. They had stepped into their dream.

Peter began to pray. In the distance, the faint sounds of more than one approaching siren could be heard. As for the audience, they were supremely quiet. The tension of anticipation clenched all present.

“Lord,” Peter prayed. “You delivered my brothers and I from Satan’s power for Your purpose, to glorify Your name. We come before you now humbly tonight Lord asking only that you use us as willing vessels. Your will be done, Mighty God.”

Then a sound like far off thunder began to roll toward Parkersboro, like a powerful storm popping up on a summer night. But the sky was completely clear.

In a few seconds the noise became more intense than any storm could ever be, it was like a hundred jet engines all revving up at once. The sound was felt as much as it was heard. Most of those present described it as “a wall of energy” or “an enormous pressure wave.”

Then out of nowhere a bright plasma, looking like fire but without any heat, enveloped the porch and the men on it. Like a sheet of lightning, it surrounded them, dancing and sparking off each man like a Living Flame.

“Good God Almighty!” the President gasped, astonished. “What do you make of that?”

Trying not to show the fear that had seized him, the first senior advisor said, faking composure, “Sir, Hollywood can make anything seem real.”

“But that is a live broadcast!” the President exclaimed. “Quite the trick, wouldn’t you say?”

“What?” the second senior advisor said quietly into his cell phone. “It’s on fire? Tell them to go over it, around it, through it, I don’t care. These people have hijacked a federal prison to make some damned movie for hell’s sake. What? Use of force? What the f*** do you call lighting a school bus on fire in the middle of an access road? Do your job.”

The Living Flame then split into seven separate streams, one for each man in the prayer circle. From the top of their heads the Holy Fire reached infinitely heavenward into the evening sky. The disciples did not outwardly react to what was happening. Whatever the Energy was doing to them was a mystery.

“I need a live shot of that, Randy. Not in a minute, now! Get a camera on that road!” Martz was in a panic. He was not at all convinced that what he was seeing from Parkersboro was real, his senses and his experience were screaming that it couldn’t possibly be. Then he got word in his earpiece that a small army of Feds were invading the camp from the highway. When he heard a roadblock of flaming buses had been set up to stop them, he knew he had to get images of that on the air too.

For the select, seeing the Holy Spirit manifest itself in the form of a Flame was the final sequence of the combination that unlocked their stored instructions. God had opened His human vaults and the select were now ready to deliver His treasure to the world.

Two minutes after the Holy Flames appeared they vanished, accompanied by one last huge clap of thunder. Peter and the brothers remained standing in their circle in silence for a minute or so more. No one inside the compound made a sound, the only noise was coming from the access road in the woods a mile away; metal scraping against metal, diesels straining, and men shouting. The barrier was being breached.

Then Peter Carson spoke.

“God says the time has come for us to stop using violence against one another. We must spiritually evolve beyond our brutish nature. No longer should we approve of or condone physical force as a means to achieve any human goal, whether as individuals or as societies.”

“We must freely choose to follow His will, to become peaceful. If we recognize that our only true enemy is Satan, and not each other, the Lord says this knowledge will help us to overcome our fears. God will strengthen us in our battle with evil if we reach out to Him and seek His love and wisdom.”

“For the next three days, the Lord our God says He will not allow man to be violent. For this brief time, God is suspending our freedom to hurt one another. He says that we are to learn from this instruction, this gift, so that we will eventually be able to accomplish the same result through our faith, His love, and our free will.”

“I’ll be damned. What some people won’t do for ratings,” the President’s first senior advisor caustically said. “What a load of crap.”

But the President wasn’t listening to his advisor. Seconds earlier a military officer assigned to the White House, the custodian of the President’s portable nuclear command and control technology, commonly known as “the football,” had rushed into the room and immediately pulled the President aside to give him an urgent message.

“Tell them,” the President ordered the officer.

“Sir?”

“Go ahead, Captain.”

“As of approximately two minutes ago all the command and control functions of our nuclear arsenal have been disabled,” the officer reported.

“That’s impossible,” the second senior advisor said. “Those systems have triple, even quadruple redundancy. If one fails another kicks in. The backups are close to foolproof.”

“Sir, we couldn’t launch a bottle rocket right now,” the Captain explained. “As we speak, I’m getting reports in my headset of weapon systems failures from, well, everywhere, sir.”

That’s when all hell broke loose.

Men and women, both in and out of uniform, streamed into the oval office barking orders into phones and sending out messages via various high tech communication devices. The answers they received back were all the same, everywhere on earth all forms of weaponry employed by the United States, from side arms to hydrogen bombs, simply no longer functioned.

The first senior advisor brought the President the bad news. “Sir, it appears that we are defenseless,” he admitted. “We are trying to determine the cause of this phenomenon, Mr. President. It’s been suggested that possibly some exotic, planet-wide electromagnetic pulse, or an until now unknown energy source, perhaps a wandering black hole, has us in its grip. We are speculating sir, but our best estimates are that this will all clear itself up in a matter of minutes. Sir, I have the Joint Chiefs standing by, we are rea … ”

“Will you please be quiet!” the President demanded.

“Sir, I strongly suggest that we must take all necessary and proper … ”

“Are you deaf? I said shut up!” the President yelled, as he maximized the volume on the television set.

Now several minutes into the next hour the network “chose,” as if it had a choice, to continue to feed the world live images from Parkersboro.

“The American authorities will be here shortly to seize us,” Peter said, pointing toward the vehicles and men approaching from the access road. “Do not worry for our safety, or indeed your own. For the first time in the history of man we are in no physical danger from each other. Pray for us, pray for yourselves, pray for the world. The Lord God loves you, each and every one of you. Rejoice! Ours is a chosen generation, blessed beyond measure! You will see and hear from us again very soon.”

After Peter spoke these final words, for no apparent technical reason, the signal from Parkersboro went dead. The network desperately tried to reestablish the link, but their efforts were useless. The broadcast was over, God had spoken.

“I want those men in my office as soon as possible,” the President ordered.

“Yes sir,” the second senior advisor said. “The Marshal Service will arrest all of them, shut the whole circus down. You saw them entering the camp; we have a sizable force in place, Mr. President, more than sufficient to get the job done.”

The President looked over at his advisor, a man whom he had trusted with the most important of matters for many years, a close friend whose intellect and expertise had been an invaluable part of his success, and all he could think of saying to him was, “Are you really that stupid?”