On the Edge
Page 59
Bruce nodded and said quietly “OK. I'll do it. Let me call Diane first, and tell her that everything's OK, and about Amy.”
“Susan, Kristen, come on,” Richard said, hurrying out the door to the garage, just as a police car and an ambulance pulled into their driveway. Two policemen jumped out, weapons drawn, and ran toward them.
“Stop! Who are you?…We had a report of a man with a gun coming in the direction of these houses. Are you OK?”
“Yes, officer, we're fine. I'm Richard Sullivan; here's my ID. I think there was a mistake on that report. But we do have a teenage girl in unexpected sudden labor, and we could really use that ambulance to get her to the hospital.”
As they put away their weapons, the two officers looked at each other and at the paramedic, who had run up while Richard was talking. “Sure. That's fine. Where is she?”
Susan lead the paramedics to Amy, who was lying on the living room floor, breathing as she had learned in her birthing class, crying, and praying. “We've got help, Amy. Everything's going to be all right,” Susan said, smiling and holding Amy's hand, as the paramedics unfolded the last parts of their stretcher.
Two minutes later Amy was in the ambulance, and the group was standing outside its open back doors, deciding who would drive to the hospital in which cars. The lead paramedic took Amy's blood pressure and fitted her with a portable fetal monitor.
“I can drive Susan in my car,” Kristen said to Richard, “…if you want.”
“Hey!” the paramedic yelled to his partner. “This baby is in distress! Let's roll!”
“Can I go?” Richard asked, as the driver slammed the first door shut.
“One adult. That's all. Let's go.”
Richard jumped inside, and the driver slammed the second door behind him. Kristen grabbed Susan, and they ran to Kristen's car. The police car and the ambulance took off together, blue and red lights flashing.
Nepravel and Zoldar were defeated. They were used to winning against humans, and they hated the bitter taste of defeat. The prayers. The infernal prayers! The humans had constantly sought God's help, and He had answered them! As the emergency vehicles sped off, the two demons let out wails of anger and of hate, knowing that their fates were sealed.
Amy had heard the paramedic's words about her baby, and between the pain of the contractions, which were already starting to come closer together, she gasped, “What is it, Mr. Sullivan?”
Richard, kneeling by Amy, looked up at the paramedic, who was seated at Amy's head, watching the vital signs on both Amy and her baby. The paramedic answered, “This is on a relay back to the hospital for their analysis, but as best I can tell, the umbilical cord must be wrapped around the baby's neck. Every time she has a contraction and has to push, it wraps the cord tighter, cutting off oxygen to the baby's brain and throwing it into distress.” Lowering his voice for only Richard to hear, he said, “I've seen this before, and it's not good. We've got several miles to go, and her contractions are coming closer and closer. The baby may not make it.”
That was simply not acceptable to Richard. He took Amy's hand in his and said to her, “Amy, I'm going to pray out loud so you can pray along with me. I know it's going to be hard, but try not to push.”
Then Richard began to pray. “Dear God, we call upon Your mighty power tonight. We lift up Amy and her baby to You now, asking You to intervene, to guard and protect this baby, as You did Your own Son almost two thousand years ago tonight. Dear God, please hear our prayer, and save this baby, that he might do Your work in his time…”
Roy Johnson had recently retired from a Christian publishing company, and he was one of the three editorial panel members for “911 Live” that night in New York. One of their “spotters,” who scanned the raw feeds from the ten cities, announced over the panel's headphones, “We've got a young mother with an unborn baby in distress in an ambulance, with a guy praying for them.”
“Let's see it,” Roy asked. The monitor came on in front of them, and there were Richard and Amy in the red glow inside the ambulance. Richard was just telling Amy that he was going to pray, and then he began.
“Looks good to me,” Roy said to his fellow panel members.
“Isn't it a little mundane?” the woman from Network asked.
“Now, Gloria, it's almost Christmas, and this is probably the last segment we'll get on tonight. I went along with you on that drug bust in Chicago, despite the violence. I vote we show people doing what we've been doing for thousands of years, praying when we're in distress. And besides, look for yourself. It's ‘what's really happening!’” he smiled.
She thought for a moment and then returned his smile. “OK. Sure. It's Christmas. Let's do it. All right with you, Don?”
The third member of their panel nodded his agreement. Roy called over his microphone and spoke to the director, who said to the technician, “OK on the feed from the ambulance. Back it up and start it from the top after this commercial. Give our anchor the details.”
At 8:30 that night, the Friday before Christmas, “911 Live” broadcast into millions of homes in America the truth that millions of Americans had forgotten: that the power to do anything and everything rests only in God, not humanity.
On their screens the show's viewers saw Amy and heard the paramedic give his early assessment of the difficult situation. Then they saw Amy's tears and Richard taking her hand, as he started to pray.
And all across America, people stopped what they were doing that night and began to pray with Richard.
Cynthia Weeks was looking out her living room window in Des Moines, as her two younger children put the finishing touches on a snowman with their father; their creation stood in the spotlight created by their outside lights. Behind her, their teenager suddenly said, “Hey, Mom, there's a guy praying on ‘911 Live’ for a baby!”
She turned away from the window and immediately saw Richard, Amy, and the paramedic, as Richard began to pray for God's help for Amy's baby. Cynthia listened for a moment, then reached for her telephone and called the three lead numbers on their church's prayer chain. Within three minutes over fifty members of her church were watching the same scene and interceding for God's mercy.
Across America, members of church prayer chains called each other to be sure that all were watching, and thousands of voices were added to the prayers for Amy's baby.
Kristen's elderly parents, watching on an old black and white television set at their farm in Texas, saw that the ambulance was in Kristen's city. They joined hands on their sofa, bowed their heads, and prayed.
Lou Thompson hated being so far from home so close to Christmas, but the same snow storm had disrupted the airline schedule, and he had to spend an extra night in a budget motel frequented by salesmen such as himself.
As he spoke to his wife on the phone, he used the remote control by the bed to flip through the TV channels. He was suddenly struck by the face of a teenage girl, tears running down her cheeks, as a man held her hand and bowed his head praying, a siren going in the background.
“Honey, do you have the television on?” he asked. “Flip to Network…” They both watched for a few minutes and listened to Richard's prayer, as they finished their conversation.
When he hung up the phone, Lou continued to watch the television, and his heart melted at the situation, thinking of his own teenage daughter and listening to the man in the ambulance pray so fervently. With tears filling his own eyes, Lou Thompson knelt by the bed in his motel room far from home, and for the first time in many years prayed to the God whom he had known so well in his youth.
Marty Tsongas came home late from the office and was walking through his den on the way to change clothes, when he looked at what his kids had on TV and saw Richard Sullivan praying with a girl in an ambulance. He rushed to the phone and called the Tomlinsons. “It's on Channel 7. Yeah, I promise it's Richard…. You see it now? Is that Amy Bryant? Oh, no.” And Marty called his wife into their bedroom, where they began praying.
Kate Tomlinson changed channels when Patrick got Marty's call, and she gasped to see Richard and Amy on the screen in her living room. When she realized what was happening, she ran to Patrick, and they both knelt, bowing their heads and praying for their baby.
When Tom Bryant came within range of the local dialing area, he called home on his car phone to let his family know that he was on the way. He was surprised to hear Bruce McKinney on the other end; thirty seconds later he had changed his destination. And, having seen Richard do it on other occasions, he began to pray for his daughter.
Following behind the ambulance in Kristen's car, Susan asked Kristen to pray with her. Susan bowed her head while Kristen drove. Unknown to Susan, Kristen not only prayed for Amy and her baby, but also for herself, asking God for His forgiveness and committing to Him that from now on she would turn to His Son as the Lord of her life. Unseen by them in the darkness, the blinding Light of the Holy Spirit visited her car on the interstate that night.
All over America, in homes, at airports, in hotels, wherever there were televisions tuned to Network, believers joined in praying to their common Father, united in asking for His protection for this helpless baby.
* * *
As Janet and Nancy were descending the escalator to the second floor of King Department Store in the mall, Janet turned around and was talking to Nancy, when suddenly she heard her husband Richard, as if he were there, saying, “Dear Father, You know the courage of this girl, how she chose not to have an abortion. Please visit her now and protect her baby…”Janet saw the shock on Nancy's face, and she turned to face forward.
They could see a wall of hundreds of color televisions for sale, all tuned to TV5. There in front of them were Richard and Amy, and Richard's voice was reaching out to everyone in the video section of the store, praising God and asking for His help. They ran up to the huge thirty-six-inch screen. Many people noticed the overlay identifying their city on the screen, which had originally been Janet's idea.
As Richard's voice could clearly be heard praying, people stopped talking to salesmen and watched. A crowd started to gather; no one could use the escalator without seeing and hearing Richard's fervent prayers, which never stopped. In one corner of the video section a small group had formed and was praying together.
“Come on, we've got to go to the hospital,” Nancy said, pulling on Janet.
“But which one?” Janet asked.
“Memorial,” one of the people who had been watching said. The two women ran through the mall for Janet's car.
Millions of believers, and others, united in prayer that night, focused on an unborn baby, fighting for his life in his mother's womb. And as He has promised, God heard the prayers of His people.
God, who created time, was not affected by the network delay. He heard the prayers across time. He responded.
One of God's mighty angels, the same one who had chased Nepravel away from the abortion clinic, flew down and intercepted the ambulance. As Richard prayed and Amy gasped and millions of others asked for God's mercy, Richard laid his hand on Amy's stomach, and the angel reached inside her. With the same powerful talon he used to grasp and to explode demons, this angel tenderly and gently pulled the umbilical cord away from the baby's neck, loosening it and allowing the life-giving blood to reach the baby's brain unhindered.
The paramedic checked his readings during Amy's next two contractions and then said to Richard. “Hey, I hate to interrupt your prayer, but the baby isn't in distress any more. All of the readings are normal. I can't believe it. It's a miracle! I've never seen anything like it.”
Unknown to him, all over America millions of people heard his report, and they cheered, hugged, and wept. Many kept on praying, praising God and asking for His continued help for Amy and her baby.
Patrick Tomlinson hugged Kate and then picked up the phone to make airline reservations.
Kristen's father asked her mother, “I wonder if Kristen knows those people?”
The ambulance made it safely to the hospital, and the paramedics wheeled Amy and the unseen angel, still grasping the baby's umbilical chord with his talon, into the operating room. As standard procedure in such cases, the doctors performed a Caesarian section, and Nancy arrived in time to sign the necessary papers.
“911 Live” went off the air at 9:00, but Network was flooded with so many calls that at 9:45 they ran a crawl across the bottom of that evening's Friday Night Movie: “At 9:20 the young woman on ‘911 Live’ gave birth to a healthy, seven-pound baby boy. Mother and son are both doing fine.”
The instant overnight polls registered that, due to the word-of-mouth calls, the last thirty-minute segment of “911 Live” drew the largest audience the Network had ever experienced on a Friday night.
Epilogue
So Richard Sullivan did not die that year. In fact he lived to be quite an old man, in love with Janet and loved by both of their children, and by their seven grandchildren. After he submitted to the Son of God as his own Lord, he also accepted his God-given responsibility to be the spiritual head of his family. By doing so, he not only changed the eternal lives of his wife, his children, and his grandchildren, but also, through them, of hundreds of other people.
When Richard's immortal soul did finally pass to the next life, he was taken, like everyone, to the Judgment Seat. There God kept His promise that “all who believe in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” The Blood of Jesus atoned for Richard's many sins and imperfections, and he was welcomed into heaven with millions of other believers. Eventually he was joined there by Janet, Susan, Tommy, and five of their grandchildren, where they're spending eternity in complete joy, praising God.
The boy grew up in Cincinnati with fine parents in a good home. He somehow knew—he always believed—that he had been touched by God, even before he was born.
Thirty-five years later, in one of his nation's darkest times, Patrick Tomlinson, Jr., began and led a mighty revival—the most sweeping in the nation since the late nineteenth century Millions of people were led away from the lies of Satan, who was bent on their destruction and instead turned to the one true God who created them in His own image and who loved them.
And this revival brought the nation to the moment when people finally realized that neither government nor any other program conceived by humans could answer the overwhelming problems of that day. People finally realized again what the founders of the nation had known so well, that each individual and nation must be founded on God and on His will if they are to survive and to prosper.
Patrick Tomlinson, Jr., was alive and able to be the spark to light God's cleansing fire of national revival only because Richard Sullivan had believed. And Richard Sullivan had believed only because many other believers, over many years, most not seeing any results at all, had nevertheless told Richard the same true story about God and about the power of a life submitted to Him.
Despite the forces arrayed against them, their voices could not be silenced.
I hope that God blessed you by reading this book. If you know family members or friends who may gain a new perspective from reading On The Edge, you may find additional copies at your bookstore, or you may order them directly from the publisher.
To order direct, we invite you to visit our website at ParkerHudson.com
The President
by
Parker Hudson
Letters from Readers
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