And his God was real.
Finally he could stand it no longer. I’ve got to—get away— just—get back in—control, figure out— He turned to go but had not gone three steps when he heard Brother Mitchell calling his name. He stopped abruptly, riveted to the spot, for Jesse was crying out, “Oh, God, save Riley Case! Don’t let him go on in such misery. He’s running from You, Lord, for he doesn’t know Your love, Your joy, Your sacrifice for him. Draw him unto Yourself, Lord. Save him and fill him with peace . . .”
Riley felt as if a bullet had taken him in the heart, and it drove the breath out of him. He suddenly found himself weeping. He had not wept in years, not since he lost his mother when he was eight years old. The pain he had felt then, so stricken, so lost and alone, washed over him in a great wave and grew until he felt that he was the most desolate being in the world.
Turning, Riley stumbled toward the small figure. He heard himself crying out, but it did not seem to be his voice. He saw Jesse turn; a youthful light appeared in his blue eyes, and his face glowed brightly.
“Come on in, son!” Jesse cried. “All those who ask forgiveness from Jesus Christ are welcome!”
Riley heard the voice, but he could go no farther. He fell to his knees and began sobbing. He felt Jesse’s hands, warm and sure, on his shoulders, and then he heard himself crying out to God. Riley saw that his fears were right—he was going to die, and he was going to face judgment.
But now Riley knew that he was not going to perish.
In fact, he might have just started living.
Riley Case had never been so exhausted in his entire life. As the two were walking back toward the Mitchells’ cabin, it was all he could do to pick up one foot and put it down in front of the other one. He looked at Jesse and said rather sheepishly, “I’m really dragging, Brother Mitchell. I can’t remember ever being so tired.”
Jesse, too, was weary. “Let’s sit and rest awhile.” The two men found a good-sized boulder, brushed the snow off, and sat down on it.
“This is so—strange to me,” Riley said awkwardly. “I’m tired physically, but it’s kind of a good, clean thing instead of the beat-up, dingy feeling you usually have . . . and . . . inside I’m—rested or something.”
“That’s the peace of God, son,” Jesse said quietly. “You know, it’s been many years since I found Jesus, but I felt that day just like you do right now. I had run from Him and fought Him. He had to bring me into the kingdom kicking and screaming! But the minute I gave up, I felt peace in my heart.”
“I can’t get over it,” Riley said in a low voice. “All my life, ever since I was a boy, I’ve had this—tight, wound-up feeling inside myself. I’ve prided myself on keeping everything—emotions, feelings, anger, regrets, anything like that—under strict control. Now it seems that somehow all of those things are—are not—gone or disappeared or absent, but that I don’t have to work so hard, to strain, to fight.”
Jesse nodded. “I expect you’ll still have some fights, son. But you’ll find that they’re all on the outside, that they don’t touch the solid, secure, restful spirit of Jesus that’s in you now. The peace of God passeth all understanding.”
Riley stared into the distance, unseeing. “Peace . . . yes, peace. Funny you know the word, you know the definition of the word . . . but you don’t get a glimpse of what it really is. So this . . . is peace.”
Jesse laughed. “Makes a nice change, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, sure does.” Riley glanced at Brother Mitchell, whose face still glowed with an inner joy. “What about fear? Does peace overcome fear?”
Jesse glanced shrewdly at Riley’s face. It was a hard man’s face, his jaw set with grim determination, his eyes far-seeing and unflinching. He was a tough man, Riley Case, and for him to broach the subject of fear—to admit to it, to seek guidance for it—was, Jesse knew, probably one of the most difficult things Riley had ever done. Slowly Jesse replied, “Well, Mr. Case, I think that our Blessed Savior and Lord Jesus Christ answered that a lot better than I could: ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid’ . . . ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world . . .’”
EPILOGUE
COUNT TOR VON EISENHALT walked with triumph in the ancient lands that had once been a garden and in the city that had once been holy. His face, comely in form, was nonetheless shocking in its glee. For what had once been a garden was full of the stink of death and the dust of bones; the old river Jordan ran dirty red with blood; and the hallowed ground where wise King Solomon’s majestic temple had stood was a mound of rubble and the carcasses of the dead. Some New Zionists, profoundly uneasy at the desecration of the holy ground, had dared to express doubt about Tor von Eisenhalt’s bloodthirsty victories and the harrowing cult worship he had inspired among the children of Israel. These dissenters were soon found out, and then their bodies were added to the charred remains of the traitorous Arabs that reached almost to the sky, a ghastly, putrid sacrificial pyre on what had long been known as Temple Mount. They were, after all, like the betrayers of old who had believed that God had once sent them a Lamb of sacrifice instead of a lion of war. Had those traitors, too, not been rightly crucified?
For Tor von Eisenhalt swept away the enemies of the children of Israel and gave them untold riches. The children of Israel had, once again, demanded a king and gotten one like unto Saul; and they had wished for a golden calf and gotten gold such as the world had never seen. Tor von Eisenhalt was their messiah.
But even as he rejoiced in the barren hills of Lebanon and the parched battlefields of Golan and the blood-soaked plains of Moab and Judah and Edom, Tor von Eisenhalt was uneasy in his mind.
He was drawn—torn, even—because of the unsettling feeling that somehow things in the West were not as they should be. It was not a knowledge; it was not an instinct; it was as formless and hard to define as a cool tendril of air on a hot day or a very faint scent that carries a half-forgotten reminder of the past. He could never quite grasp the exact source of his apprehension, whether it was a place or a certain group of people or a single person. Every time he tried to surround it, to encircle it and then descend upon it, all he could bring to his mind were the most fatuous of images: cats. Big spotted cats . . . little kittens . . . a stupid-looking tomcat that had no tail . . . small wildcats . . .
Though Tor von Eisenhalt felt no pain as mere humans know it, this frustration was such a torment to him that it was almost a physical sensation. It made his mouth dry and his throat tight and his chest burn. It enraged him that he could not envision, could not crush, whatever was standing against him.
It was unthinkable; and so he refused to think of it. Even the most powerful evil may be weakened with the most insignificant mistake.
He turned his inhuman eyes to the east, and to the utter north, for there were murmurings, there were secrets, there were betrayals and the beginnings of dark plots. This he could see clearly, and this he relished. The two great giants, China and Russia, would soon be his footstools; and the blood would run high and thick and stinking up to even the bridles of the great warhorses . . .
Tor von Eisenhalt, for all his dark cunning and ancient sorceries, was still blind and deaf. True, ahead of him lay great and terrible battles, and blood-soaked victories. True, even the great colossus of Russia and the oldest earth of China would be his.
But his enemies were behind him, unseen, in the West, and though they were few, they were mighty, and they were unafraid.
And ahead of him the earth itself rebelled at his ghastly touch.
The rumblings and unrest Tor felt in the hole of his soul did not come from Russia, China, or any place that could be named. Deep beneath his feet, where even rock ran as thin scarlet liquid, was rebellion. It was called the Pacific Ring of Fire, and it encircled the whole world like a flaming band. Soon it would spew forth in fury, and Tor von Eisenhalt would gnash his
teeth in a kingdom of darkness and pain.
In the West, and in other little secure pockets of the world, God’s people rested that winter, and were refreshed and renewed as they prepared for the Ancient of Days.
In Chaco Canyon, Zoan grew a garden that was as lush and green as if it had been in the cradle of the Tropics. Every Indian in the canyon, through Cody Bent Knife’s testimony, had come to Jesus Christ with a deep and quiet joy that at last they had joined with the true Great Spirit. The Bible was one of the few books that the desert wanderers had, and Lystra Palermo taught it first to the children, and then to all the children of God. They made gardens, sang songs, admired the stars, made friends, and prayed. They were hoping for a long siege, but were preparing for a short bloody war. They grew strong.
In the gentle Ozarks, Jesse Mitchell walked and prayed and rejoiced. His people, too, had gardens, and in the spring, the flowers seemed to grow so rapidly and luxuriantly that they might have been in the most pampered greenhouse. Allegra worked and grew tired physically, but her grief lessened and her gaze began to rest without guilt or fear on Riley Case. The Stantons blossomed, their joy complete, their peace whole. David and Xanthe, without ever saying the words, grew into a love that was best measured by its serenity and security.
Riley Case walked and kept watch.
He thought about how, one day, he would save the lives of the others. He thought about how, and why, he knew that he might have to die to do that.
But mostly he marveled, for he knew peace.
For me to live is Christ,
And to die is gain.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DR. GILBERT MORRIS is a retired English professor from a Baptist college in Arkansas. His first novel was published in 1984. Since then, he has become one of the most popular fiction writers in Christian publishing. He is the author of more than eighty novels, many of them best-sellers. Some of his most popular series include The House of Winslow, Appomattox Saga, and The Wakefield Dynasty. His daughter Lynn and son Alan have coauthored many books with him.
Lynn Morris has a background in accounting. She worked as a private accountant for twenty years before she began collaborating with her father on the series Cheney Duvall, M.D. This series has sold nearly half a million copies in five years.
After working in the armed forces and the U.S. Postal Services, Alan Morris began coauthoring books with his father. Their historical series, The Katy Steele Adventures, launched Alan’s highly successful writing career. He is the author of The Guardians of the North series and is currently collaborating with best-selling author Robert Wise on a new series.
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