The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “The good news is that the girl survived and we know about the story because of people who left that community over that incident,” he said, filling in what Miranda didn’t know.

  “Why don’t the immortals just wipe out the resisters, or lock ‘em up to get ‘em out of the way?” Jamie asked, testing something he heard at school.

  Rodney looked at his youngest son, who had stopped playing with his lima beans and was now fully invested in the conversation. “I’ll ask the King when he comes to talk to me,” Rodney said provocatively.

  “What?” Miranda said.

  “He’s coming to talk to you, himself?” Jamie asked.

  Rodney looked at Emma. “Well, he visited your mother already and gave her the idea that he would see me some time soon.” Rodney had always been in the infantry, but he truly valued the impact of a well-placed bomb.

  All eyes turned to Emma, who returned Rodney’s look, with a little hint of scolding, and then stood to clear some dishes from the table.

  “Do you believe everything your father tells you?” She teased the kids.

  They looked at each other and Joshua answered. “Yes.”

  Emma laughed. “As you should, of course.”

  Out of the simultaneous talk and gasps, Miranda’s voice pierced the din. “Mother, you didn’t tell us.”

  “Yeah,” Joshua said, uncharacteristically inarticulate over the revelation.

  Emma settled some plates into the sink, paused and looked at them. “I’m still not ready to talk about it.” She smiled to reassure them, in spite of her silence.

  Miranda turned to her father. “You’ll tell us, won’t you, Dad?”

  Rodney smiled patiently. “I don’t know. Some people who’ve met him haven’t been able to talk afterward.”

  “Some go blind,” Jamie said excitedly.

  Rodney nodded and continued to smile, though the cheer faded from his eyes and the corners of his mouth. He was trying not to get ahead, trying not to be anxious about the prospect of a visitation. Emma looked at him, reading his mind and praying silently.

  One late afternoon, two weeks after that dinner conversation, Rodney stopped his car in the middle of the highway to allow an elderly gentleman to cross, though it was a very unusual place for a pedestrian. The flowers lining the highway reminded Rodney of a park from when he was a child, which softened his feeling that the old man shouldn’t be walking there.

  Just before he hit the accelerator, another figure stepped into view. This man looked straight at Rodney and waved. Rodney stared back. He had seen that face once before and had dreamed about it a hundred times since. He sat gripping the steering wheel thinking, “I’m not ready for this.”

  He watched, as the man walked to the passenger door and opened it, before Rodney had a chance to unlock it. He stared at the clothes that his new passenger wore, carpenters’ pants, a work shirt and boots, much the same thing Rodney was wearing on his way back from a job. He felt a bit like he was being teased. The passenger reached over and patted him on the shoulder, which had the invigorating effect of waking him from his shock and focusing him on the present reality.

  “Drive on up here a bit and then pull off at the old Perkins farm,” the man said.

  Rodney just nodded and pressed the accelerator, focusing on the road again, with intensity provoked by the feeling that anyone could walk out onto the road in front of him at any moment. As his speed increased, his passenger rolled down the window and leaned a bit against the rush of incoming air, smiling.

  Slowing and turning into a gravel driveway that had been cleared of weeds only recently, Rodney followed his passenger’s directions.

  “You can park up there, by the maple tree.”

  Rodney complied, slowing further and crunching to a stop on the right hand side of the drive, two wheels in the shallow drainage ditch. They both climbed out of the vehicle, Rodney following his passenger’s lead. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he began to wonder whether he was supposed to bow or something, remembering his trip to Jerusalem when he had no choice.

  “No need to bow,” the King said, answering his thoughts. “That’s why I met you on the road. I knew you wouldn’t immediately think of bowing while sitting behind the wheel.”

  “I have so many questions,” Rodney said, through a tight throat.

  “Let’s clear a few of those first, then.”

  Rodney hesitated and then saw that the King was waiting for him to speak, even though he knew his thoughts. “How is it that I can stand here in front of you?” he asked first.

  The King had rounded the front of the pod-like vehicle and now stood casually leaning on the left front fender. “Right now I want to talk with you. I don’t need to impress you with who I am this time. Instead, I want to show you who you are,” he said. “I’m not limited in how I can appear to you.”

  Rodney nodded. “Of course.”

  “The power you encounter in Jerusalem is part of my nature as God’s first born. It is, in essence, the presence of God opened up wider for you to see and feel. Now I’m meeting with you face to face, as a friend to a friend. That too is part of my nature, just as much as the other.”

  Rodney felt a swelling fear that he would not understand, or remember, what the King said to him, but the King reassured him.

  “You will remember as much of this conversation as you wish to remember, Rodney. Don’t worry.”

  Rodney nodded again, thoughtfully looking at the clothes the King was wearing, but he pulled himself away from that and asked, instead, a question that really bothered him.

  “I didn’t worship you before the war, before the Reign. I pretty much ignored you,” he said, feeling taut emotions tugging his insides, like elastic bands threatening to rend him in two.

  The King spoke while Rodney attempted to repress those emotions. “Yes, that’s right. Your assessment is honest and true. And you feel guilty about the notion that I’m giving you a second chance.”

  “Guilty and undeserving,” Rodney said.

  “Good,” the King said. “This honest inward assessment is what has saved you thus far, Rodney. You don’t deserve a second chance any more than any of my followers deserved their first, second and subsequent chances. Set that aside. No one has ever deserved what my Father and I give freely.”

  “Not understanding that is a lot of what kept me from you before,” Rodney said, not as an excuse, but as a verbal realization that he had stumbled onto.

  “Very good.” King stood up, put an arm around Rodney’s shoulders and led him up the drive toward the farmhouse, which they could barely see through the overgrown brush and untrimmed trees.

  “You know what happened to the Perkins family,” the King said. “They succumbed to the Dictator because they thought they could walk with evil and still remain free from its temptations and corruption. Darren held too high a view of his own power and too low a view of the enemy’s.”

  The two men walked a few more steps and Rodney asked, “Why do you tell me this?”

  “Not your business?” the King asked. “What happens is always your business within the realm of influence I give you. What is not your business is judgment or condemnation. That’s my business.”

  For a moment, Rodney thought of scenes in movies he had watched, where a powerful man puts his arm around a lesser man and walks with him in mock friendship, his grip symbolizing power and control and not companionship. But here he walked with the most powerful person the world had ever known, his arm around Rodney’s shoulder, and he didn’t feel like a vulnerable wretch.

  “My love for you is real,” the King said. “I am your friend in the purest sense of that word.” He replied to those unspoken thoughts. “I don’t need to deceive or manipulate anyone, because I lack nothing.”

  Rodney smiled, letting loose a flying sense of relief inspired by those loving words. The King dropped his arm from Rodney’s shoulder and stopped to look at him, with his hands on his hips. He smiled back.

>   “You have found a rare gift, Rodney. You have learned from your life the cleansing power of truth. You learned it in spite of a father who spoke too few words to you, and a mother who avoided hard things to the point of self-deception.” The King paused, to allow his words to finish their course into Rodney’s heart. “You discovered the antidote to what you learned from each of them was the same, courageously embracing the truth.”

  He began to walk again, Rodney following and listening much less self-consciously than such an introspective conversation between mere mortals would have required.

  The King said, “Steve helped with this discovery.”

  Rodney recalled small boyhood vignettes of Steve protesting against deceitful authority figures and speaking up when others would not dare. He smiled again, thankful for his life-long friend.

  “Where you admired his bold honesty, you saw a picture of me in him. And where he sheltered in the strength of your certainty, he saw me in you.” Like the master teacher, the King again waited for his pupil to absorb and respond.

  Rodney looked at the bright and loving eyes locked on him, there in the overgrown clover on the Perkins’ farm and he saw what the King wanted him to see. “You were drawing me to you, even when I refused to go to church,” he said, blurting the revelation.

  The King nodded. “You dismissed the religious people and did so for good reason, at times, but you did not entirely dismiss me, even if you didn’t call me by name.”

  Again Rodney connected. “This is why I get this second chance?”

  “This is why it seems so easy for you to seize this second chance,” the King said.

  During this entire encounter, Rodney struggled with a hovering sense of vertigo, that started with his entire universe tipping and penetrated into his emotional core, taking his physical balance with it. This is one reason he had welcomed the King’s arm around his shoulder earlier.

  The King knew all of this, of course, and put his arm around Rodney once again. But, this time, the vertigo intensified and Rodney dropped to the ground, as if he had been shot in the heart. He sprawled in the moist, fragrant clover and rye grass, momentarily blinded. The King crouched next to him and smiled down at his friend.

  After allowing a moment for Rodney to recover, the King explained. “My embrace is not always going to reinforce your efforts to stand up. If you let me close to you, Rodney, I will, at times, knock you to the ground.”

  There, splayed before the Creator of the Universe, insects exploring his tangled hair, Rodney willed himself to absorb this lesson, as he did each of the previous teaching points, but this one perhaps more deeply.

  The King helped Rodney to sit up, unfolding awkward arms and legs and brushing ants and ladybugs out of Rodney’s long, tousled hair with careful, gentle hands. Then he helped him to his feet.

  “Do you think I’m cruel to drop you to the ground like that?” The King asked warmly.

  Rodney had sublimated the question of judgment and execution that had plagued him since the early days of the Reign. The King pulled it out of the clutter of Rodney’s emotional defenses and held it up for consideration. It looked familiar to Rodney and he took a deep breath to prepare to assess its value once again.

  “Cruel?” Rodney tried the word, checking for a fit, without completely surrendering to the intimidation natural to this moment. “I don’t know how to measure something like that, where you’re concerned,” he said honestly. He looked at the King, braving the eye contact. Then he realized the answer. “But I guess you’re the one all things are measured by, aren’t you?”

  The King heard the slight edge of a challenge in Rodney’s tone, welcoming the leaked emotion, as much as the true insight. He nodded, “For me, to deny or evade that fact would be deception,” he said. “For anyone else to grant himself, or another human being, the status of measuring stick would also be dishonest. Those who judge my actions, attempt to take my throne from me.” He looked squarely at Rodney and said, “That’s no harm to me, but it does harm the challenger, like a man ramming his head against a steel vault door.”

  Turning and walking slowly toward the house, Rodney unconsciously following, the King continued. “Before I placed my throne here on the Earth, people could find room to speculate about the extent to which I ruled the world. It was, in fact, a time between the reign of men and the Reign of God. But now, no room remains for such speculation, and resistance negates grace, where it used to only stretch it.”

  Rodney thought of the thousands who had abandoned society to rebel against the King. “Will you judge them? Will you punish them?”

  “Yes,” the King said. “But not now. They will be allowed to live, to multiply and to build their alternative kingdom. Their attempt will be the first in human history that truly serves only human lords. The deceiver has been locked up and the rebels serve only themselves this time.”

  For Rodney, the universe consisted of material things and material beings. Even his recent conversion happened during the physical presence of Jesus on the Earth. He was, however, peripherally aware of spiritual categories outside of his experience. He looked now at the King, wondering about the nature and existence of the Devil.

  “You need not concern yourself about him,” the King said. “For this generation, he will only be an historical phenomenon and not a present force. What you are seeing, however, is that not all rebellion, not all evil, originates with him.”

  A question buried even deeper than the nature of judgment surfaced, when Rodney thought of those who continued to resist the Reign. “Would I have rejected you, if you had taken my living children from me when you returned?” he asked bluntly.

  The King smiled. “Isn’t the world complex enough for you, without burdening yourself with the moral obligations of imagined events?”

  Rodney furrowed his brow, trying to comprehend the meaning of this reply.

  “That you ask the question,” the King said, “is healthy for your connection with those rebels that you encounter.” He stepped up onto the porch of the farmhouse, which they had just reached. “It’s useful for you to remember that you were once a resister yourself and to remember how much you loved your children. People who assume that the mistakes of others cannot infect them deceive themselves and prepare for their own future fall.”

  Rodney placed one foot on the bottom step of the porch, feeling the wood flex under the weight. He stepped quickly to firmer footing. As he did so he glimpsed something in the reflection of the large picture window to his right. He turned quickly to see who might be following them, but saw no one. He turned to look at the King to judge what had just happened.

  “The worshippers you have seen in Jerusalem are, of course, not confined to Jerusalem and they know where I am,” the King said.

  Hearing this, Rodney began to reassess this entire conversation. He had felt as if he and the King were alone during the whole encounter, that he had the full attention of the Lord of the Universe. But, of course, he had come to understand the ubiquitous presence of the immortals years ago and had benefited often from their quick intervention when they appeared suddenly, snatching rescue from the grip of disaster. He and Emma had also joked about voyeuristic possibilities when they were alone, but they had grown to trust the good will of the King’s representatives.

  The King replied to his thoughts again. “They’re all on your side and they feel about you just the way that I do. That’s their nature.”

  Yes, Rodney had discovered the benevolent intentions, and even affection, of many of the immortals. He smiled a relieved smile and looked behind him once again. There, a countless multitude of observers hung in the air in the form of an invisible amphitheater, unencumbered by gravity. Rodney laughed and tears welled in his eyes as he released the joy of his man-to-man encounter with the King.

  The King shocked Rodney once again, when he not only returned the joyful laughter, but looked at him through tear-filled eyes, as well. In a fit of freedom, Rodney stepped across the po
rch and embraced the King, who gripped him hard and continued to laugh.

  How long he stayed there, wrapped in that strong embrace, Rodney guessed was much less time than it seemed, but he could not relate the electric joy of that moment to time in any meaningful way. Finally, however, the King did draw him back, took Rodney’s face in his two hands and said goodbye.

  Rodney spun between ecstasy and panic. “Will I see you again?” he asked, sniffling and wiping at his cheeks.

  “Yes, of course, you will,” the King said, “if you look for me, and if you devote your whole heart to seeing.”

  Rodney nodded. “I’ve been too reserved and neutral.”

  “I know your heart,” the King said. “I expect to see you again.”

  Those comforting words soothed the wrenching sensation of the King finally letting him go and walking off the porch into the overgrown yard. There he extended his arms and allowed a half a dozen immortals to sweep him up and away, into the cloudless sky.

  As he watched them all disappear, like a swarm of giant bees, Rodney smiled at the knowledge that Emma would believe him when he told her about this afternoon. Even more importantly, she would understand the impact it made on his wooden soul.

  He stumbled back down the drive to his car, replaying the conversation in his head and chuckling at some of what he remembered. He trusted that he would remember all that he needed later, as the King had promised. He seriously prayed for protection to be able to drive home, feeling intoxicated by his experience; and when he pulled to a stop on his driveway he breathed a word of gratitude.

  As soon as Rodney stepped out of the car, Emma swung open the screen door, Betsy in her arms. She saw his face and knew immediately why he was late.

  The King returned to the throne in Jerusalem, now wearing his royal robes, half a million of his worshippers arriving with him—a small fraction of the whole raucous assembly, flowing like a gigantic murmuration of starlings, and making music, like a symphony of human instruments, as vast as the stars. Among these, who had been singing and dancing more than twelve hours each day for over twenty years, some lay on the ground in homage to the King, where they felt the Earth vibrating in response to a power greater than gravity and more beautiful than the oceans.