The List

by Robert Whitlow

  Flipping the pages to 2 Kings 23, Renny learned that three hundred years had passed from the time of the prophecy in 1 Kings 13 until the birth of the future king Josiah. Upon reaching manhood and assuming the throne, King Josiah renewed the covenant between the people of Judah and the Lord. Renny stopped. Covenant. Covenant List. Still unsure of the connection, he continued. Josiah then embarked on a campaign of religious cleansing that ended at Bethel:

  Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin—even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the LORD proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.

  The king asked, “What is that tombstone I see?”

  The men of the city said, “It marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it.”

  What Renny read stirred him, but he had no framework for understanding how to bring it forward. He knew the List had become an evil thing in the hands of LaRochette, but his only attempt to receive guidance from Scripture to destroy the List was destroying him instead. His mistake hadn’t just burned his fingers; Renny felt as if he had third-degree burns over half his body. The account of King Josiah was harder to apply to his current problems than his idea of burning the List to destroy its influence. He prayed but didn’t get any direction. Perhaps he should ask A. L. Jenkins. Already he missed the big man and looked forward to his return.

  Jo’s condition stabilized, but she continued to run a low-grade fever. Dr. Levy placed her in a “bubble,” a completely sterile environment created inside a plastic tent.

  “She is going to need a bone marrow transplant to have a realistic chance of survival,” he told Carol.

  “There is no possibility I could be the donor?”

  “Unfortunately not. As you know, the best donors are siblings, but since Jo doesn’t have any brothers or sisters, I’m searching a database for individuals who have expressed willingness to provide bone marrow for patients like Jo.”

  “Like organ donors?”

  “Not exactly. We need bone marrow from someone who is healthy; a transplant won’t work from someone killed in an accident or a suicide. The donor must be willing to undergo the pain of a transplant to help save someone else’s life. Not many people are willing to make that type of sacrifice. From those who are, we need a donor who is a match for Jo.”

  Her voice trembling, Carol asked, “When will you know if there is someone suitable?”

  “My staff is working on it now. I’m moving as fast as I can.”

  Weakened by the fever and low blood count, Jo was not completely coherent, and to an outside observer her mutterings about beings of light and darkness in her room would be classified as delusions. Anne knew otherwise. Working a double shift to care for her friend, she sat by her bed through the night.

  “There are more,” Jo said, turning her head back and forth.

  “More what?” Anne asked.

  “Of everything.”

  Anne held Jo’s hand and waited.

  “Is it light or dark in here?” Jo asked, staring at the ceiling.

  “Do you want me to turn on the light?”

  “No, that’s Renny’s job. He has to do it.”

  “He’s not here now.”

  “Renny!” Jo cried out suddenly. “No! No!”

  Anne wiped the perspiration from Jo’s forehead. The fever was rising again. Jo moaned. In spite of the best efforts of medical science and the sacrificial faithfulness of her friend, Jo still needed one thing above anything else—she needed a miracle.

  The lights dimmed in the library. The three men sat across from one another in leather armchairs. The List lay open on a low table between them.

  “I had someone call the hospital in Michigan,” LaRochette said. “She’s slipping but needs a push over the edge.”

  “I’m surprised she’s not dead,” Roget responded. “There is much more resistance than with the others.”

  LaRochette shrugged. “Her father, H. L. Jacobson, and Bart Maxwell were submitted to the authority of the List. The doorway was open. They were powerless against us.”

  “But the result will be the same,” Roget said.

  “Yes, she will not escape. I’ve seen the end from the beginning.”

  “And Eicholtz?”

  “We’re not in a rush. First the girl, then Eicholtz.”

  “And whenever we choose, young Jacobson,” Thomas Layne added, with a cruel smile on his face.

  “Later. He needs to suffer at the hands of men before he learns the nature of true torment.”

  “May I take the lead?” Layne asked.

  LaRochette looked at Roget, who nodded.

  “Very well. Find your place on the List, and we’ll begin.”

  31

  Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.

  PSALM 3:2–3, KJV

  Renny and his cellmates finished supper—slices of bologna and processed cheese between two pieces of white bread, four bites of green beans, a square of orange-and-yellow Jell-O, and a red-colored punch of a vintage Renny hadn’t considered fit for drinking since kindergarten.

  “Where was the chef tonight?” Renny asked Winston Morgan.

  “If you think this is bad, wait until steak night. At least you know bologna has been ground up by a machine in a meat-packing plant somewhere. The steak is shipped straight from the shoe recycling center and covered in gray liquid.”

  The guard who collected their food trays opened the cell. “Come on, Jacobson, your lawyer is here to see you.”

  “My lawyer talked to me twice the whole time he represented me,” Winston said. “Yours comes twice in one day. How much is he charging you?”

  “Probably not enough,” Renny responded as the bars slammed shut.

  “You’ll need to explain that to me later. I thought I’d heard everything.”

  The guard took Renny to a different, slightly larger interview room.

  Jenkins was waiting with a Bible and legal pad on the table before him. “Have a seat,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Thanks for coming back so soon,” Renny said.

  “As of this moment, you’re my number one client.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s the sense I had when praying for you this afternoon. I’m moving you to the top of the list.”

  Renny winced.

  Drawing a line down the middle of the legal pad, Jenkins continued. “Your bond has been set at $110,000.”

  “I can’t come close to that amount,” Renny said.

  “It’s too high for the nature of the crime, and in the typical case, I’d file a motion to reduce the bond so you could get out of jail pending arraignment and ultimate disposition of your case.”

  “When are you going to file the motion?”

  Jenkins hesitated. “How much do you know about criminal procedure?” he asked.

  “Only law school stuff, mostly theory, not much about the nuts and bolts. I’ve been doing a lot of Regulation Z work at the firm.”

  “Regulation what?”

  “Bank and finance regulations.”

  “Well, I know nothing about banking regulations.”

  “And I don’t trust my memory of criminal procedure.”

  “OK. I don’t want to file a motion to reduce your bond.”

  “Why not?” Renny asked sharply. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “I know that, but my sense is that we need to handle your case in an entirely different way.”

  “How?”

  “I bel
ieve we need to reach final disposition as soon as possible. I want to move you through the system as quickly as we can. If things go as planned, you’ll be out on probation within two or three days.”

  “That sounds fine with me, but there’s no guarantee, is there?”

  “No, but to find out where we stand, I need your permission to meet with someone at the D.A.’s office and offer to expedite your case without all the usual formalities and legal maneuvering. You would agree to plead guilty to attempted burglary, and the D.A.’s office would dismiss the misdemeanor charges. Also, the D.A. would not oppose approval by the judge of a first offender petition on your behalf. The petition would provide that once you complete a term of probation, your burglary conviction would be purged from the records and you could truthfully say you had no criminal record on job applications, credit reports, and other background checks.”

  “No jail time after sentencing?”

  “Correct. This procedure is only available for people with no prior problems with the law. You would also have to pay some money to LaRochette to fix his skylight and perform community service time.”

  “What sort of community service?”

  “It can be anything from picking up trash along the roads to providing counseling for troubled youths. Your probation officer would work that out with you.”

  “OK.”

  “One of the assistant district attorneys is a lawyer named Virginia Adams. She is tough but fair. My plan is to talk to her in the morning and tell her what I want to do.”

  “Go ahead. Give it a try.”

  “ Good. Are your cellmates leaving you alone?”

  “They’re fine. Two guys who wrote a bunch of bad checks.”

  “Is one of them a short guy who looks like a bookkeeper?” Jenkins asked.

  “That’s the one.”

  “I heard him make a plea for mercy that made the judge smile. It was the old ‘guilty with an explanation, Your Honor’ approach. It didn’t work, but it was entertaining.”

  “After talking with Winston Morgan in the cell, I’m sure it was. Does the judge have to grant the petition you described?”

  Jenkins shook his head. “No, but I will talk to him beforehand and get a sense of his opinion.”

  “That seems risky.”

  “To some degree, but you don’t have a lot of options.”

  “True,” Renny admitted.

  “Any other questions?”

  “Not right now.”

  Picking up his Bible, Jenkins said, “All right, let’s move from the law to the prophets. I told you I would pray about a spiritual strategy suitable for your situation. I have two passages to start with. The first is in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 6.” Opening his Bible, he read:

  “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

  “Unfortunately, many people reading these verses stop after Paul writes ‘we wrestle not.’ And that’s exactly what they do—nothing. They ignore the practical reality of spiritual evil, and there is no way you can successfully fight an enemy you don’t believe exists.”

  “That’s not my situation,” Renny said. “I know there is an evil force in all this. It’s trying to kill Jo and destroy me. That’s why I wanted to burn the List, to break its power or spell over our lives.”

  “Correct. But even though you knew there was spiritual evil at work, you made a serious mistake in focusing your fight against flesh and blood.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Let me conduct a friendly cross-examination.”

  “OK.”

  “You realized the book, the List as you call it, was a focus of evil power.”

  “Yes.”

  “You read in Acts about the books of sorcery burned at Ephesus and concluded the key to destroying the power of the List was to burn the book.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you decide to kill Desmond LaRochette?”

  “He deserves killing more than anyone else I can think of at the moment, but to kill him would be murder.”

  “Isn’t he the key person who understands and exercises the evil power of the List?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, why not kill him?”

  Renny thought a moment. “That would be struggling with flesh and blood.”

  “Correct. And it’s the same with the List. The List is only a book, an inanimate object. You didn’t think about killing LaRochette because you had enough sense of right and wrong to realize killing him was not the answer to the root problem. Neither is a book the root problem. The List has evil power only because there are evil forces associated with it. I would not want my eight-year-old reading it before he goes to bed, but the key to breaking the List’s power is not in destroying the physical pages. The key is combating and defeating the spiritual forces behind it, the principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, and spiritual forces of wickedness in high places.”

  “How in the world do I do that?”

  “It’s not a fight fought in this physical world. And that brings me to the next passage of Scripture. It’s in the fourth chapter of James: ‘Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.’

  “The first step in fighting spiritual evil is not running out to do battle; the first step is submitting yourself to God and surrendering to his authority as the Commander in Chief of your own heart. You have to win the battle within, the one inside your own soul, before you can have a chance to win the battle without, the one against external spiritual forces of wickedness and evil.”

  “I think I see. It’s like I’ve had a fifth column sabotaging everything I’ve tried to do.”

  “Exactly. Once you defeat the enemy within, you can receive your battle plan for offensive action against the plans of the devil.”

  “They didn’t teach me this in law school.”

  “Me either, but in the type of work I do, I’ve been involved in spiritual warfare for over ten years. A lot of on-the-job training.”

  “What do I need to do?” Renny asked.

  “Let me ask you a few questions first. Where have you made mistakes in dealing with the List?”

  “Are you going to stay till midnight? I don’t know where to begin.”

  “OK. This morning you correctly told me that motive is generally irrelevant in a court of law. But unlike most earthly judges, God is very interested in motive. What was your motivation in pursuing involvement in the List?”

  “That’s easy. Money. I needed money.”

  “Did you really need money? You had a job, car, place to live, food, clothes…”

  “Sure, but I wanted a lot of money.”

  “Which is called?”

  Renny thought. “Greed.”

  “Right. The Bible says, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’ I think your present situation could be marked Exhibit A as proof of that statement.”

  “Does God want me poor?” Renny asked with frustration.

  “Not necessarily. God wants you to be in right relationship with him, whether he blesses you with a little money or a lot. But the List is obviously not a source of money that God is blessing. The whole thing is on the wrong side of God and probably criminal in the eyes of the government as well.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You need to repent of your greed and place yourself in the hands of God in the area of money and financial security.”

  A deep part of Renny did not like what Jenkins was telling him. Letting go of control was not one of his top ten favorite things to do, but the new man within him knew that the lawyer was right. After a few moments, Renny nodded. “OK.”


  “All right, you tell God.”

  Eyes closed, Renny said, “Father, I have been greedy. I’ve made decisions based on greed that have hurt myself and others. I no longer want to live my life controlled in any way by the love of money. I commit myself to you and trust you to bless me and meet my needs. Amen.”

  “Good. For a new Christian, you know how to pray.”

  Renny exhaled. “Actually, I’m glad to get that over with. I guess I had to go back to where I stepped out of bounds and begin again. Now, how do we go on the offensive?”

  “Not so fast. Can you think of another place you stepped out of bounds?”

  “Trying to burglarize LaRochette’s house?”

  “No, more basic than that. Ask the Lord to show you.”

  Renny closed his eyes. Many things came to mind. A minute passed. He opened his eyes and met Jenkins’s gaze. “I should never have taken the oath or signed the List.”

  “Yes. That’s the bedrock issue. Everything else is built on that foundation.”

  A sharp pain shot through Renny’s right temple. He winced.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m afraid I’m getting a headache. I’ve had them off and on since my father’s death.”

  “They’re connected to what we’re dealing with. We can’t stop.”

  “OK, but sometimes I can reach a point of nausea.”

  “Not this time. Go ahead and pray, then I have some things to add.”

  This was much tougher than the issue of greed. Suddenly, Renny was disoriented and unable to formulate a coherent thought or express a complete sentence. The pounding in his head increased, and he wondered if he was about to pass out. Putting his head in his hands, all he could cry out was, “Help, Lord!” But as with blind Bartimaeus, a simple cry for help was all the Lord required.

  The anointing of the Holy Spirit came upon A. L. Jenkins, and he took up Renny’s cause. Less demonstrative but more intense and focused than in the morning, the lawyer prayed with a specific authority that crystallized the conflict within the small room. Hellish oppression and overcoming faith met in supernatural conflict over Renny’s head. Jenkins commanded, bound, and loosed; each word was a forward thrust before which the enemy of Renny’s soul grudgingly retreated. At one point, Renny visibly trembled for a few seconds while a specific corner of his inner house was swept clean and Jenkins moved on to another room. Finally, the light of the Word and the power of the Spirit drove the darkness from the farthest corners of Renny’s soul. Jenkins paused, caught his breath, and concluded as he had before, “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the strong Son of God, amen.” Renny put his head on the table. Jenkins waited.