The speakers and banquet tables had been set up, along with the video screens and projectors, and so the wait began which, for any other event, would have been the routine smoking of cigarettes outside, the periodic checking in on the room to be sure there wasn’t a feedback loop breaking mirrors and that the projectors were working, and the interminable waiting for tear-down. I was stuck, though, unable to make myself leave the large ballroom, its too-bright chandelier ricocheting its beams from the mirrors that accented the poorly-painted eggshell walls. The room was expectant and sober but happy, with lots of smiles and politely hushed conversations over plates of catered finger-foods and I wondered, then chided myself for it, whether the caterers had been paid in advance.
At three o’clock, everyone had finally trickled down from the back of the room where the buffet tables were set up and had taken seats at the long rows of tables facing the stage. I watched from behind the sound console next to the stage as a medium-height, medium-build man in a tweed suit introduced himself as Reverend Tommy Abshire and, wiping sweat from his brow with an embroidered handkerchief and a nervous smile, began what he hoped was a sermon fitting to be his last.
“My beloved friends,” he said, the voice surprisingly warm and clear, the dark eyebrows raised benevolently, the palms turned upward, “here and now, what a glorious place to be.”
The crowd responded with thunderous applause, and the projector flashed the words “here and now” in large, curled script behind the sweating man. An image of the Lafayette Freedom Church’s façade followed it, dwarfing him and drawing forth another round of cheers and whistles.
Finally, as the crowd settled, Abshire continued: “we all know why we’ve gathered here. We are the lucky ones. We have been chosen by our God as witnesses to his tremendous glory and power, to be here in the final hours of this Earth, and to be drawn up into heaven, as one, together, to be with him forever and ever.” More applause, this time quieter but more solid, more steady. The claps were louder and faster, and every pair of hands in the room was clapping—including mine. I stopped as I noticed, but smiled at myself.
“I know most of you, and I know you’re ready.” He frowned in the silent pause. “Those of you I don’t know, those who were brought here by one of my friends or who have come in response to our newspaper ads or our billboards or our radio broadcasts, if you didn’t come ready, that’s OK. You’ll be ready when the time comes.” There was no applause, but there were smiles, and I could see many in the crowd joining hands and gripping one another tightly. “How many of you,” he said more softly than before, “came here tonight because you have not been saved in the blood of Jesus Christ.”
In the nervous silence, several hands went up. The faces beneath them were pale, and one woman with her hand raised was in tears. They were smiling though; wide, jubilant smiles of relief, smiles that said it was going to be all right, that salvation had found them just in the nick of time, and that, for a single afternoon’s attention and devotion, they would be awarded the same salvation as those who had devoted their entire lives.
The reverend looked at the upraised hands and, unsurprised, said softly “good, good.” The voice echoed slightly, and a tiny high-pitched whine threatened to roll over the room. I reached down and made an adjustment on the audio board and it vanished. “We’re gonna have you come up here in a little while and we’re gonna baptize you in the spirit of Jesus, okay?” It was rhetorical but they all nodded their heads. “That’s right, everybody, tonight’s the night, and not a one of you will be left behind. Now, what I wanna do first is I wanna all bow our heads and pray, and thank God for bringing us together here tonight on this glorious occasion, okay?”
Every head in the crowd showed its crown to the reverend, and he began a solemn prayer in the name of Jesus to his Heavenly Father, asking him to make his presence known in the hearts and minds of all in attendance. He asked him to lift up those hearts in his glory, and to let his love shine from their lives. He asked his blessing as they rejoiced in the light of his heavenly presence at this, the moment they’d waited their entire lives for, when they would meet him face to face. He asked this in the name of his beloved son Jesus, Amen.
The reverend called to the stage an old friend, who he introduced as someone whose life, like those of many here, had not always been lived according to the word of God. As the gray-haired man, thinner and taller than he, in a black shirt and blue jeans that fit not nearly as well as did the sharp tweed, stood looking at the ground with his hands behind his back, the reverend explained that his was a story of a terrible journey to redemption, then handed over the microphone. Alcoholism, drug abuse, and jail time for a drunk driving accident that had killed a young girl had been the mile markers of a journey through every knowable abomination of the spirit. “I was lost,” the voice cracked in its thick Midwestern accent. “I had nothing left, no one to turn to, no purpose in my life whatsoever. Then, a man came up to me one day on the street and said, ‘do you want to be saved’?” There were murmurs in the crowd and nodded heads. “I asked him what he was talking about, and he said, ‘Jesus, man. I’m asking you if you want to know Jesus’.” There was clapping now, and the murmurs grew louder. The energy was a tangible thing, and this otherwise unremarkable man was manipulating it like the conductor of an orchestra. “’Jesus?’ I asked him. ‘Get outta here,’ I said, and kept walking.” There were sighs and the energy fell. “Then there was a voice inside me, inside my heart that said ‘Gary Winnaker, this is it. This is your chance.’ You know what it was?” The chatter grew so loud it was like applause. “It was the spirit of the lord taking hold within me. I turned around to that man and I said ‘sir, I do. I do want Jesus in my life.” He looked at me and he took my hand and we went inside the church and he baptized me in the blood of the lamb and people, when I tell you I was healed, I mean the power of the Lord was in me and it ran through me and it turned my upside-down life right-side up!”
Now the room exploded with applause from every chair. Again, my own hands responded reflexively and again I put them down when I noticed. Music was playing from a CD player remotely controlled by the reverend, and Gary was clapping and dancing on the stage, making waving motions with his hands and successfully inciting the audience to dance and sing. It was an upbeat song with a jangly guitar and a rock and roll drum beat that said:
Washed in the blood,
Washed in the blood,
Washed in the blood of Jesus
A steady path I know
And no longer will I roam
I’m washed in the blood of Jesus
When the song had ended, Gary looked over the audience with a wide smile as he waited for them to calm down. “Friends,” he said once the noise had subsided sufficiently for him to continue, “I got to know a peace in Jesus unlike anything I could ever have known in my days of sin, of alcohol and drugs, of iniquity. It wasn’t until I’d put away those things and given my life to the Lord that the bounty of a life in Christ was revealed to me. I went to college and became a teacher, then a principal of a middle school in Wisconsin. I ran for the school board and won, then became superintendent, and served in that post for twelve wonderful years and helped so many young people. I saved and invested and, by the time I retired, I had over a million dollars to my name.”
Scattered voices around the room whispered “praise Jesus” as he went on.
“Even as the Lord opened this world to me, when I retired, I was restless. I wanted more—I wanted the opportunity to do more of what my god had called me to do.” Gary paused here, and looked around the room in a wide circle, finally resting on Reverend Abshire’s face in the stage wings. “That’s when I heard the radio announcement from the Freedom Church. I called them right away and asked them how I could help to spread the word of the Lord, to do what I could to help God’s children find their way home and be ready for this—for today, the day that he comes to us with open arms. I wanted to help people, like some of you here tonight, who haven’t yet found Jesus in their hearts, to know the peace of God’s eternal glory.”
Again, the “praise Jesus” came from around the room.
“I signed up for the ad sponsorship program, and had billboards put up, ads taken out in newspapers around the country. I even bought some TV airtime and aired commercials during some high-profile sporting events. Ladies and gentlemen, that ad campaign brought thousands through the doors of the Freedom Church to find their salvation, and it was worth every penny!” Applause roared from the crowd. When it finally died down, he continued: “Three months ago, I sold my home and my property, and used what I had left to buy an RV. Since then, I’ve been going from church to church across the country, spreading the joyous word of what’s to come today to thousands upon thousands of people, young and old, and my journey has ended here, tonight, with you.” There was clapping. “Last week, I sold that RV and spent the money I made from it, the last of what I’ve got, on that billboard you see through that window there—“ he pointed out one of the windows of the second-story ballroom to a large, full-color billboard that read: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. Ephesians 1:7.” Next to the text was a picture of Reverend Abshire, all smiling and bright-faced, in his tweed suit holding a bible. There was an address and a phone number at the bottom of the billboard, inviting anyone to call or visit. “Your salvation is here,” the church’s motto read just below.
There was more cheering, but modest this time, and it quieted quickly. “I am here, with you, with nothing to my name but my heart filled with the love of Jesus Christ, to offer myself into the Lord’s grace and mercy.” Music faded in, soft and slow, and Gary’s words grew louder so that they would be heard just over the cresting strings and voices of the recording. “Rejoice, my friends. Rejoice in the glory of the lord, for he has taken our tears away and healed our wounds, and he will give us everlasting life!”
There was no applause now, but the words of the song came solemnly from the lips of all present, as the song’s words scrolled over the projector screen behind the stage. The Reverend came from the wing, and raised his arms as he sang along:
Glory, glory to the Lord my god
His love fills my cup, I am in his glory
Let us magnify the Lord
For he is worthy of our praise
Hallelujah, Lord, Hosanna in the highest
He is worthy of our praise
Reverend Abshire was on stage alone again, and was leading the congregation in another prayer, thanking the Lord for bringing Gary Winnaker into our midst. He thanked the Lord for the blessings he’d bestowed upon Gary in bringing him into the glory of Jesus Christ, and for moving within him so that he might do the good work for his fellow man through the Freedom Church. Then he thanked the Lord for Reverend Farthing and his prophecy of salvation, for speaking through him to all God’s children, for sending his glorious message so that men may be healed and come into his holy presence with a pure heart, to live for ever and ever at his side in heaven. Amen.
There was more music, then another guest speaker, a local man, whose wife had been diagnosed with cancer that was now in remission because of the healing power of Jesus Christ. There had been chemotherapy too. There were more whispers of praise during his story, and scattered applause as he finished and the Reverend began yet another song and prayer. I looked several times over at the faces of some of the “un-saved” who had identified themselves earlier in the evening, and saw that the smiles had faded from their faces, and they now wore a worried, slightly impatient look. It was four-thirty; those few were anxious to be saved before the moment arrived. My heart was in my throat as I put myself in their place. I’d been saved when I was a kid, having been raised in the church, in the easy and loving tradition of the Assembly of God where there were no communion dresses and no baptismal certificates, and I had found myself here not as a believer, not even as a skeptic, but for a separate purpose altogether, not intending even to engage the thought of whether what was to happen here would happen at all. Now my heart felt heavy in my chest as I looked at their faces, and then at those of the others in the room, seeing the look of relinquishment I’d known those years ago in Marshall, of setting a place in my heart for the way things would be, had to be, could not but be, and deconstructing that world I’d known into so many tiny pieces that they could no longer hold any meaning of their own except as shards of something broken and not worth saving. Gone, said the faces of the redeemed, gone and done and good riddance, for salvation awaits, and for the other few, the clock devoured what remained of a life to which they clung in unholy desperation. I knew that fear, and as Reverend Abshire called them to the stage and in the hot spotlight each closed their eyes and prayed furiously, sweating their iniquity away in tiny glittering beads of white fire, it burned away, leaving only the same quiet lucidity that was spread over the other faces in the crowd like foam upon a calm sound after a storm.
“Forgiveness,” the reverend said when a tall, thin-haired man with bulging eyes and an impatient limp had finished the final iteration of the repeated prayer, “is the Lord’s gift to you. Let us pray and give thanks. Gary?”
Gary Winnaker came to the stage from the wing opposite where I sat, and the reverend turned over the microphone and came over to me. “Is the laptop ready to go?” he asked as Gary began another solemn prayer, the smile gone, the face all business.
“Yes, sir,” I waved a hand at the low table next to the audio console where a notebook computer had been connected, per his specific instructions, to the hotel’s wireless network and one of the projector’s inputs. There was a video feed coming in of an event similar to the one around us but much, much larger.
“Perfect,” he said, the smile returning partially. “As soon as he’s done, switch the projector over to that, okay?”
“Sure thing,” I said.
As he mounted the first of the steps leading on to the stage, he snapped a finger, jogged over to my table again, and asked me “son, have you been saved?”
I stared stupidly at the diamond-studded gold tie pin he wore with the Freedom Church’s logo on it, then stammered, “y—yes, I—I th—Yes. I was raised in the church. Yes sir, I have.”
“Good,” he said loudly, as if addressing someone behind me, “good. It’s a good day to know the Lord, isn’t it?” He turned back to the steps with a springing gait, not waiting for an answer. The expensive pants swooshed around his short legs as he mounted the stage again, his palms upraised and eyes closed—partially closed, likely to avoid injury—and stood next to Gary with one hand on the shorter man’s back as the two concluded the prayer.
“….as we join our brother and your son Reverend Howard Farthing in his ministry to the good people of Davenport, Iowa, we thank you, Lord, for bringing us together for this most holy and blessed event. Lord, we live through your glory and we ask that you lay your holy hands upon all present here, in Iowa, and everywhere so that your children may, this very night, enter into your holy presence. In Jesus name,” and the crowd all said: “Amen.”
I switched the projector to the video feed from the laptop and, in a grainy, heavily compressed video image being transmitted a thousand miles over the internet, the high cheekbones and perfect, radiant teeth of a man who belonged on camera filled the fifteen-foot-wide screen behind the stage. The shadows of Gary Winnaker and Reverend Abshire floated off the left side of the stage opposite me and, in the dark room, the changing of light to dark to light from the screen threw itself mercilessly across the room.
His voice was perfectly unaccented, as if generated by a computer. “My children,” he began, “today is a most joyous day.” He paused for the applause of his congregation, which was echoed lightly by hands in the darkness of the ballroom where I sat. “The Holy Spirit has brought us together today so that we may enter into his holy presence hand-in-hand, my people. Hand-in-hand, as we have prayed for our sick, cried for our departed, sung his praises—hand-in-hand now we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ who reigns for ever and ever, for ever and ever, for ever and ever.”
The clock on the wall of the ballroom was digital, a simple black box with illuminated red digits that read, unapologetically, six o’clock. I lost my breath for a moment, and my stomach felt light and queasy, and I heard the gasps behind me indicating I wasn’t the only one who had seen it. There was music coming through the loudspeakers, thin and choppy through the compressed internet feed, and there were some in the crowd singing weakly with the song as the words scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
The risen Lord is my shepherd, and nothing shall I fear
For he, my God, my everything, who took away my tears
Will lead me now and evermore beside the waters still
And I will live forever in his glo-ry
When the song had ended, I looked across the stage at the Reverend and Gary, and their faces were cold and still, and I looked out at the people in the crowd and their faces were the same, and there was not joy nor anticipation any longer, only a mirthless fixation on the face now painted in light in the front of the darkened room. The clock read 6:03, in numbers that seemed larger than the clock, larger than anything at all, and the face of the man was small and distant, and there was shuffling of feet and clearing of throats as he began speaking. “My children,” he said, his voice having lost the grandiosity and depth it had before, as if he’d sung with everything he had and now his breath was thin, “our Lord has delivered to us his gift, his spiritual judgment.” His emphasis on the word was subtle, but it was there, and it cast ripples through the faces in the room. Again, there was stirring. “We are in the midst of the great tribulation, my people, an end to the wickedness and the iniquity of men who refuse to open their lives and hearts to Jesus Christ.” Farthing paused, but there were no murmurs of praise nor applause. There was silence—damp leaden silence, and the clock read 6:05.
There was a world in which we now stood—all of us, both within and without that darkened ballroom, with all its tension and white noise and air-conditioned cheap eggshell walls—that everyone in that room, with very few exceptions, had at once relinquished, placed in a past that was forgotten. Hopeful, heavily, a hundred worlds sealed within a hundred hearts held a million breaths and prayed to their little gods, lamenting a doom pronounced from between blurred lips even as hope threatened from beneath shuffling soles. In the delicate nether between what was known—that with whose severance peace had been made—and the unknown, which had been—easily for some, begrudgingly for others—accepted and assimilated into what was real and what was present, a single word loomed above the fragile stillness like a hammer above a looking-glass, and fell with an appalling whisper.
“Tomorrow will begin the trials of the Lord’s children,” the voice rang from the speakers, and the whole universe seemed to exhale. At the back of the room, even as the disembodied countenance finished its sentence, prompted by the single word still ringing through the arches of the high ceiling against the cheap beads of the large chandelier, spears of light impaled the room as the light shuffling became footsteps that tap-tap-tapped through the opened door and down the marble hallways, hushed finally by the carpet of the staircase that led to the mezzanine where the exit opened into the warm Louisiana night. “The end has begun,” the face continued, as the footsteps splintered into hundreds of footsteps, leaving the room a sparse set of silhouettes against the wide-open double doors at the back of the ballroom. I couldn’t see the faces of those shadows but, across the stage, I caught a glimpse of Gary Winnaker. His hands were clasped upon his chest and there were tears in his eyes, and Reverend Abshire was standing dejectedly beside him, looking at the floor with his hands behind his back, his lips pursed and his cheeks low and sallow. The sermon continued from the speakers, but it was as if Farthing spoke into a vacuum. The remaining bodies in the room were the limbs of a dead thing, the numbness fading only slowly as the feed ended with a short prayer and the lights faded back on.
Abshire returned to the stage and stood before the few that remained and addressed their desperation, looking down with his eyes but with a voice that came forth as if from below. “My friends,” he said, “the work of the Lord is beyond our ability to know. He moves in ways within us and around us, and it is sometimes difficult to understand how and why.” His voice trembled. “We can know, though—we do know—that his work is our redemption. It is our salvation. Let us pray.”
With this last, Gary Whittaker, along with the few remaining parishioners that had remained filed slowly out of the room with slow, unsteady steps and not a word among them. As they left, the reverend said his prayer, and it was he and I alone who shared it.
“Dear heavenly father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the opportunity to know your blessings through this experience. Although we may not understand your plan, Lord, and though we may find it difficult to reconcile what we have seen this night with our understanding of your word, we know that it is not for men to understand your glorious and blessed work. We are your disciples, Lord, and our lives are for your glory. Please watch over all these, your children, even those who have gone from here to carry on with their lives, and please bestow upon them your guiding love and your boundless mercy. We ask this in the name of Christ Jesus, your son and our savior—“
I had been silent and still for some time and, as I took a breath, it was labored and shallow, and I felt cold. I had not come as a believer, and I would not leave as one, but I had been a part of what happened here, and I felt it was right that only I and the Reverend Tommy Abshire remained in that room after what had happened. “Amen,” we said together, and I stood in silence, recognizing that those people, every one of them, had made up in their own mind that it was over—that whatever they were still holding on to was just an illusion, and that the truth of things was to be revealed to them this very night. Each was returning home and would now pick up the pieces that had been cast aside, would wonder what happened, and would build walls against any such words or prayers, against the threat of blind faith and against promises that might sound too good to be true. It would harden their hearts.
Abshire said nothing when the prayer had ended. He walked down the steps on the right-hand side of the stage where I sat and put a hand on my shoulder, eyes downcast, his face a lazy grimace. He was no longer sweating, and his skin was not so tanned and fine as before but now seemed old and spotted. He turned and left the room quietly, letting the door close behind him with a gentle click.
I finished my job as I would have any other, packing the speakers and stands in their cases and loading them tenderly into the old minivan at the loading dock out back, careful not to let the tommy lift take the rear bumper off. I made the final “dummy check” to be sure I hadn’t left anything in the ballroom, then returned to the van, locked the rear door, and drew a cigarette from my pack. The first drag was warm and filling, and I felt the tingling thirst for the tobacco that had built up for the past five hours unnoticed, as I’d been transfixed by the events in the ballroom. Over the side of the van, past the garbage compactor beside the hotel’s loading dock and just beyond the Vermilion River bridge, where it cast only a partial reflection across the dirty and shallow water, the Freedom Church billboard still offered its promise of redemption as warmly and as openly as ever it had. I finished my cigarette, threw the butt in the ever-present pool of standing garbage water at the bottom of the dock’s incline and stepped into the driver’s seat of the van, pausing for a moment to feel the aching in my bones. I’d stood for nearly the entire time, and could feel it in my knees and ankles. I’m getting old, I thought to myself, knowing it wasn’t age but laziness and fatigue. I wondered then how it might have been, would it all have been true, if the expectations of all those hundred something people would have been spot-on. Would we all be standing in line waiting on St. Peter to sort through the mess? Would we be sitting on a golden curb before the pearly gates waiting on our number to be called? The song came to mind and I laughed to myself as I started the van and headed out for the shop:
Tell St. Peter at the golden gate
That you hate to make him wait
But you’ve gotta have another cigarette.
Bio By Jered Gaspard: My name is Jered Gaspard, and I am an IT Professional in Lafayette, Louisiana. I am an undergraduate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and I reside in Lafayette, Louisiana with my wife Monica and my son Grayson. I am 33 years old, and have been writing for most of my life, only seriously since 2008.
