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Chapter
Eleven
A Voice in the Wilderness
As the Reverend Adam Leeds exited the apartment building,
a new world order, in its infancy, followed him down the steps and onto the
empty street. The long trek to
Armageddon had begun.
Though he hadn’t caught sight of Adam this time,
evangelist Moses Rawlins, who was, that very moment, returning to the Union
Rescue mission for his evening meal, felt a sudden compulsion to shout out
doomsday warnings. It was
the same compulsion he had felt earlier today when he saw that dreadful women
emerge from the shadows behind that unfortunate young man. As if to herald the distant age, he had
cried out as a voice in the wilderness “Beware of the False Prophet, he who
causes all, small and great and rich and poor to receive a mark!”
At that time of day most of the homeless folk
were still panhandling or scrounging for liquor uptown. Such a spontaneous reaction was
expected from drunks burned out on cheap wine. Laughing foolishly at himself, he had trudged up to the
wholesale district bordering skid row, where he gave listeners a sampling of
his new format. The sun was
setting. Motorists driving past,
as usual, frowned at him.
Pedestrians still on the street, looked at him with great disgust. Although he was inspired with
illumination, it felt like sheer lunacy.
After this attempt, on the way back to the mission, he had stopped
awhile beneath a large oak tree and tried it out on idlers in San Julian
Park. He cringed now when he
recalled his reception. The
homeless folk in the park merely laughed at him. Many of them, who had only been annoyed at his fiery sermons
before, had looked at him as if he had gone mad. For a while, as he considered his drastic change of format,
he wondered if this might be true.
Though Judgment Day was a common theme in his
preaching, it had been a personal—turn or burn—appeal to a sinner’s
relationship with God. Ironically,
Moses the firebrand preacher, had been a Roman Catholic since birth. In spite of his conversion to what he
called “basic Christianity,” he had accepted the Roman Catholic interpretation
of the Book of Revelation written by Saint John. The Catholic view, shared by many mainline Protestants, that
John had intended his book only for the churches of his day, had made perfect
sense to him, but so had many of the Protestant churches’ views on salvation
and the forgiveness of sins.
Doctrine, in itself, he believed, was not important. “The issue,” he explained to listeners,
“is your relationship to God. Are
you saved? Do you trust in the
Lord?” It was that simple. All the trappings of the Catholic
Church and the claptrap of the Protestant faith were not, in his estimation,
essential for salvation and could, in fact, become stumbling blocks for the man
and woman on the street.
When asked by a visiting priest at the
mission if he had forsaken the mother church, Moses answered promptly that it
had forsaken him. Its
rituals and unbending ordinances against folks, like himself, had driven many
believers away. But he also
criticized a visiting Protestant pastor, who tried to convince his audiences
that Roman Catholicism and Judaism were in error. Moses believed that Protestantism, particularly the
televangelist kind, was fundamentally intolerant of other faiths. It also put too much stress on what was
going to happen in the future, when today was all that mattered to folks on the
street. On skid row and the
wholesale district of Los Angeles, where he conducted his open-air church, the
most important issue was a Christian’s personal relationship with God. Why would homeless folk care about the
Antichrist or False Prophet when they suffered their own demons each day? Concepts such as the Mark of the Beast
or the Great Tribulation, described by televangelists, were irrelevant to men
and women gripped by the beasts of alcoholism and drugs. With the real life horrors that
homeless people had to contend with daily, the doomsday scenarios painted by
televangelists seemed ludicrous against the backdrop of skid row.
For Moses Rawlins, Christ’s words were simple
and direct. Books in the Bible
such as Revelation and Daniel—the chief sources of the Apocalypse, on the other
hand, were too complex for simple folks to comprehend. In spite of the criticism from visiting
pastors and priests, he had preached Christian basics to homeless people,
rather than fundamental Protestantism or doctrinal Catholicism, striving to
make the Holy Scriptures user friendly to their unwashed ears. On certain occasions, when questioned,
he would explain to his listeners that there were no Catholics or Protestants
in heaven. God was
color-blind and doctrinally ignorant, and heaven was filled with only one type
of men and women—Christians, period. Hell, on the other hand, was filled with all sorts of
riffraff, be they Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, or Jew. His simple, easy to understand format
for salvation had been perfectly suited for down-and-out souls on skid
row. And yet now, after
successfully avoiding doctrines and dogma all these years, he was espousing a
particularly fundamentalist Protestant eschatology and attempting to warn folks
about Biblical boogiemen he found hard to accept: the Beasts of Revelation: the
False Prophet and Antichrist, who would set the stage for the Great Tribulation
of the End Times.
In
spite of the blessing of prophecy bestowed upon him by the Lord, his first
experience as a doomsday forecaster had been strange and unsettling. He felt like one of those
televangelists, he ridiculed, consumed with apocalyptical imagery and doomsday
drivel—the antithesis of a street evangelist in almost every way. The Lord had filled him with
wondrous—all be it Protestant—bursts of revelation, but he had felt foolish
after the reception he received today.
******
After a long day of preaching, followed by the
unscheduled period of warning listeners about the End Times, hunger, fatigue,
and mental exhaustion overtook Moses Rawlins. All that mattered to him, after such a long day, was
arriving on time at the Union Mission for the evening meal.
As he sat at the table with other homeless men, he
wolfed down a plate of meat loaf, mashed potatoes and buttered rolls, washing
it down with three glasses of iced tea.
Quietly, without conversation at first, he finished his meal with great
relish, topping it off with a wedge of apple pie. Surfeited, he settled back in his chair, chewing on his
thoughts.
It appeared to Moses as though God had big plans for
him. He had once been a successful
engineer, with a wife, daughter and a spacious house. He had been a respectable member of the community, a member
of the PTA, and regularly brought his family to Saint Boniface’s Roman Catholic
Church. Yet not until he hit the
skids, humbled by life’s misfortunes, had he truly known the Lord. Why had Jesus waited until he was on
skid row? At this stage in his
spiritual growth, after years of preaching on the street, he had been given a
task: he was to become a herald or forecaster of the End Times…. How strange
and mysterious of the Lord that He had waited so long.
As he finished the last of his pie, he
conversed politely with the homeless folk at his table. It was difficult to make small talk
while dealing with revelations from the Lord. When he was a member of the middle class, he would have had
many clever things to say that would prevent him from wasting time. Here, during dinner time at the
mission, the typical “how’re you doing?” ice breaker resulted in long winded,
rambling reports of health, living conditions or problems with other vagrants
or brushes with the law. Moses
found it best to rely on the tried and true method of commenting on food, the
weather or local news. Perhaps, if
they wished, he might discuss a Biblical topic with them, if it did not offend
other diners, but nothing controversial, such as politics or their immortal soul.
This evening, thought Moses wearily, small talk simply won’t
do. The voices around him were
scarcely heard as he sat there experiencing another revelation from God. Several of them, whom he knew
personally as friends, recognized him as Preacher Moe or the Shepherd of Skid
Row. Among this group, Smokin’ Al
Breen, Little Tom, and Skunk Larson, Moe’s favorites, would always be in his
cheering section, as would Judd, a slightly addled old drifter who maintained
an almost permanent smile on his shriveled face. Though most of the others knew him as a friendly nuisance,
Charles Blintz, whom Moses once tried to convert, sat glowering at him from
across the room. After serving
time for beating up a vagrant in Gladys Park, Charlie, a yellow-haired,
buck-toothed young man with pale blue eyes, had recently been released from
jail, along with the three members of his gang who helped him beat poor Ignacio
Rosales half to death. Ignacio,
who had been born again at one of Moe’s street revivals, sat next to Moses at
his table, across from Al, Skunk, Tom, and Judd.
Fortunately tonight, Charlie and his gang were
watched carefully by the security officers standing guard in the room. One tall, stringy haired homeless
woman, Rhoda Simms, whom everyone knew as the Skid Row Witch, made disparaging
remarks about him at the beginning of the meal, but was shushed into silence by
Moses’ friends when he began to speak.
In a moderate tone, confident that he would not be interrupted, Moses
stood up and addressed those immediately around him, especially his friends
Ignacio, Al, Skunk, Tom, and Judd.
After seeing Moses rise to his feet, other diners, curious about the
commotion, moved in closer to the speaker as he stood looking around the room. Among his audience, portly Buff Peyton,
ex-gang member Heck Reyes, and Ephalia “Effie” Powers, so often among his
hecklers, knew better than irritate the sponsors of their meal. As many others, they sat in various
stages of torpor or boredom in their seats. While others such as Ursula Painter, Stork Channing, and
Alden Taylor craned their necks to hear, a few diners had fallen asleep. Faint snoring could be heard in various
quarters of the room. His words
this time were difficult to understand, but there was, many listeners marveled,
something different about the Shepherd’s expression tonight. Moses was smiling, as if he knew
something earth shaking was about to happen but was not ready to tell.
Kaz Yorba, the dwarf, suggested jokingly to Wyatt
Brewster, a onetime seminary student, that the preacher might be on drugs. Enigmatically, the young man shook his
head and held his finger up to his lips.
In the faintest of whispers he told Kaz “The preacher is not mad, and
he’s not on drugs. Moses Rawlins
is one of those rare street crazies truly touched by God!”
Kaz laughed foolishly to himself. The diners in the room showed
extraordinary patience as Moses struck a statuesque pose. The security
personnel, ready to move in quickly, watched Moses and his silent congregation
with jaundiced eyes. It was, Moses
would later realize, the defining moment in his evangelical career. No longer would he simply be known as
Preacher Moe or the Shepherd of Skid Row. . . He was Moses, a prophet, God’s
voice on the street.
“Truly I say unto you,” he raised his arms
dramatically, a collective gasp registering in the room, “a man—one of your
own—shall do the devil’s work.
When you hear strange and wondrous tidings, they are not miracles but
diabolical things. When you see
Christ walking passed you on the street, it’s not Him at all but his diabolical
counterpart—the emissary of the beast.
Humbly did the Master pick his flock? In imitation of Jesus will this counterfeit select folk on
skid row.”
Moses shuddered at what he just said, and yet,
without losing a beat and before the security forces shushed him into silence,
he outlined, as quickly as possible, a series of events that would happen on
skid row. One day he would outline
the events in detail for his protégés, the Two Witnesses during the End Time,
but for now he struggled with his revelation. His message, in fact, seemed outrageous to many
listeners. “What’s crazy ol’ Moe
talking about now?” They murmured amongst themselves. For several listeners, including Wyatt Brewster and his
friends, however, Moses had finally struck a chord. None of them had ever heard the Shepherd talk this way:
“… In those days before the official countdown
begins, the counterfeit Christ will be looked upon as a lunatic, until he
gathers his twelve apostles—a collection of ex-drug addicts, prostitutes and
down-and-out misfits who will become his missionaries in the End Times…”
******
Leaving his audience with an enticing introduction
of things to come, which he planned to follow up with “bulletins,” as the
spirit moved him, Moses gave them all a parting blessing, receiving a modest
smattering of applause. His
friends rose up unanimously to clap, while young Wyatt sat staring into
space. To avoid the gruff handling
of security guards demanding he leave the premises, Moses mumbled a blessing to
them, exiting the building quickly after the prayer. Wrapped in God’s graces, he ignored the hoots from Charlie
and his friends, looking forward, at that point, to a well-earned night’s
sleep.
This time he returned to the abandoned newsstand in which,
during good weather, he bedded down for the night. After only a few hours of fitful slumber, however, another
revelation appeared murkily as a dream, and the urge to prophesy returned to
him. Moses didn’t know that Adam
Leeds had been indwelled by Satan tonight, and yet, during the dreamscape of
apocalyptic symbols parading in his mind, it was as if God, himself, shouted
into his slumbering mind “Wake up—he’s afoot. Tell the world now that he’s here!”
Driven by what he was certain was the Lord’s command,
Moses felt pumped up and ready to give one more sermon before turning in
permanently for the night. But to whom,
he asked himself, looking up and down the street. It was, he noted on his wristwatch, approaching
midnight. His friends, Smokin’ Al,
Skunk, Little Tom, Ignacio, and Ol’ Judd, had decided to sleep at the
mission. The homeless families
were all bedded down for the night.
The malingerers on the sidewalks, such as Charlie Blintz, were in no
mood to be preached at this time.
But the heartland bums who lived in the alleys of skid row, which
included his friends, might still be awake at this hour.
“What better time to give bums the message than when
they’re drifting off to sleep?” He asked himself cheerily. “They’ll make a
splendid audience!” He tried reassuring himself, as he cradled the Bible
affectionately in his hands. “Lord,” he called out, looking up at night sky,
“this is madness. Strengthen my
soul with your Holy Spirit, comforting presence, and your divine will. Guide my steps, put wisdom in my mouth,
and protect me from the evil one this hour!”
In spite of his fine words, Moses didn’t feel
confident after his reception on the street. The encouragement given by his friends couldn’t wipe away
the memory of hecklers or the frightened looks he received earlier on skid
row. He was, he reminded himself,
a much better preacher than a prophet.
He was still not completely certain he was not suffering delusions after
all those years of drinking cheap wine.
He knew most of the scriptures by heart. Many of the images flashing in his mind were not from the
Bible. Should he present them to
the street people, if he barely understood them, himself? What if there was a troublemaker in
their midst like Charlie Blintz or one of his friends? Would the Lord protect him so he could
deliver His message? Could he, as
the Old Testament prophets, rely upon God to protect him from his enemies if
they threatened him with bodily harm?
Moses remembered from his Bible studies that many of the prophets had
been killed while serving the Lord.
Was Christ, himself, not crucified for bringing sinful men the truth?
Questions and more questions plagued his mind. Moses steps faltered with his failing
resolve. He remembered the look on
Charlie Blintz’s splotchy face; it seemed to typify the dark, evil side of skid
row. He had seen that same hateful
expression many times when preaching the word. Moses had, in fact, identified three major looks of
disapproval among his listeners: resentment, annoyance, and, in Charlie’s case,
malevolence, which bred malicious glee.
Many of the homeless folk were merely irritated by his disruptions. It was, however, from their numbers
that he had made converts on skid row and even a few friends. The drug addicts, prostitutes, and
malingerers, such as Charlie Blintz, he encountered, who resented his
intrusions, were more difficult to reach.
They were, unless they repented, lost sheep for the shepherd of skid
row.
Except for Charles Blintz or Rhoda Simms, who needed
exorcism more than conversion, Moses was a relentless evangelist. Perhaps there was a demon leering from
Charlie’s pale blue eyes. At times
Rhoda Simms, a drug addict and ex-prostitute, appeared to be clinically
insane. Most of the others,
however, when they heard him preaching, left him alone. Sometimes they would actually listen,
and a few had even been saved. But
Charlie and his gang hurled insults at him when the mood suited them. Moses wondered what Charlie would do to
him if he ran into him in the dark.
So far, in his evening visits, he had not been waylaid, but he had
always limited his services to counseling and prayer. With such a loud voice, he wouldn’t dare preach to homeless
folk at this hour. The Lord
protected him as long as he followed a few guidelines. Moses had never attempted even a
visitation this late at night.
As he approached his destination, which was as yet
unclear, he uttered verses from the Twenty-third Psalm, the same prayer Adam
Leeds had read from the Bible many times, but Moses had memorized the Palms
perfectly, as he had most of the Good Book:
“Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…”
Tonight, as he walked into the valley of the shadow
of death, it occurred to him that his vanity, not the Lord, might be leading
him now. Was he really up to a
one-man revival with these folks?
Perhaps on this occasion he was overdoing it. Should he not introduce this new subject to them on another,
more auspicious time and place?….Who was he to tempt the Lord?
******
Questions followed questions. This time, as his flashlight probed the
darkness, the Lord answered him without symbols or words. A sudden wind gushed out of nowhere that
moment, blowing warmly into his face.
Turning off his flashlight, Moses paused beneath a street lamp, his red
hair and beard stirring in the breeze.
He was still exhausted after a day of preaching on
the street. Today he had preached
longer and with greater vigor than ever before, but that last hour in the
wholesale district had been the most difficult in his preaching career. With the exception of the excellent
meal at the mission this evening, he had eaten poorly this week. When he bedded down in the newsstand,
he had felt weak, footsore, and racked with arthritic pain. Yet, at this moment, after only a short
period of sleep, he felt revitalized, ready to give the Lord another hour or
two of service preaching about a subject that would affect the whole world.
Now, as He had countless times before, the Lord
stiffened Moses’ resolve. Quietly,
in a sudden draft, He had reminded him of his mission to spread the word. Moses’ doubts, if not his fears, had
faded with the Lord’s breath.
Remembering that dreadful woman who inspired him to make the sign of the
cross, the preacher mumbled John the Revelator’s exhortation from the Book of
Revelations but this time under his breath: “And I stood upon the sand of the
sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns,
and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy…”
Ever since the woman emerged from the
shadows, he had been convinced he had been given a sign. The young man, who was walking in that
neighborhood, had also seemed significant, though he couldn’t imagine why. The man had no business in that neck of
the woods. The woman would have
seemed out of place anywhere on earth.
She was a monstrous parody of a streetwalker, the most frightful specter
he had ever seen on skid row. And
yet, fear and concern aside, these specters—man and beast—had stirred him
spiritually. Moses didn’t fully comprehend yet what had just
taken place in the world. The two
incongruous people seen on the boundary of skid row seemed unrelated to the
flashes of prophecy in his head as did the flashes, themselves, which had no
counterpart in the Bible he knew.
The Lord, in His own good time, he knew, would explain the mystery to
him, but why had been shaken him awake this hour? Was there someone he was supposed to meet or something
special he was supposed to do?…. Moses sensed, with bated breath, that he would
soon know.
At such a time, the preacher could of think
of only one thing to do: preach.
Seeing a handful of vagrants emerge from a side street, he found himself
screaming in a loud voice “Repent!
I have seen the dragon. The
Day of the Lord draws near, when the dragon shall anoint the beast!”
“What sort of nonsense is this?” He had asked
himself after the words poured out of his mouth.
He didn’t remember reading those words in the
Bible. Once again, it appeared as
though he was breaking new ground.
This was brand new scripture.
It was the same cognitive experience he had during dinner at the
mission, but this moment he had mentioned the dragon and the beast, which
meant, respectively, Satan and the Antichrist or False Prophet. This is serious business! He
thought with a shudder. He had
broken his long-standing rule about loud preaching late at night. The three men and two women looked at
him, as he shouted at them, as if he had lost his wits but continued on their
way, the same reaction he received during his experiment in town. Many pedestrians, including his normal
street audience, he recalled, had thought he was a lunatic, and yet, for that
brief period, he had been louder and more passionate than ever before. He knew as soon as he asked himself the
question “what sort of nonsense it this?” exactly what kind of nonsense it
was…. It was divine nonsense, the Lord’s special brand of
double-talk—the same sort of ambiguity that John the Revelator spouted
throughout the Book of Revelation, and he still barely understood. Now, it was coming to him too, as dream
imagery and flashes in his mind.
Moses, in spite of his reception today, was more convinced than ever of
his new mission on earth. It
would, if nothing else, he decided, change and re-invigorate his evangelical
pitch. He was not merely sent to
save their souls, he was sent to warn them of the End Times, a subject that
frightened even him.
But had he not jumped ahead of himself this evening
in warning his listeners of the Antichrist and False Prophet? What about the reasons for those
dreadful times: the lack of faith and the degenerate morals, which foreshadowed
the dark days ahead? Moses knew it
would be difficult to break with his old hell-fire and damnation format. It was his trademark on skid row.
This time, though filled with dread, Moses felt
strengthened. Something excited
him about the setting; he could feel it in the air. It was not merely the breeze drying the cold sweat on his
brow; it was a feeling, implanted by the Lord, that he was going to meet
someone of great importance on the street. Earlier this evening, as the sun set over the buildings, one
last flash of brilliance had greeted his eyes. He was certain that this event, as the breeze and inkling,
had been a sign, too. So far, in
subtle language, the Lord had spoken through the sun, the wind, and an
inexplicable feeling in the air.
Without a moonlit sky, night had fallen heavily on
skid row, deepening quickly into progressive shades of gray, purple and
black. God’s inner light was now
greater than the flashlight clutched in his hand. Glints of the future flashed on and off in his mind. After preaching in town, at the park,
at the mission and to the vagrants just now, he was, by the Lord’s command,
ready to sermonize to the worst dregs on skid row.
As lamplight cast his moving shadow onto the
sidewalk, a special warmth seemed to surround his soul, fortifying him against
the unknown. Against the darkness,
which had so quickly gobbled up the street, an inner peace and abiding faith
swelled inside him. Unbeknownst to
Moses, a spiritual ‘photo negative’ of himself now roamed skid row. It was now midnight, the worst time on
skid row—no place for shoppers, tourists, or anyone else, including himself, on
foot. For Moses Rawlins, however,
it was a special time: a period in which he would test his spiritual
strength. With Bible in hand, he
had always been ready for his twenty-four hour service to God, but no more than
his detour tonight.
“All right Lord,” he whispered discreetly up
to the sky, “you’ve convinced me.
You’ve made me into a herald and forerunner. Keep my spirit humble but my mind alert. Let my tongue not stumble when I
struggle with your words.”
******
Moses now headed directly into the heartland of skid
row. In every corner and pocket he
could hear them: murmurs, coughs, curses, and muted conversation—the misbegotten
and castaway, the so-called dregs of society, if not settling finally for the
day, already lurking singly or in small groups in alleys or street nooks. Most of this group, after panhandling
uptown, had already returned and withdrawn bottle-in-hand into their darkened
habitats to bed down for the night.
His own friends, Smokin’ Al, Skunk, Little Tom, Ignacio, and Ol’ Judd
were, he thanked God, sleeping safely at the mission tonight. For the remainder of heartland bums, as
Moses called them, it was time to settle down and, in many cases, enjoy their
hard won booze. Several groups, he
passed along the way, lingered on the sidewalks, by the curbs, or hovered as
moths around street lamps as if drawn by their light. Many of them were drug addicts and a few aging prostitutes
no longer able to sell their wares.
Collectively, whenever possible, this—the most downtrodden of the street
people—huddled for a smoke, a swig of wine, or just to chat a spell. Those retreating into alleys, whom he
called the Alley Rats, were the sorriest of the lot. This group included but was not limited to addicts, burnt
out winos, and a few mentally disturbed Vietnam and Middle East veterans, who
were among the most pitiful men on skid row.
In a muted tone this time, Moses uttered,
“I’m the voice crying in the wilderness.
Make straight the way of the Lord!”
Looking around self-consciously, he felt
suddenly vulnerable on the street.
It was the worst place to be at this hour, even for a prophet chosen by
the Lord. Yet the Lord, Himself, had
awakened him, and the Spirit had moved him to the worst part of skid row. His congregation was the same and his
territory remained, for the time being, downtown LA and skid row, but the
message was different now.
Ultimately, he sensed, his territory would be the entire world.
Today, during normal working hours, he had
preached to pedestrians and anyone else who happened to look his way. Earlier, in the late morning, he
had sermonized to the homeless, especially the growing number of families
huddled in the park, by the river, or camped in vacant lots. To them, the victims of social and
economic woes, he conducted quiet sermons or counseling wherever they happened
to be. As they bedded down for the
night, he revisited them only long enough to gather their prayer requests
before returning to the boundary of skid row. This afternoon something had been added to his routine. All of his regular stops, he suspected,
would have to fit into the regimen set by the Lord for his new mission to
herald the End Times on skid row.
Clearly, God was testing him.
It was the first time he would enter an alley by himself, in the
darkness, and this late at night.
“It’s
written,” he quoted, looking longingly up at the sky. “ ‘Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord.’ Well, Lord, if this be
your will, give me a sign…. Just one more…. I’m almost there. The hole of the Alley Rats is straight
ahead.”
******
Miraculously it seemed Moses, drops of rain fell on
his cheek. He thought he heard a
faint rumble of thunder from the cloudless, starlit sky. Finally, Moses turned into an unlit
stretch of alley, praying feverishly under his breath. His only illumination, now that he was
out of range of the street lamps, was his flashlight, which he used sparingly,
and the glow of cigarettes down the line.
As airport runway lights guiding his approach, he used these smoldering
beacons to prevent himself from tripping over legs and knees in the dark. With his Bible in hand, he sought out
familiar faces or just derelicts who were still awake. At a few points, while probing the
darkness with his flashlight, he heard threatening grumbles and quickly turned
it off. Most of the derelicts
stared like zombies straight ahead, if not already slouched over in sleep. Heads would continue to drop, bodies
would crumple, until one by one they fell asleep.
Thirty
feet or more into the corridor, at what seemed to be a likely spot, Moses
stopped, turned off his light, and stood there peering into the dark.
“Listen,”
he suddenly cried, “don’t go to sleep!
It’s me again: Moe Rawlins.
Many of you have heard me on the street. I’ve got something to tell you. So hold on a minute; your lives may depend on it. Just open your eyes and listen to my
voice. The last thing I want you
to hear before you fall asleep is this: it’s
not too late! That’s right my
friends, Jesus wants you just like you are. Why, I don’t know.
I’ve had several talks with Him about you. I keep telling him that you’re not listening. I’d love to stay with my homeless
families where at least they’re sober.
I’d also like to stay in the mission with my friends where its warm and
I can get a good night’s sleep.
But He wants me to spend my evenings here in the hollow—a dark, cold,
living hell, where I can get beaten up, maybe killed.”
“I
use to be like you guys,” his voice softened. “Before I hit the skids, I had a
family, a big house, and a good job.
Then I lost them all one by one.
First my wife died, and then my daughter ran off to Lord knows
where. And suddenly I was hitting
the bottle. It was so easy to stay
drunk after work, but then I began drinking during lunch and sometimes even
during working hours, until finally, after showing up drunk at work once too
often, I was fired from my job. I
never planned my end, but that’s what it was: a death wish. I was so unhappy I wanted to drink
myself to death. But I’m not
asking you to give up the booze now, this very moment. I’m only asking that you listen. This is the easy part. The Lord will help you through the hard
part later. Right now, just say to
yourself ‘Jesus, I’m listening.
I’m a sinner, but my eyes aren’t shut and my heart’s open. So give me a chance like you did for
ol’ Moe. I don’t want to burn in
Satan’s fires. I don’t want to die
of sclerosis of the liver, kidney failure or brain rot. I want to live a happy life and someday
be where you are Lord: paradise.’”
“I’m
praying Lord!” He shouted at the top of his lungs. “I’m repenting before it’s
too late, before I get sick, die, and wake up in hell. Hear my prayer Lord. Hallelujah! I’m waiting, watching, my eyes uplifted, my spirits
afire. I hear you at the gates of
my heart, the window of my soul, knowing you’re there but heeding you not,
feeling your love but blinded by sin.
Pull me up Lord. Stand me
on my feet. I want to walk out of
here whole, believing, trusting, and the man you want me to be!”
After
this message of salvation, would come the hard part, which he dreaded the most:
the warning given to him by God of the End Times—the Last Days. At this point, after his lofty sermon,
he walked silently a ways into dark corridor, praying for guidance under his
breath. Out of politeness he
tried, as always, to keep his beam low to avoid their eyes. Derelicts, who had been in the darkness
too long, were sensitive to light.
He had learned to be patient with such folks, not merely out of
compassion but out of fear of the unknown. Right now, of course, he was in the most unknowable portion
of skid row: an alley. Keeping his
flashlight beam trained on the ground, he gripped its handle as a weapon and
stood with his back to a brick wall.
“I
have a message for you tonight,” he grappled with the knowledge in his mind,
“not like the others…. I know it’s for the entire world, and yet I begin here
in this humble place. You’re among
the first to know. I’ve seen the
dragon. She looked out at me
passed a poor wretch, whose soul was in torment, and I knew it was her—a sign and an omen the Lord allowed me to
see. Why the devil would walk
these streets when there is much more promising ground in Hollywood, Wall
Street or any major city in the USA, I don’t know. But I know the devil’s right here, having selected our
habitats to begin her mischief on Planet Earth!”
After a pause, in which he realized that many of the
men in the alley were mumbling to themselves and not listening at all, he said
with little confidence “I’m here to tell you about a subject in Scriptures I
still struggle with myself: warnings of things to come—the End Times…”
“So tell them, preacher,” a gravelly voice, close by
in the shadows called out as he faltered, “they, who’ve seen the dragon down
here every night!”
That moment warm fingers reached up to touch his
hand. His throat constricted when
he considered the old man’s words.
“I hear you Lord,” he found his voice. A rush of cognition caused him to gasp, and he reach out to
steady himself by touching the slimy wall.
“Yes, God, I’m listening,” he looked around wild
eyed, a glint of lamplight highlighting his face.
“The Book,” the old man cued him, “… the unwritten
Book.”
“… I thought the answers were all in my Bible,”
Moses picked up the cue. “Flashes
in my mind—nay revelation—tell me there is more, much more,… another book other
than the books of John, the Revelator, and Daniel, to be written by God’s
author, whom the Lord will find as a blank sheet and I, Moses Rawlins, will one
day teach. I am but a voice crying
in the wilderness and you, children, are the Lord’s sounding board. Hear now the words of the Lord!”
“Who is the dragon? Who can make war against him?” Another voice, deep and
resonant, rang out, in the darkness.
“Who said it will be a man?” Asked Moses,
futilely searching the shadows for the owner of the second voice.
This time he wondered if he was being mocked. Was it the devil he heard now? What madness has brought me into a
bum’s alley, he asked himself, backing away slowly to the street.
“Come into the light,” the gravelly voice called
from the shadows. With his
flashlight aimed at the ground, Moses quickly retraced his steps out of the
corridor. Pulling out his tattered
Bible, which he could not possibly have read in the almost total darkness, he
fingered it Ouija board fashion as if it might inspire his thoughts, until he could
read it at the mouth of the alley.
A passage appearing at once to his tired eyes cued him now:
And
I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the
martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her I wondered with great admiration…. And the
woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the
earth.
******
He turned to the dark corridor now and the
words again poured out of his mouth as if he had memorized them by heart.
“The
Lord speaks through me. Thus
spaketh the Lord: ‘Lo, the devil is now a woman, who has chosen as her
spokesman, a man of the new age, who will make you believe that the devil
doesn’t exist. In the universal
faith he preaches, their god—the devil—shall be called the Deity. In truth it will have no gender or
form, and its message will be in conflict with what is implied in
Scripture. There will be no
doublespeak from His prophet; God will speak plainly this time…. In the dark
days which shall come, the False Prophet will gather his twelve from among his children
as apostles of darkness for the new age, who will be the first to wear the
mark…. Remember my words, so you will know that moment, when the first beast
tempts you with his words. Make no
mistake, children, the dragon speaks through her prophet. The beast will make you think that
Christ has come again, but in the False Prophet, there indwells the devil, who
controls and directs the beast!’ ”
At
that very moment, a familiar figure plodded dejectedly up the street. When Moses recognized the man in the
clerical collar, he knew immediately who he was supposed to meet. He did not even know his name, yet he
knew who he would one day be.
Though their eyes met—gray upon gray, there were no words passed between
the two ministers. Adam Leeds,
broken in spirit and mentally lost, trudged on, immediate destination unknown,
but his purpose had been written in the Book of Life since the beginning of
time. What could Moses say to
someone who would one day play such a role? Words of rebuke seemed in order and yet he felt pity for
this lost soul.
Glancing
at the Alley Rats, Moses looked back with dread at this vision. “It begins!” He declared to his
indifferent audience. Elaborating
upon the prelude he used for his revelation, he cried out as he had that first
moment when the Spirit moved him: “Thus saith the Lord: The hour of the beast
has come. The long road to
Armageddon has begun. I stood upon
the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads
and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his head the name of
blasphemy. And they worshipped the
dragon who gave power to the beast and worshipped the beast, saying, ‘Who is
like unto the beast? Who is able
to make war with him?’”
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