1634: Turn Your Radio On (2 page)

It was coming from the direction of the fairground on the other side of Buffalo Creek. Fischer followed the sound as it strengthened, up the hill to the fairground. He had worked on fixing the fences there just last week.

Now, in what had been referred to as the picnic area, there was a large white tent. It was brightly lit from inside and the music was coming from there. He decided that he would go in to listen.

When he walked through the open flap, a woman, an up-timer woman, came over to him and shook his hand with both of hers. "Welcome, Brother! You're just in time for the sermon. Let me help you find a seat.

"It'll have to be up front," she continued, grinning as she took hold of his upper arm to guide him to the front. "You have to come early to get a back seat! If you don't speak English, don't worry. Reverend Chalker was a chaplain's assistant stationed in Stuttgart, and speaks German well."

After some jostling to move the people on the second row down a bit, she placed him on the aisle with a wonderful view of the choir that was singing some song in English with a rhythm and harmony unlike anything he had ever heard. They had several musical instruments accompanying them, also unfamiliar to Fischer, along with violins. But they played the violins unlike anything he could remember either.

Finally, the choir finished as the audience—Fischer couldn't quite think of it yet as a congregation—applauded. Some held their right arms up in the air above their heads, and several people around him yelled out, "
Praise Jez-sus
!"

A man dressed in a grey suit and using a cane walked up on the podium and took his place behind the pulpit. He was old even by up-timer standards His hair was full, wavy and snow white. It seemed to capture the lights aimed at the stage with almost a halo effect. He leaned his cane beside the pulpit and shuffled some papers on its top. He took a sip from the mug at the edge of the podium and leaned forward.

"My name is John Chalker and . . . " He paused for a moment, then yelled, "
I am a sinner
!"

The old man's voice was obviously just a shadow of what it had once been years before. Even though it wavered from his tired old throat, the force behind it was still there.

As a child, Fischer learned from his father that he must learn to fit in if his family would ever be able to find a new town that would allow them to stay. He'd not only learned the catechisms of the locally mandated religion, he'd also learned to pick up the different ways people pronounced their words from one town to another.

Later, as a student at the university, he'd learned to amuse his classmates with imitations of a number of his professors. The professor from the North Sea area spoke in a very guttural Plattsdeutsch dialect. The imitation that Fischer performed always made his proper-sounding Saxon classmates laugh.

This old man in front of him, preaching of love and acceptance and second chances had such a different way of molding his words that Fischer could not help but try to form some of those words with his own lips. It was very similar to how they spoke in Saxony, but just a little off.

The person to his left bumped into him. Fischer looked around and noticed a large number of the others in the tent swaying to the old preacher's pacing, holding their right hand up to the sky as if reaching out to be picked up off the bench.

After a time Chalker, who had been leaning heavily on the pulpit, reached for his cane and began to walk toward the front of the podium, all the while continuing his sermon, "You can only die once if you are born twice."

Taking a few more steps, he said, "Christ said to Nicodemus, John 3:3 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'"

Another few steps and he thundered, "In Revelations 2:11 it is written, 'He who overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.'"

Yet another few steps and the preacher deepened his voice and continued, "In Romans 10:13 Paul said, 'For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.' Are you saved tonight? Are you safe from the second death? Are you guaranteed a tomorrow?"

Now having reached the very edge of the stage, Chalker gestured to the lady in front of the choir and said, "As Sister Jennifer Copenhaver leads us in our closing hymn, if there is any doubt in your heart of your salvation, if there is any question in your mind of where you are spending eternity, if you are not absolutely certain that God will look you in the eye come Judgment Day and say, 'Welcome home' . . . "

The preacher paused a moment. Then he gestured over his shoulder and continued. "That is not a fancy pulpit. This old band stand is not a fancy altar, but you know that Jesus ate his last supper at a plain wooden table and just stood on some big old rocks to give his sermon on the mount. It just goes to show that what's important is not the physical things around us. It's the golden things that need to be in our hearts.

"So make your way to the steps of this simple old altar tonight where we will open the Bible and help you to claim the promises of God."

Sister Copenhaver held up a blue hymnal in her right hand, and signaled the band to start their lead in. The choir behind her began to hum along with the band and she broke forth in her incredible clear, sweet voice with the words, "Just as I am, without one plea."

All around Fischer, people began to sing. Some floundered under their benches for a book and a page, others joined in from memory aided by Sister Copenhaver's prompting. Those without a book seemed to all have one hand—and more often both hands—in the air.

The woman across the aisle from Fischer not only had both hands in the air but she seemed to bob up and down as if she were floating and was about to leave the ground. Then she left off singing the words of the song in English for another language Fischer couldn't make out and then left off singing all together to repeat the same mumbled phrase over and over interspersed with "Thank you, Jesus" and "Praise the Lord."

At the end of the first verse the preacher held up a hand. Sister Copenhaver fell silent but the choir continued to hum and the band played softly.

"Are you here tonight without the Lord? I
know
you
are
! The spirit has revealed to me that we have people here who have not claimed the
Lord
as their personal
savior
! If you are here tonight, search your heart for the peace that passes all understanding and if you can't find it, as we sing a second verse of 'Just As I Am' make your way to the altar steps here in front of me."

Sister Copenhaver, both hands still in the air, with the voice of an angel incarnate sang, "Just as I am and waiting not."

Fischer thought the preacher standing before him seemed to shed his years like an overcoat, becoming younger as he stood at the edge of the bandstand that Fischer now clearly saw as an altar. Pitching his voice to be heard over the song, which did not stop, Chalker looked around the crowd gathered in the tent, stopping just as he made contact with Fischer's eyes. The preacher seemed to point with his cane right at Fischer as he boomed out, "You can only die once if you are born twice!"

The hairs on the back of Fischer's neck and arms stood on end. He felt himself rise from the bench and walk to the steps of the altar in front of the old preacher. He fell to his knees and bowed, aware of others also making their way to the steps beside him. He felt a powerful hand place itself on the crown of his head, and the old man said, "Bless you, Brother! The Holy Spirit has much planned for you!"

****

Brother Chalker settled into the rocker on the back porch and opened the notebook that was in his lap. "Well, I guess it's time we got started. First, let's thank Elder and Sister Paul and Ingrid Nemeth for letting us have our Bible study in their back yard tonight."

After giving some time for the amen's, scattered applause and thanks to die down, he continued, "Let's not forget their children Alexis and Jacob for taking care of all of our younguns for us."

Again some warm applause interrupted him. "Elder Paul was telling me that his oldest, Terrell, is really enjoying being in the army. He might even decide to make it a career. Let's all hold him up to the Lord so that he might remain safe.

"The pickin' and singin' over at the covered-dish dinner was as enjoyable as ever. Now, we've been blessed with a lot of new folks here tonight who found their way to our family during last week's revival. I'm glad to see how well all of you made them feel at home. I do want to specifically recognize one new church member. Brother Dieter Fischer, would you please stand?"

Fischer was startled to be pointed out, but he stood up and brushed the grass off his threadbare pants. "Brother Fischer came over to me after last Sunday's service and told me that he's an ordained Lutheran minister!"

As the gathered crowd offered scattered amen's, Chalker continued, "We want to help Brother Fischer find the gift of becoming a voice for the Holy Spirit that's inside him waiting for the right time. I have a powerful feeling that Brother Fischer is going to help us spread the Word in this new world."

Finished with his business, the old preacher set down the notebook and thumbed open his Bible. "Let's see . . . after the Ring of Fire brought us here, I started these Bible studies by just starting to read through from Genesis 1:1. We've continued on every Wednesday since then. Tonight we're up to Mark 1: 4."

Chalker gave those with Bibles time to flip open to the night's passages, then began, "'John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey.'"

Chalker smiled and related the thoughts that this passage brought to his mind. "You know, I felt that way after the Ring of Fire. I had given my service that morning at my church in Fairmont and they surprised me with the keys to a brand new Chevy Suburban.

"I was absolutely tickled to death. We had been needing a car to get around to do visitations of our shut-ins and to carry meals and such. So, I decided to drive up Highway 250 to visit Sister Lana Soper at the Manning Assisted Living Center.

"Anyway, I was finishing up praying with her, that's when I heard the thunder of the Ring of Fire. I didn't know what was going to happen to me, but I knew that the Lord would provide. There I was, with just the camel hair coat on my back, a leather belt, no more paychecks and a comfortable home back up-time lost to me forever.

"After the Emergency Committee prohibited any driving to conserve the supplies of gasoline, the Lord guided me into the local car dealership to trade it in for something that I could ride around in."

The old preacher paused and drank a sip of water before continuing. "Now, I had hoped that that fine new Suburban would have gotten me a wagon and a team of horses and maybe some money to keep going until the Lord was ready to provide me with guidance as to what to do next.

"But the Lord was way ahead of me on that one! The car dealer had just finished his spring tent sale on Saturday before the Ring of Fire and he took me out back to show me the beautiful tent that he had planned on returning to the rental company the next week. Since he didn't need it, he threw it in on the deal.

"So now, here I was. Cast into the wilderness and the Lord was providing me food and shelter so I could continue in His plan."

Chalker continued on with his reading of the Bible until he came to Mark 1:16. "'Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.'"

Chalker paused, then re-read the passage to himself and his eyes lit up. "God be praised!"

Looking at Fischer in the crowd gathered before him in the Nemeth's back yard, Chalker smiled, "Fischer? That means 'fisher' or 'fisher of men' doesn't it?"

Fischer felt uncomfortable as others around him turned to look at him with wide eyes. He acknowledged with a simple nod.

"Brother Fischer, I don't believe in coincidence in matters of the Bible. That you would come to our revival and the very next Bible study should contain this passage . . . Well, the Spirit is strong in this assembly tonight."

A man in the back of the gathered crowd began to speak out. But not in any language that Fischer could recognize. It seemed to have an internal structure like a real language though. Then another began chanting out in a different-sounding tongue, and another, and another.

Fischer looked from one to the other, and then several others begin to laugh and cry out, "Amen!" All those around him seemed to be simultaneously raising their right hands above their heads and waving in unison. God help me to understand what they are saying. Help me to learn to do as they do, he thought. But the gift of tongues was not to be his that night.

****

It had been warm these last few days, even for July, but the kitchen was not hot. Susannah Becker took one last look into the oven to make sure the pork was done. Satisfied, she smiled and ladled the vegetables into Herr Enriquez's serving bowls. She wiped her hands, walked to the doorway and called out, "Soup's on! Wash up and come to the table."

Where these West Virginians came up with the idea of announcing meals by calling out something that was not being served escaped her, but it was one of the small mysteries which she had long ago decided she would never learn the answer to. Like these odd spices that Peter liked so much, she figured that by now she could get used to anything.

Susannah was almost knocked over by the Beyer's children, little Anton and Vittoria, as she entered the dining room carrying her load of steaming vegetables. "Excuse me, Fraulein Becker," Vittoria exclaimed in her "too mannered for four" voice. "Papa said the last one to the table gets no dessert."