The Atonement (33 page)

“
Amen.”

“
My subject today is: He is
God. The message is coming from the book of Daniel, chapter four,
verses 29 through 37. When you find it say Amen.”

Allyson yawned and pushed some of her curly
ash blonde locks over her shoulder, as the parishioners searched
for the scripture. She was tired, but not enough to fall asleep as
she did last time. She decided to stay awake and listen to the
message to find out his angle so she could give the information to
her mother. Suddenly, Allyson felt a tap on her arm. When she
looked over she saw that an old woman was offering to share her
bible with her so she could read along. Allyson did not expect such
a gesture. The woman was smiling at her and seemed to be offering
out of kindness – not what she expected based on the stereotypes
she had of church folk who she had always thought were mean and
judgmental. She would have waved away the woman’s offer, but
instead she decided to accept it, glancing down at the page.

Allyson had heard of this king before in an
ancient history class she’d taken in high school. She knew
Nebuchadnezzar was a real king who lived during the pre-Christian
era, but didn’t know much else about him. She wondered how the good
reverend was going to get an hour-long sermon out of this
particular snippet of the Bible.

“
I know that God is real. I
know that He is and that he is God. There are a lot of people who
don’t know this fact. They think everything in this world is
according to man – dictated by human flesh. And I don’t understand
how anyone can believe in man. Man has let us down so many times.
Man relies on his research or his science to help him understand
this world and how it works, but how many times has science failed
us. Science told us that African-Americans weren’t people. We now
know that wasn’t true. They told us women’s wombs made them crazy,
but now we know that’s not true. Science told us that certain drugs
were okay, but then a year later, the same drugs had to be pulled
because they killed people. Every time you look around there’s
always something that man and his science thought was true, but in
the end, it turned out it wasn’t true. Some of the things they’ve
said were so crazy, you’d have to ask yourself why would people
even give that a second thought. Did you know they got doctors
today that want to say that pedophilia is not a sickness? Now you
know that’s wrong. You can’t even trust him for the weather half
the time – weather man say it’s going to be sunny and you go out
there without your umbrella and sure enough it rains all over you.
But you can’t tell man that he doesn’t have it going
on.”

“
You can’t tell some of
these men that they might be wrong. They want to argue with you and
tell you about their degrees and their experiences and the work
that they’ve done. They think it’s all about them. As we read the
scripture passage we see Nebuchadnezzar was just like these
men.”

“
Nebuchadnezzar believed
that everything that he had came from his own strength, wisdom and
power. He was full of himself and he refused to acknowledge God. He
probably thought he was a god in his own right. But then God put
His hand on Nebuchadnezzar, hallelujah! He took a man at the height
of his power and intellect and brought him down to the level of a
beast of the field. It reminds me of what it says in the book of
Psalms, ‘verily every man at his best state is altogether
vanity,’
¹
and when he says ‘Man that is in honour, and understandeth
not, is like the beasts that perish.
²
Just when you think you’re
something big, God will show you just how little you are.
Nebuchadnezzar was scraping and drooling, his hair sticking up like
birds feathers and there was nothing he could do about it. He had
lost his mind. There was no kind of psychological therapy in all
the world that could have helped him get his mind back because what
God does, man cannot undo. Nebuchadnezzar scraped and drooled until
the time that God had appointed, or until He was good and ready.
How many rich and powerful men today get a disease like cancer?
They go all around the world thinking they can use their money and
influence to get a cure, but it doesn’t work. It is not until man
has an encounter with God that he realizes who God is. After his
encounter, Nebuchadnezzar had no other choice but to admit that God
is real and that He lives.”

“
Here we go,” thought
Allyson, smugly. “More science bashing. Granted, there were
scientists that made mistakes, but scientists have also made some
really important discoveries that have benefited humankind.
Scientists discovered the world wasn’t flat. They also came up with
transplant surgeries, antibiotics, computers and other useful
inventions. There had to be some kind of error in order to get to
these successes. That’s what progress is all about. It has nothing
to do with a god.” Allyson was getting restless. She felt he was
more convincing at dinner than he was during this particular
sermon. However she would continue to listen to see where this
message was going.

“
Many people see man
imitating God and think that because of the few things God allows
him to do like Himself, that there is no God. God allowed Pharaoh’s
magicians to do enchantments like some of the miracles that He
worked through Moses. God allowed sorcerers like Simeon to bewitch
people. God allows men today to play around and call themselves
cloning, using in-vitro fertilization, making artificial hearts and
the like, but there’s always a limit to what man can do. There was
a point when Pharaoh’s magicians couldn’t do what God was working
through Moses to do. They couldn’t use their enchantments to bring
darkness across the sky and hailstones of fire. Simeon could do a
lot of things, but he couldn’t lay hands on anyone and have them
filled with the Holy Ghost as God worked through the apostles. Even
today, a man can call himself making an artificial heart – I read a
story about how the fake heart was still going, but the man was
dead, praise God! If God wants to call you home, there’s not a man
on this earth that can keep you alive. Man can manipulate these
cells and the like, but he can’t make something out of nothing! God
formed a world from nothing – he didn’t need any cells or anything
else! God spoke and it appeared –how many men can claim to do that!
He formed man from the earth and breathed the breath of life into
him! When have you ever heard a man do that! Jesus Christ called
Lazarus back to life after the latter had been dead in his grave
four days. Have you ever heard of a scientist that could do that?
Y’all don’t hear me! I’m telling you that man has a limit, but God
has no limit!”

“
Hallelujah! Glory to God!
Glory!” said the old woman next to Allyson. Her exclamation made
Allyson start a bit. It’s seemed the old woman was not the only one
who agreed with the Pastor. There were many people calling out
praises to God.

“
Some of you still want to
argue,” continued the pastor, “you want to say that man is on a
path to progress. The longer we live, the smarter we get, better
things are going to get. I say what kind of progress have we made?
Going from the telephone to the cell phone is not progress. Going
from the horse and carriage to the airplane to the space shuttle
isn’t progress. Over the years man has been able to change
how
we do things, but
not
what
we do.
For all our technological progress, no one has ever been able to
solve the problems that have plagued mankind since the fall of Adam
and Eve. For centuries, man has been searching for a way to bring
world peace, but has he ever done it? For centuries, man has been
searching for ways to end poverty and crime, but has he found it?
Man has made peace accord after peace accord, policy after policy,
law after law, ruling after ruling, but nothing he does can
legislate the human heart. Decade after decade man has been trying
to prevent natural disasters, disease and sickness – has he ever
been able to do it? When it comes to these things we are in the
same state that we were in thousands of years ago, but we just have
fancier gadgets. We keep trying to solve these problems but there
is only One that will be able to solve them. There is One that will
bring peace, there is only One that will end poverty and sickness.
My Bible tells me that the only One who will bring perfection to
the earth is Jesus Christ!”

Allyson couldn’t argue with this particular
portion of the Pastor’s message. From the way the world looked to
her, man did seem to be like a dog chasing his tail. So many
scientists, politicians, businessmen, celebrities, and philosophers
in the world all claiming to have the answer to the world’s
problems and in the end their work would be proven to be
miscalculations, error and sometimes outright lies meant to
deceive. But then whom could you believe? Who could you trust?
Should she even believe this Bynum character?

“
So you see I can’t put my
trust in man,” continued the Pastor as he reached the conclusion of
his message, “I know some of y’all say you trust me, but I can’t
even say I trust myself from time to time. I have to put my trust
in the Lord. As it is written: ‘God is not a man that he should
lie, nor the son of man that he should
repent’.
³
I know that I can trust God because his Word is always true.
The apostle Paul wrote, ‘Let God be true and every man be a
liar’.
⁴
When He speaks it comes to pass. I know that I can trust God
because He is Wisdom. He knows what I don’t and his knowledge is
perfect. I know that I can trust God because He is all powerful and
there is nothing that He can’t do. Finally, I know that I can trust
God because He is love. He loved us so much that He sent his only
begotten Son, Jesus, to die for our sins. That’s right, like the
Word says ‘For when we were yet without strength, in due time
Christ died for the ungodly’
⁵
and ‘But God commendeth his
love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us’.
⁶
We
didn’t deserve the grace that He gave us, but He did it anyhow. How
many of you know many people who would do something good for you
after you had mocked and mistreated them? Christ did that for us
despite the fact that mankind had him crucified on the cross. He
did it so that we could have eternal life. Folks, it can’t get no
better than that!”

“
God can give you
immortality – the real deal, not the sorry substitutions that man
comes up with. You can’t live forever through your children because
at some point they’re going to have to die, too. You can’t live
forever by having your name on a building because eventually that
building will be torn down. You can’t live forever by fame because
in less than a generation, you’ll be forgotten and your place and
name removed from the history and record books, deemed irrelevant
or discredited. The only way to receive eternal life is through
Christ and Christ alone. Put your trust in Him. Don’t believe me –
believe God. Go get your Word, open it and read it. Just trust Him
and see. He will never leave you and He will never fail
you.”

The Pastor’s words were tempting. Who
wouldn’t want to believe in someone who had the answers to all of
life’s problems? Who wouldn’t want to be able to depend upon
someone for all of their needs? But how would she know that this
God was the answer? There was a part of Allyson that wanted to
believe, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up. There were lots
of things that seemed real to her in the past, but turned out to be
fake. She didn’t want to be disappointed again. The Pastor seemed
genuine in his convictions, lots of well meaning people were, but
that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be wrong.

Soon after he began the altar call for the
communion. Row by row the churchgoers lined up at the altar to
partake of the bread and the wine. As the people went up, the choir
sang songs about the blood of Jesus. Allyson had no intention of
participating. She just waited for this portion of the service to
conclude. She watched as her brother went up to the altar to kneel
before the serving tray with several others before saying a brief
prayer and taking a chunk of bread and drinking the wine from one
of the little cups. He did seem content with his life now in a way
that he hadn’t before. “What if his faith was genuine?” she asked
herself. Allyson knew her brother had never been the church type
and yet here he was, a part of this holiness church of all places.
Could it have been this place that changed him? Did he really
believe what that Bynum guy said? But then again, Tim could be a
very convincing actor, since she herself had been fooled for so
long.

Once the communion was over, Pastor Bynum
offered the benediction and dismissed the parishioners. Allyson was
about to try to find Mrs. Sharpe, when she saw her approaching the
pew where she sat. No matter how many times she’d seen Allen’s mom,
she was astounded by how well she looked for her age. Sure her own
mother looked young, but Allyson knew that was because of her
yearly regimen of botox, spa treatments, yoga, fade and wrinkle
creams, fad diets, and new age health fads. Allen’s mom on the
other hand, had none of that, and yet she had a flawless and
wrinkle free golden-brown complexion, and though she was a little
plump, her physique was noticeably toned and firm. The only things
that signified her age were her outdated 80’s teased out hairdo and
her outfit: a simple navy seasonless wool suit that had a
collarless, peplum jacket, a simple pill-box hat, and black pumps.
The warmth of her smile was almost enough to melt Allyson’s cold
cynicism.