Empire's End (26 page)

“So we were all lying,” she said, “all of us who claimed to have seen Him.”

“Let him continue,” Barnabas said.

“That's what I believed, Mary. That you were deluded, a cult of conspirators.” Then I told her of petitioning the high priest for authority and men to thwart the threat of the burgeoning sect expanding as far as Damascus.

When I got to the brilliant light that threw me from my horse and blinded me, it was clear Mary had moved from enduring my tale to truly listening. She seemed to be with me as I sat in deep remorse at Judas' home on the street called Straight, not eating or drinking for three days. The story of Ananias experiencing the same vision I had seemed to soften her.

She turned to her cousin. “This is the Ananias you know?”

Barnabas nodded.

I told her of the distressed horse, the gatherings of the people of The Way, of visiting the synagogues and amazing the scholars because I knew the Scriptures but argued for Jesus being the Messiah. She seemed to hang on my words when I told of the couple who helped Ananias lower me over the city wall, then the miraculous ride to Arabia on Theo.

I suggested I didn't have to tell all the details of my time in Yanbu, but when I described the old man and the young boy and she saw where the story was going, she said, “Yes! You do!”

So I left nothing out.

I told her even more than I had told Barnabas on the long trip to Jerusalem. Because Mary knew Taryn, I included our first embrace, our first kiss, and the anguish over keeping from her the truth about my involvement with the death of her husband.

In a normal circumstance I might have eliminated many of the horrific details of the slaughter of the innocents. But Mary was a woman who had suffered deep personal pain, who had lost her own husband when her son was young. She had been oppressed and persecuted because she had cast her lot with a Man who claimed to be the Son of God and then proved it by rising from the dead. And she had seen loved ones martyred for their faith.

Mary wept with me as I told of burying Alastor, and finally she dissolved into sobs when I showed her the note from Taryn I had found on the dead man's body. Barnabas and John Mark came around the table to comfort her, and I saved the rest of my story until she had control of her emotions again.

Mary was moved and as confused as I at God's wiping away all traces of Yanbu before I met the caravan. When my account brought her up to the previous night and James' prayer, her transformation was complete.
“I love James,” she said. “Everybody does. Peter so depends on him. And don't worry. If James is with you, Peter will be too.”

“And you?”

She clouded over again and gently ran her fingers over the parchment before her. “If Taryn is for you, I am too. And you must find them.”

I shook my head. “I don't even know where to start.”

“That won't stop you.”

Barnabas rose. “The Lord has told Paul he will be here fifteen days.”

“Oh, no,” Mary said. “Is that all?”

I couldn't suppress a smile. “Earlier you didn't want me here at all.”

“I didn't know the Lord and one of my best friends had forgiven you. You are welcome in my home anytime you are in Jerusalem.”

At ten o'clock that evening, Barnabas and I took the cart about twenty minutes north of the apostles' main headquarters and tied the horse on a street in a quiet neighborhood that appeared to have shut down for the night. We walked two and a half blocks to a dark synagogue, and Barnabas led me around back where he knocked lightly on the door.

When it swung open, a low husky voice said, “Watch your step. I don't want to light the lamp till we're downstairs.”

I didn't know how these people lived that way, skulking around in the dark most of the time. I gingerly felt my way down each step, wondering which was the last. When we finally reached the bottom, the air was cool and damp and our host lit a small lamp. There before me, in the flesh, was the man I had seen only from a distance a little more than three years before. The short, stocky fisherman was still muscled from when he'd spent all his daylight hours slinging nets into the Galilee.

He shook my hand without hesitation, apparently James' approval being all he needed. I was surprised by the edge of humor in his tone, a
hint of sarcasm a constant just below the surface. He was uneducated but certainly not limited in intellect. “Your reputation is much bigger than you are, isn't it?” he said.

That made me laugh. “I suppose it is. Had me bigger and scarier in your mind, did you?”

“You scared me all right. You terrified a lot of people with the authority of the Sanhedrin behind you. But in person there's something almost charming about you.”

“I've never faced that accusation before,” I said, and he laughed.

“Well, I've heard your inspiring legend secondhand more than once, but that doesn't mean I don't want it straight from you. I've got all night, so let's have it.”

“You really want to take the time?”

“We're going to be spending a lot of time together, Paul. You came here to preach, did you not?”

“I did.”

“Then we're going to a place where you will do just that. But I want to know you first. Start from the beginning.”

I looked at Barnabas, who merely raised a brow as if I should get used to doing as instructed. So I started my account in Tarsus and took more than an hour to tell it all. Peter proved the best audience I'd ever had, perhaps because I didn't have to convince him I was telling the truth. His face and eyes came alive as he responded to every twist and turn, every surprise and disappointment.

The man flinched and feinted, grunted and groaned, laughed and gasped, “Oh, no!” and “Really?” and “I can hardly believe it!” besides praising God. He even loved the story of my having won over Barnabas' Aunt Mary that morning.

“Isn't she the most amazing woman?” he said. “You never have to
wonder what she's thinking! And that boy! He's going to make a great missionary one day.”

“Or evangelist,” Barnabas said.

“Now, Paul,” Peter said, “you say the Lord has indicated you will be with us only a short time. He has not indicated why, but that's all right. Besides James and me and Barnabas here, my brothers are adamant about keeping their distance from you for now. Let's not worry about that either. There is a lot of work for you to do. Two weeks is plenty of time for you to prove yourself so that if the Lord should ever return you to us, the brethren will have forgotten their opposition.”

“I'm ready to be put to work.”

“I have in mind seeing how you would do, given your background and your fervor, holding forth for the kingdom among the Hellenists.”

I glanced at Barnabas and stared at Peter in the low light. The Freedmen? The ones who conspired to have Stephen executed? “Do you know what you're asking?”

“I know exactly what I'm asking.”

“You think the other apostles suspect me now, what would they think if I went straight to the same faction who delivered your first martyr to the Sanhedrin, complete with false witnesses?”

“They'll believe you're everything they fear you are—someone trying to infiltrate us.”

“And what will that serve?”

“It will prove them right or wrong.”

I sat back and studied the man. Had he misled me all this time? Had Peter encouraged me to a place where I could not but fail? “How long do you expect I would last, preaching Christ and Him crucified to the Hellenists?”

“That depends on you, Paul.”

“I don't understand.”

“Explain to me your calling.”

“I have.”

“Make me understand it in the simplest terms. What propels you? What sends you out? You preached in Damascus a few times three years ago, then once more a week or so ago. Now you come here, ready to fulfill what you believe is God's call on your life. You had better be able to articulate it if you are to accomplish it in a city where you are widely known as an enemy of the argument you now so enthusiastically espouse.”

I found myself unable to hold his gaze, so I studied my hands and considered my words. “I am a prisoner of Christ Jesus,” I said. “The dispensation of the grace of God was given to me by revelation. He made known to me the mystery of Christ, which in previous ages was not made known to the sons of men as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His apostles and prophets.

“I became a minister of His promise in Christ through the gospel, according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by His power. I consider myself less than the least of all the saints, yet this grace was given that I should preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to make all see the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ. Now the manifold wisdom of God may be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him.”

“Boldness and access with confidence!” Peter thundered, slamming a fist on the table, making me jump. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close. “You are not going forth in the power of your own flesh,
but in the power of the resurrected Christ! You have nothing to fear but death, which we know is only life eternal!”

“Oh, I long to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.”

“That's all He asks. Let us do His bidding until He sends us elsewhere. You have long since surrendered your standing before the council, the Sanhedrin, the high priest. You never had any official standing in the government except, as you say, as a citizen. Unless you're mistaken and the horse you called Theo never made it back here, you have a closed account with your former superiors. So while they might be curious about you and take notice that you're back in the city, they have no legal interest in you. You are free to go about your business, and your business is the Lord's work. If you are making yourself accountable to me—”

“And I am.”

“Then I have work for you. Tomorrow you venture into the Hellenist Quarter. Preach on the street corner, preach in the market, the square, the amphitheater, the bathhouses. They will argue, they will rage, they will accuse, they will try to shout you down, but stand your ground and preach till they chase you away.”

“Am I to go alone?”

“What if you were?”

“I'm willing.”

I was offended when Peter laughed. “The Master Himself never sent us out alone,” he said. “We always went at least in pairs. Tomorrow the three of us will go. Then it will be you and the Son of Encouragement here. He can make you feel as if your worst address was a gift from heaven.”

“Which it had better be,” Barnabas said.

JERUSALEM

R
EFRESHED EXHAUSTION
. I
KNEW
no other way to express it.

Peter's strategy of speaking unbidden in public areas among the Hellenists proved prescient, as their leaders quickly invited Barnabas and me to formal debates, where I became the chief speaker.

My days and nights were full, and at first I felt God must have put in abeyance the persecution I was to endure as I fulfilled my calling to preach the gospel. Since the horror at Yanbu, I had suffered no personal persecution beyond the terrible loss of the family I believed was about to become mine. I could not deny that after my evening prayers I often wept bitterly, unable to do anything about my beloved Taryn and her son, Corydon. This went far beyond missing her touch, her kiss, her love, the sound of her voice, and the future I had believed was ours. I was nearly mad not knowing where she was.

I comforted myself with only the hope that General Balbus, motivated by his lust for her, would not mistreat her or the boy, that he would provide for them and not cast them aside. But what basis for marriage—God forbid—was his mere attraction to Taryn's beauty? And what was to become of her if she could not convince the general she cared for him at all? Would he soon tire of her and move on to his next conquest? Or was she already just one of many? Did he already have a wife and family, and were Taryn and Corydon mere trifles who would prove inconvenient and not worth hiding? Then what?

I prayed God would spare them, see they were, at worst, abandoned somewhere I could find and rescue them. I could look past any indignity to reclaim her.

It was the not knowing that wore on me.

Barnabas' Aunt Mary proved a balm to my spirit, for she had been such a good friend to Taryn that she enjoyed talking about her. And she was older than I so I respected her as a wise counselor.

Every morning for the rest of days I stayed in her home, Mary asked insightful questions of Barnabas and me about our evenings of ministry, and she urged John Mark to ask questions too. She would not allow him to come along, as she agreed with us these were dangerous meetings and that the Greek-speaking Jews may pretend to enjoy the debates with me, but they could not be trusted. “While they smile and compliment you on your knowledge of their language and culture, behind your back they are plotting your demise.”

“She's right,” Barnabas said. “You have to know they recognize you.”

“So much for your nickname,” I said.

“Oh, there are many things for which I can easily compliment and encourage you, Paul. And Peter agrees with me. You preach with passion and power, and you stay focused on your message. But he also agrees your time
here is providentially limited. You have no friends among these people.”

Every day I stopped in the tiny temple where I had first met Peter, making sure it was between services so I could be alone. There, before venturing back into the Hellenist district, I sought the Lord—sometimes with Barnabas, but often just by myself. God always met me. Whether He spoke or not, I sensed His presence and felt settled in my spirit.