What was once a few small doubts was now a raging cauldron of confusion and despair. He loathed the thought of betraying his fears to anyone, but they were rising by the second. He feared not only for his own life but for what was coming. What kind of world had he just inherited? The darkness was so dark, so thick, he could barely see beyond the next few minutes, much less the next few days, or weeks. Evil had regathered while the world had slept. Now it was on the move, and James worried it would overtake them all. He didn’t simply feel scared. He felt naked and desperately alone in the cosmos.
Where was he supposed to turn? It wasn’t military or political advice he craved. What, then? He had never been a religious man. Not like MacPherson. Certainly not like Jon and Erin Bennett. It seemed hypocritical to seek God now. Yet something in him was grasping for spiritual answers. It was a craving so deep it ached, and yet he feared it was, as if by definition, insatiable.
Restless, he got up, steadied himself, and began looking around the general’s quarters. He glanced at the collection of family photos on the man’s nightstand and thought of his own wife and daughters, holed up at STRATCOM near Omaha, surrounded by MPs, unable to get to him, scared out of their minds. He wanted to call them. He wanted to talk to his wife about what they were planning. But he couldn’t. Not now. She didn’t have the clearance.
He moved over to the bookshelf and scanned the many tomes in the general’s impressive collection. One volume caught his eye. He reached up and pulled out a dog-eared copy of a book by two Time magazine correspondents: The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House. He sat down, turned on the desk lamp, put on his reading glasses, and flipped through the well-marked pages. Many sections were underlined and highlighted. There were questions and comments scribbled in the margins. Then he flipped to the back and found several previously blank pages that had been filled with the general’s handwritten bullet points and notes.
BG preached to 210 million people face-to-face/85 countries/417 crusades/friends with 11 presidents/“They asked about how the world would end, which was not an abstract conversation.” (p. vii, xi)
Churchilclass="underline" “Do you have any real hope?” (p. 48)
Eisenhower: “How can a person be sure when he dies he’s going to heaven?” (p. 52)
JFK: “Do you believe in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?” (p. 109)
LBJ: “I’m not really sure in my heart that I’m going to heaven.” (p. 123)
Graham on Nixon: “I almost felt as if a demon had come into the White House.” (p. 219)
Reagan: “I have decided that whatever time I may have is left for Him.” (p. 268)
Bush 43 @ Kennebunkport: “How do you become a real Christian?” (p. 329)
James studied the list. He had all the same questions, and none of the answers. He wished there were time to read, time to think, time to search for answers. But there wasn’t, and now someone was knocking on the door.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“General Stephens.”
“Come in.”
Stephens entered, saluted, and saw the book in the president’s hands. “That was a good one,” he said softly. “One of my favorites.”
James said nothing, just looked down at the questions.
“Kinda wish we could give the ole reverend a call right now, don’t you?” the general said with a gentle, easy manner that surprised James.
“Kinda, yeah,” he replied.
“Ever meet him?” Stephens asked.
“Graham?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No, never did. You?”
“No,” Stephens answered, “and I regret that. But I watched him on television a lot, especially when I was based in Germany. And I must tell you, Mr. President, he changed my life.”
“How so?” James asked.
“I’d been raised in a Christian home, sir,” the general said. “Went to church every Sunday. Prayed before supper. You know, the whole nine yards.”
“And?”
“And I got to a low point, sir. I had lost some of my men in Kosovo. My wife had left me. My kids hated me. Everything was going wrong. And the thing was, I thought I was a Christian. And I began to get angry with God. I’d yell at him at night, alone in my room. This went on for months. I was slipping farther and farther into depression. Finally one night, after watching a Billy Graham crusade on television, I yelled at God and said: ‘I don’t get you. The Bible promises love, joy, peace, happiness. Well, I don’t have any of it. So either you’re a liar, or I just don’t get it.’”
“So what happened?” James asked, genuinely curious.
“Well, that’s the thing, sir,” Stephens said, reliving the moment as if it had just happened. “It had never happened before. And it’s never happened since.”
“What?”
“I don’t think it was an audible voice, but it may as well have been. I knew it was the Lord, and He asked me, ‘Michael, do you ever read the Bible for yourself?’ Now, sir, I had read the Bible from time to time, in church, you know. But the real answer was no, I rarely read it for myself. So I said, ‘No.’ And then He asked me, ‘Do you ever really talk to me in prayer?’ Again, I said grace before meals, that kind of thing. But the truth was I’d never really understood prayer, much less done it. So I said, ‘No, Lord, I don’t.’ And He said, ‘Michael, why should you expect me to bless you when you don’t even really know me?’ After that, the transmission seemed to end.”
61
James would have expected himself to be skeptical.
Even cynical. But he wasn’t. He was trying to process everything the general was saying. He had never heard someone share his story so clearly or so personally, and it didn’t anger him as he would have thought it would.
“Go on,” he said after a long pause.
“Well, Mr. President, at that moment, I got down on my knees,” Stephens continued. “On the one hand, I was so ashamed of myself. I’d been so close to the truth but had never really gotten it. And yet at the same time, I was so grateful that the Lord had spoken to me. He’d told me what I was doing wrong. He was calling me to follow Him. To know Him. To fall in love with Him and stop trying to live my life on my own terms, which obviously wasn’t going so well. So I prayed a simple prayer. I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal Savior and Lord. And I’ve never been the same since.”
“How so?” the president asked.
“Well, sir, I got an immediate assurance that I was going to be in heaven forever when I died, which gave me a new confidence to live life without fear. And I got a hope for the future that I’d never really had before in my entire life. I can’t say my life has been perfect since, sir. Lord knows, I haven’t been perfect. But I know He’s with me. I know He’s leading me. I know He loves me, and that’s made all the difference.”
The room was quiet, save for the ticking of a small clock on the general’s desk. No phones were ringing. No aides were bursting in. No Secret Service agents were looking over their shoulders, and James sensed that this, in its own way, was a miracle. God was calling him. Perhaps He always had been, and James had always resisted. But now he knew he was out of excuses.
“Mr. President,” the general asked after a pause, “have you ever accepted Christ as your Savior?”
At any other time, under any other circumstances, James knew he would have been offended by someone asking him that question. But not now. He felt strangely warmed inside, as if God Himself had sent this man at this time to tell him what he needed to do.