Sound of the Trumpet (12 page)

Then suddenly her attention was caught by the speaker, the teacher of the class.

“People are asking,” he said, “why doesn’t God stop this war? Why does He allow such awful things to go on? And we turn to the Bible for the answer. Has God ever done this before to the world? Allowed terrible things to sweep over a calm and prosperous people? Allowed whole cities to be destroyed, beautiful memorials laid waste, treasures of art utterly disfigured, human lives by the thousand, yes, by the million, cast off at a stroke? Has He ever allowed that before? The answer is yes. And why has He done it? Turn in your mind back to the first chapter of Isaiah and see how God sent word through the prophet to the kings of Judah of the calamities that were to befall them as a consequence of their sinfulness, their forgetting of the Lord. ‘A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity,’ he calls them. He brings to their remembrance their great sin of forsaking the Lord, of provoking the Holy One of Israel.

“So the reason of those wars and that destruction that God sent to His people is not hard to find. And we, in this day, are we wondering why God is letting us see so much trouble? Why
we
are called a
Christian
nation, yet we have to give up our sugar and our coffee and most of our meat and butter, too, besides our gasoline and our tires. No more holiday rides. And some of us have to give up our sons and our own lives. Why should God let all this come upon us? Why should He be so cruel when we are a Christian nation? We are not sinful like Hitler or the Japanese! Oh, but we are forgetting all the time that sin, the main sin, the real root of all, is unbelief. ‘But we do believe in God,’ we cry out. ‘We join the church, we give to missions, we help the needy. Why, certainly we believe there is a God. We even believe in Jesus Christ and that He is God’s Son. Certainly we are believers. Why should all of this happen to us? We cannot believe that God would let such people as ourselves suffer this way. Some of our sons and brothers and sweethearts are even being killed.’ But you know, that is not belief, just accepting with your intellect all those doctrines. To really believe, we must individually accept what Christ did for us in taking all our sins upon Himself. He paid the penalty of death by shedding His own blood on the cross in our stead. A true believer accepts Christ as his own personal Savior.

“And it is not atheism, but unbelief, mere neglect of God, that is the great national sin. And it is to show the nations what their sin of unbelief has been that He has come to bring them through tribulations, that He has to let war come and kill their sons, destroy their homes, make desolate their goodly works, which their hands have wrought and of which they have been so proud. And God, through all this horror of war, is yearning over His people whom He has loved and who have forsaken Him and gone after strange gods, gods of silver and gold, the work of their own hands. Oh, those sins of the nations of the Old Testament, how they mock us with their similarity to our own times, our own world, and these sad days in which we are living now, with perils in the offing, and not so very far off either. God is calling His people today by the war which He is allowing.

“But some are thinking that wickedness is perhaps stronger than God, and the devil is getting away with it. No,
never
! Our God knows what He is doing. And these experiences we are having to live through are not things that Satan has sprung upon unprepared God. ‘Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world!’ Acts 15:18—nothing can take Him unaware. ‘Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.’ Psalms 119:89. So God, before the foundation of the world, knew that you and I and our world today were going to have to go through all this turmoil and awfulness. He knew about your life, and my life, and how the war was going to make us suffer. But He knew also what it was going to do to us, how it would purify some of us. The important thing to Him is whether you and I shall come through it to know Him, our Savior, and to be like Him—be ‘conformed to the image of His Son.’ His object in all of this is that you and I shall be like Christ and ready for an eternity with Him.”

There was more of this. The speaker went on to tell of other wars in the Old Testament times, and of God’s allowance for wars, that through them evil should be punished. He showed how God often used one wicked nation to punish another and then punished the nation He used, because they were puffed up, thinking they had won the war by their own strength.

Lisle sat there in the dark listening, filled with wonder, startled into thinking, brought suddenly face-to-face with a living God whom she had never realized before, amazed that the Bible had truths like these for bewildered souls, in every perplexity of their human lives. She had never thought of the Bible before as anything more than a beautiful, inspirational book, filled with traditional stories and vaguely related to life. She supposed it to be in some way connected with God and salvation for the time that comes after this life. She believed it, of course, because she had been brought up to believe it, but more as a family precaution against lawlessness and ill-breeding than as something that involved any obligation from her personally. And now suddenly it seemed that it did, though she couldn’t have told just why. This teaching seemed somehow to destroy all the former steady foundations of her life and made her feel that she had been walking in a dangerous way. She didn’t understand why or what she ought to do now.

Vaguely she felt that someone had taken the chair beside her, and there was suddenly a sympathy in her heart for all the unknown people in the dark room who were listening with her to this most startling message. Then suddenly the blue light flashed just a wink and she realized that the person beside her must be John Sargent. The knowledge was strangely pleasant but did not distract her thoughts from the teacher’s words. Suddenly, there in the darkness, a figure shone out, a figure with divine light in His face, looking toward them all, with nail-pierced hands and a face that bore glory and love. She saw for the first time in her life who Jesus Christ was, and what He wanted to be to her. Did the speaker just
tell
all that? Could mere human words paint a picture like that in the dark, that brought a light to her soul she had never known before, a light of whose existence she had never before dreamed? Afterward, thinking back, she could not remember words, only truths, great new truths that she had not known before. Did other people besides this little group among whom she found herself tonight, know these things? Did her mother and father know them, and live their placid lives without ever speaking of them, not even now and then?

Then all too quickly the siren blasted forth, proclaiming the blackout was over, and the lights in the room sprang up. Gradually she could see the people around her and could watch the face of the teacher. He brought his lesson to a close with the great proclamation that this Jesus who was now in heaven, the Jesus who had died for them all and had risen from the dead and been caught up to heaven, was coming back to claim His own! Was coming soon! He had said so Himself. And all these people evidently believed it. Lisle looked from one to another of those about her, looked up to John Sargent, who had stepped away to see that the lights went on when the sirens blew, but had returned to the chair beside her.

So she looked up and met that same smile, those same blue eyes tender with reverence now, as he smiled. And her look of wonder filled him with a great ecstasy.

Then the little company burst into soft singing, started by a sweet voice:

I have seen the face of Jesus,

Tell me not of aught beside,

I have heard the voice of Jesus

And my soul is satisfied;

For He shed His blood on Calvary,

And He saves me by His grace,

And I find my all in Jesus

My eternal resting place.

They sang it so tenderly with such clear voicing of the words, that they seemed to be wrought into her soul, and she tried to remember them, for when she would have to leave.

Then there followed a tender prayer, and when Lisle lifted her head and looked again at the young man beside her, it was as if his eyes told her that it was all true that she had been hearing. That he had tried it and he knew.

But he only said when they stood up and the group was beginning to go quietly away, “If you can wait five minutes, I’ll be glad to take you to wherever you want to go. You see, I’m janitor here tonight, and I’ll have to see that fire is right for the night and the door is locked.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Lisle, looking a little startled at the thought of going back into her world again. “I don’t know whether I would be able to find my way home or not. I got rather turned around in the blackout.”

“All right. I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” he said.

And then, unexpectedly, a plainly dressed girl with shy eyes came up to her and said, “Good evening,” and Lisle, taking a lesson from those she saw about her, put out her own hand and grasped the girl’s, which was held out awkwardly. Somehow she felt as if these people were almost kin to her in some strange, subtle way. How it would have amused Victor to know that she felt that way.

“You are a stranger here,” said the girl. “We hope you’ll come again.”

“I would like to,” said Lisle, giving her a warm smile. Then the teacher came by and stopped to speak to her cordially and others nodded good evening. How warm the world was growing since these war times had come. Or was it these people who studied the Bible that seemed so different from others? Lisle wondered if her mother had ever been to a Bible class like this one.

She could hear the furnace being shaken down beneath the thin flooring. That was John Sargent down there. He said he was janitor tonight. Did that mean only tonight, or was it his regular job? Could it be possible that being in this Bible study atmosphere had given his smile that rare quality?

The people went out with seeming reluctance. They seemed to love the place and each other. But they were soon gone, and then John Sargent turned out the lights, locked the door, and they started out.

“If you’ll just put me on a trolley or bus somewhere and tell me where to get off, I shall be all right,” said Lisle. “I hate to trouble you, and I’m really not afraid.”

He smiled pleasantly.

“Well, the trolleys and buses in this region are rather uncertain quantities. Perhaps we had better walk a little way till we find a taxi. I’ll be glad to go with you to your door if you don’t mind walking with a stranger.”

“Why,” said Lisle with a little ripple of laughter, “you’re not a stranger, are you? I think we were introduced by Mrs. Gately one morning on the street when she was protesting about getting her imported dress spoiled. Wasn’t she too funny? But—” and her voice grew sweetly grave, “we have been seeing the face of Jesus together tonight and that makes us friends, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” he answered solemnly, with a deep ring to his voice. “I’m glad you’re like that!”

“But I’m not,” said Lisle thoughtfully. “At least I never was before tonight. I think I’ve you to thank for the vision I got tonight. I didn’t know there was teaching like that in the Bible.”

“Well, I only discovered it myself a few weeks ago,” said the young man. “A fellow workman asked me to take his place here for a while as janitor because his wife was sick, and so I found the Lord.”

“Why!” said Lisle. “That’s like my case. I had no idea when I came over to this part of the city to take the place of a Red Cross teacher who wasn’t feeling well that I was going to get caught in the dark and walk right into a place like this. It’s wonderful. And I wonder if I haven’t found the Lord, too. I never heard anybody talk the way you do. I’m a member of a church, of course, and my people have always been church people, but I really never heard anyone say that you could know the Lord the way that teacher said. The way you have said. There can’t be many people who know these things, or surely I would have heard of them.”

“Well, I’ve found out that there are a good many, but of course there are a lot of the other kind. The ones who are so interested in the world and doing as everyone else is doing that even the war hasn’t waked them up yet.”

Her heart warmed to that.

“Are you doing something in the war?” she asked suddenly.

“Well, not much yet,” said John, with regret in his voice. “I came home in my last year of college to take care of a dear old grandmother, who has practically worn herself out to help me, and now her life is hanging in the balance. I can’t go while she needs me, but it may be a matter of only a few days, or at most months, the doctor says. Of course, she doesn’t know there is a war on and we are in it, though she sensed it was coming some time ago. If she knew, she would want me to go at once, no matter how much she would miss me. But she is paralyzed and cannot talk. She can only press my hand, but I can see by her eyes that it means a great deal to her to have me there sometimes. I couldn’t go while she is that way, and so I am waiting.”

“Of course,” said Lisle warmly, and she began to wonder if Victor would have done as much for his mother. Not if there were no glory in it, she was immediately sure. Oh, it was dreadful to have her onetime friend fall so far short of fineness and loyalty. And here she was comparing him unfavorably again with an utter stranger. And yet he wasn’t an utter stranger. He was a child of God, a saved person who had been seeing the same vision that she had seen tonight.

“I think you are doing so right,” she said slowly, almost thinking aloud. “I wish I could do something for your grandmother. Who is caring for her while you are working?”

“I have hired a practical nurse. She is a kindly elderly woman, very sincere. Grand is well cared for. Of course, her wants are few.”

“Could I send her a few flowers now and then?” asked Lisle shyly. “She wouldn’t need to know who sent them. She wouldn’t know me. She might enjoy a flower. Flowers are such sort of heavenly things. It might just reach her and please her. But if she thought about them at all, you could let her think you sent them. Or if she ever got well enough to ask you, you could say a friend of yours gave them to you for her.”