OFF TO FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA

I headed off in the Mountaineer at 7:30 yesterday morning, saying good-bye to Clyde and Clyde Lynn in the driveway. I am going to miss those guys, and everyone at the Pilkington’s. True, I am only leaving for a couple days, but this place and the people inhabiting it have become near and dear to me. This would be my first foray into the wilds since arriving here nearly two months ago. True, I drive into Johnstown every other day, but Johnstown doesn’t really qualify as “the wilds,” that is, unless you count the Dollar General store near the Pasquerilla Fountain. I’d be launching toward Fairfax, Virginia, and the home of Doug Witherspoon.

It rained nearly the whole way, which I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I liked it. It always feels good to be headed off on an adventure of the evangelistic variety, no matter what the weather. Inclement weather only adds to the Pauline nature of the excursion. It’s not exactly a day and a night in a swamp, but I do what I can.

Doug wanted me to come down for several reasons. First, there is no ecclesia here in the near vicinity with which he can fellowship, and he loves to study and talk about God. Second, he wanted me to meet his wife and two daughters and perhaps share some grace with them about the apostle of grace.

I had not been to a Bob Evans restaurant in months. Everybody knows that I’m a “down on the farm” kind of guy, so Bob Evans is one of my favorite places to eat. (You folks out west don’t have them—sorry about that. I guess it’s a good thing you don’t realize just what kind of bacon you’re missing, so I will not tell you how delicious it is.) I couldn’t resist, then, when a Bob Evans restaurant presented itself en route, somewhere in Maryland. This particular store was a combination Bob Evans Restaurant/Disco, so here I am at a table, as seen through the LSD lens of my little Samsung camera.

I got here a little past noon. Doug is a great guy. I’d never met him, but he has helped me publish the good news for a couple years now. I’m telling you, Doug could hardly wait to start in on the Word. He hung up my coat and then—bang—we were in the living room going over a list of questions he’d jotted down on his ever-present yellow notepad.

Doug is a physicist with an inquiring mind (sorry for the redundancy). He applies his same practical sense and desperate wanting-to-know disposition to the Scriptures as he does to science. Scripture and true science, we know, go together like bacon and LSD; at least, I hope you would know this.

People like Doug think so deeply and thoroughly that their questions invariably touch gray areas in the teaching lying ever in the periphery, but rarely addressed. While we were talking, Doug had me scratching furiously onto my now ever-present yellow notepad, giving me great ideas for future articles and talks. Listen to some of the questions, answers, and more questions we dug into:

1) Are there names in the Book of Life? When does Job resurrect to life? How about Adam? Abraham? None of these men were Israelites. Isn’t the former resurrection only for Israelites? Where is the Paradise Jesus mentioned to the thief on the cross? Is it on the millennial earth, or the New Earth?

2)  The title “Christ” occurs in 1 Corinthians 15:22 and 23, but in verse 28, Christ becomes “the Son.” Will we always be in the body of Christ, or does the appellation “Christ” disappear, for us and Him, when He is no longer anointed for the task completed here at the end of 1 Corinthians 15?

3) The universe is big. Jesus Christ is not omni-present, and therefore cannot be everywhere. Does He not delegate authority during the Millennium? Does He not delegate it to the twelve, who act in His name? That made me think: Do not the members of His body act in the same capacity among the celestials? Are not our words, His? Are we not Christs? In a figurative sense, then, when the beings of the upper realms address us, are they not, by extension, addressing Him?

4) This made me think, Will King David outrank the twelve in Jerusalem during the Millennium? Since God promised David the throne, will he rule perfectly in Christ’s stead in accord with the Melchizedek priesthood, allowing Jesus Christ to be physically elsewhere? Could the rule be so perfectly in accord with Christ that the statement could be made of David, as a figure of association: “Christ rules in Jerusalem”?

6) Can Satan affect our thoughts directly, or can he only crash circumstances, which in turn affect our thoughts? In other words, does God protect us from satanic incursions directly into our brains?

5) What exactly will we be doing among the celestials? Will we be emissaries there, much as the 144,000 are emissaries in Israel? The 12,000 from every tribe carry kingdom edicts abroad during the Millennium. Might not we do the same among the heavenly host?

6) What time, exactly, is dinner, Doug? I smell something delicious in the kitchen. Is that, possibly, the slow-cook chicken you mentioned earlier? Is that what the crock pot is all about? Shouldn’t we be getting the rice on the stove? Opening a bottle of wine, perhaps?

Doug’s oldest daughter, Laura, stopped over for dinner. She is a graduate student at George Mason University, and perfectly charming. It would be just us three for dinner, as Doug’s wife Maggie had taken the train—some kind of train—to Philadelphia on business for the day, and his younger daughter, Catherine, was away until ten at a school function.

I shall procure photos of Maggie and Catherine tomorrow. There is also a rumor that I shall be visiting Doug’s work, and also the Air & Space museum annex, which I am told contains the Enola Gay (the plane that unleashed atomic hell upon Hiroshima), and the space shuttle Discovery, which has been into the celestial realm about thirty times more than I have.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am on the outskirts of the nation’s capital, from which fares forth the seed-plot of a one-world government, which government may or may not contain a Dollar General near the Pasquerilla Fountain in Johnstown.  

© 2012 by Martin Zender