I am defeated. I can’t escape the logic presented in this book. I always thought the Bible was a bunch of superstitions and fairy tales, but I guess I was the one that was wrong, not the Bible. I never knew that no other nation of antiquity besides Israel has ever completely ceased to exist and then been reborn, and that this had been foretold in the Bible. I didn’t know that modern archeology has found and verified many of the lost cities mentioned in the Bible. I didn’t know about the ancient Roman records that mentioned Jesus, and even mentioned the fact that He did miracles, and confirmed what much of the New Testament says about Him. I never knew that every single prophecy about His first coming was fulfilled to the letter. I didn’t realize that we accept Homer’s Odyssey as authentic even though the oldest copy is dated almost five hundred years after the original was written, whereas the oldest copies of some of the New Testament letter have been dated to with twenty-five years of the originals. I didn’t know. The question now is: what do I do now?
     Wait! There’s still one unanswered question! If the rapture happened three weeks ago, why was that preacher still here? I’ve got to go talk to him.
 
 

Day 23

     I found the preacher that gave the prayer at my graduation. Point blank I asked him if he thought that what had happened was the rapture. I fully expected him to laugh at me for being ridiculous or at least smile at my naiveté, but nothing prepared me for his reply. When he first saw me and I told him who I was, he smiled and shook my hand, and asked what he could do for me. As he heard the question, he seemed to age twenty years before my eyes. His shoulders drooped, his eyes took on a haunted look, and, in a voice so quiet I could barely hear him, he whispered, “Yes, I believe that it was the rapture.”
     I could barely breathe. My thoughts were racing, and there was such a roaring in my ears that I barely heard myself ask him why he was still here if that was the rapture. His reply burned into my mind. “Because I talked the talk, but I didn’t walk the walk.” He told me that all these years he had been a preacher, he had never truly believed in Jesus with his whole heart.
     I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. If this man, a preacher, got left behind, what hope was there for me? I had never even acted like I believed, and no one who ever knew me would have called me religious.
    I don’t know what to do.

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