“So this is your Dream of Dreams, Flanders,” said his girlfriend in her black one-piece swimsuit.
“Yes, Tracy,” he said in his swimsuit. “I dream that my whole family gets saved from their sins.”
“That they get born again as you and I did long ago,” she said.
“That they go to Heaven instead of to Hell,” he said.
“Yeah. Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been praying for your lost family lots, Flanders,” she said.
“Thanks, Tracy,” he said. “They need it, and I need it.”
His full name was Flanders Arckery Nickels. Her full name was Tracy Barrow Greys. They were on another date here at the seashore, with the yellow sun reflecting off of the sea. She was his “black one-piece swimsuit goddess” again here at the beach. And she and he were walking along the edge of the waves, her to his left toward the waters, and he to her right toward the sand. They had their arms around each other’s waists. And he delighted to feel the curve of her side in his hand with that feel-good maillot fabric covering her side there and throughout. She leaned her so-beautiful brunette
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head against his head. She hugged him harder in her right arm. He hugged her harder in his left arm.
Even Miss Tracy Grey’s glasses were beautiful. Her countenance was enhanced in comeliness by her glasses. And her eyes behind those glasses were the prettiest eyes he ever saw among one-piece swimsuit women. And Tracy was built just right everywhere. Were this Christian man Flanders not a Christian living for Christ, this girl Tracy in this apparel the black one-piece swimsuit might well have been his “sex kitten.” So stirring and seductive this black maillot woman would have been were she herself not a Christian living for Christ also. What clothes showed off a gal’s form so sensually and so
sensuously than did a black one-piece swimsuit? Was it not more provocative truly than most utter bareness upon a woman? He looked upon her shoulder straps, upon her belly, upon the rest of her covered self, and he asked, “So what is it made of, Tracy?”
“My women’s maillot, Flanders?” she asked. He nodded. And she said, “Spandex.”
“Spandex,” he said sultrily.
“Or more completely, Flanders, ‘Antron Nylon/Lycra Spandex,’” she said.
“That sounds as sexy as it looks, Tracy Barrow Greys,” he said.
“It feels even better yet,” she said.
“Lucky young woman!” he said.
“Lucky young man to have such a young woman who likes him,” Tracy Greys said to him.
“I want to sweep my girlfriend off of her feet,” he said in good flirt.
“I want you to sweep me off of my feet,” she said in fun frolic.
And he grabbed her in both arms, and he lifted her up above the sea, one arm under her knees and the other arm around her upper back. “Wooo, Flanders, What you do with women!” said Tracy.
“You are my only woman, Tracy,” he said.
“Carry me a mile, boyfriend,” she said.
“I shall carry you two miles, O Tracy,” he said.
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“The honor is mine, O Flanders,” she said.
“And the privilege is all mine, girl,” he said.
And the boyfriend began to carry the girlfriend along the edges of the great sea. “Where are you taking me in your arms today, Flanders?” she asked.
“To our favorite place, Tracy,” he said.
“You mean our place for worship?” she asked.
“There indeed,” he said.
“Where our Bibles are and where our hymnbooks are,” she said.
“We love to worship together—you and I, pretty Tracy,” he said.
“Yeah! So sweet fellowship together—you and I and the Good Lord,” she said.
“Our funnest times together are in fellowship. Aren’t they, Tracy?” he asked.
“Worship and fellowship are even more fun for us than frolic and flirt, Flanders,” she said.
“Yes!” he said.
“When we get there, we can maybe pray for your Dream of Dreams in prayer meeting—you and I alone together, Flanders,” she said. “And we can talk all about it.”
“We can talk all about it here on our walk,” he said.
“You are the one walking right now. I am being carried right now,” she said. Then she began that which he suggested: “I know a Bible verse that could give you hopes for your family, Flanders.”
“Oh, how I would love to hear it now,” said Flanders Nickels.
“It’s Jeremiah 32:17, and it goes like this:” she said, “’Ah Lord God! Behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee:’”
“That’s a good cause for such hope, O Tracy,” he said. “Nothing is too hard for God to do.
He saved you and me; He can save all of my family, too.”
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“That’s right. He can, Flanders,” said Tracy Greys. “And once again the Bible says in Jeremiah 32:26-27: ‘Then came the word of the Lord unto Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?’”
“He can. He really can, Tracy,” he said.
“Only care. Only believe,” she said.
“Dad, Mom, Big Sister, Brother-In-Law, Big Brother, Little Brother, and Niece,” summed up Flanders Nickels his lost family.
“Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, Dad, Brother, and Sister,” summed up Tracy her family for whom she had once prayed for salvation.
“Yeah, Tracy. Your family got saved long ago,” said Flanders. “Only believe. Only care.”
“Believe that they can still get saved. Care enough for them to keep praying,” said Miss Greys.
Put another way, Flanders said, “Believe that no soul is too hard for God to save; and no heart too hard for Him to soften toward Him. Care for them and show them God’s love in your time with them and share the Gospel with them as long as the door is open.”
“It happened real quickly with my family, Flanders,” said the black maillot woman. “I was not saved long before I led them all to their own salvation, thanks to God.”
“Those sand castles that you told me about, Tracy,” he said.
“Ah, here we are, boyfriend—our worship site on the Pacific Ocean seashore,” she said.
There were their hymnbooks and their King James Bibles and their prayer meeting notes all neatly stored in two shoe boxes—one that once contained her women’s pumps; and one that once contained his men’s penny loafers. Flanders set Tracy back upon her feet from his long carrying. And man and woman of God quickly took off the covers of their respective shoe boxes and grabbed their Good Books and hugged them against themselves in both arms. And Tracy said, “You were talking about those sand castles of that day my family found Christ, Flanders,”
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“Do tell me about that day again now, Tracy,” he said.
“We all were on a seashore and a sea very different from this one here where we are,” she began. “We were on the Atlantic Ocean. And it was early in the day around sunrise when it all started to happen. And all seven of us were building sandcastles. Grandpa and Grandma were making the biggest of our three sandcastles; Mom and Dad were making the medium-sized of our three sandcastles; and Brother and Sister were making the littlest of the sand castles. And I…what was I building in the sand with them? I was making a great wall around their three castles in the sand. As you heard me tell it ever since, Flanders—the Greys family was building a ‘sand city.’”
“A city in the sand, Tracy,” said Flanders.
“And by the time that noon came around, our city of sandcastles with my wall around the city was all completed. We even had a newspaper photographer come up and take a picture of it to put on the front page, Flanders.” She sighed and said, “Then I took a stick, and I drew a two-word sentence in the sand right in front of my city wall, it reading, ‘Jesus saves.’ I was already saved by Jesus myself for not long. I knew the glory of those two words. And I knew their power, and their wisdom, and their love. At once they all asked me, ‘Who is Jesus?’ and ‘What can He save me from?’
I then said, ‘He is Lord, and He wants to save you from Hell.’
Then all at once they all said, ‘I want Him as my Saviour, too, Tracy!’
Right away I did share with them the Gospel, reciting I Corinthians 15:3-4 to them, wherein it is written, ‘For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:’
And my whole family, before I knew what was happening, professed the saving Gospel, all seven of them saying, ‘Jesus died for our sins and rose again the third day.’
‘Jesus saves!’ I now said what I had written.
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And all seven of them, penitent and repentant, sincere and humble, and trusting as a little child, and yet wise as grown-ups, all fell upon their knees in the sand, raised their arms toward Heaven, and would not look Up, and did beat upon their chests; and they all prayed a seven-word sinners’ prayer:
‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ Just like that my seven loved ones all became born-again Christians like myself! That day was the happiest day of my walk with Christ, Flanders. I shall never forget that moment—both for the rest of this life and for the rest of my life in Glory to come! Now Grandpa and Grandma and Mom and Dad and Brother and Sister are going to end up in Heaven now.”
“It can happen also for my own Dad…and my own Mom,” said Flanders Nickels. “And it can happen for my Big Sister and her husband. And it can happen for Big Brother and Little Brother. And it can happen to my niece, Big Brother’s daughter. Salvation is not a step-by-step procedure. Nay, rather, it is an instantaneous moment when a lost and searching and sincere soul puts all of his trust for his eternal destiny upon the work and person of Jesus Christ. Your family got saved by accepting the free gift of eternal life. That will happen to my family, too, Tracy. It has to. It must. It will happen.
But not yet. God, be merciful to all them, sinners.”
He paused to sigh, then went on to share a most fervid soliloquy of three groups of sayings that he found to best explain the frustrations of a saved person who tries to warn his unsaved family of their danger of the lake of fire that awaits them yet in their sins. First he went on to tell his Christian girlfriend: “They are lost. God has me to tell them that they are lost. And I warn them about Hell. But they do not believe me. And they are still lost.” Second he told her, “Put another way, Tracy: ‘They need God in their lives. God has me to tell them that. But they do not believe. They do not want God in their lives. Then they end up in a Godless eternity.’” Third he went on to share with his girlfriend-in-the-Lord, “This one is the worst one, and it goes like this: ‘I know that they are all going to Hell. They do not know that they are going to Hell. I tell them this. But they refuse to believe. And they still do not know. It doesn’t do me any good to know this about them. It is they who so badly need
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to know this about themselves. But they refuse to believe. And they all end up down there.’ I tell you, Tracy, sometimes I want to grab them by their shoulders and shake them and ask them point-blank, ‘Don’t you know? Don’t you know?’ If they only had some sense in their heads. I want to ask them in a most non-humble manner, ‘Can’t you tell? Can’t you tell?’ I pray that God the Holy Spirit yell into their ears, ‘Look at your life. What’s wrong with this picture? Who’s missing? It is the Saviour!’”
“I had only to wait some months after I got saved before I got my family to also get saved, Flanders,” said the black one-piece swimsuit gal. “But you’ve been saved ‘forever,’ and you’ve been waiting years for your family to come around and get saved. And still they reject Christ.”
“It is written, ‘For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.’ I Corinthians 1:18,” recited Flanders. “Again it is written, ‘But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.’ I Corinthians 2:14.”
“Also is it written in II Corinthians 4:4, Flanders, ‘In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them,” said his girlfriend-in-Christ. “And again in II Corinthians 11:3, ‘But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.’”
“The Devil does his evil work most well,” said Flanders.
“Your family is making it easy for him, Flanders,” said Tracy Greys.
Then there arose in the air a distant booming. Flanders looked off into the horizon from where it was coming. Tracy grabbed his right hand in both of her hands. Flanders said, “I think that I hear thunder, but I see no lightning.” The sky was blue and clear. He saw a storm of blowing sand off in that horizon. Tracy’s grip on his hand tightened.
In fear, the black one-piece swimsuit woman said, “Let us flee him into the sea, O Flanders!”
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“It is a ‘him?’” asked Flanders, mystified, and she pulled on his right arm with both of her arms, and she forced him into the ocean with her. Apparently whoever this was could not endure to be in the sea.
Behold, a mighty and a fell centaur—real and living and formidable—running now right toward them! He came like a storm, and he stopped before them, making sure his hooves were not in peril of an incoming wave where he did stand. Truly were not centaurs only creatures in science fantasy novels? Why was this one here before them? He must surely be a demon. He them stomped his right front hoof upon the beach, and the ground quaked beneath them. Then he spoke to them as a demon:
“My father sealeth up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. My father hast been in Eden the garden of God. Every precious stone was his covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold. The workmanship of his tabrets and of his pipes was prepared in him in the day that he wast created. He was the anointed cherub that covereth, and God hath set him so. He wast upon the holy mountain of God. He hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. He wast perfect in his ways from the day he wast created,…” Here he ceased his declaration.
“…till iniquity was found in him,” added Tracy in Scripture wisdom, finishing his declaration.
Flanders knew this to be God’s rebuke of Satan in Ezekiel 28, but he was speechless before this living centaur who had come upon them like this here at the seashore. He and Tracy were safe in Christ here in this ocean He had created. This centaur dared not to come in after them. This centaur remained upon the dry sand, himself a danger from Hell.
Then Tracy Greys addressed him by name, “Censure, go away!” His girlfriend knew him. His name was “Censure.” And the word “censure” meant “blame.” And just like that the centaur turned and went away, running back toward from where he had come. And the beach shook and the sand filled the air and the boom of hooves filled this peaceful place of God with the confusion wrought by
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Satan, the author of confusion. Then the interloper was gone, and all was quiet in God once again.
“Tracy, what was that?” asked Flanders.
“His name is ‘Censure,’ and I know why he has come,” said Miss Greys.
“How come?” asked Flanders.
“He’s coming because he thinks that your family is close to getting saved. Censure does not like souls coming to Christ. He hates our Saviour and us, Flanders,” said Tracy.
“You know him, Tracy?” asked Flanders.
“And he knows me, Flanders. He blames me for getting my family saved. And he blames you for trying to get your family saved,” said Tracy Greys. “It all started when I found salvation, and Censure blamed my father in the faith for my salvation. And he blames your father in the faith for your salvation.”
“This Censure blames the Good Lord for a lot of good things,” said Flanders. “He is quite a devil.”
“Censure is a demon,” she said. “And he came running up to my family that day I led them to the Lord…that day we all made our sand castle city. But he came too late. They all just got born again.
And he was so mad that they found Christ, that he went rabid, and he began to stomp down all our our sand castles with his mighty hooves until it was all utterly devastated. The demon was a destroyer. And then, just like that, he ran back toward where he had come from.”
“It looks safe to come out of the water now, Tracy,” said Flanders. “He’s gone.” And he proffered his right hand, and she took it in her left hand, and they stepped back out into the beach.
“He’s gone, Flanders,” she said, “for now.”
“He’s coming back then, Tracy?” asked Flanders Nickels.
“He’s coming back, Flanders,” she said with a sigh.
“He’s come for you before more than once. Hasn’t he?” asked her wise Christian boyfriend.
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“Uh huh,” she said with a nod.
“And he will come back for me, too. Wont’ he?” asked Flanders.
“Yes. Until he gets what he wants,” she said.
“The continuation of my family’s lives without the Saviour,” said Flanders.
“Maybe even their death before you can talk to them about Christ again,” said Tracy most seriously.
“He can do that?” asked Flanders.
“Censure can do a whole lot more than just to raze sand castles or come and declare himself by saying a few Bible verses, O Flanders,” she said. “I am afraid of him!”
“I think that I am afraid now, too,” said Flanders.
“Be afraid,” cautioned the woman of God.
Flanders encouraged the both of them with the verses I John 4:18, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”
In acknowledgment, Miss Greys said, “We are children of God safe in His hands. He will not let anything happen to us that is not His will. The demon Censure has to get past our Jesus first to get to us. We love the Lord, and the Lord loves us.”
“I am no longer scared,” said Flanders.
“Nor I, either, Flanders,” said Tracy.
A silent moment passed; then Flanders Nickels asked, “Where did he come from?”
“You mean, ‘How did he first come after me?’” she asked.
“Yes, Tracy. When was the first time you saw him?”
“When he killed my best friend for his blameless Christian testimony,” said Tracy.
“I am sorry for that, Tracy,” he said. “Censure can kill then.”
“He kills with his right front hoof,” she said.
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“The same one he made that earthquake with right here when he stood before us,” said Flanders.
“Yes. That one,” she said. Then she went on to tell her sad true story, “My best friend’s name was ‘Proffery.’ He and I were best-friends-in-Christ. He was fourteen years old and too young to be interested in a girlfriend. I was thirteen years old and too young to be interested in a boyfriend. We were then, instead, brother-and-sister-in-the-Lord. And we were both saved for only a few weeks at the time of our best friendship. As you can tell, this was before I led my family to Christ. But wonderful
Proffery had a dark past in his old life of sin. And it came back to do him in in his new life with Christ.
You see, righteous Proffery, in his life before finding Christ, had become heavily involved with the occult. And he had a real familiar spirit, who was a centaur. Hence the demon Censure, Flanders.
And Censure blamed Jesus for having saved Proffery and myself. And Censure blamed Proffery for taking care of me and for disciplining me with both of us still just babes in Christ. And he came after him with a Devil’s vengeance. It happened when we were both sitting up against his Dad’s silo on the farm and sharing Scripture from the book of Ecclesiastes. Our backs were against the silo, and we were reading about the futility of this life were it lived without a personal Saviour. We agreed with everything that the writer Solomon had to say about that in that book. Then we heard what sounded like a quaking of ground off in the distance. We looked up and saw a great and terrible beast running toward us with the speed of a cheetah. I did not know what this was then. But Proffery knew. And he told me in panic, ‘Run away from me now, O Tracy! Flee and do not come back! Run for your life!’
He sounded as if he were angry at me. But when I looked into his face I could tell that he was fearing only for my life. He was not fearing for his life. I hesitated. But then he said gently to me, ‘As God wills, O Tracy.’ And I did what he told me. This was what he wanted. He wanted me not to die with him. And I ran away from the silo as he begged me to do. And all at once the centaur crashed into good Proffery headfirst and rammed him and knocked him through the open doorway of the silo. And there was my best Christian friend sprawled in a heap within the concrete silo. And, in disobedience,
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I began to run back toward the silo to rescue my knight in shining armor. But then, from outside the silo, the centaur declared to Proffery within, ‘I am Censure, and I do blame you for having made this young gal a mighty faithful daughter of the Enemy. Because of you, she will grow up to be a mighty faithful woman of the Foe. Death to you!’
And then he raised his right front hoof and did with it strike a redoubtable blow upon the silo where he stood. And I saw the silo collapse down upon my Proffery in a devastating crash. Proffery was buried dead in the rubble. And the greatly formidable centaur, himself also buried under all of this rubble, simply and easily climbed himself up and out of the razed edifice, himself unharmed and coated with dust from the destruction. Then he looked me in the eye, and he said, ‘I blame you for his good death, O girl of the Lord. Your day will soon come.’ And then he ran off back to where he had come from. And he has been threatening me randomly ever since, always asking me to deny Christ, which I never did and never will.” Then she said, “Then, when I looked at what was once Dad’s silo, and I knew who was crushed within, I cried.”
“God cried with you,” said Flanders.
“He cares for me,” said Miss Greys.
“You will be with Proffery again when the Lord comes,” said Flanders.
“Yes, and Up There are no demon centaurs, Flanders,” she said.
“Censure’s time will come for him,” said Flanders Nickels.
“Woe unto him for his fate of damnation,” said the black maillot woman.
“Hell—the place of torments for all of the fallen angels,” said Flanders.
A feeling of peace came upon them here at their worship place on the beach. It was like a gentle wind from the Holy Spirit. And both born-again believers were encouraged in the Lord, and man and woman felt better now. Then Tracy Greys got to her feet and pulled down on the back of her black one-piece swimsuit around her bottom for comfort. Then she sat back down again in the sand
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at his right hand side.
With a grin he said, “I saw what you did. Why do maillot women do that?”
With female wiles she said, “I have a long torso for a one-piece swimsuit woman.”
“Oh,” he said. Both laughed heartily together. Then he said, “I remember when we got that for you, Tracy.”
“You were there with me, Flanders,” she said.
“I remember, Tracy,” he said as they reminisced. “It was my post-Thanksgiving present for you.”
“It was the day we shopped on Black Friday,” she said.
“And our first stop was Prange’s,” said Flanders.
“And it was also our last stop—Prange’s,” said Tracy.
“We got there and never left,” said Flanders.
“The line was all the way outside and all around the store,” she said.
“And it was cold and windy,” he said.
“But you made that promise,” she said.
“I promised you to buy you the swimsuit that you would fall in love with,” he said.
“Which could never be for me the more conventional two-piece style swimsuits that women my age are not too shy to buy for themselves,” she said.
“No. Not you and not me. We both prefer one-piece swimsuits—you to put on and I to look at you in it,” said Flanders.
“There were people camping out in tents out there since before dawn,” said Tracy Greys. “And all the people in our line were swearing and cursing. Two women even got into it and began to slug each other—women who did not even know each other,” exclaimed Tracy.
“Some Americans are overzealous in their roles as consumers,” said Flanders.
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“You mean that they will bite and scratch to get something for nothing, Flanders,” she said.
“They will do anything for a great bargain,” he said. “But not us. We were just looking for the perfect maillot for you.”
“That’s right,” she said. “None of the swimsuits on the racks were Black Friday deals.”
“I was ready to pay a hundred dollars to get you your suit, Tracy,” he said.
“Swimsuits for women are hardly ever that much,” she said.
“Yours was only fifty dollars,” he said. Then he said, “One would think that by November there would be no more women’s swimwear out there in the department stores. Summer in Wisconsin is already long over before November, Tracy.”
“Oh, but that year Prange’s brought out their new swimwear for the year early that time,” said Tracy Greys. “Those that we saw that day after Thanksgiving were not left over from the summer before, but, rather, were the start for the summer to come.”
“There were lots of maillots on those racks, Tracy,” he said.
“And there were going to be a lot more in the months after until Summer, around July First,” she did say. “Then the women’s swimwear rack is at its fullest. After July First, the swimsuits start to become less and less in the women’s swimwear department.”
“How do you know all of this?” he asked.
“Because I am a girl,” she said.
“How come I never knew all of this?” asked Flanders.
“Because you are a guy,” she said. They laughed out loud together.
“And we finally got home in the dim hour of four o’clock in the afternoon,” he said.
“And then I put it on for you,” she said. “I put it on just for myself, though, too.”
“You looked great!” he said.
“I felt great!” she said.
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“I saw something in your hand when you came down the stairs at your place to show off for me,” he said. “It looked like a scrappy piece of white paper. You saw it, then ran back upstairs, then came back down with it no longer in your hand.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “What that was was something a woman’s boyfriend need not to see,”
“Was it the sales receipt?” he asked.
In confession, she said, “No, Flanders. They call it a ‘hygienic liner.’”
“Oh,” he said. “Something for down there. I get it.”
“Women’s maillots have those down there for when you try on the swimsuit. When you buy the swimsuit, you have to tear it out and throw it out, and then you are ready to wear the swimsuit for yourself from then on,” she said.
“You threw it out. Didn’t you?” he asked.
“I threw it out, Flanders,” she did reply.
“Again you know things that I do not,” he said.
“I’m a woman; you’re a man,” she said. They grinned in wiles at each other.
“I wonder if there are black maillots for pretty young women in Heaven,” he asked.
“I wonder if there might be a great ‘Prange’s in the sky,’” she surmised.
“One thing is for sure, Tracy—there is no sin in Heaven, and there will be no sinners in Heaven,” he did say. “Only those born again and those who are the loyal angels are in Heaven.”
“God forbid that he allowed those not born again into His Heaven,” said Tracy Greys.
“If those who died in their sins were let into Heaven, then Heaven would be no better than down here in Earth, indeed!” said Flanders.
“And what joy can equal the joy of the resurrected saints worshiping Jesus at His throne in Glory forever and ever?” asked Miss Tracy Greys. “And only we born-again Christians would like to do that Up There. The lost? Hardly. The unsaved would be miserable—even in Paradise—if they had
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to praise and glorify the Good Lord as we so want to There.”
“Indeed the wicked think very differently from the righteous, Tracy,” said Flanders. “You and I are righteous; we are just. And your family is righteous. And my family right now is yet wicked. God can change their eternal destiny if they turn to him. It must happen before they pass away, and it must happen before you and I are raptured.”
“Our God is a God of compassion, Flanders,” said Tracy.
“I see the Good Lord Jesus’s compassion throughout all of the book of Matthew, O Tracy,” said Flanders. “The words that He did speak when He walked this Earth unto the searching Who came to Him exude with the compassion only of Christ.”
“What kinds of things did He say to his supplicants, Flanders?” asked the black maillot woman.
“I memorized those words of compassion,” said Flanders. And he preached a little sermon on the book of Matthew to his girlfriend-in-the-Lord: “One time a centurion came up to Jesus and asked Him if He would heal his servant, who was sick of the palsy. Jesus went on to say to the centurion, ‘Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.’ And his servant was made whole and well.
Another time, another man was sick of the palsy, also. But he had friends who brought him down on a bed through the roof and set him in his bed before Jesus. Christ saw him, and He said to him, ‘Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.’ And this man got up, took up his bed, and walked. Another time, there came to Jesus a woman who had an issue of blood for the past twelve years of her life. She reached out her hand and but touched his robe, and her bleeding stopped. Jesus turned about and saw her, and he said to her, ‘Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.’ Another time,
two blind men sitting, heard that Jesus was coming. And they both called out to Him, asking Him to give sight to their eyes. Jesus came up to them, and he said to them, ‘According to your faith, be it unto you.’ And the blind men could now see. Also, a Gentile woman came up to the Lord and asked Him if He would to cast a demon out of her daughter. And He said to her, ‘O woman, great is thy
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faith. Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ And the devil came out of her daughter.”
“They had come to Jesus with a faith in Him that He could help their physical needs, and when they left Jesus they did so with the faith in Him that saved their souls,” said Tracy Greys.
“Dream of Dreams, Tracy,” he said. “Dream of Dreams.”
Then she said, “It is almost time now. Isn’t it?”
“Mom told me that dinner will be ready at 5:00. Dad said that he has something that he wanted to ask me. All of my family will be there, And Mom and Dad said to bring you, too,” said Flanders Nickels.
“What do you think that your dad will say to you?” she asked.
“All he said was, ‘We need to ask you something, Flanders,’” said Flanders. “Maybe he might ask me to leave the family. I have done lots of preaching at all of them in my burden for their lost souls. Maybe they had enough to do with me. And they might want nothing more to do with me anymore.”
“I would be so sad, Flanders,” she said.
“In either case I would like you to be with me then, Tracy,” he did tell her.
“What should we do? It’s almost five o’clock,” said Miss Greys.
“We shall go to dinner with our eyes on Jesus, and we shall hear what Dad asks me with our eyes on Jesus,” said Flanders Nickels.
“’Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.’ Isaiah 26:3,” quoted his maillot girlfriend believer good Scripture.
“Let us go,” he said.
And they picked up their little boxes of worship items at this favorite place of theirs, and they walked to Flanders’s parents’ house on the seashore not far away from here.
Behold, in the dining room a feast fit for the day of Christmas! Everyone was there sitting
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and ready to eat. Two tables were there—one big dining room table for the rest of the family and one little card table for Flanders and Tracy. Mom and Dad were at the heads of the dining room table, and Big Sister and her husband were at the one side, and Big Brother and Niece and Little Brother were at the other side. Flanders and Tracy, yet both in their swimsuits from their frolic and fellowship, sat down at the card table. Flanders then had a word of prayer. And all nine began to eat Mom’s good cooking. After a while, they were all full, and dinner was done, and everybody turned to Mom and Dad.
Mom said, “Flanders, your father has something to say to you.” Everybody turned to Dad.
And Dad said, “Flanders, your mother and I have been thinking about what you have been telling us about Jesus all of these years.”
Everything suddenly turned still.
And Dad stood up now at the head of the table, and he said, “We seven talked about this yesterday. We spent the whole afternoon talking about all of your Bible verses you kept telling us.
And we all said that we heard it all before. So we made a decision yesterday.”
Flanders and Tracy looked upon each other at their card table, silent prayer Up to God in their eyes.
Dad then went on to say, “And all of us decided that we were wrong, and all of us decided that you were right.”
Mom went on to say, “Your father is saying that we need to become born again, like you and Tracy.”
And Dad said, “And we would like it if you would lead us to salvation,”
“Help us,” said the other five at the dining room table.
“Yes. Help us,” said Mom and Dad.
“Praise God, Flanders!” exclaimed Tracy Greys.
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“Praise God that I have lived long enough to see this day come!” said Flanders Nickels. “Amen! Amen!” and he choked on his words in this so very great relief. Then his words came back to him. And he said, “I will be eternally honored to lead all of you to salvation in this dining room this moment.”
And Flanders Arckery Nickels went on to share God’s plan of salvation with his seven loved ones: “Mankind are all reprobate and full of sin. God hates and judges sin and sinners, because He is holy and cannot look upon sin. And the only way for man himself to pay for his own sins is to burn for eternity in Hell. But God the Father looked down from Heaven upon man and his eternal doom, and He had compassion for him. And He sent His Son, Who has always been, to come down to this sin-cursed Earth from Heaven, to die for our sins. And this Son of God, Jesus, willingly submitted Himself to the cross of Calvary, where He bore upon Himself every last sin that every last one of us committed.
He bore our sins on the tree. And He took away our sins. And He died on the cross. And He rose again three days later. And on the fortieth day He ascended back Up to Heaven, where He always will be. And He intercedes for His children. Right now He is looking down upon this dining room and is interceding for me as I preach these good and saving words to you right now. And God wants all of you to end up with Him in Heaven for everlasting. And God does not want any of you to end up down in Hell with the Devil for everlasting. And all it takes is one prayer to make the difference between salvation and damnation. And you are all ready to receive Jesus as personal Saviour this moment as I preach. You seven are all ready, I do think.” All seven of his family nodded their heads in sure assent and conviction of heart. “Let us pray now,” said Flanders Nickels, seeing his so-elusive Dream of Dreams now about to be resolved with so great resolution before his very eyes.
Behold, a force of great magnitude suddenly struck the ground outside of this house! The house actually shook where it stood! And fear filled the faces of the seven whom Flanders was just about to lead to salvation. And confusion and alarm and chaos came upon this dining room table where his
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family was sitting. Lo, a voice as of a demon spoke into this dining room from outside the house, saying, “Flanders, son of God, do not speak any more about Christ to your family. If my father loses them, I shall blame you forever. And you know what I do to those whom I blame.”
Out there now was the centaur Censure seeking to hinder and to prevent Flanders Nickels from leading his family through the sinners’ prayer.
Very angry, Flanders stood up, said to Tracy, “I’ll get that minion!” and went outside to confront him.
Tracy, following him, said to him, “Rely on God right now in His strength and wisdom, Flanders. Alone without God you are no match for wily and strong Censure.”
“I’ll do that,” he said to her. And he prayed a quick prayer, “Help me, Lord.” And he stood before the centaur and confronted him in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Strong and confident in the Devil, Censure raised his right hoof above the ground of sand, and he said to Flanders, “Son of God, do not take one step nearer to me. If you do, I shall make a greater earthquake than the one I have just now made. And the house will come crashing down upon your loved ones, and they will die, and they will go to Hell.”
God the Holy Spirit filled Flanders’s understanding with great spiritual wisdom, and Flanders began to seek the upper hand over this centaur in this standoff between good and evil. The Christian man said to the centaur, “You are afraid of water. Aren’t you?”
“No, man of God. I fear not water,” said Censure. “I do drink it when I do thirst.”
“But you do fear the water of the sea, Centaur,” said Flanders.
“I neither drink the water of the sea, nor touch the water of the sea,” said Censure.
“Tell me now then, O centaur, why that is,” said Flanders.
Yet Censure went on to say, “I fear not God nor God’s children.” Just then a wave from the Maker washed ashore and covered the centaur’s four hooves and then returned back to the sea.
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Sparks and smoke and a noisome smell began to emanate from his hooves, and he had to most ungainly dance about upon the sand in pain until the pain went away. To try to regain his composure, Censure went on to say, “I hate God and God’s children.” God sent another strong wave that was bigger than the others just to get the demon. In fear, the centaur ran away from it and found himself right face to face with the man of God who was challenging him in the Lord.
Filled with the Holy Ghost, Flanders Nickels said to him, “Censure, I think now that there is one more thing that you cannot endure, something even worse for you than God’s great ocean.”
And the centaur trembled in his four equine knees where he stood right in front of the man of God. And Censure lied, “There is nothing about what you say.”
“Oh, but there is. And I know what it is,” said Flanders.
“That wisdom can come upon you only from One who is greater than my father,” said the centaur.
“Shall I tell you?” asked Flanders in prevailing over him.
“I know that which it is,” confessed Censure.
“Shall I strike you with it right now?” threatened Flanders Nickels.
“The hurtful name of the Lord in rebuke!” cried out the demon centaur. “Don’t do that to me! I implore you, O mighty man of Jesus.”
“You will leave then, Centaur?” asked Flanders.
In confession Censure said, “If a born-again believer were to say to me a demon, ‘I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,’ I will leave this earth at once and go down forever to Hell before my time and never come back up here on Earth again.”
“Do you wish me to say that to you right now, and do you wish God to send you down to Hell right now, O centaur called ‘Censure?’” boldly and justly asked Flanders Nickels in the strength of Christ.
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“Have mercy on me, O mighty man of Christ!” cried out the demon.
“Will you leave here now?” asked Flanders.
“I will leave here now,” said the centaur in retreat.
“And you will never come back?” asked Flanders.
“Surely I shall never come back,” promised the minion, tripping over his hooves.
“Flee, O centaur called ‘Censure!’” commanded Flanders Nickels.
And with no hesitation the formerly invincible centaur devil fled Flanders and his family, never to come back to trouble them again.
“Yea!” cheered his loved ones, ready to receive Jesus.
Tracy Barrow Greys ran up to him and embraced him in Jesus and said, “You got him scared of you, boyfriend. Great is our Jesus and His name.”
“It is written, ‘O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the Earth!’ Psalm 8:9,” said Flanders in this most exultant moment of his walk with Christ.
It was time now to lead his lost family unto so great and personal and everlasting salvation.
It was the next day now, and Flanders and Tracy were on another date at this seashore in their swimsuits. Dream of Dreams had been solved with solution. Everybody in his family had prayed with him and become born again Christians. And right now boyfriend and girlfriend were rejoicing over this in joy. And Tracy Barrow Greys spoke the words of sinners’ prayer today that Flanders had led his family to Jesus with line-by-line yesterday: “Dear Lord: I am a sinner who deserves to go to Hell. But I am sorry now for all of my sins. I wish now to have done none of those things. Please look down from Heaven and forgive me now. Jesus Christ the Lord long ago went to the cross of Calvary to bleed to death just for me. And not only that, but three days after that, came back to life in His Resurrection.
He lives! And He is the Saviour of the world. And now I ask You to become my own personal Saviour
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of my own personal soul. Don’t let me have to go down to the torments of Hell. Let me instead go up to the glories of Heaven. Save me as you have Flanders and Tracy. Thank You, Jesus. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.”
“Yeah, girl,” said Flanders. “And just like that God stole my family away from Satan!”
“Or you could say that the Devil lost your family to the Lord,” said Miss Greys.
“Yeah,” said Flanders.
“It is written, O Flanders, ‘The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.’ Psalm 103:8,” said the wise maillot woman.
“Again is it written, ‘The Lord is gracious and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy.’ Psalm 145:8,” said Flanders Nickels.
“Our God’s grace says that we do not deserve to go to Heaven, but God wants us to be There with Him anyway,” said Tracy.
“And God’s mercy says that we deserve to go to Hell, but God does not want us to be there with the Devil, nonetheless,” said Flanders.
“That is why he sent His only begotten Son into the world,” said Miss Greys.
“To redeem fallen mankind and womankind from their sins,” said Flanders. “And children kind, too.”
“Look. There are our hymnbooks right here in our little boxes,” said Tracy.
“I am so happy now, girl, that I want to sing,” he said.
“I want to sing now very much, also,” she said. “Do you have one that you feel the most like singing right now?”
“Early in my new life in Christ, when I used to pray for Mom with first hopes, I used to have a song I called, ‘Mom’s hymn,’” said Flanders. “I would sit up in bed with this church hymnbook and sing it a few times; and then I would continue singing its melody with my own words of spontaneous
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intercessory prayer just for Mom.”
In understanding, Tracy Greys said, “It was for you, ‘Mom’s hymn,’ not because she liked it, but because you liked it and sang it in prayer for your Mom’s soul.”
“Yes, O Tracy,” he said.
“It must have been a great hymn about leading a loved one to Christ, O Flanders,” she said.
“It was a great hymn about witnessing to the lost,” said Flanders Nickels.
“Which one is it in this hymnbook?” she said. “We can sing it together.”
“It is hymn number 432, and it is called ‘Rescue the Perishing,’” he told his black one-piece swimsuit girlfriend-in-Christ.
“But now it no longer needs to be just about your own Mom who got saved, Flanders,” she said. “Now it can be all about every one of your family who got saved,”
“Yes. Mom’s song come true can now be my family’s song come true,” said Flanders Nickels.
“A song of Dream of Dreams, Flanders,” said Tracy.
“My song of Dream of Dreams, Tracy,” said Flanders.
“Let us sing unto our God,” said Tracy.
And together the two young born-again believers sang “Rescue the Perishing”:
“1. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,
Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;
Weep o’er the erring one, lift up the fallen,
Tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save.
Rescue the perishing, Care for the dying;
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
2. Tho they are slighting Him, still He is waiting,
Waiting the penitent child to receive;
Plead with them earnestly, plead with them gently,
He will forgive if they only believe.
Rescue the perishing, Care for the dying;
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
3. Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter,
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Feelings lie buried that grace can restore;
Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness,
Chords that are broken will vibrate once more.
Rescue the perishing, Care for the dying;
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
4. Rescue the perishing, duty demands it–
Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide;
Back to the narrow way patiently win them,
Tell the poor wand’rer a Saviour has died.
Rescue the perishing, Care for the dying;
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.”
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