Flanders Nickels, a man without Christ, has a visitor—the girl next door—who is outspoken about her Saviour. Her name is Tracy Lynn Privette. He sees her words about her Jesus as words of a magpie who talks too much. He resists her Christ. Instead he shares with this woman his two great secrets—the one, an ambitious pursuit of learning how to master the wind; and the other, a picture of the love of his life in a wheat germ ad. Tracy has to get past these two obstacles to tell him of his need for Jesus.
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
By Mr. Morgan P. McCarthy
This was his first morning now in his brand new apartment. He had moved here yesterday on a Saturday. He was here now on his first whole day here on a Sunday. And he did not have to go back to work until tomorrow on Monday. This was another upper apartment for him, as had been all of his other apartments, and for that he was glad. And he was happy with his brand new life in his brand new place. And his work place was still very near to his home. It would take less than five minutes to walk to work every morning, That meant that he could still stay up late and still get up late every workday. And this day was the second day of his weekend off from work. And before him was a most pleasing and large breakfast spread out upon his kitchen table. On one big platter were three pieces of French toast with butter and syrup. On the other big platter were three pieces of French toast with butter and strawberry preserves. “A breakfast fit for a monarch,” he said. Then he said to himself, “Thank you, Flanders.” Then he devoured this meal fit for a king with gusto. And when he finished his last bite, he heard the sound of a sliding of something passing through underneath his apartment door. He saw it there on the floor—it looked like a letter in an envelope. And he got up to go and see what it had to say for him and from whom it had come.
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It read on the envelope, “To my new neighbor: Welcome to the apartment house. From the girl next door.”
He then opened up this envelope to see what it said. And he read the following in most legible and flowing cursive writing in pencil: “Hi, good neighbor. Welcome to the neighborhood. I live next to you up here down the hall. God told me to write to you, so I am writing to you. He wants me to tell you that a Saviour has died for mankind. And he wants me to tell you also that Christ arose. This Saviour and this Christ are the one and the same God. And God loves you and wants you to go to Heaven to be with Him in your life to come. But not everybody gets to go There. One time I told one of my friends that only born-again Christians get to go to Heaven. And she told me in offense and in indignation, ‘Only born-again Christians go to Heaven? Crazy idea! Makes me so mad!’ And I lost her. She died in her sins in a tragic accident the next day. She is in Hell now. Indeed does the Holy Bible promise that only born-again believers go to Heaven. I am saved from my sins because of Jesus.
How about you, if I may ask as a girl who has a burden for souls? Are you saved or unsaved? All the people of the Earth fall into two categories—the saved or the lost. It is written in John 3:16, a verse that you probably heard or saw before, ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ I care for you, neighbor, even though I do not yet know you. But Jesus loves you with a perfect love, because you have a soul that He died for. And one soul is worth more than all the wealth of the world. I’ll be much in prayer for you. Who knows? Maybe you are already mightily saved in Christ. Whether you are or are not, I believe that the Lord will want me to come and visit you. So I will come and visit you if you would receive me. And when I come, I shall come bearing the good news of the Gospel. The girl next door in Christ, Tracy.”
“I am not one of you, Tracy,” said Flanders, himself the farthest thing from a Christian. “The girl chatters like a blooming magpie.” Then he examined the pencil markings on the paper. And he
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said to himself, “Looks like a number one lead pencil, it is so very dark, most unusually dark.” And he pushed the letter back away from him at his kitchen table. And he said, “What a magpie that woman is all about Jesus! Blithering magpie that talks too much.” And he huffed in offense at the Word of God.
Then he heard a knock on his door. Not having expected any visitors here on Sunday morning, he got up to answer the door to find out who was here. And when he answered the door, he saw a beautiful young woman standing there in exciting pretty clothes. She was tall and thin and most comely of visage. And she had on a long-sleeved argyle sweater with white and gray and black diamonds across her torso and with solid black across her sleeves and with a high black collar and with a black hem at the bottom that hugged her hips. And she had on a black skirt of box pleats that reached nearly to her knees and that shined in polyester. And she had on long sleek black tights. And she had on nice black pumps with big square high heels. And her hair bewitched him in its fullness and in its brownness. And her eyes, even behind a pair of big glasses, were truly the prettiest eyes in Wisconsin. She was irresistible to him. But then she raised her right hand and showed him a big Book that she was holding. This surely had to be the Bible. This must be that woman down the hall. The magpie had come, just as she said she would.
“I am Tracy,” she said. “May I come in?”
Her tone was humble, kind, and gentle. And he said, “You are a very pretty girl, Tracy,” And he proffered her his kitchen table despite her promise of more words about God in that letter. In deference to a visitor so comely, he pulled out a chair for her to sit down on at his kitchen table. And he sat down across from her at this table. He was not sure what he was getting himself into with a woman so on fire for Jesus here like this. But he had never had a real date with a real pretty woman before. And he was lonely, even though this would be no date, but probably an uncomfortable sermon for him. And he said, “My name is Flanders, Tracy. Flanders Nickels.”
And Tracy said, “And my full name is Tracy Lynn Privette.”
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“Glad to meet you, Tracy,” he said not without truth.
And the young Christian woman said in greetings back to him, “The Lord bless thee and keep thee: The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace.”
“Wow, Tracy! All that!” he said. “I like it!”
“That’s from Numbers 6:24-26, Flanders,” she said.
“Is that from your Bible, Tracy?” he asked.
“Yes, Flanders,” said this girl next door. “The King James Version Bible.”
“The Good Book seems to not be so bad to me now,” he said.
“It is God’s love letter to mankind,” she said.
“I know God,” he said, suddenly so ready to tell this strange believer woman his great secret.
“Oh, are you a Christian, then, too, Flanders?” asked Tracy Privette.
“No, I know God, Tracy, but not as a Christian,” he said. A subtle doubt about his profession shown upon her features. Perhaps this woman next door did not think that he knew God so long as he was not a born-again Christian like herself. He felt it needful now to try to prove her wrong, and he told her how it was that he did know God in his own way most closely. “I am a god in training, and God is helping me to attain my godhood with my Magnum Opus.”
“You believe that you can make yourself into a god, Flanders?” asked the skeptical girl next door.
“Oh yes, Tracy,” he said. “Do you want to see my Magnum Opus?”
“Is that some type of wand or sceptre or magic stick, Flanders?” she asked.
“No, it is my book that God and I are writing together,” he said. “And when I attain my destiny, I will be able to make mighty winds with a wave of my arm.”
She actually laughed upon hearing this, and she quickly tried to hide it with her hand over her
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mouth.
“You laughed, woman,” he said, his pride wounded sorely.
“Only God can create wind, Flanders,” she said. “The Creator has created weather; the Creator controls weather; the Creator changes weather. Mankind cannot do this.”
“Oh, but I will, Tracy. With much help from God,” he went on to say. “With my great analytical mind I am studying my own mind. My Magnum Opus is an analysis on how I can learn to create wind. It is a dissertation unlike any other written by man. And I will learn to do things that only a god can do.”
“Like make winds come and destroy and kill and wreck, Flanders?” she asked.
“I will become the greatest man who ever walked this world,” he said.
“That distinction is already taken, Flanders, and He is the Good Lord Jesus Christ,” she said.
“I must go and get my Magnum Opus and show it to you,” he said. “Then you will believe.”
And he went into his bedroom and took it up in his hands and came back to the kitchen with it. And he set it upon the table where she was sitting. She looked upon it with caution, too discreet in her faith to reach out and touch it. He went on to brag, “In that book are one hundred handwritten pages of copious notes that I have written down in my introspective studies. Within are theories and questions and discoveries never before breached in any philosophy or theology or ideology. I am a pioneer exploring new frontiers, Tracy Lynn Privette. And I when I learn to wrought great and mighty winds with my arm, I will be invincible and invulnerable and immortal.”
“How long did all this take for you to write, Flanders?” asked the girl next door, looking upon this research paper and not opening it up yet.
“Five years and counting,” he said.
“Are there more years for you to come with this Magnum Opus, Flanders?” she asked.
“I have not yet arrived, Tracy,” he said in self-grandeur. “I must continue on in life in study and
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in notes and in adding more pages. My power over wind is yet to come.”
“I believe that it is evil, Flanders,” she said in compassion.
“My great destiny is not evil, but glorious, Tracy,” he said.
“I believe also that it is vanity,” said Miss Privette.
“I am taking my life as a mortal and I am dedicating it to becoming an immortal,” he said. “That is not vain.”
“You are gambling away your whole life to become something you cannot be,” she said.
“”I am a misunderstood genius,” he said with a huff.
“You are mad,” she said about his absence of sanity in his life goal.
“Would you at least look inside of it and read some?” he asked. “And then make up your mind whether you are for or against the Magnum Opus?”
“I will look into your Magnum Opus and read one thing and then look away from it again,” she said.
“That’s fair,” he said. “Open up my book and read one thing and then tell me if I am crazy or not crazy.”
And this the girl next door did. She opened up in the middle, looked upon a line in the middle of the page and found a two-line ‘poem’ centered horizontally. It said,
“Questions, questions, everywhere,
Nor any answer to be found,”
And she shut up the Magnum Opus with even greater doubts upon his life dream.
“Well, what do you think, Tracy?” he asked.
She went on to recite a little poem that she had known, or, rather, a two-line stanza from a famous poem of English literature,
“Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”
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“You read that poem, too, Tracy,” he said.
“’The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” she said. “Is there some literary symbolism between your poem and his poem, Flanders?”
“No,” he said. “Except for as the mariner could not drink any of that sea water, I could not seem to find any answers.”
“One hundred pages and not one answer, Flanders?” she asked.
“Yet,” he said. “But sometime down the road.”
“It looked like you write in number four lead pencil,” she said.
“Number four lead pencils are my writing pencils,” he said. “It is a hard lead, and it stays sharp long, and it writes quite light on the paper. My whole Magnum Opus is written with number four lead.”
“I don’t like pens, either,” said Tracy in truth.
“I have another book that I treasure in my room, too, if you would allow me to go and get it and show it to you,” said Flanders.
“I do not get opportunities to have a man share his dreams with me,” she said, greatly curious as to what this next special secret might be.
“The book is based upon my Chef d’Oeuvre,” he said, running to go get it and running to bring it back.
“I see two books and not one book, Flanders,” she said.
“Oh, but the one book is a Readers’ Digest, and the other book is my book of drawings that I have sketched,” he said to Tracy.
“Your book of drawings is the Chef d’Oeuvre, Flanders?” asked the woman next door.
“No, Tracy. The girl I draw sketches of—she is the Chef d’Oeuvre,” he said.
“You call a woman a ‘chef d’oeuvre,’ Flanders?” asked Miss Privette.
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“Uh huh,” he said with an avid nod.
“She must be beautiful,” said Tracy.
“The most beautiful woman in the world,” he said.
“May I see those sketches, Flanders?” she asked.
“May I show you the real girl first, Tracy?” he asked. He held up the Readers’ Digest.
“The Chef d’Oeuvre woman is in there?” she asked.
“My dream girl is a wheat germ girl,” he said.
And he opened up this magazine right immediately to where his dream girl was, and he showed her to Tracy Privette. Tracy saw the woman. She was a blonde with straight shoulder-length hair and with bangs across her forehead. She was sitting, and her knee was up. And she was wearing a long-sleeved chambray work shirt and blue jeans. Her eyes seemed most comely to Tracy. And Tracy could see how she could steal a man’s heart. Miss Privette read the words at the top, “You are what you eat.”
And Tracy said in compliment and in approval, “She’s beautiful, Flanders.”
“Thank you, Tracy,” he said, feeling now very happy that this Christian lady had come to visit.
“Do you have a girl’s name that you call her, as well?” asked Tracy.
“I adoringly call her ‘Carol,’” said Flanders. “And I have fallen head-over-heels in love with her.”
“She looks like a real country lass,” said Tracy. “Do you know anything about her for real?”
“I do not know for sure, but I believe that my Carol is too beautiful a woman to be a mortal,” he declared to Miss Privette.
“Kretschmer Wheat Germ.” read Tracy. Then she said, “I ate wheat germ a couple of times.”
“Did you like it?” he asked. She shook her head sheepishly. Tracy and Flanders laughed. And he said, “I tried it, too, It acted like an aphrodisiac for me.” Tracy and Flanders laughed again.
And Miss Privette said, “You have a little lust in your love for her, Flanders.”
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“You women say, ‘All men think alike,’” said Flanders. They laughed together a third time.
Then the girl next door asked, “What else do you know about the Chef d’Oeuvre?”
“I know that I want to marry her,” said Flanders. He then held up his big book of papers.
“Those must be your drawings,” said Tracy.
“Wedding pictures in my romantic fantasy,” he said.
“Sketches of your Carol in her bridal dress?” guessed the girl next door.
“Yes! Yes!” he said. “My own dear fairy princess bride!”
“Why, there must be a hundred of them in this,” she said. She began to look through them.
And there was the Chef d’Oeuvre drawn thereby in all manner of white long-sleeved silk bridal gowns with trains.
He said, “All of these sketches are drawn in number two lead pencil.”
“Ah, the most popular lead for pencils,” said the girl next door.
“And look at this drawing, Tracy,” he said, showing her the most recent sketch in the very back.
Miss Privette looked and saw a picture of Flanders and Carol at the wedding altar in a sweet kiss, the bride and her groom. “Ah, unrequited love,” said the girl next door.
“Love, yes. Unrequited, no,” he said. “I am happy in my life of daydreams with my beloved Chef d’Oeuvre.”
“These artworks make you happy,” said Miss Privette, understanding his reply.
“They make it to me like she is real here with me,” he said.
“You study your mind with your mind to seek the power of the wind. Have you ever thought about studying your mind with your mind to find out where she may be found, Flanders?” asked the woman next door.
“I never thought about that, Tracy,” he said.
“You say that she is an immortal, like what you want to become,” said Tracy Privette. “Do
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you think upon you two someday ruling the world together?”
“I never thought about that, either,” said Flanders.
“With a little wind from your hand, you could blow a breeze upon her hair and make it even prettier for you to behold,” said Tracy in flirt with this guy.
“Be still my heart, girl,” said Flanders. “You speak romance to this lonely guy.”
“I bet that you never thought about that before,” said Tracy.
“I never did,” said Flanders.
“You do many things with pencils, Flanders.” said Tracy in praise of pencils.
“I write, and I draw,” he said.
“I do things with pencils, too,” she said.
“Studies and hobbies, Tracy?” asked Flanders.
“Worship projects,” she said.
“That makes sense, Tracy,” he said, “you being a Christian and all.”
“I write down Bible verses, and I write down new converts’ names,” she summed up her worship life with her pencils.
“What do you do with these Bible verses that you write down, and upon what do you write them?” he asked, interested now in a believer’s walk with Christ.
“I memorize them, and then I memorize them again, and then I memorize them again,” she replied.
“A Christian forgets Scripture that she has to re-memorize it?” he asked.
“Uh huh,” she said with a smile. “We believers are human, too.”
“Is that what you call fun?” he asked.
“Memorizing and re-memorizing again and again are equally fun for me, Flanders,” she told him in truth. “Indeed the Word of God is most wondrously satisfying to a daughter of God like
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myself.”
“”Are these verses on cards?” he asked.
“They are all on my colored index cards,” she said.
“May I take a look at some of them?” he asked.
“I’d be honored to show you my index cards,” she said. “They are all in my wooden index card box, Flanders.” She skipped back to her apartment and skipped back to his apartment, and she had the little wooden box in both hands. And she set it upon the table in front of him.
“Can I take a look inside, Tracy?” he asked.
“Ooo, go ahead!” she said in gladness.
He opened up this little wooden box and took out the first index card and did look upon it. It was yellow. The front side was ruled and had the Bible verse reference handwritten upon it. The back side was unruled, and it had the Bible verse itself, handwritten meticulously by the woman. The other colors of the index cards found in this box were orange and pink and blue and green and red and gold.
None were white. He analyzed the pencil words on this yellow index card, and he asked, “Tracy, I would guess that these index cards are all written in number two-and-one-half lead pencil.”
“Number two-and-one-half lead, You are right, Flanders,” she said.
“Do these different colors mean anything?” he asked.
“I put Bible verses that share a certain theme all together in the same colors with each other,” she said.
“I see two other yellow index cards right behind this one,” he said.
“Those three yellow index cards, I can tell, are all about some paradises full of waters in the Bible,” she said.
“Are you real good at memorizing Scripture, Tracy?” he asked.
“Real good, Flanders,” she said.
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“Really good?” he asked.
“Yes, really good,” she said.
“Shall I test you with these yellow ones?” he asked her.
“Yes. Go ahead and test me,” she said, having genuine fun with this guy next door now.
He picked out one and looked upon the front and said, “Deuteronomy 8:7, girl.”
“I well know that one,” she said.
“Prove it, woman of God,” he said in flirt.
And she recited it back to him as he looked at the back of this index card. “For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;”
“Perfect, Tracy,” he said.
“Now try the next one, Flanders,” she said.
And he took the next one and read to her on the front the reference, “Isaiah 35:7, O Tracy,”
And she recited this verse as well promptly and confidently, “And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.”
“Perfect again, Tracy,” he commended her.
“Now the third,” said Tracy. “Go and test me with that third yellow index card that you have in my box.”
“You can correctly give me the verse after I give you the reference,” he said. “But how good are you at giving me the reference after I give you the verse?”
“In all of my Scripture memorization, I test myself both ways, Flanders, over and over again,” bragged the girl next door. “Go ahead and read the verse, and I will correctly tell you that verse’s reference.”
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He then took out the third of the group of three yellow index cards, turned it over, and read to her, “I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.”
And she said right away, “That is Isaiah 41:18.”
“Perfect once again, O Tracy,” said Flanders.
“The Word of God is perfect,” she said, “both the living Word Jesus Christ and the written Word the King James Bible.”
“How many colored index cards do you have in this box?” he asked.
“One hundred,” she said.
“One hundred and counting?” he asked.
“Yes. There shall be more later on that I will wish to write up, Flanders.” she said.
“And what was that other pencil project that you told me about, Tracy—something about writing down the names of new converts?” he asked her.
“Ah, my own Lamb’s book of life, Flanders,” she said.
“What is that—the Lamb’s Book of Life?” he asked.
“The complete Lamb’s Book of Life is a book in Heaven that tells all of the names of the people who have accepted Christ as Saviour. These are the names of all of the born-again Christians from throughout all the history of the world. This book belongs to Jesus, the Lamb of God. I, as a believer, have my own little book of names of those who have accepted Jesus from my own witness of Christ. All of the lost people out there whom I have led to salvation I have written in my own little book.
Because of God, I have won very many souls. And I record them in my sheets of paper as they become born again one by one and day by day and soul by soul. This is my own little Lamb’s book of life.”
“Can I see your little book, your own book of life, Tracy?” he asked.
In flirt, she said, “I thought that you would never ask.”
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And the girl next door hopped to her apartment and back to his apartment in a short moment.
And in her hands was a yellow envelope inside of a manila filing folder. She gave it to him most confidentially, and he took it in honor at this sharing of this big thing in her life. He opened it up and saw a record of souls and their names and the date of their born again conversion, all written with pencil on yellow paper. The first line at the top of page one read the following: “Soul I—Proffery Coins—February 29, 1990.”
“Who is this Proffery who was the first one you led to salvation?” asked Flanders.
“My park friend whom I used to talk with at Voyageur Park,” she said.
“He got saved a little less than a year ago,” said Flanders. “And in winter, too, at that.”
“On a February 29 of that leap year,” said the woman next door. “We were making a weird snowman, and we got to talking about God, and all of a sudden I was sharing Christ with a lost person for my first time. And, wouldn’t you know it, but all of a sudden I was leading him through the prayer.
And he got saved. I had never done anything that important before in my own walk with Christ. And it felt great. And then I decided to become a soul winner for God.”
“What was so weird about that snowman that you were making with Proffery?” asked Flanders.
“It had four big snowballs to his form and not three big snowballs like all snowmen are supposed to have,” said the girl next door.
Flanders said, “I like your true tale, Tracy.” Then he went on to page through the rest of her book of souls. He saw twenty entries per page, and he saw five full pages in her precious book.
Then he said, “I see one hundred new converts’ names in your book of life. That’s a lot of work to be done for the Lord.”
“One hundred souls so far, Flanders,” said Tracy. “With God’s mercy and grace I hope to keep winning many more lost souls for Christ.”
Looking upon the bottom of page five, Flanders read, “Soul C—Regalroyal Sixpence—
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February 10,1991.” And he went on to say, “Why this one got saved just a week ago today.”
“Soul number one hundred for me,” said the woman next door.
“Who was he?” asked Flanders.
“He was the one who lived here in your apartment just before you came, Flanders,” said Tracy Privette. “I led him to his saving knowledge of Christ on the day he was moving out.”
“This writing in this little book of life looks like it was written in a number three lead pencil,” he said.
“A number three lead pencil it is, Flanders,” said Tracy.
“You know your pencils, Tracy,” he said.
“And so do you, Flanders,” she said.
“You are a good Christian, Tracy,” said Flanders.
Finding hope now for this man so lost in his sins at his table with her now, the girl next door said, “Flanders, I know a great way how to begin page six on my Lamb’s book of life.”
“Such a one would be your soul CI in your book,” he said.
“Soul CI—Flanders Nickels—February 17, 1991,” she explained her wishes to him clearly.
Caught off-guard with this personally convicting indication of his own unsaved soul, Flanders sought to slough her comment off with an impromptu reply, “I will become my own god in time to come. Why would I need your God?”
“Didn’t I hear your affinity with God when you told me of how you and He worked together in your pursuit of winds?” asked the girl next door.
“But my God is the Father. Your God is this Son,” said Flanders.
“The true God is Father and Son and Holy Ghost,” said Tracy Privette. “And my Heavenly Father was never helping you to become a god of the wind, Flanders.”
“Then who is it, woman, who has given me all the words to write my Magnum Opus?” he
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challenged her in his great sureness of future grandeur.
“It could be the Devil. It could be a demon. Or it could be your own pride,” she said.
“A man of my potential who is on the verge of making it actual has every right to brag on himself,” said Flanders about himself.
“Flanders, your own sin nature, by its wickedness, keeps you from becoming better than you are right now,” she said. “Your sins necessarily keep you from becoming more like God. Iniquity and transgressions only end up making mankind worse and worse. Indeed, Flanders, despite your very potential that you so brag on now, because you do sin, your actual ends up becoming very limited instead.”
“You talk like a crazy woman, Tracy,” he said. “Your words now do not make any sense to me.”
“It is written, ‘Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men; for that all have sinned:’ Romans 5:12,” quoted the girl next door most cogent and relevant Scripture for this time and for this situation.
“So you are saying that because I have a sin nature that someday I must die,” he asked coldly.
“God is saying that, Flanders,” pleaded Tracy in compassion for this man’s soul.
“What do you and Jesus think about my book?” asked Flanders
“I think that the Lord sees all your words of the Magnum Opus as nothing more than vainglorious words of a wannabe philosopher,” said the girl next door most boldly in Christ.
“Prove me wrong, Tracy, or never come back here again,” he said in offended pride of life.
“That I can do in the Lord,” said the faithful witness warrior. “How long, again, have you been writing your Magnum Opus thesis?”
“For over five years,” he said.
“How far have you gotten toward its finish, that moment where you learn how to create your
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very first wind, Flanders?” she asked point-blank.
Avoiding a direct answer to this direct question, Flanders said, “I have discovered truths never before conceived by mankind. I have learned theories that men of science cannot understand. I have asked myself brave new questions that no thinker has thought to ask himself before.”
“I heard all of that from you before a little while ago at this table, Flanders,” she said. “I ask you again, ‘Are you any closer to becoming a god now than you were when you began your Magnum Opus five years ago?’”
This time he gave no rebuttal. She seemed to be right. And now he seemed to be wrong. And in his silence was a “No,” to Tracy’s indicative question.
The Christian girl next door then went on to open her Holy Bible and to read out loud to him a most telltale passage of Bible verses about his life dream as a maker of winds: “’And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.’ Luke 12:16-21.”
In understanding of this parable first spoken by Jesus, Flanders Nickels confessed in humility and in repentance, “I may not live long enough to consummate my Magnum Opus.”
“No man can live long enough to consummate the Magnum Opus, Flanders,” said Tracy.
“It cannot be done by any man,” said Flanders. “Nor can I ever do it.”
“You are not Jesus,” she said.
“I am not Jesus,” he said in confession. “I need Jesus.”
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“What about your Carol?” asked Tracy. “She needs Jesus, also.”
“The only life dream and life goal I have left now is the girl, Tracy,” said Flanders. “Maybe I can hold off on Jesus and look for the dream girl now first.”
“Woe!” cried out the girl next door. Her burden for all lost souls that had just now reached out to a girl beloved of Tracy’s new neighbor had backfired most alarmingly. For now, just as quickly as he had repented of the Magnum Opus, he suddenly fell back again into false idolatry with his Chef d’Oeuvre! “Flanders,” cried out Miss Privette, “I thought that you were ready to get saved, and now all of a sudden you are not ready to get saved!”
“My Chef d’Oeuvre is more beautiful than the man Jesus Christ,” he said in his fondness for the opposite sex.
“Flanders, if you were to take one look at the Lord Jesus in His regal glory, you would not say or think that,” said the woman next door.
“The woman is a goddess, O Tracy,” he bragged on his Carol.
“No, Flanders. That woman was created by God,” said the girl next door. “And she is a sinner.
And she needs Jesus to save her from the fires of Hell.”
“Prove that with a Bible verse,” he challenged Miss Privette more with frustration than with certainty.
“Flanders, it is written in Psalm 119:73, ‘Thy hands have made me and fashioned me: give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments,’” recited the girl next door.
“What are you saying with that Bible verse, Tracy?” demanded Flanders, becoming desperate at
maybe losing Carol from his life now, too, because of this visitor from next door.
“This verse says that even your wheat germ girl needs to fear God, Flanders,” said Tracy.
“It does make sense that a wise and good Creator gave my Carol her great beauty,” said Flanders. “No real woman can give herself such beauty as that which God has given my Carol.”
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“Do you believe now that our Maker also made your Carol, Flanders?” asked Tracy.
“Mortal or immortal, my Chef d’Oeuvre shall ever be the girl upon whose ground I worship,” declared Flanders in star-crossed love.
“We are called to worship the Lord our God only, Flanders,” said the Christian woman next door.
“As long as I live upon this Earth, I will always love the Chef d’Oeuvre more than I do God Himself,” declared Flanders.
“So much so that you are willing to reject Christ all of your life unto death?” asked Miss Privette.
“I am willing to go to Hell and back for her,” he said.
“Flanders, there is no coming back from Hell,” said the girl next door. “Jesus saves.”
“Carol saves,” he said in blind false idolatry.
“Flanders!” rebuked Tracy in shock.
“My Chef d’Oeuvre is young and beautiful and mine,” he declared.
Then an idea passed across the mind of the girl next door. It was an idea from the Good Lord.
And it could tear down this guy’s last stronghold against seeking Jesus. She had to act quickly. And she had to be right about this idea. God would not fail her. And she said, “Flanders, your Readers’ Digest with that photograph of your woman Carol. What date is it?”
“The date of that issue?” he asked.
“Yes. When was that comely dream girl of yours put into the ad?” asked the girl next door.
“I haven’t thought of that for years,” he said. “I forgot.”
Tracy Privette reached out to the magazine with this false goddess of his inside of it, and she read out loud, “February 1973.”
“Do I understand what you’re getting at?” he asked.
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“Her picture is almost twenty years old,” said Tracy Privette.
“Eighteen years,” he said seeking to make it sound not so old.
“She does not look like that anymore,” declared the girl next door what he thought that she was getting at. “Your dream girl has aged twenty years since the time that that advertisement was taken.”
“But I discovered her in July 1979,” he said.
“That does not matter, Flanders,” said Tracy. “She looks to be twenty or twenty-five years old then. Maybe she is forty or forty-five years old now.”
“Not every girl is still a dream girl anymore when she is in her forties,” confessed Flanders, reality about his Chef d’Oeuvre now coming upon him.
“And she can only get older after that,” said Tracy hard words with a soft heart.
“I can not love an old Carol as I do the young Carol,” he cried out.
“Can a guy stay in love with a Chef d’Oeuvre who dies of natural causes?” asked the girl next door.
“A Chef d’Oeuvre in the grave is a dread ugly corpse,” he said in confession.
“And the Saviour Jesus Christ risen from the grave is a living God of regal glory,” declared the woman next door.
“Tracy Privette…,” he said.
“Yes, Flanders?” she asked.
“I believe that now,” he said. Then he said again, “I need Jesus.”
His two foundations in life broken down through the eternal wisdom of the Holy Spirit spoken by this born-again believer woman, Flanders now had nothing left in life. He had no more excuses as to why he should not get saved. He was wrong, and the girl next door was right. Indeed Jesus saves.
And he did not want to go to Hell. He really wanted to go to Heaven.
And he asked this born-again girl next door, “Could you help me get saved right now, Tracy?”
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“The honor would be mine. The glory would be Jesus’s. The salvation would be yours,” said Miss Privette in great joy and gladness.
“What must I do to get saved?” he asked.
“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” she answered most scripturally.
“I believe that the Magnum Opus is not the truth. I believe that the Chef d’Oeuvre is not the truth. I believe that the Holy Bible is the truth. And I believe that Jesus is the truth,” he proclaimed.
“I can tell that you now do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” said the girl next door. “All that you need to do now is to pray and ask God to save you and then accept His so great salvation as the free gift of everlasting life.”
“What does a guy like me say to a God like yours when he wants to become born again?” asked Flanders Nickels.
“I will lead you through the prayer line-by-line,” said Tracy Privette.
“I am ready, girl!” he said in great enthusiasm. “Let’s go for it!”
They bowed their heads at his kitchen table for the sinners’ prayer.
Just then loud music burst into this kitchen from the other apartment next door. It was an invasion at the very wrong time for this witness warrior here with Flanders right now. But for Flanders it was like a rendezvous with a beloved.
“Alas! Junk music!” cried out Tracy in dismay.
“Whoa! My Carol’s love song,” he called forth in sweet reverie.
It was the song “Loving You,” by Minnie Riperton, and it truly evoked all of Carol’s magic in bringing back to his heart all of his feelings for an old flame of dream girl.
And he said, “I can hear Carol singing to me.”
“Carol is not singing to you right now,” said Tracy. “Minnie is singing on the radio.”
“The voice is Carol’s,” he said. “And she loves me as much as I love her. I can hear it in her
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voice. Ooo, this is magic of romance!”
“Flanders, you are only pretending,” said Miss Privette.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” he said in rebuke. “Every time I used to hear this song, I could tell that my Carol was head-over-heels in love with me just as I was head-over-heels in love with her.”
“The real Carol is not in love with you, Flanders,” said Tracy a hard truth.
“I could share Paradise with her,” he said.
“The real Carol does not even know that you exist, Flanders,” said Tracy not without jealousy for her Christ.
“You’re jealous of her,” he said.
“For God and for myself,” said Tracy in truth.
“Any more of this song, and I will forget about your prayer that you were going to have me to say,” he declared in passion for beloved Carol.
“Dear God, shut down the music,” prayed the Christian woman in this exigency over Flanders’s soul.
Suddenly the music stopped. Suddenly all was quiet. Suddenly the magic was gone. “Loving You” was cut off in the middle by a prayer-answering God.
“What happened?” asked Flanders.
“The mighty God took away a lost man’s temptations,” said Tracy with a deep breath in and a deep breath out. “Thank You, God.”
“I was just getting into it,” he said.
“The Devil was trying to get you to change your mind about the Saviour,” said Miss Privette.
“What happened to me just now?” he asked. “All of a sudden all of my feelings for the dream girl swept me up in a romance that I had just gotten done repenting of.”
“The Devil tempts people with music of the world,” said the girl next door.
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“He sure tricked me, Tracy. Thank you for having prayed for me just now. I can see now that
God is the true God and that Carol is no goddess,” said Flanders Nickels.
“Are you ready to get saved now?” asked Tracy the girl next door.
“That sounds like a great idea,” he said. “Let’s have at it.”
“Let us pray now before anything else comes from the Devil,” she said.
“Should we pray first right now that God keep the Devil from interfering again?” asked Flanders with great spiritual discernment for a lost person.
“No!” said Miss Privette in a weaker moment. “We must get you through the sinners’ prayer before the Devil can think up another thing to throw our way.”
“Oh. All right,” said Flanders in deference to the woman of God.
She at once bowed her head at this kitchen table, and he did likewise.
Just then a mighty wind began to blow upon this apartment with a great and perilous force.
And the roaring of Hell itself from this wind filled this apartment with a noise that was greater even than the noise of that love song. Both looked up from this prayer. “Is that a tornado?” cried out the girl next door.
“Is that a straight line wind?” asked Flanders.
“It has been sent from Satan,” said Tracy.
“I thought that you told me that nobody can make wind but God Himself,” said Flanders.
“We must acknowledge that the Devil has power, too,” confessed the girl next door. “And he is a clever imitator of God.”
“God is more powerful than Satan. Isn’t He?” asked Flanders.
“God is utterly sovereign,” declared Tracy. “He is stronger than Satan indeed.”
“Could we pray that God take away the wind then?” asked Flanders.
“That we can do,” said Tracy, ashamed of her previous negligence.
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“Maybe we should have done that first before this wind came up like this,” he said in mixed reactions.
“You were right, and I was wrong,” confessed the Christian woman. And she prayed, “Lord, please take away this great gale from us. I’m sorry that I had not first prayed about something like this before it happened.”
And the great winds ceased, and there was a great calm inside and outside. “Thank You, Lord,” she said now.
And she said in confidence, “Now let us get you good and saved, Flanders.” But first she wanted and needed to ask God to keep any more tricks coming from the Devil upon them.
Lo, Flanders said, “Just think, Tracy. That could have been me making that great and powerful wind blow like that.”
“Alas, we are out of the frying pan and into the fire,” groaned the girl next door upon hearing this second rejection of the prayer of salvation from Flanders at this kitchen table.
“What do you mean?” asked Flanders, desirous of great power with wind.
“We just overcome the dream woman, and now we must overcome the pride of power,” she said in great disappointment.
“I think that I am jealous of the Devil,” said Flanders, having seen what the Devil had just done
with great and mighty wind.
“But the Devil is going to Hell, and he knows that he has but a short time,” said Tracy.
“Will I go to Hell were I to master the power of the wind, too?” asked Flanders.
“Right now you are going to Hell even without mastering the power of the wind, Flanders.” said Tracy, edifying him.
“There is fire down there in Hell, isn’t there?” asked Flanders.
“There is a lake of fire down there,” said the girl next door.
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“Damnation cannot be overcome with wind,” said Flanders.
“Salvation can only come from the Saviour,” said Tracy.
“I must not deny salvation for the cause of wind,” he said.
“Let us get down and do it,” said Tracy with some irritation at his vacillations at this table.
“Right here and right now,” promised Flanders Nickels.
And first Miss Privette prayed, “Lord, please keep back the Devil on his leash from reaching out to this kitchen. Keep him away from this table. Hold back his many tricks upon Flanders and upon myself. ‘Salvation belongeth unto the Lord:…’ Psalm 3:8.”
And now the time came to lead this man to the Lord. All was clear. And there was no turning back. And they bowed their heads where they sat. And this is what Tracy had Flanders to pray to get saved from his sins: “Dear Father, Who art in Heaven: I am a sinner many times over. I have the pride of fallen Lucifer. And I made a false idol of a woman. I repent now of the Magnum Opus. And I repent now of the Chef d’Oeuvre. I am sorry for both of them, and I ask for Your forgiveness for both of them, and I ask You to clean me up inside from both of them. It was Your Son Jesus Who died on the cross for these two sins of mine and for all of my other sins. And it was same Christ the Lord Who did rise back to life on the third day. I ask You now to become my own most needful personal Saviour. And I ask You now to give me everlasting life in my life to come. Thank You, Jesus, for saving my lost soul right here and right now as I come to You and ask You for this so great salvation. In Your name I pray. Amen.”
It was done. Flanders Nickels was now a born-again believer. And he was no longer walking down the road to Hell. He was now walking down the road to Heaven.
“Congratulations, Flanders,” said the girl next door. “You are now a Christian.”
“It feels good,” he said.
“I am so happy for you,” she said.
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“So am I,” said Flanders. “Thank you for leading me to Christ like you did.”
Looking up to Heaven, the girl next door prayed, “Thank You, Good Lord.”
“Praise Jesus!” said Flanders for his first time.
“It is time for me to go and get something from my apartment again,” said Tracy Privette.
“Another pencil?” asked Flanders.
“Among other things I have to give you now that you are a child of God, Flanders,” said Tracy.
And she ran away and ran right back; she had her purse with her now.
She sat back down at his kitchen table. She took out a pocket watch from her purse, looked at it, and said, “A couple minutes ago you became born again into the family of God. According to my pocket watch that makes it ten minutes after twelve in the afternoon.”
“12:10 P.M.,” said Flanders.
“Yes,” she said. She then pulled out a little calendar from her purse, a calendar that she could hold in the palm of her hand. And she looked upon it and said, “Today is February 17, 1991.”
“February 17, 1991. Yes,” concurred Flanders.
“Sunday,” she said.
“Yes. Today is Sunday,” he agreed.
She then pulled out of her purse a little booklet, and she said, “I want you to have this. It is a gift from me to you, Flanders, to commemorate your conversion to Christ.”
“It looks like one of those salvation tracts, Tracy,” he said in happiness. “Thank you.” She proffered it to him in two hands, and he accepted it from her in two hands. And he gazed upon its celestial cover. On top were the words, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And across its whole front was a glorious sunset upon the clouds and upon the water truly a glory of creation.
Then the girl next door said, “Do turn it over, if you would, Flanders.” He turned it over to its back. She then reached into her purse and took out a number one lead pencil, and she said, “Do take
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this, too, if you would, Flanders.” He took the very dark lead pencil. Then she said, “Would you put your signature on your new tract?” In ready consent, the man wrote down his name “Flanders Nickels” in cursive writing near the bottom of this last page of the tract. “Would you now write down when you prayed and got saved, Flanders?” she requested of him. And in this same dark lead pencil, he wrote down underneath his signature the words in cursive, “February 17, 1991. 12:10 P.M.” Then the girl next door said, “Would you now write underneath that the words, “I was saved.” And with his pencil he wrote in all capital printed letters, “I WAS SAVED.” “There,” said the soul-winner girl. “That’s all done now.”
“What is that for?” asked Flanders, inquisitive and acquiescent to the girl next door.
And she said, “This is for assurance of your salvation in case you come to doubts somewhere in your walk with Christ whether you really did get saved.”
“I think I see,” he said. “In case the Devil comes along and says to me, ‘Flanders, you did not really get saved,’ or ‘You did not mean what you said in the prayer.’ or ‘Christ is not the way.’ then all I have to do is to look down here at what you had me to write, and I can become reassured of what happened for me this day, and I can rest in my salvation.” She nodded.
“Oh, and let me share with you this—every good Christian’s motto:” she said. “Once saved; always saved.”
“I can never lose my salvation. Can I?” asked Flanders.
“It is a promise of God, and it is called ‘the eternal security of the believer,’” said the girl next door.
“Even if I sin?” he asked.
“Even when you sin,” she said. “A person who gets born again cannot become ‘unborn again.’”
“That makes sense to me,” said Flanders. “Seeing that God has given me everlasting life, who can take away from me that which God has given me? Surely not myself!”
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“And not only that, Flanders. But eternal life is eternal. It is from the moment of conversion down here to forever after Up There. How can something eternal suddenly just quit? It is everlasting,” preached the girl next door.
“I want to start going to a good church. I want to start praying every day. I want to start reading the Bible every day,” he said, finding three brand new and wondrous things that God blesses His sons and daughters with in their walk with Christ.
“I have one last thing to pull out of my purse for you, Flanders,” said the girl next door. And she pulled out a little red Bible for him, a pocket King James Version New Testament.
“My own Holy Bible!” he exclaimed in joy of the Lord. “Thank you! Thank you!” And he took it in both hands and held it against his heart in rejoicing.
Then the girl next door said, “I do have one more thing to give to you, Flanders, and it is not in my purse. But it may not be good enough for a cute guy like yourself.”
“What is it, Tracy?” he asked this girl next door.
“Myself as your new girlfriend-in-the-Lord,” said Tracy Lynn Privette.
“That’s the best thing you could give me other than my own conversion, girl,” bragged Flanders on his girl next door. “You are not only good enough for me, but I am hardly good enough for you.”
“Flanders, do you give yourself to me as my brand new boyfriend-in-the-Lord then?” asked Tracy Lynn Privette.
“No young man has as pretty a girlfriend as I now have in you, O Tracy,” said Flanders Arckery Nickels. “I give myself to you as you give yourself to me.”
“Soul CI—Flanders Nickels—February 17, 1991,” said the girl next door about her next entry in her book of souls. Then she said about him, “My real cute guy.”
And Flanders Nickels went on to say, “Led to Christ by a princess of a girl.”
To God be all glory and honor and praise and thanksgiving ever and anon. Amen.
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