James Patterson’s Journal—The Story Of The Congregation Of Andria Church During The Dark Time (Patterson’s Tale #5)
(Note: Parts #1 through #12 can be read by logging on to <timesexaminer.com>, then click on my name when our home page comes up. Scroll down the lists to part #1, published Aug. 5, 2023)
RACHARD LEE BECOMES PASTOR OF ANDRIA CHURCH
“During this time we elected Rachard Lee as our new pastor. He had a very old God’s Bible that he showed to all of us one dark Sabbath night. We had only fatwax candles to see by, but he showed us the page at its front where it said it had been printed in someplace called ‘Atlanta, Georgia’ back in A.D. 2142, which he told us was just before the start of the time when people on our continent all began to fight each other. Lee told us that night that no one knew how long these wars had been going on, but that he believed that it had been for a period of hundreds of years. He said that his old Bible had been authorized by a new king named James, who had probably lived before the start of the wars that had ripped apart our continent and its people.
“Our new pastor was determined to resume our normal worship services as soon as we all agreed it was safe to do so. One Sabbath morning he gathered all of us together in our big room next to one of the fireplaces, then he asked me to pray for God’s blessing on us, and thank Him for the blessings we had received. At first I had a hard time trying to think of blessings we had received rather than the increasing persecution we were experiencing. I managed to think of one or two, including His sending my wonderful Leah to me to be my wife. There were about 35 of us there that morning when our pastor told us to sit down on the floor. We had only a few chairs and no benches, so most of the time we all sat on the floor. Using his old Bible he explained that God’s Word plainly taught that persecutions of God’s people often made them stronger and more trusting in His protection. He told us that the persecution of the very first Jesus followers back in the ancient times led to their being spread all over the empire of the Romans that existed then, which resulted in God’s Gospel, or Good News, being taken to people throughout the known world.
THE JESUS FOLLOWERS OF ANDRIA VILLAGE BECOME KNOWN AS THE ‘FISH” PEOPLE OF ANCIENT TIMES
“He read the passages that told of how a man named Saul had persecuted the new followers of our Messiah, and how he himself had been spoken to personally by our Lord out on a lonely road, and saved. He read how Saul’s name had been changed by our LORD to Paul and how a persecutor like him became one of the greatest servants of our Jesus God the world has ever known. Lee spent more time stressing how persecution could make us better and more faithful followers, as it had since our Lord Jesus first walked among men and warned them that those who followed after Him would always suffer some sort of persecution. Surprisingly our pastor Lee told us that we must pray for the salvation of the Enforcers and Overmasters who abused and persecuted us. He even claimed that it was not beyond God’s power to save some of the evil Enforcers that had killed our members. He looked at the several young people with us and told them that they could be the ones that God used in the future to witness to the Enforcer beasts who hated us so much. He reminded all of us that even though no Enforcer had ever become a follower of Jesus God to his knowledge, with God nothing was impossible. But he reminded us that even our Savior, Jesus God, was persecuted by the governing authorities while He lived on this world, and that we, as His followers, will surely experience the same.
“Finally, Pastor Lee told us that in the ancient time the Jesus followers identified themselves with a “fish” symbol, although he didn’t know why. He led us into the hallway and stopped in front of our beautiful old Saint Andrew’s Cross flag that had been painted on the wall perhaps centuries before. He looked at it for a few minutes without saying anything. Then tears began to run down his cheeks. He told us that where he came from, the large village called Fillyelfia, he had been inside some very old buildings that had this same flag painted on their walls, along with a strange flag that had red and white stripes on it, with many stars in a field of blue. We had never seen any flag before, except for the one on our old church’s wall, and it was exciting to learn about such things. He said that the people in ‘Filly’, which he called his home village, had told him that the Saint Andrew’s Cross flag had been a symbol of resistance to tyranny for centuries, and was the most sacred flag that any of them knew, except for what he called ‘a Christian flag’ that he had seen once when he was a youth. Lee told us that his father had told him that Saint Andrew’s Cross was the same flag used by the forces of Rober Tely during The Tyrant’s War centuries before, although he couldn’t tell us the significance of the 13 stars. But as we stood looking at that old flag tears began to leak from my eyes also.
“Our pastor told us that from now on we who belonged to our Savior, Jesus, would be known as “the Fish People”, and that term would be used when referring to each other or to our movement. He told us that in “Filly” the JS people had begun to draw a symbol of a fish to help identify others who might also belong to our Savior. He took a char-stick from his pocket and as we watched, he drew a picture of a fish above the flag painted on our wall. He went into our small work room and retrieved a mallet and a chisel. He handed them to his daughter, my wife Leah, and instructed her on how to use the tools to cut the outline of the fish in the soft plaster of the wall. It took her only a short time to cut the entire outline of the fish onto the wall over our flag. Lee then handed me his char-stick and told me to trace the lines that Lead had carved, so the image of our “fish” would stand out boldly. As I finished, our pastor told us that our Savior expected His followers to “stand out boldly” just like our little fish. It was a lesson from a great Godly man that I have never forgotten.
SPIRITUAL VICTORIES AND CHALLENGES
“This happened in Summer Late of the year 2378, as I recollect. During the next 32 years, until the terrible year of 2410, when the increasingly persecuted lives of the “fish people” around Andria village came to a violent end, we had more good times than bad, and we experienced many more blessings from our Savior than we received hatred and persecution from our oppressors. Our two daughters, Janda and Karra, grew into lovely young women who were devoted to their Savior and were a joy to me and to their mother. They married good men who were also “fish people”, and within a few years we had 5 wonderful grandchildren to love and cherish. Tragically, because of the evil ones they never lived long enough to enter adulthood and experience the joys and challenges that it brings about. They were greatly loved for the years we did have them, and I know they are waiting for me in God’s Heaven, and are preparing to give me many hugs just like they did when they lived.
“Over the years we had our spiritual victories and many challenges caused by the followers of the evil one. The number of saved members of Andria Church grew slowly over that time, and some years we lost more members than we gained. Some died naturally or of some fatal disease, or of old age at 45 to 55 years; some were killed by members of other clans during the increasingly violent feuds between them; some died at the hands of the Enforcers who randomly broke into our homes, searching for forbidden weapons such as any kind of metal bladed knife with a point. Mostly they just burst in to the homes of villagers at any time of the day or eve, and took what they pleased from us. To resist them in any way invited at best a severe beating, and at worst being dragged away by them, most of the time never to be seen again by their victim’s family.
“By Fall Late of the year 2395, or thereabouts, the beatings and general harassments against mainly the members of the JS (the pagans were also persecuted, but not in the same degree as we were), began to take its toll on our faithful members. By that time we were down to about 30 adults and children in our church, and we were struggling to continue. Somehow we kept going, but that was the year we decided to discontinue meeting during the daylight hours and meet only during the darkness. We were certain that the Enforcer beasts knew of the existence of our group, but they seemed more disposed to picking us off one or two at a time in the village rather than risk an ambush by Lee’s or my late uncle Karkal’s pagan followers on the shadowy trails leading to and around our old building.
“We eventually started to “camouflage” our old building, keeping it well maintained but periodically placing ‘clever dirt’, as our pastor called it, in the hallway and in the rooms to make it look as though it was an abandoned building. I only recall one time that several Enforcers went through it while several of us hid in the forest nearby. They were heard to conclude that their efforts to discourage us from meeting together must have been successful since the building was ‘obviously abandoned’. The next year they came and posted several signs around the area warning people to “Keep Out” and to “Stay Away” by order of the Andria Enforcers. We ignored the signs and continued to meet together, although toward the end we met only two or three times a month because of the danger from the Enforcers and our pagan fellow villagers who, while not reporting us to the beasts, did the work of the Enforcers voluntarily by generally harassing us, painting vile pictures on our homes (none of them knew how to read or write so at least they couldn’t print evil words on our homes).
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NEXT TIME: Pastor Rachard Lee strengthens his position as both our spiritual leader and leader of the Resistance. The pagans of Andria village decrease their harassment of the Jesus Sect, and the non-committed villagers find welcome and safety among their Jesus Sect neighbors. A great sickness descends upon Andria village, and many of the villagers die, including Pastor Lee’s wife. Lee’s son, Edrood, and his family and followers, flee from Fillyelfia after a great uprising there, and are reunited with Pastor Lee and his sister, Leah. Andria village is attacked by a large group of Military Enforcers, but God grants the villagers a victory over the forces of repression.
