CHAPTER 12: CONCLUSION: FAITH AND UNBELIEF
"Look at that! They’re still here. We must have landed a few minutes, or seconds, after we took off. The marvels of time travel, eh?"
"I bet they’re really surprised now, or worse, completely baffled."
Our friends are referring, of course, to Mordred’s knights, who had stood watching as the capsule had disappeared, and who now stand in the same spot, watching it appear again.
"Anyway, let’s get this thing over with, shall we?" Kerry walks over to the communicator and turns it on. There is a whirring sound and then, the voice of Mark Lewis is heard loud and clear. "Hey, what happened? We’ve been expecting to hear from you guys."
"We tried to call, but the communication was garbled. I guess we were too far away."
"But it sounds great now. What happened? Where’d you get to?"
"We got to 33 A.D."
"Say, that’s pretty good. But we’ve refigured the calculations again, and the next jump should be your last."
"I--I’m afraid, Mark," says Walt, with a lump in his throat, "we’ve already made our last jump back."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we’re not going to complete the mission. It’s impossible. We just came forward as far as Camelot in order to communicate with you and tell you our decision."
"What?! Have you fellows gone mad? After you’ve gotten this far, why should you want to give up now?"
"Because we’ve discovered the only real thing that can ever change the world; because we’ve come to realize that it’s impossible to eliminate sin from the world, and we’ve discovered that the only answer to the sin problem is Jesus Christ."
"Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ?! So, you went back to 33 A.D., and actually met the man personally?"
"Well, we didn’t actually meet Him. We heard Him speak and we saw Him crucified, and I actually saw Him once after He'd been crucified and risen from the dead. But we did meet the apostle Peter, and he set us straight on a few things."
"But you can’t just give up now, after all of this time and money has been invested. What will the shareholders think?"
"I’m sorry, Mark, but we can’t go on."
"I-I-I-I don’t know what to say. Hey John, come here and talk to these boys, will y'? Seems like they’ve got religion or something and wanta scrap the mission."
Soon John’s pleasant voice is heard. "Hey, now, fellows, what is all this?"
"Well, just like we told Mark, We came to realize that we’ve been making a big mistake. The way to make the world better is not to try to eliminate sin in the world, but to change the sinners’ hearts through Jesus Christ."
"Well, I don’t know what to say either. It certainly is a surprise. So then, you won’t even try to carry out our original plan?"
"We won't because we no longer believe in its value."
"And are all three of you agreed on this?"
"We are. We are determined to come home. If you can help us to do so quicker, we’d appreciate it. If not, we’ll try to make it on our own."
There is a moment of silence, and then John speaks again. "Well if you insist on this, I guess we’d might as well help you to get back. We have developed a force field thruster which could be of great help in pulling you back this way. So far we haven’t developed its possibilities for forward thrust--that is, from here back into the past. But the way things are going here, by the time you get back we may have that aspect ready for use as well. Probably you are tired from your much traveling and need a brief rest. We’ll help you get back, by means of the force field thruster. Then, we can have a nice long talk about your trip, you can take a little rest and when you’ll be ready to go again, we’ll probably be able to send you all the way back in only two or three leaps at the most."
"O.K., John. Maybe we do need a rest. Just help us get back."
"O.K. Do you still have some alcohol, or did you use it all?"
"We managed to save some from 33 A.D."
"And, where are you now, exactly?"
"As I told Mark, we came back to the time of Camelot. It seems like we landed a few seconds after we took off."
"Well, do everything just the way you did to get there. Use the same mixture of alcohol and fuel. I'm going to try to get a fix on you with the force field generator. Maintain contact and let me know the exact minute of your take-off. Try to call me again when you are revolving in the air. Try again when you have traveled about 500 years forward. By exerting pull on the force field from here, we might be able to pull you back in one leap, but it's a long shot."
Kerry stays at the radio controls, Walt measures the fuel and alcohol, while Daniel controls the levers. Soon the cylinder is again revolving in mid-air, much to the shook of the befuddled knights on the ground:
"Well ain't that th' derndest thing y' ever saw in yer life?"
"Sure is! First, it goes up in th' air an' disappears. Then it appears in th' air again and plops down on th' ground again. Then, it goes up in the air again like it’s fixin' t'--well, would y' look at that! There it goes again."
"I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m gettin' outa here!”
"Hey! Wait for me!"
************
The force field thruster proves successful and soon our three friends find themselves back where they started from, in the driveway of Mark Lewis' home. Everything looks basically the same as it did when they left, except that Mark’s garage has expanded into a huge laboratory. Will, John, and David are all there to greet them as they step down from the cylinder. In the doorway, they see Mark’s imposing figure, standing with his cigar and brandy snifter, and with a very cynical look on his face. The others are like little children at a party.
"Welcome home, guys!"
"Yeah, it sure is good to see you three again, even if it is a bit premature, as far as finishing the mission."
"Anyway, you certainly did prove one thing--that time travel really does work."
"I can’t wait to hear all about your experiences."
By the time they get to the door, Mark has loosened up a Little. He sets the brandy on the stoop and gives the three a big hug. "I guess it is good to see you sons-o’-guns, even if you did come back too soon."
Once inside, they briefly relate their experiences of the trip, while the others sit in awe. Finally, the time comes to be frank.
"It was a great experience,” admits Walt, "and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. To have actually been able to visit those other periods of history was thrilling, indeed. But the greatest thing that happened to us was something which could have happened right here and now and can happen to you fellows also."
"What do you mean?"
"I’m talking about the experience of finding Jesus Christ as our personal savior."
"Oh, that," sighs Mark.
"Of course, that! Can’t you see from what we’ve been saying that the whole journey was sort of geared to this? I mean that apart from our efforts, it really seemed as if an unseen hand--the hand of God, if you will--was guiding our destinations."
"That’s right," chimes in Daniel "At practically every stop the name of Jesus, or at least of God, came up somehow. Twice we were actually confronted with the message of the importance of faith in Jesus, first by the preacher in the old west, and then by the great reformer, Martin Luther."
"But all the stops," adds Kerry, "were somehow pointing us to the need for Christ if we would have realized it. The emptiness we saw in the lives of the men searching for gold, the discussion about the need for personal faith in an active God at Colonial Philadelphia, and the futility of Da Vinci's humanistic philosophy; all of these should have caused us to think."
"And then," continues Walt, "When we got pulled forward to the future, it was to the start of the terrible time of tribulation which is coming upon this earth after all the believers are taken out. I’m sure glad that now I don’t have to go through that time. But, you fellows will, if you don’t accept Jesus as your savior as we’ve done."
“Then our brief encounter with Martin Luther,” inserts Kerry, “should have showed us the importance of faith for salvation.”
“But,” adds Walt, “we chose to see Luther’s passion as coming from a crazed mind, rather than an enlightened one.”
"The stop at Camelot," adds Daniel, "helped us to realize that you can’t change the world by changing outward conditions--that the change that is necessary is an inward one."
"And then, when we were talking to Peter in 33 A.D., after having watched the actual crucifixion of Jesus, everything became clear and we realized what God had been trying to tell us all along--that the real answer is His Son, Jesus Christ. Seeing him crucified didn’t faze us at time, until we actually spoke with Peter and realized the purpose of that death."
"And that’s why we can’t continue with the mission."
"I thought" insists John, "that we were going to talk about that after you’ve had a chance to rest up."
"We’d like to talk about it now if you don’t mind."
Mark, who has been sipping his brandy and puffing on his cigar, as usual, takes another sip and another puff and sighs, "Ah, what th' heck? Let 'em talk about it now, if they want and get it out of their system, so to speak."
This time Daniel takes the lead. "Well you see, there is no use to try to play God and try to eliminate sin in the world. If God wanted sin eliminated, He would have done so Himself. But, the presence of sin in the world is a necessity, just as darkness is necessary in order to make the light shine more. But the main thing is that if there were no sin in the world, Jesus wouldn’t have had to come and die for the world. Faith in Him is the real answer to the sin problem. He came to save people from sin. He offers both forgiveness and the power of a new life. So, all we have to do to make the world better is repent of our sins and accept Jesus as our savior and try, with His help, to get other people to do the same."
"And you actually believe that?" asks John.
"We certainly do." all three answer at the same time.
"Well, I think it’s the biggest bunch of foolishness I've ever heard! What about you, Mark?"
Mark has just taken a big puff on his cigar and is blowing the smoke out slowly, while he searches the faces of the three time travelers. "Yeah, that’s for sure, John!” he says slowly, looking from Walt to Kerry to Daniel. “So all three of you became Christians eh? Well, that’s one for the books!"
"And," adds Walt, "we definitely will not continue with the mission, because it is doomed to fail anyway.”
"In fact,” continues Daniel, “we’d like to warn you not to try to continue it. You might as well abandon it, because it can never succeed, due to the fact that it's based on a wrong premise. But, if you insist on continuing it, you’ll have to send someone else to go back, because we won’t go."
"Of course, we’ll continue the mission" insists John. "Don’t be silly! Why shouldn’t we?"
"Because,” answers Daniel, “you are playing God and going against the plan of the one true Almighty God. Thus, it never will succeed."
"That’s right" adds Kerry, "It cannot succeed. Either you will all become believers in Jesus like us before this is all over with, or you will be destroyed in some way by God or one of His messengers. Jesus Christ is the only answer to the problem of sin and evil in the World. There can be no other."