Chaim struggled to climb the steep, slippery side of the canyon. For a few steps he would make progress, and then a branch would break off in his hand, or his foot would slip, and he would slide back down the muddy track toward the swirling waters below. So far he had been able, each time, to stop himself before being washed away; but the water level was rising and he was no closer to escape. To make matters worse, the torrential downpour seemed to be increasing now, rather than abating.
After the others had been sent on their way, and the home unit had been sold, Chaim had travelled to Sydney, and then hiked out into the Blue Mountains, in an effort to get closer to God.
It was exciting to see something happening that was so obviously supernatural. Encouraging reports were coming in from the six "tribal judges", as he had started to call them. But the problem for Chaim was that he could not see where it was heading. Here was this wonderful worldwide movement of people doing nice things for everybody--and attracting a lot of attention for doing it--but it seemed to end there. Add to that the fact that the movement was counting on him to give them answers--answers that he did not have.
Before he left Newcastle, he had discovered a website in England. where he learned about a similar movement happening in the Western Hemisphere. He had contacted the people to learn more, but was disappointed to discover that they were unashamedly Christian, from start to finish.
That was fine for them, but what he was leading was much bigger than that. It allowed for people from all religions to work together without trying to convert one another. It would be a betrayal of what he stood for if he allowed this movement to be turned into just another Christian sect.
In fact, he could already sense tensions between himself and David Hartley, the group's only committed Christian. David was more flexible than most Christians Chaim knew, but he suffered from the same tendency to assume Christian superiority.
And then there was Mashallah, who also looked for a messiah, but as with David, it came with the trappings of religious bigotry that represented the Muslim point of view.
Vaishnu was different. He was more open to other beliefs, and, although he also looked for a messiah, he was not so prone to raise the topic of the Kalki Avatar.
What Chaim went up into the mountains to find was a way to overcome all of these differences, and to get the more religious elements of his movement to let go of their fundamentalism.
And then the rains had started. Just a drizzle at first, growing into a gentle shower. But then it changed to a catastrophic cloudburst and, what had seemed like a comfortable sanctuary with a pond in the middle and mountains on three sides before the storm came, had suddenly filled with water that could not escape quickly enough through the deep gully that became a waterfall at the open end of the canyon.
As the waters continued to rise, Chaim had moved farther up into the canyon itself. Now he was totally boxed in. It was only a matter of time before he would be drawn into the muddy water and swept over the falls. Suddenly, he found himself praying for help, something he had never really done before, even after he had started listening more seriously to God.
"Please God! A tree. A rock. Anything to get me out of here," he prayed, as he clamoured again up the muddy bank. Instead of what he had prayed for, he grabbed a clump of grass that gave way and sent him plummetting down the bank once more. This time he did not stop at the edge. He slid into the water and was drawn under. His heavy hiking boots and wet clothing added to his inability to surface. This appeared to be the end, for him and for his hopes of finding the answers he had sought. As his oxygen ran out, he felt a strange peacefulness. His mind filled with a blinding light.
And then, just as he felt certain that he was dying, there was a rumbling from under the ground, and a powerful change in the movement of the water.
Where it had been flowing over the falls at the open end of the canyon, rocks began to tumble, and the ground began to open. The entire cliff face that had caused the flood to build up behind it, collapsed, and tons of water rushed through the opening, pulling Chaim with it.
As he was about to be swept down the ravine to his death, his body crashed into a huge fallen tree that spanned the gap and was now the only obstacle to the water's escape. The crash forced water from his flooded lungs.
Chaim clung there, watching the water race down the ravine below him. He was not out of trouble yet, but at least he could breathe again.
"Thank you!" he shouted between coughs and splutters. "Oh thank you!" and then he looked around. He might be able to climb across the fallen tree to the rocks on either side, but both ends of the tree were lodged in rocks over which the water was still running strongly, from the sides of the canyon and down into the ravine. Unless the rain stopped, he would never be able to walk on those rocks without being swept over.
"Gotta stop the rain," he said to himself, and just as he did, the rain stopped, as quickly as if someone had turned off a tap. One moment it was gushing down so heavily that it was difficult to see through, and the next instant, nothing. He looked up and a hole appeared in the clouds, with the sun shining brightly through.
Chaim started to laugh almost hysterically, as he hoisted himself up onto the top of the tree. Then, hugging it as he progressed, he moved toward the nearest end, where the flow of water was already beginning to slow down. He took several minutes to cover the distance, and by the time he reached the rocks, they were almost dry. The sun was shining brightly now. He scrambled to a higher perch and then threw himself on the ground, bruised, shaken, and exhausted, but alive nevertheless.
"So what was that all about?" he exclaimed unashamedly and thankfully to God. He had no doubt that the rains had stopped in response to his mutterings, but he wanted to be sure.
"Start!" he said quietly, and the downpour immediately returned.
"No! Stop! I didn't mean that!" he shouted. And the rains stopped, as they had before.
"Okay, so what does all of this mean?" Chaim asked himself and God at the same time, when his laughing had died down. He naturally assumed that it was his responsibility to find an explanation, although he was conscious that God had to be the one to give it to him.
There had been the dream about the little girl, just before the fall of America, then the synchronicity of everyone turning up at Macquarie University, and now this. In between, Chaim had not experienced anything else that he would regard as miraculous. He still had his underlying bias against miracles, which he always associated with religious fundamentalism and ignorant superstitions.
So was God trying to say something about his attitude toward fundamentalism, perhaps?
Grabbing hold of a nearby rock, Chaim decided to try it once again.
"Start," he said softly. Nothing happened. "Start. Start raining!" His voice was louder, more demanding this time. But again nothing happened.
"Okay, so I've lost it," he said with a shrug. "It's kind of a relief anyway."
But he knew that what had happened before was not his imagination.
"Miracles happen. I can accept that," he said to himself. "But they're not the norm. Just exceptions for exceptional circumstances."
Then he looked up and said, "And that was one hell of a circumstance that you just got me out of. Thank you. Thank you."
Chaim smiled as he contemplated what was happening to him spiritually.
"So I'm becoming a fundamentalist. I believe in miracles!" He thought for a moment. "Okay, I can live with that. But what do I do about it?"
He thought more specifically about his problems with David and Mashallah. Obviously, they couldn't both be right... not perfectly right. But they had some things in common too. They both were looking for a messiah, and they both called him Jesus. This bothered Chaim. Vaishnu was looking for a messiah too, but that had not bothered Chaim. Why?
Could it be because Vaishnu's messiah was not called Jesus? How was it that he could tolerate things in non-Christians that he could not tolerate in Christians? Maybe, for all of his talk about tolerance, he really did have a blind spot when it came to Jesus. And maybe when it came to listening, this same blind spot was more like a deaf spot.
"Okay, if that's it, then I apologise," he said to God. "Could it be as simple as that? If that's the problem, I'm willing to change. Is all of this just about Jesus?"
Chaim closed his eyes, and instantly an image appeared in his brain of a man on a big white horse, wielding a huge blazing sword. Some words popped into his brain at the same time: "His name is the Word of God."
He knew instinctively that the man was Jesus, and he was overcome by the power of the revelation. In all of his listening previously, he had not seen images or heard words. It was always just silence. God had used the silence; but he now understood that what God really had wanted to do was to talk to him.
And what had kept him from hearing had been his prejudice against Jesus. Oh, he had been prepared to accept Jesus as a great philosopher, and he truly did respect much of what Jesus had been recorded as saying. But now he was coming face to face with the Man on the White Horse, the Word of God. This was Jesus in all his splendour... a Jesus with absolute authority. And Chaim literally bowed at his feet, ashamed of how he had treated him in the past.
"Forgive me," he said with heartfelt sorrow. "Forgive me!"