The Bible Study

A/N: Thanks for the reviews! Also, be sure to check out my new HM fic, Love and Loss. It's based on Friends of Mineral Town. I'm looking to make it a romantic tragedy, but things may end up happier than I had originally planned.

Anyways, it won't JUST be the Bible study in this chapter, those of you who were upset about the separation. I just wanted to get a nice update in last time, and wanted the Bible study to be in depth and steady as opposed to pointless and hurried. Know what I'm saying?

Oooh, and those of you who have been complaining about the "preachiness" of this story are REALLY not gonna like this chapter! But those of you who wish to learn a small something about what I believe in will definitely learn something.

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My heart was still beating fast as I rapped my knuckles against Jack's recently painted door. It was brown now, contrary to the shabby red color that had once frowned at farm-visitors. I noticed a new doorknob, too, one not to be twisted, but with a little lever that you're supposed to push down. It looked pretty fancy. I wondered what Jack had changed on the inside of the house.

When the door finally opened, Jack stood in the entrance with a welcoming smile on his face. "Hey," he greeted me, motioning for me to come inside.

"Hey," I said, stepping in. "Sorry I'm a little late. I had to change." Obviously, I left out the minutes Kai and me had spent together.

Indeed the inside of the house had been changed. The walls that had once been covered by carefully placed planks of wood were now hidden behind decorative wallpaper. I also noticed that the flaky wooden floor that had once been beneath my feet had been stripped away, leaving a nasty layer of concrete behind. Jack began talking to me, "It's okay, there's still some people who aren't here yet."

I looked around at those who were here. Elli and Jeff were seated on the sofa, which had been turned around so that its back faced the television. The three of us exchanged smiles until I noticed that Popuri and her father were here! Strange, I mused. Lillia, who was likely still cleaning up at the square, was one of the most religious villagers of them all.

Of course, I wasn't surprised to see Cliff emerge from the recently added bathroom. "Look who's here!" he said to me with a playful smile. The look in his eye told me of his happiness at my arrival. He sat down on the floor in front of the couch and struck up a conversation with Elli and Jeff. Chatter began to develop amonst the few who were present.

"Jack," I said hesitantly, "the house looks...nice!" My eyes continued to drift around the room. There was a new chest of drawers on the left wall, next to a sizable potted plant that hadn't been there before. But the item that most attracted my attention was a pretty acoustic guitar, which had been gently set on a stand in between the television and the right-side wall. I'd seen an instrument like this on television before, and I knew Maria owned one. But hers was old, old, old and sounded like dry beans in a tin can when she played it, which was not often. This guitar looked to be of considerably high quality. It was very pretty. I wondered if Jack played.

"Thanks," he replied. His eyes could not hide his apparent joy and pride in what he'd done with the place. "The floor's not done yet, obviously. I'm waiting for the carpet to come in so the mountain carpenter's crew can help me lay it."

I lowered my voice and stepped closer to him. "Where'd you get the money for all this?" I asked, confused. "I know Pappy never had the funds to do anything like it."

"My dad sent me some money," Jack explained to me. "The money Pappy left him in his will. Dad's already got enough, so he just gave it to me to help out. And I needed it."

"It was enough to buy that guitar?" I asked. I didn't really know the common price for such an item, but this one looked particularly expensive. "It looks kinda pricey, Jack!"

"Oh, I already had that. Dad sent it over here with the money, figurin' I might want it. Which I do. Sure is pretty, isn't it?"

I smiled because I couldn't help it. Jack's grin was just contagious. "You play?"

"Since eighth grade," he answered with another smile.

"Well, you learn somethin' new every day," I said, letting him know I thought it was cool.

Everyone looked up when the door creaked open and Harris walked in. "Sorry I'm late."

"It's okay, Harris," Jack assured him. "Maria with you?"

Harris looked down. "I'm afraid not. Her parents said she couldn't come."

Jack and Cliff looked at each other with sorrow in their gaze. "Something to pray about." Cliff's voice was sad and low.

"Sure is," Jack said, his tone equally glum. "Guess we'd better get started."

"Everybody go ahead and take a seat," Cliff instructed kindly. I sat down in a wooden chair facing Elli, with Jack and Harris on either side of me. Cliff plopped down in between Jeff and Elli, his expression growing to be one of playfulness and joy. "I'll open with prayer," he said. I listened to what he said, with only an idea of Who he was praying to. "Heavenly Father," he began, his voice surprisingly casual. Not solemn, not serious, not even scared. Though I detected respect in his bowed head and reverence in his closed eyes, it seemed as though Cliff was just talking to his uncle or to a real close friend. "We thank You for this series of opportunities You continue to give to me and Jack. We thank You for our safety today and for the fun we shared at the festival. Lord, please use Jack and me as instruments, as tools; help us to disregard ourselves and only speak things of You. We love You and praise You, God, and ask that right now You open the hearts of those who are here tonight." Then after a brief pause, he concluded, "It's in the name of Your Son Jesus that I pray this. Amen."

"Amen," Jack added. He began handing out their Books. Some had different labels on them, some were plain black or maroon, and some were colorfully decorated. The one I received was one of color, with a bouncy font on the cover that read:

NIV

Teen Devotional Bible

Devotions for Teens

Written by Teens

On the back, it advertised the devotions a little more and then explained that the devotions were only there to help teens and young adults understand the "truth of God's Word" and to give additional information about the "inspired authors of the Bible."

Jack got my attention with a soft, "Psst!"

I looked up from the Book and into his face.

"That's a really good Bible," he told me. "Same truth, but with some really helpful devotionals and stuff. I want you to keep it."

"Thanks," I said, turning it over in my hands. I already had a Bible at my house, except I remembered that on the spine it had different letters besides "NIV."

"I think it'll help you understand it more than you would with the King James Version that Pappy gave you," Jack explained. "The words in this one are smaller and simpler so you spend less time trying to figure out what it's saying and more time learning the truth that's written."

"Oh." I looked at it again, this time opening it up to examine the small print on the tissue paper pages. I saw what must've been one of the devotions, typed in a different font and separated by a decorative green box.

"Okay," Cliff started. "We're gonna begin by looking in the book of John. If you look in the table of contents in your Bible, it'll tell what page you can find it on." He gave us time to find it.

I read the first passage of the section to myself, silently. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning."

WHAT?

I thought this was supposed to be easy to understand!

"I realize," Cliff said, reading my obviously confused expression, "that the first couple of verses are really, really confusing and don't make much sense at all to you. But since all of y'all are new to the Bible, we're going to just look at the easy, more. . .what's the word. . .VITAL things, I guess you would say. Now don't get me wrong. Every single thing printed in this Book is vital, but there's also a passage in here that says that just like babies start by eating soft foods and then later progress to meat and stuff, newbies to the Bible start with the easy things and then move on to the more intense passages. Are we good so far?"

We nodded.

"So before we look at this portion of the Bible, I'm going to give you a little background. We're going to start looking at a man named Jesus. Jesus was the Son of God. There's more to that, and we'll come back to it, but for now, I'll just tell you this. God chose a woman to give physical birth to Him, that is Jesus. This woman, Mary, was a virgin, about to be wed, but God caused her to conceive. That's the miracle of it all. Mary understood that her baby would actually be God's baby. She understood that He would be the Son of God. God told her this."

"About to be wed?" Popuri said, her voice skeptical. "If she suddenly conceived, wouldn't her fiance kinda. . .see? Wouldn't he see and then think she was cheating on him?"

Clever thinking for somebody like Popuri.

"And that's part of the story." Cliff paused. "Actually, everybody turn back your pages until you get to a book before John, called Matthew." Cliff leafed through his own Bible. "There, look at Chapter 1, verse 18. 'This is how the birth of Jesus came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.' You can read for yourself after that. Basically, what happens is God's angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him to go ahead and wed Mary because it was God who caused her to conceive. Then in verse 22 it tells us that all of this happened to fulfill the prophecies in the Old Testament."

"There's a few things in here that you guys may not understand because you've never heard anything like this before," Jack said, looking up from his manuscript. "For one thing, the Holy Spirit."

"We know what spirits are, Jack," Basil said, his voice, though polite, hinting offence.

"Ah, but the Holy Spirit isn't just a spirit. The Holy Spirit is God's spirit. You guys all believe we have spirits, correct?"

We nodded.

"So do we, although the word more commonly used is 'soul,' as far as we go anyway. But God's spirit, the Holy Spirit, is a part of Him. There are three things that make up God. There's the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. We call that the Trinity. That's just to clear it up a little. We'll get deeper into the Trinity as we get deeper into this Bible study. The second thing I thought you all might not understand is the reference to prophecies in the Old Testament.

"The Bible is split into two big sections: The Old Testament and, just guess what the other one is."

"The New Testament," we responded. The mood was a little bit lighter.

"The Old Testament tells about the things we need to know about before Jesus's birth. In it, there are prophecies, spoken through God's selected prophets, that let the people know what they were looking for in the Messiah."

"That's Jewish," Basil said, his eyes lighting up. "Wait! I've heard some of these things before in my travels. Jewish people nowadays are people who don't believe anything in the New Testament, correct?"

"As far as I know," shrugged Cliff. "I'm no scholar, but from what I have learned, the Jews believe Jesus to have been just another prophet. But let me tell you why that's not right - "

"Wait a minute," Jack said to Cliff. "Let's finish up with Old and New Testament business. So that's the Old Testament. The New Testament is made up of the things we need to know about what happened in and after the life of Jesus. The New Testament is what we're going to be studying until we gain understanding of it as a group. It contains the key to our salvation."

"We'll come back to the flaws in Jewish belief later," Cliff said. "We really need to get through the life of Jesus to fully understand that."

"Agreed," Jack nodded.

"Tonight, we won't go too deep into it." Cliff looked around, pausing, taking a breath. "Three of you have been in here with us before, plus one who could not be here with us tonight. Jeff, Elli, Harris, and. . .Maria. All of you have yet to make the decision."

The room was silent as a winter night. Suddenly Cliff was talking again. He began explaining things about the life of this man Jesus. He told of His childhood, how He had taught even the priests things of God that they had never known. After twenty minutes, Jack took over, telling us fascinating stories of miracles performed by Jesus, of the scorn of the Pharisees, of the way His own hometown came to despise Him. We heard about the choosing of disciples, of the parables Jesus told the people and then later explained to the Twelve. We were told how Jesus predicted His own death and resurrection and His betrayal by one of the disciples. It was like an epic drama story; I was kept constantly on the edge of my seat, wondering, "What will happen next? Oh, no, it's not Peter, is it? Peter won't be the one to betray Jesus, will he? The Pharisees! Why doesn't Jesus run away? He can escape them!" Cliff and Jack did a wonderful job telling the story, making us jump with every foul word spoken from the lips of the Pharisees, every dangerous situation encountered by Jesus and the Twelve.

All the time, we skipped around throughout what we learned to be the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

It was near midnight when Cliff directed us to Chapter 26 in the book of Matthew. The six of us shivered and shook as we read about the plot against Jesus, Judas's agreement with the cheif priest to betray Him, and the frightening words spoken at the Last Supper. Cliff read aloud as the rest of us read along, hearts pounding, hands shaking, breaths quivering, "'While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."'"

"What?" Popuri gasped. "What? What's happening, Cliff? What's going on?"

"Just listen," Jack said, his voice dark. His tone of voice told us to just wait and see.

Cliff continued. "'Then He took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom."'"

"Cliff!" Elli exclaimed, propping herself up on the sofa. By now, I'd slid to the floor after falling out of my chair twice and looked up at her, sharing her concern. "What's happening? Tell us what that means!"

Such questions and comments from everybody present had not been uncommon throughout the night. There were many complicated, confusing things that we did not understand, and Jack and Cliff would kindly take time to answer our many questions as well as they could. "The story is almost over," Jack said, his voice hushed. "You'll see, you'll see."

"Oh, no!" I cried, literal tears forming in my eyes. Throughout the story it was as though we had all formed a bond with the characters, and I had a sinking feeling in my tummy as though something very bad was about to happen. "It's Judas! Judas is about to betray Him, and Jesus knows! Jesus knows!"

"NOO!" Popuri and Elli wailed, tears gathering in their own eyes.

"Shhh!" Basil and Jeff hushed us. "We want to hear what happens, be quiet!" Basil pressed, his voice low.

Cliff read on, telling us how Jesus predicted Peter's denial of Him as they retreated to the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane. He told us that Jesus took three disciples up with Him to pray, telling the others to stay behind. "'Then,'" Cliff read, "'He said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with Me." Going a little farther, He fell down with His face to the ground and prayed...'"

Goosebumps pricked my bare legs, which I quickly tucked in to my chest. Something bad was about to occur...

"'"My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will."'"

We heard how He went back and found His disciples sleeping, and Popuri began to shout, "Why are they sleeping? Don't they know? Don't they know that they should be praying!"

"SHHH!"

"'He went away a second time and prayed...'"

As Cliff repeated the same prayer, a tear escaped my eye. I was scared.

Jeff showed signs of anger when we heard that Jesus found them all sleeping again and then again. Elli and I were in tears, and Popuri was on the verge of sobbing into her daddy's shoulder.

Soon, Cliff was reading about Judas coming with the priests and elders to betray Jesus. The six of us nearly jumped out of our skins when Peter cut off the ear of one of the servants. We were puzzled and amazed when Jesus healed it. We were frightened as we listened to Cliff tell of the questioning of Jesus before the Sanhedrin, upset about the false witnesses. We were angry as we heard about Peter's denial of Jesus, ashamed of him. We shivered hearing of Judas's thirty silver coins. We listened in fear as Cliff read about Jesus going before Pilate.

"They're letting the murderer out?" Popuri burst.

"But Jesus is innocent!" I wailed.

"'But they shouted all the louder,'" Cliff read, "'"Crucify Him!"'"

Just like that, Elli, Popuri, and I burst into tears. I leaned over to sob into the cushions of the sofa. They were going to kill Him! They were going to kill Jesus! He had done nothing wrong, but they were going to kill Him!

"'...Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed Him over to be crucified.'"

We cried all the harder. I didn't look up from plush leather of the sofa. I just let my many tears run into it unimpeded. When we got to the part about the Roman soldiers mocking Jesus, I felt Jack slide down to sit beside me and stroke my back. I finally turned around, still listening to Cliff's dark reading voice telling the dark story, and let myself cry all over Jack's tee shirt.

"'They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head. They put a staff in His right hand and knelt in front of Him and mocked Him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. They spit on Him, and took the staff and struck Him on the head again and again. After they had mocked Him, they took off the robe and put His own clothes on Him. Then they led Him away to crucify Him.'"

Jack wrapped his arms around me, and I continued to sob and wail as Cliff read on about the carrying of the cross, the nailing of His hands and feet, and the mocking sign that they hung above Jesus's head that said, "THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS."

"'. . ."My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"'"

"Why did He forsake Him?" Popuri screamed in anger.

I looked Jack in the eyes. "Why?" I asked him, my voice barely audible through my flowing tears.

"Just listen," Jack whispered to me.

Cliff continued to read. He read about Jesus's death, and then the burial, and then the guards at the tomb.

But then...then he read about the resurrection.

"'After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

"'There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

"'The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He has risen, just as He said. Come and see the place where He lay. Then go quickly and tell His disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him.' Now I have told you."

"'So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell His disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," He said. They came to Him, clasped His feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see Me."'"

"He's alive!" Popuri shrieked. "He's alive! He's alive!"

Elli and I joined in the squealing as the three of us, who had long since jumped to our feet, began to leap and sing in joy. Never before had I become so involved in the telling of a story.

Finally, when we'd settled down, still sniffling and wiping at our eyes, Jack looked at us and said, "True story."

We all looked at each other.

"When are y'all gonna host another one of these?" Jeff asked. "Next week?"

Cliff and Jack looked at each other sadly. They knew we weren't quite ready for the rest of the story that we knew there was. "Yes," answered Jack. "After the fireworks display on Summer first."

"I'll be here," I said to the two boys in attempts to cheer them up. It worked pretty well. Jack stood, and I embraced him long and hard. "That was a real good story, Jack," I whispered to him as the others around us were having their own conversations. "I believe it."

He was quiet, doing nothing but returning my warm hug. "Then you'd better be here next week, Karen."

I sighed with a grin. Jack must've been the best hugger in the world. "Oh, Jack, you give good hugs," I said, even though I knew I'd said it to him just yesterday.

"So do you," he told me, giving me one last squeeze. "See you later, Karen. Love ya."

"Love you, too, Jack." I stepped away from him. "C'mon, Cliffy, let's go home."

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A/N: I know, I know, it was short. But after this, things are gonna start picking up pace and getting faster. I'm getting tired of going so slow, as are you I'm sure. I spent all day on this, so I hope you're happy. Please review, and I'll get the next chapter up just as soon as I can.