Before Jack began, he walked over to Patrick and Tamara and offered his congratulations. But he did have a question for Tammy, based on what he had read about her family on the church's website.
"Tammy," inquired Jack, "You said your children were born again on the same night three years ago. But Emily would have been only two at the time - "
"Emily has been able to talk in full sentences since she was eighteen months old," interrupted Tammy. "She's been a fast learner, and also had the ability to read shortly after her second birthday as well. One night, my family gathered around the table. We were still in huge grief over my precious husband being taken away from us. Emily was, oh, two years eight months. We decided to reflect on the Bible. I began reading from the Authorized Version of Saint John's Gospel. After I read six verses, Emily just grabbed the Bible and began reading the rest of it, without making a mistake, nonstop for three hours. As the story progressed, Kaitlin and Chester were shocked at how well she was reading, then started paying attention to the words.
"Emily then read the last two verses in John, Chapter twenty: 'And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.' Emily then burst into tears, knelt, and asked Jesus to come into her heart. She never got to the last chapter, twenty-one. So touched were Kaitlin and Chester by this that they too started crying then they fell to their knees. Although they have always been Christians they asked God to forgive their sins so they could accept Jesus as well. Then, to my amazement, they all began speaking in tongues, and thirty seconds later I did too - how full the room was filled with the Holy Spirit. I had never prayed in tongues before until that night. It was then the four of us were healed. We still grieve for Don, of course, but we got the will to go on. And now, we have Patrick - and my children have the father, brother and sister they've all prayed for. Not to mention the best possible extended family one can pray for!"
Jack, never too keen on being 'born again', thanked Tamara for the clarification, but offered no further comment. Instead he accepted a headset microphone and battery pack from Ruthie. He faced the congregation, made his way to the first row center aisle and said:
"I know I am far less welcome here than a swarm of mosquitoes - "
There was thunderous applause.
" - but I also know you have all eschewed the Word of Faith, at least since Rod and Shelby took over this congregation about nine years ago. It has been quiet criticism, but it has gotten far more pronounced since Felicity and Hope, then Patrick, joined your pastoral team. At the heart of the modern variant of the beliefs of E.W. Kenyon have been the latter two's parents, Harry and Prudence Anderson. Well I can tell you I've known them for fifty years and it's been nothing but a nightmare for me for most of those years, dealing with them.
"Both were quite wealthy already, and grew up in British Israelism families. They started university in their late twenties, when I first met them. Through a combination of perseverance and sleeping around with senior management - both going both ways, by the way - they wound up as executive producers of Walter Abramson's media division. I could on forever about what they've done since then, year by year, but I will tell you about three things - their terrorist activities, their unrepentant abuse of children and teenagers, and finding an aide who found his way to committing truly cowardly things at their orders and payoffs. So ... here goes."
Jack began by giving details about their march up the ranks to the production crew, following by their financing the terrorist act and his getting paid off to shut up about it, that went into much more detail than the précis he gave to the posse. He offered a sincere apology for his role. Then he began to yarn a story about Harry and Prudence that even their children didn't know about.
"Shortly after they became born again - or said they were - in 1971, they headed back to their hometown, here in Saint Louis. They took over a relatively small church. They had a modest congregation but they were barely making ends meet. They decided to launch the Grace is Yours network just about then. It was only when they took advantage of the 'must carry' rules that they became superstars in Christianity, at least in their own minds. They took the profits, and deciding there wasn't enough room here for such a burgeoning ministry, headed for Anaheim.
"They got richer by the day, funneling more than eighty percent of contributions to their personal accounts. Everything else went to administration. Not one penny went to extending the word of God. They played the markets, got even richer. They bought their own satellite, again with viewer contributions, skimmed a 'commission' in the hundreds of millions, invested and got half again rich, and so forth. All this 'sow a seed, reap a blessing'? What a load of crap! The Andersons got the goldmine, the viewers got the shaft!"
Applause. The congregation was sensing that perhaps Jack was on their side.
"Want one example? One of my favorites has to be a woman in 1980, when Miss Anderson was just two years old and Patrick a newborn, who wrote in and said she was battling a deadbeat dad who owed tons of money on alimony and child support to six children including two sets of twins. Harry read the letter on TV, then addressed the woman directly on camera: 'Sow a seed of, uh, thirty-seven dollars. We're not trying to buy God off, just make a contract with Him. Thirty-seven dollars!' Now on TV a month later, he said, 'The ex-husband of our loyal prayer partner called her the next day and wired her forty-seven thousand dollars including back interest.'
"Well, that kind of bugged me, that something wasn't quite right. No guy just ups and does that like that. So I called Harry, because my predecessor's show was shown on his network. I asked him to give me the name and address of the woman to verify the 'miracle'. No dice, Harry said, privacy laws. Well, I knew someone in the mail room and asked her for help. I tracked down the woman in question. She said to me that over the four years Harry had been national she had donated over two thousand dollars with nothing to show for it, for the same prayer request! I then asked her if her husband paid up anything. She said yes, but he actually coughed up a twelve thousand dollar lump sum and set up a payment plan for the rest over four years. His lawyer sent the proposal to her and she received it one week before the broadcast, and she accepted it. And the only reason he paid up - without any remorse - was because he was due for a big tax assessment that year and he needed to zero out his bill - and support payments were tax deductible. At least, the child support payments. Alimony wasn't but when I got in touch with him, he told me it was important to do the right thing.
"Well, she then sent a letter to Harry and punk'd him with something that wasn't even true! Harry, in his zeal to score one, never called her back to see if this was for real. Many faith healers actually do so they don't look stupid. She sent another letter following up, telling the truth and apologizing. Harry didn't say he was conned. Instead, he made it seem she got all the money at once. It's still a lie, in my opinion. And that's when I began to realize the level of his and Prudence' depravity and unscrupulousness. I thought the al-Aqsa attack was one thing. This really proved how evil they are."
Hope gasped. This was the first time she ever heard about this.
"Oh, and the faith healings! Yes, for about ten years Harry and Prudence did them. It stopped when Hope started speaking in complete sentences at the age four because they feared she knew better, and of course she did and does. They performed thousands. Or they said they did. With only four exceptions, they used actors who were paid scale to fake getting cured. The four managed to sneak through security. And only one of them experienced what one might rightfully call a cure - a thirteen year old girl who was thought to be paralyzed from the neck down for life. Sort of. She did walk out of the wheelchair, unprompted, which freaked out Harry and Prudence and made them faint! Turns out she was diagnosed with the wrong disease all along - and no one ever encouraged her to walk. She still has major health issues - such as the same NF1 that afflicted Ms Hunter for so long - but she has about as close to a normal life as possible.
"They knew they were phonies. They told me they were con artists. But religion - organized or not - is one of the biggest revenue generators among all industries. You need to understand this, my friends. Religion is a business, an industry.
"About the time Hope was twelve and Patrick was ten, they no longer lived in adjacent bedrooms in the huge mansion they once called home. Hope had already broken ranks with her parents over the Charismatic Movement that took over mainline churches, starting in the 1960s. It's not that she didn't see a problem with Pentecostal principles being adopted by Roman Catholicism and the mainstream Protestant churches. She saw it as a welcome advance -"
"And I still do!" interrupted Hope from her chair.
" - yes, Miss Anderson, but I understand you feared that too many people would be deluded into thinking among other things they could speak in tongues ... when not all can."
Hope stood up and approached Jack in a non-threatening stance.
"You and I both know that eighty percent of people who claim they can speak tongues, can't, or fake it," said Hope once they were face-to-face. "It went beyond that with me. Pentecostals generally believe that the ability to speak in tongues is the first sign of being able to receive baptism of the Spirit. Charismatics believe our experiences with the Holy Spirit as being filled with the Spirit, are the key. There's an important difference. No, Jack, I do think that spreading the message of Pentecost to all the sister churches is important, especially sola fide. But even at the age of twelve, I already was seeing a lot of my Catholic friends in school speaking in tongues. That's not a bad thing if you know what the interpretation is. But if you don't then who are you praying to? It's probably yourself - or at worst, Satan."
Hope's comments received a loud round of applause.
"And that's where things broke down with you and Patrick. Isn't it, Hope?" asked Jack.
"Yes," said Hope. Patrick, behind them, nodded. "I got into an argument with my brother about this. Both of us were using the Bible to prove our points. Finally, I just moved down the hall. It had been strained for months, but there was no compromising on this one. We didn't even speak to each other at dinner. I didn't speak to my parents at dinner. And when I negotiated a truce with them - but not with Patrick - I told them if I was to have a show I had to do it my way. If you have the gift of tongues, use it. But just because you can't speak in tongues, doesn't mean you are automatically apart from God. That's the point I was trying to make all these years. And what I'm still doing here. It took twenty years for Patrick to come around - and only because he couldn't live anymore with what happened to him."
"Have you and Patrick ever spoken in tongues?"
"I don't know about my brother, but I have. Three times total, the first when I was sixteen. And that many, actually is a lot."
"For the record, Jack, I have too ..." said Patrick. "I faked it for the longest time to get the cash, but the first night Tammy and I were together in bed, she and I spoke tongues for real."
The congregation murmured. This was a big admission from the formerly aberrant minister. They applauded him for his honesty.
"Well ..." said Jack after a pause, "... would you two be interested to know that your parents financed Hope's being raped by Edward Sanderson while she was at seminary?"
Hope had to keep herself from hurling. "And that's why? Because I used my mind?"
"Yes."
"So why did they let me on the air?"
"To make sure you never said anything, even if Ed came back into your life. Which he apparently did, in disguise."
Hope frowned. "What about Lisa Lumby, and Catherine and Rita Hampton?"
"Friends of Ruthie's," said Jack.
"And Deena and little Annie was because they're in Ruthie's family ..."
" ... and Ruthie, Felicity and Shelby are the next to be raped. Sooner rather than later. Fair warning, ladies."
He leaned over to Hope, and whispered, "And it's because you and Ruthie are tying the knot on Tuesday. Congratulations to both of you, but Ed knows."
"And you know this because - " Hope whispered back.
"Ed hacked into your e-mail, found out how intimate you and Ruthie are, then he sent me a text message!" said Jack. "That's why I'm really here. All of this is being paid for by Harry and Prudence. And the attacks on the religious sites - they'll happen in two weeks tomorrow. He told me the date."
"What about Lisa and Brigitte getting kidnapped?"
"Ask the kidnappers. They've confessed they were acting on orders from your parents, too. Nothing to do with my church."
"And you're asking for our help because -" said Hope aloud.
"We have the same enemies. I told all of you that!" replied Jack, resuming his normal voice too.
"You already know you're going to jail?"
"Better in the clink than dead. I don't want anything to do with any act of terrorist, including rape! And my life is in danger too."
Patrick stood up. "You want our help, you'll get it," he said. "Whatever you want. Now, I believe you have a sermon you want to give. The floor's yours."
Jack returned to the lectern and began to speak about the Parable of the Prodigal Son.