a great idea at first, preacher’s dream, beaming the Good News into millions of homes—where’s the downside? But just look what happened. Greed, theft, false testimony, megalomania, cult of personality. I’m not saying Satan created TV, I’m just saying he really knows how to work it.”
Also like Cole’s parents, PW thought people would be better off with a lot less “e” and “i” in their lives.
“I’m all for Christians connecting online, sharing stories and music and videos and such. But remember, it’s always better to be together, in church or some other safe place, worshipping or doing Bible study or community service—whatever—than to be sitting home alone clicking away.”
Cole had always thought it was lame the way so many ordinary people wanted to post pages with photos of themselves and lists of all their favorite things and have everyone follow their every dumb move—like, who cared? He’d never kept a journal, but he was sure if he ever did he wouldn’t want it to be where the whole world could read it! What would be the point? Still, it was way strange at first, living in a house where the only computer you were allowed to use was in the breakfast nook (he was still in the hospital when he learned that his laptop, along with his parents’ laptops and everything else of value, had been looted from their house in Little Leap) and set up so that every site you browsed could be checked by someone else. His parents had never done that, but they would have approved of PW’s preaching a gospel of a less noisy and distracted life. They would have given an amen to his call for the need to break the hold the Internet had on people’s lives, especially young lives. Say what you would about the pandemic, at least it had helped slow down the rat race. It had also got people thinking more about the world to come. In communities like Salvation City, life had become simpler and more purpose-driven. People were sticking closer to home, spending more time with their families. And everywhere church attendance had soared.
According to Pastor Wyatt, what Christians had needed to figure out was that they’d had it right before. Dirtying their hands in politics, trying to influence the government and change the laws—all that he and many other Christians now declared a mistake. “We only made fools of ourselves. Everyone seemed to forget the saying that politics is the art of compromise, and that’s just not where our church is at. What do we care how we look to the rest of the world? What matters is how we look to God. Why should we waste energy trying to win other folks’ respect? Don’t we got a more important job than that? I want my flock to care less about what secular folks are up to and more about their own spiritual lives.”
It was said that when the Antichrist came he would make use of the Internet to lure people from the true path. Certain hidden codes were said to be already in place, waiting to be activated.
But why was it the Antichrist who got to use the Net? Cole wanted to know. Why wouldn’t Christ use it, too?
When Cole asked about this in Bible study, Mason’s one eye twinkled and he said, “Who’s to say he won’t use it, little bruh? Maybe he will. Maybe he’ll decide to have his very own blog. Wouldn’t that be dope?”
But PW said, “Jesus won’t need the Net nor any other worldly tool. He’ll be on his white charger, he’ll be wearing his blood-red robes, he’ll have his sword and his army of angels and saints. All the trumpets will be blowing. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him. Revelation, my boy! The King of kings! Say now, why would my Lord need a blog?”
Boots Ludwig and Pastor Wyatt were good friends, but that didn’t mean they always saw eye to eye. When Boots and his wife, Heidi, came to dinner, the two men often argued, as they often argued when they were on the air. They argued about more or less the same things all the time.
Boots accused PW of being too soft. He made it seem easy to be a Christian, Boots said, when being a Christian was never easy and was never meant to be. These days, too many preachers made the church sound like a warm, cozy nest where all