No one would have been the wiser if science hadn’t caught them. Pastor Henry, his wife and family moved to the small town of Copper Hill, Tennessee shortly after he left the military. Their little congregation had three ladies with cancer, and a young man stuck in his bed for the foreseeable future and had been for most of his life. They were the first in the town to get a miraculous healing.
It wasn’t too long after that a man who had lost his leg in an accident at the mill, had his stump regrown into a fully functional leg complete with a suntan line where his sock would rest. Older folks suddenly became as spry as they had been in their youth. The congregation didn’t get sick anymore, not even allergies. The miracles were powerful, frequent and started to spill out into the surrounding communities. Pastor Henry wasn’t one of those fire and brimstone preachers. He spoke the truth in an easy-to-understand manner. Things were good for their church as they rolled into that fateful spring. Sister Martha celebrated her 100th birthday by jumping from an airplane, the Smiths celebrated their 50th anniversary by running a 5k and for the valentines dinner the senior Sunday school class cooked an outstanding meal for the newlyweds around their town.
His family fit right in with everyone; his two boys attended the local middle school, his baby girl was in the elementary school and his wife joined the PTA and was elected President almost immediately. She took over the ladies ministry as most pastors wives do. Callie loved and supported her husband in most things, when she disagreed with him, he knew it. She really didn’t think he should have left the military and prayed that John would accept himself as God had designed and gifted him. She constantly encouraged him to accept it in full, but knowing how scared he was of it she didn’t push..very hard.
John Ford Henry grew up a pastors son, his grandfather was a pastor, and his great grand daddy. He was the first to graduate seminary, that didn’t change the examples they had showed him as he grew up though. Love God, love your neighbor, treat your wife with love and respect and the same for your children. He had joined the army right after seminary as a chaplain. He regularly interacted with the soldiers he was assigned to and they loved their Chap. When the United States declared war, his unit was the first to go and he went gladly, excitedly looking forward to it. That deployment opened his eyes to a gift from God beyond his ability to speak and preach however and it scared him.
A medic was the first to see the miraculous healing that had started it all. They were on a convoy to another base when an explosion blew one of their vehicles into a mangled mess of metal. It severally injured the two occupants, one died right away. The medic went to work. When the firefight was over, John kneeled next to the bodies of the men and prayed.
He prayed, “Dear God in heaven, I beg you to grant your mercy to these two soldiers. They are here to serve my Lord. Their lives aren’t over yet. You can still use them for your glory, my God. I pray you don’t allow the forces of darkness to do any more damage to them, and I pray you heal them. In Jesus’ name I pray Amen”
Then he touched the medic and quickly prayed, “God, give him strength and power to complete his mission. Open his eyes to your glory”
He rose and walked on to the other soldiers, continuing to console and pray for them. The medic didn’t move. Speechless, with tears streaming down his face. He had just watched a man blasted by a roadside bomb; Jaw hanging, arm just about gone. He had bandaged him. He still had blood on his hands from carefully putting his insides back where they belonged. Flesh knit back and sealed with no scarring. Completely healed. Then the other soldier, once dead, sat up. He jumped up screaming about the miracles, but no one really believed him. They said he was just tired. He knew he wasn’t. When the chaplain had prayed for him, all weariness had left him. The two men laying there knew. His leadership put in for commendations, they gave him full credit for saving those two men’s lives. He hadn’t even worked on the dead man. He was dead when he reached them.
The dead man stood up and walked over to Chaplain Henry. “Sir,” he said, “I was just standing next to my body and watched you pray for SPC Carter and I. I was dead and you brought me back to life. And Carter was almost there when you pulled him back to the living. Thank You Sir.”
“It wasn’t me Sarge, I just prayed for God to keep you safe. I am glad you are ok.” Henry said awkwardly. At first, he thought nothing of it. The writings of his future were complete.
The soldiers he ministered too thought of him as their good luck charm.
The sick, the wounded, anyone he prayed for walked away better for it.
If Chaplain Henry prayed with you before a mission, you came home.
None wanted to risk it, so even the atheist had him pray.
Everyone sought him out. Yet most didn’t really think it was as it appeared. War does weird things to the brain. Instead of Chaplain or the plethora of nicknames soldiers called their chaplain, like “the God guy”, or “Chappy”, or even “Spirit Warrior” they called him “the Apostle.”
This all scared John. The supernatural in modern Christianity was all demons and the spawn of Satan. Christians didn’t mess with it. His denomination believed the spiritual gifts weren’t for today, those supernatural things only happened in the Bible. “That all ended with the apostles” was often the excuse for anything that dealt with that sort of gifting. And now he was called the Apostle everywhere he went. Apostles were the ones who said, “Send me $29.95 and I will send you a prayer clothe of anointing.” Healers were just charlatans, or witches consulting with the devil. “Jesus said that many would claim to do things in my name and they wouldn’t be really his.”Nope, better to just ignore all this and not get ostracized from everyone and everything my family knows. What would people say if it got out that they considered him a lucky charm? “Luck is another form of witchcraft. We don’t have luck in the church.” Or worse, that he had prayed for a dead guy and he was walking and talking?
He knew it had to be God. He couldn’t stop praying; not praying because good things were happening would be as bad as not praying because you didn’t think God was helping at all.
He quietly told his wife on one of his few phone calls and she calmly listened as he spoke, knowing ahead of time that God had a plan for her husband. God had told her that John would soon see a gifting so powerful the world would see. She encouraged him to do more. “Honey,” she would write, “You have no reason to fear if God is for you, then who can stand against you? So what if they don’t believe, I do, the people whom God healed and protected through you believe?” He didn’t want his family outcast from the church. As a chaplain, he served at the whim of the church. If they decided they didn’t want him serving, he was out of the Army the next week. His kids still needed to attend the church camps, and it was bad enough that the other campers poked fun if their clothes didn’t meet a certain standard, or their beliefs weren’t just so. To have the dad who was “demonically claiming healing powers” would just be too much.
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At the end of their year, his unit returned home and without his wife’s approval, he resigned his commission and applying for a little church in the hills of Tennessee hoping he could hide. Disappointed, his wife stuck with him, knowing God wouldn’t allow him to hide for long. John couldn’t quit caring or praying or being the called man of God. he was so the miracles followed him right into those hills he wanted to hide in with his family.
It wasn’t until DIVOC 91 reared its head that people noticed just how healthy Pastor Henry’s parishioners and community were. That spring, the world erupted with the worst virus man had ever seen. People were dying. The dead were being left in refrigerator trucks. They were so far behind in burials. The CDC had its hands full. Homeland Security, understaffed and overworked, exhausted their people. The people wanted answers, and they wanted them yesterday. The world governments had none. They collectively issued lockdowns. Businesses died. People developed depression and suicides were the norm.
But not in Copper Hill. No lockdown. No disease. Business as usual. Callie followed the apostle Paul by cutting up John’s old brown army t-shirts and sending them to friends and family where ever in the world they were, prayer clothes of a sort. She kept this a secret and did it all by herself. She worked through the shirts slowly, eventually moving to just any old shirt of his. He never suspects a thing; Callie, as we know wives do, regularly removed his older clothes and replaced them with new. The people who got these rags didn’t suffer or die, even with medical proof of the illness. Some of them asked her to make masks from these shirts.
She knew it was time to move forward, so she brought the project to the ladies of the church and they started sewing around the clock in shifts. Some of the old friends from the military and seminary began sending Callie packs of t-shirts which she would have John wear, and then send them back for distribution. John finally got a clue, but he trusted his wife and didn’t say a thing.
Science caught them. An anomaly, really. Hoping to contain the virus, scientist developed a way to track where the virus erupted. They called them hotspots. Homeland Security and the CDC would surround the area, locking everyone down in a mandated quarantine. Yet, nothing seemed to stop the viral spread. Still searching for an answer, any answer they discovered cold spots.
In the middle of Wyoming, where there was one person for every thousand miles, it wasn’t ever becoming the hotspot. But some places were interesting. So they assigned agents to research further. Agents showed up in these cold spots and asked questions. They didn’t give a choice to those they questioned. Some attempted to ignore them, but a night in jail loosened sealed lips.
A little scrap of T-shirt someone showed an official in Copperas Cove, Texas, made the little cold spot in Copper Hill, Tennessee become the molehill of the investigation. Being scientifically minded, they didn’t believe for a minute the stories they were told as they asked questions. Short of torture, though, this fragment wasn’t a miracle. Miracles don’t happen. Perhaps there was a cure being manufactured and sent on the material. After testing the fragment and finding nothing discernible, they knew the origination of the package was from Cassie; now she needed to answer questions and Copper Hill was on their radar.
The superiors wanted answers and so far the answer given was so silly no one would believe that some man was a healer. Copper Hill woke surround by Homeland Security and the CDC. In full up armored vehicles, complemented with 50 cal guns and Mark 19 grenade launchers. The media started broadcasting almost immediately. They brought on experts on claimed that God wasn’t doing these things. They accused Pastor Henry of being a drunkard; they said this was all a product of his PTSD and that he shouldn’t even speak on Sunday or lead a church. Some believed he was Jesus returned. Others proclaimed this to be the end times. Only negative and crazy made the news. His family stood by him. As scared as he was, he stepped out and embraced who he was. He prayed for hours at a time. He felt guilty for bringing all this into the town.
One day while he was praying gunfire erupted, he ran outside to see several HSP surround someone laid out on the ground. This was a moment for him. He could stay back and allow these things to disappear or he could embrace his call and march right out there among the cameras and government officials who didn’t believe a word he said. They didn’t believe his wife, his church, or even the mayor of the town. He took a deep breath and then another as he walked into the street. Laying in the road was his son’s best friend. A lad of 14 dead. Shot through the head and chest. Blood was pooling at the feet of the agents. “Why” he screamed. “What did he do to you?” The agents stayed silent. He dropped to the boy, covering him with his body. “Dear God,” he prayed, “this is your child. He didn’t deserve this. We told them what they needed and yet here they were shooting one of children. God, I forgive them, but please bring this dear child back to us.” He sat up, tears streaming down his face. Blood was all over his shirt. As the agents looked on, not speaking a word, they watched the eyes of Josh open and then he sat up. The world was watching live. Of course, the naysayers claimed it was a media stunt to get Copper Hill back on the map. Many figured he would write a book. They didn’t believe any of this hogwash, though.
The government treated everyone that believed in the healing gift God had given to Pastor Henry like terrorists. By force, they locked Copper Hill down. They didn’t have rights anymore. The National Guard was called up, and they instituted a complete and total quarantine. The soldiers knew. They started assisting the town in getting packages out. They surrounded the town with razor wire and controlled the one road in and out. They tested the water. They tested the soil. They tested the air. The CDC, frustrated with their results, began a mandatory blood draw from all the citizens of the town. Blood draw after blood draw. Comparing their blood to blood from places like Nashville or Atlanta showed nothing was different. Nothing they did came back with results. While the rest of the world was burying their dead, this little town became a Mecca of sorts for people wanting to see the man with the power to heal. They crowded the fencing day in and day out.
They demanded answers. Pastor Henry gave them. His wife spoke loud and clear. His denomination deserted him. He carried on. Still scared. Still called. The escalation of force brought to Copper Hill had revealed nothing, or so they believed. They didn’t notice they were virus free. Even with the crowding around the town, the virus never showed. None of this ever crossed their minds. Frustrated, they just knew Pastor Henry and his family were hiding something. Then, without warning; for the greater good of the world, they came in the night and the town woke to their beloved pastor and his family gone.