Founders (4 page)

While they were packing, they heard gunshots in the distance. Each time that she heard shots, Terry gave Ken a nervous look. After the third time, Ken muttered, “Don’t worry, that’s just some lowlifes taking advantage of the blackout to settle old scores.”

After some discussion, they decided to have Terry lead off in the Mustang. Terry summed up what they had both been contemplating. “Of our two vehicles, we’ve got to consider the Mustang semi-expendable, and the Bronco irreplaceable, since that’s our four-wheel drive. So if we run low of fuel, we ditch the ’Stang. And if the Mustang gets blocked, or pinned, I’ll bail out and run back to the Bronc. Hopefully that will distract any looters and give us time to get away.”

Ken sighed, and said, “That’s hardly like sacrificing a pawn. But under the circumstances, I guess that’s the best we can hope for, if we get into a jam.”

Ken and Terry worked by the light of flashlights while they packed. As they did so, they listened to the car radio in the Mustang, tuned to the WGN news broadcasts. The reporters mentioned that the station was operating on backup power. The litany of rioting, looting, and arson reports was nearly continuous. At 10:30 p.m., the traffic reports were still bad. There were traffic jams caused by collisions, car fires, stalled cars, and “police activity.” That was the euphemism used by the local traffic reporters for gunfights in progress. There were dozens of these incidents throughout the metropolitan region.

Ken intentionally left their rifles and ALICE backpacks as the last items that they would pack on the passenger seats of both vehicles. These packs had been the standard U.S. military issue for many years. With an aluminum frame, olive drab nylon bag, and comfortable hip pad and shoulder straps, the ALICE was the pack carried by two generations of American soldiers. If they had to abandon their vehicles they might have to do so very quickly, and Ken insisted that the most important items be kept close at hand. Their backpacks and their weapons were by far their top priority.

Terry felt that it was best to get on the road as soon as possible. They hoped that leaving at night would minimize the traffic. But the news broadcasts spoke of traffic snarls at all hours. At 10:43,
they started the engines of both the Bronco and the Mustang. Ken reached over the hood of the Mustang and pulled down the emergency release for the electric garage door opener. He yanked it backward, rolling the garage door up. In the Bronco, Ken followed Terry’s Mustang slowly out the driveway into the street, which was lit only by their headlights.

“Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigor three hours a day will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.”

—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

Being born and raised in the upscale Carytown district of Richmond, Virginia, Ben Fielding was not very well prepared for the Crunch. His education as a lawyer didn’t help him much, either. If it weren’t for the fact that he had moved to a rural area a few years before the Crunch, he probably wouldn’t have survived it.

Ben’s parents were Reformed Jews. His father was a farm credit union loan officer and his mother was a “professional volunteer” who had spent all of her married life donating her time to the PTA, the Red Cross, Women of Hadassah, Habitat for Humanity, and the Democratic Party at the precinct level.

Ben attended the prestigious Yeshiva of Virginia for high school and then pre-law and law school at Virginia Commonwealth University. As he grew up, even though he attended Yeshiva, Ben felt that he was more Jewish by birth than he was by faith. After graduating from high school, he only rarely attended temple services.

Ironically, it was one of his Gentile classmates from his law study circle who invited Ben to attend a Saturday Shabbat service at Tikvat Israel (“Hope of Israel”), a Messianic Jewish congregation on Grove Street in Richmond. The congregation was a mixture of “Jewish Believers”—Jews who had come to faith in Yeshua Messiah (Jesus Christ) and Gentile followers of the Messiah who enjoyed delving into the more Hebraic roots of their faith, including celebrating the Feasts of the Lord, accompanied by some Shabbat service liturgy. About 10 percent of the congregation was black.

The Tikvat congregation met in an old synagogue building that had been the meeting place for Beth Israel from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. The building had sat vacant for fifteen years before the Tikvat congregation noticed it in 1990 and found that it was available to rent. One of the Elders had a vision which indicated that this old building was to be their new congregational home. The Tikvat group held their first service there during Chanukah in December 1990.

Occasionally at Tikvat there would be “black hat” visitors to the Shabbat service—Orthodox Jews. Many of them were just curious about the Messianic Jewish movement, but a few were business travelers who were “walk-ins,” assuming that it was a typical Saturday Jewish temple meeting. Very few of them visited more than once. They seemed offended, either by the modern worship service and the band’s electric instruments being played on the Sabbath, or by the references to the Messiah, Yeshua. Other Jewish visitors, like Ben, who were Reformed seemed more receptive to the Good News of Messiah, and less offended by the contemporary aspects of the service.

Ben was intrigued by the services and what he heard. He wanted to know more about Yeshua. Shortly after beginning to attend, Ben decided to take the Messianic rabbi’s new member class. He heard provoking and expositional teaching of the scriptures.
These proved to him without a shadow of a doubt that Yeshua was indeed the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Ben spent a lot of time studying the scriptures on his own, praying, and fasting. One day he got on his knees and cried out to Jesus to forgive him for his rebellion against God and for sins he had committed in his life. Ben recognized that he could never keep the Law perfectly, and that all men are sinners. He asked Jesus to come into his life and to save him. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit at that moment and Ben felt a glorious in-filling and cleansing. Immediately, Ben knew that he had become born-again, a “completed Jew.” Full of that indescribable joy, he jumped up from his bedside and began praising God and worshipping him with all his heart, mind, and soul. At the next Shabbat service, Ben confessed to the congregation that he had repented and that Yeshua had come into his life and that he knew that he was saved from his sins. Four months later Ben took part in a Mikvah service, being immersed for baptism in the York River, along with some other new believers from Tikvat.

Ben tried to explain to his parents and show them how Jesus fulfilled many of the scriptures prophesying the future Messiah: Jesus as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, Daniel’s prophecies of the coming Messiah, and how the Seven Feasts of Israel pointed to his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. He did his best to articulate why he believed that Yeshua was the Messiah. He often invited them to come to the congregation but they politely declined. They felt that Ben was simply infatuated by this new congregation, and being “a nice Jewish boy” would eventually, as his mother put it, “give up this meshuga nonsense.” He and his father often had antagonistic conversations about whether Jesus was the Messiah, and sometimes his father became angry and sarcastic and referred to Jesus as “your heretical rabbi.”

Ben loved Jesus’ Hebrew name and often said “Yeshua” to his father, but his father would refer to Jesus as YESHU: using the Hebrew acronym, which means, “May his name and memory be
blotted out forever,” a term coined in extra-biblical rabbinic literature and used by many Jews who are opposed to Yeshua being the Messiah. It is traditionally forbidden by many Jews to even mention His name. The irony in all of this was that Yeshua in Hebrew means “salvation.” Ben was sad that his father had so hardened his heart against Yeshua that he couldn’t listen.

After seven months of attending Tikvat, as a third-year law student (a “3L”) Ben met his future wife, Rebecca.

Rebecca Emerson was a Gentile. She played the guitar in the Tikvat band, danced with the Tikvat Israel Dancers, and was conversant in Hebrew. She even taught Hebrew in Tikvat’s Hebrew school. She was studying to become a midwife. She had long light brown curly hair, hazel eyes, and a lovely smile. She had been homeschooled and was just nineteen years old when she and Ben met. She had grown up attending Tikvat.

When Ben first started to attend Tikvat, Rebecca was away, traveling on an eleven-month Christian medical mission trip to Ethiopia to witness to and physically help the Falasha Jews who were preparing to make aliyah—immigration to Israel. Rebecca took this trip along with her parents and her younger siblings. When they returned to the United States they resumed attending Tikvat.

Ben was captivated the first time that he saw Rebecca. Who was this young woman who sang and played the guitar so well? Both Ben and Rebecca soon joined the staff of the Youth Group. They became fast friends and spent a lot of time together during Youth Group meetings and activities. Ben found Rebecca to be grounded in her faith, confident, intelligent, and well educated. She could speak knowledgeably on nearly any topic, especially apologetics, history, politics, economics, biblical prophecy, natural science, creationism, and biblical law. She was much more conversant in Hebrew than Ben.

Along with Ben, Rebecca had taken the Messianic rabbi’s biblical
law class, in which they had studied all of the ancient biblical laws in the book of Leviticus and also Talmudic law studies. So she had learned to discern circular logic and fallacies, and to recognize the original intent of the law and its later overamplification in modern Jewish life.

Ben found Rebecca to be vivacious and funny. He soon began to learn about her dreams and aspirations for the future. She wanted to be a midwife, a wife, mother, and a homeschooling mom, raising a family out in a rural area, living a homesteading life. Even though much of that was foreign to Ben, he was beginning to think she was a wonderful young woman.

Rebecca’s father, Ron Emerson, was a dentist and had led a medical mission team into Gondar, Ethiopia. Because he was a dentist going into villages free of charge, the Ethiopian government allowed him and his team in. Her father said that his family was “part of the team,” so they were also able to get visas and accompany him for the year they were there. Rebecca and her siblings quickly learned the Amharic language once they were in Ethiopia. They helped both her father and the doctors on the team with language translation and doctoring. She even witnessed and assisted with some childbirths. Even though her skills as a dental assistant and her knowledge of midwifery were rudimentary, she was considered an expert by the Ethiopian people. They assumed that anyone with white skin was a trained expert.

When Rebecca’s family returned to the United States and Tikvat, Rebecca’s family was asked to lead a Chavurah. These groups—based on the Hebrew word root
chaver
, which means “friend”—are study cell groups. Their Chavurah met on Thursday nights. Every year the groups switched around their congregants so everyone could eventually meet the other folks in the congregation. Propitiously, Ben was assigned to Ron’s Chavurah. A typical Chavurah meeting began at 6:30 and went until 9:30. They usually consisted of potluck dinner, dessert social time, and a Bible
study on various topics such as health, hermeneutics, creationism, eschatology, and prayer—followed by more general talk.

During the Chavurah study on biblical health Ben noticed that Ron began questioning the group members about their personal health issues. Ron seemed to be subtly sizing up Ben’s health history. It was not until then that Ben realized how obvious Ben’s and Rebecca’s interest in each other had become.

One time while visiting the Emersons’ home, Ben was walking in their backyard and noticed an old well. At first he thought it was merely a decorative wishing well. But then Ron mentioned that it was a hand-dug well from the 1800s that had never been filled in, even after city water had been provided to the neighborhood. The well shaft was more than forty feet deep and three feet wide. Ben pointed out that in the eyes of the law the well was considered an “attractive nuisance.” He advised Emerson to put a locking cover over the well’s mouth, to prevent any neighborhood children from falling in. Ron thanked him. The following weekend, Ben helped him construct the hinged cover and install a lock hasp. It was through this experience that Emerson’s opinion of Ben moved up a notch and they began to think of each other more as equals.

As the months passed, Ben’s parents realized Ben was not just infatuated with “
this Jesus”
and with Messianic Judaism, but was completely embracing Yeshua and the Messianic lifestyle. This new faith of their son’s began to alarm them and was unacceptable in their eyes. They were beginning to feel like Ben had been brainwashed and drawn into a cult. They tried to talk him out of being a Believer. They asked him to renounce “Yeshu” from being his Savior. They consulted their rabbi on what they should do. He said to send Ben to him for a meeting. Ben refused to go. Next, their rabbi suggested a clandestine gathering at their home to which they would invite a group of rabbis from the New York branch of an Israeli organization that specialized in “deprogramming” Jewish people who have come under the sway of missionaries.
They invited Ben home for dinner and “to meet some friends and have a discussion.”

Ben didn’t stay even long enough for his mother to serve dinner. The agenda of the four strangers became immediately apparent. Ben tried reasoning with them. They refused to listen to him, even when he quoted biblical prophetic passages from Isaiah that clearly foreshadowed Christ’s First Coming. After answering several of their questions, and after it became apparent that they had no intention of rationally debating him—only browbeating him—Ben said, “Well, it was nice meeting you all. I have to go now. You will be in my prayers.” He bolted out the door.