Free Showdown by Ted Dekker Page A

insubordination and walked back to the pulpit.
    The man held the cup just below the pulpit. He was wiping his fingers on the edge of the goblet as if . . .
    Yordon leaned forward with surprise. If he wasn’t mistaken, Black was wiping a gel-like substance into the goblet! What on earth did the man think he was doing? Surely he didn’t expect anyone to actually drink . . .
    Unless he was poisoning them.
    Black plunged his hand into the cup, causing some of the grape juice to spill at his feet. He swirled his fingers around a few times, then extracted his hand and flicked juice from his fingers back into the goblet.
    Yordon came to his feet, terrified and outraged at once. “That’s enough! No more theatrics.” He stepped forward but didn’t have the resolve to toss Black aside by the collar, as he fleetingly envisioned.
    â€œI’m going to have to ask you to step down,” Yordon said. “I don’t know who you think—”
    Black brought his hands together with a thunderclap. He lifted his right hand for all to see. There in his palm sat a large red apple.
    No goblet.
    Yordon groped for his seat.
    â€œDo you remember?”Black asked the congregation, ignoring Yordon.“First there was an apple. The fruit of pleasure. All was good. Do you remember?”
    Stony silence.
    â€œDo you remember, Stan?” Black snapped without turning.
    â€œYes.” The question and his own response caught Yordon off guard.
    Black tossed the red apple into the air. “And then there came . . .”
    When he caught the apple, it wasn’t an apple.
    It was a brown snake.
    â€œThe snake,” Black said.
    A gasp filled the room. Some shouts of alarm. Black held the three-foot snake by its midsection as the serpent lifted its head, testing the air with a long flickering tongue.
    â€œBut we know what happened to the snake, don’t we?”
    Slick as a magician, Black slid his hand to the reptile’s tail and cracked the snake like a whip.
    Crack!
    The blurred snake became a rigid object roughly two feet in height. A dark wooden cross.
    â€œThe snake was defeated.”
    The congregation was evidently too stunned to react this time. You could stuff an apple up the sleeve. You could hide a snake past the cuff. But not this hefty cross.
    â€œAnd that defeat gave us the fruit of the vine once again.” Black slammed the cross against the pulpit, where it vanished in a horrendous crash. Wobbling on the surface was an apple, which he held up for all to see.
    The same red apple he’d started with.
    â€œDo you remember?” Black called out.
    With his free hand, he lifted the goblet of grape juice. Yordon hadn’t seen it reappear. He held the apple above the goblet and squeezed it. The fruit compressed like a sponge, and juice flowed into the cup.
    Black opened a dry hand for all to see—apple gone. He lifted the cup high. “Do this in remembrance.”
    The congregation responded in an indistinct, astounded chorus. “Drink from this cup, the hope of my gospel.” Black paced, goblet extended to all. “Drink, Chris. Drink, my friend. Show them.”
    Chris hesitated only a brief second before stumbling into the aisle and hurrying to the front. He took the goblet from Black and waited for some kind of encouragement.
    â€œJust a sip. Don’t be greedy. There are a lot of thirsty souls in this place.”
    Chris tilted the cup, sipped, then handed it back to the preacher.
    â€œGo on, show them your tongue.”
    Yordon didn’t have to look to know what had happened. But the cries of approval confirmed his guess. The wart was gone from Chris’s tongue.
    Chris was feeling his tongue with both sets of fingers.
    Black addressed the congregation. “I want all of you to take a sip of this wine in remembrance. If you think for a second that you’ll catch something, I can assure you that the only thing you’ll catch is God’s