Prophet
Authors: Frank Peretti
Prophet
:
John Barrett, popular anchorman, finds himself suddenly lost in the comfortable world he thought he understood.
His producer seems to be hiding something big and lying to cover her tracks. His father’s “accidental” death isn’t looking quite so accidental. And his estranged son has returned search for the truth. On top of all this, John is starting to hear mysterious voices.
Prophet
has all the hallmarks of Peretti’s fast-paced blockbuster fiction, and his clear understanding of the vast spiritual struggle over moral authority marks every page.
Frank Peretti:
With more than 12 million novels in print,
Frank Peretti
is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon and has been called “America’s hottest Christian novelist.”
The Oath
(Word Publishing 1995), sold more than half a million copies within the first six months of release.
The Visitation
(Word Publishing 1999), was #1 on the CBA Fiction Bestseller list for four months. Peretti is a natural storyteller who, as a youngster in Seattle, regularly gathered the neighborhood children for animated storytelling sessions. After graduating from high school, he began playing banjo with a local bluegrass group. He and his wife were married in 1972, and Peretti soon moved from touring with a pop band to launching a modest Christian music ministry. Peretti later spent time studying English, screen writing and film at UCLA and then assisted his father in pastoring a small Assembly of God church. In 1983, he gave up his pastoring position and began taking construction jobs to make ends meet. While working at a local ski factory, he began writing
This Present Darkness
, the book that would catapult him into the public eye. After numerous rejections from publishers and a slow start in sales, word-of-mouth enthusiasm finally lifted
This Present Darkness
onto a tidal wave of interest in spiritual warfare. The book appeared on
Bookstore Journal
’s bestseller list every month for more than eight years. Peretti’s two spiritual warfare novels,
This Present Darkness
(1998) and
Piercing the Darkness
(1989), captivated readers, together selling more than 3.5 million copies.
The Oath
was awarded the 1996 Gold Medallion Award for best fiction. Frank Peretti and his wife, Barbara Jean, live in the Western U.S. In spite of sudden fame and notoriety, Frank still lives a simple, well-rounded life that includes carpentry, banjo making, sculpturing, bicycling and hiking. He is also an avid pilot.
PROPHET
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Frank E. Peretti
Originally published in 1992 by Crossway Books in different form.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Howard Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Howard Books ebook edition February 2012
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.
Designed by Jaime Putorti
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Peretti, Frank E.
Prophet / Frank E. Peretti.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3566.E691317P76 2004
813'.54—dc20 92-4850
ISBN 978-1-4516-7335-7 (eBook)
T
O
J
AN AND
L
ANE, TRUE PROPHETS IN THEIR OWN RIGHT
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I OWE A
debt of thanks to many precious people whose invaluable experience, assistance, and advice helped bring this project together: Susan the anchorlady, who let me tag along with her throughout her workday and get a feel for her job.
Nick the jack-of-all-news-gathering-trades, who showed me around and checked hundreds of pages for accuracy.
Kevin the reporter and John the cameraman, who took me with them into the field and shared their perspective with such honesty.
Good ol’ Roger the attorney, who has helped me with more than one book, always explaining things so I understand them.
Bob the physician, who advised me on the medical aspects of the story and who also checked hundreds of pages for accuracy.
Frank the “Skank,” one terrific cop who was always available.
Dana and Joe, two dedicated men in the emergency profession who took me through their procedures.
Carol, the “Lady in Scarlet,” who knows the abortion industry firsthand.
Randy and friends, who shared their intimate sorrows with me and helped me understand the abortion experience.
Hey, all of you get the credit for the things I’ve captured accurately—I’ll take the blame for the mistakes.
Thanks.
FOREWORD
I CAN IMAGINE
the “Peretti-ologists” of future days looking at this book as a key to what I was thinking during the late eighties and early nineties. Obviously I was preoccupied with truth and how it can be brokered, adjusted, censored, and selected by the gatekeepers of what we know and think. Chief among these gatekeepers is, of course, television, and chief among the mentalities and movements whose survival depends on the stringent control of knowledge is abortion. These two became the start of a story recipe:
Open a television newsroom, pour in the topic of abortion, add characters with divergent agendas, and then, stirring briskly, add an up-and-coming news anchor who abruptly finds God revealing to him the secrets of people’s hearts (1 Corinthians 14:25). He is seeing and hearing things that only God can see and hear, which leaves no room for the gray-shading, eye-closing, excuse-making, or rationalizing that smoothed his career.
With such ingredients, the pot will come to a boil all by itself—over the whole question of truth.
There are many subthemes woven through the story, of course, maybe
too
many. I just had to say something about consumerism, amusement dependence, image over substance, and feeling over thinking. But all these ingredients impel the main theme: The truth will hold us accountable. Though we try to hide it, deny it, repackage it, or even amuse and consume our way around it, at the end of the day it will still be there waiting for us—no matter how we may
feel
about it.
My concern with truth has only intensified in the early 2000s; the cry of
Prophet
still has its place. Too many, especially among the young, think with their feelings and hear with their eyes. It’s no longer truth but tightly edited images splashed with color, backed by music, and coupled with pleasure that persuade. We can’t count on people to think, explore, question, or prove things; but we can count on them to sit and watch television hour after hour and accept without question almost everything they are told. Folks interviewed at the local mall can regurgitate commercial slogans, jingles, truisms, and temporal philosophies instantly upon request, but they stare vacantly when asked to recite the Ten Commandments or even name the first book of the Bible.
But who loses in the end? Not truth. Truth is a rock and doesn’t shift to accommodate our changing fashion. Wrong will never be right no matter how we may dress it in right’s clothing. A lie will never be true no matter how often or how loudly we repeat it. To deceive others is reprehensible; to deceive ourselves is a tragedy.
Most often the heroes in stories wake up to their errors, accept the truth, and turn themselves around. That’s because the storyteller hopes his readers will do the same.
That was my hope when I first wrote
Prophet
, and it is still my hope today.
Love truth.
Frank E. Peretti
January 2004
PROPHET
CHAPTER 1
JOHN BARRETT HEARD
God speak when he was ten years old. Years later all he would clearly remember about that Sunday night meeting at the Rainier Gospel Tabernacle was that it was close and sweaty, in the dead center of summer’s heat. Noisy, too. It was altar time at the front of the church, the saints were praying and praising, and it was not the quiet, introspective kind of worship but the hollering kind, the throw-back-your-head-and-cry-to-Heaven kind as the women wept, the men shouted, and the piano kept playing over and over the strains of “I surrender all, I surrender all . . .”