Theory of the Eldest

By John Providence

The abuse I endured throughout my youth was prescribed by the Bible and administered in the name of God. The harrowing and marvelous adventure you are about to read was, in part, the Lord's answer to the evil inflicted upon me in his name and to the charges I leveled against him as a suffering child. (35,000 Words)

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Providence
• Release date: Jan 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224268467

Book preview

1: Origins

All things work together for the good of them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

It began with Grandpa Rocky on a Sunday morning in the summer of 1969. ‘I was bathed in perfect light,’ he said, ‘and the Lord took and told me that all my sins were forgiven.’

Many visions and revelations followed. And hell followed with them.

At a very young age, I traced the origin of my suffering to the day my grandfather ‘went crazy.’ And just when I thought I escaped the horrors of childhood, I was struck by a light and heard a thundering voice from the heavens.

Was history repeating itself? Was I to inherit Rocky’s awful fate?

Questions like that haunted me for years, and for good reason, as you will see.

*

In high school, Rocky was a handsome devil with ice-blue eyes and a blonde pompadour. He was short, stocky and strong as an ox. His legendary power earned him the state championship in the shot put and a scholarship offer to play collegiate baseball.

Rocky liked to ‘show off’ his strength at work by routinely lifting and moving things that required the strength of two ordinary men.

‘My boss at the hardware store took and warned me not to move those crates of bolts alone,’ Gramps said, ‘but I was full of pride in those days, see. While carrying one of them crates, the weight suddenly shifted to one side and tore my arm out of the socket.’

The injury prevented Gramps from playing ball his final season and he lost the scholarship.

Rocky had a fuzzy blue streak on his forearm that I liked to ask about. ‘That was a tattoo of my gang, The Dukes, before it took and blurred with age...yeah, say, Johnny, did I ever take and tell you about the fights I got in as a Duke?’

He did, many times. That is why I asked about the tattoo! Rocky was the youngest and shortest member of The Dukes: traits that singled him out as an ‘easy target’ to rival gangs. But anyone who picked a fight with my grandfather was in for a rude awakening.

My favorite story was about the star football player, a lineman nearly twice his size, who goaded Gramps into a fight. Rocky felled the Goliath with one swing!

‘But remember, John, no matter how many fights you take and win, there’s always someone out there who’s tougher than you, see.’ Then Gramps would tell of the day he met his match. I did not like that story so much.

The best part about Rocky’s stories was the ‘buxom’ and ‘comely’ girlfriends who were always on hand to witness him breaking a track record or knocking someone out. I did not know what those words meant, but Gramps said them like they were really good things for a girl to be!

One evening, Rocky got pulled over while driving a car with stolen tires on it and took the rap because he refused to rat on the Duke who stole them. The judge gave him the choice of going to prison or the military and he was shipped off to the Army bound for Korea shortly before he would have graduated from high school.

After serving his time, Rocky met a tall, sassy nineteen-year-old with an olive complexion named Pearl at a YMCA dance in St Paul, Minnesota. They married six months later. The couple had three children in three years: Teddy, Martha and Vinny. Gramps sold cars to support the family. He was a born salesman who quickly rose to the top of his dealership and even appeared in their local TV commercials.

After work, Rocky hung out with the guys at a bar called The Filling Station where he drank, smoked marijuana, and picked up women. ‘You know, John, for years I thought that low-down Filling Station just serviced cars for your grandpa’s dealership,’ Grandma Pearl said. ‘Lord help me, I was so naive!’

By the summer of 1969, the guilt over his extramarital affairs was eating Gramps alive. ‘I desperately wanted to confess to Pearl,’ he said, ‘but I feared she’d take and divorce me if I did, see.’

Then, the light of God struck Rocky out of the clear, blue sky on that Sunday morning in the summer of 1969. Pearl and the kids were at church without him, as usual. Gramps was in the backyard of their house when God’s light hit him like Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. He confessed his unfaithfulness to Pearl and followed hard after the Lord.

*

‘The trouble really started,’ Grandma Pearl said, ‘when your grandfather quit his job because he could not serve the Lord as the liar on the lot selling cars. Instead of looking for work, he just sat around on the couch in his underwear reading the Bible all day and preaching at us.

‘When I asked Rocky to look for a job, he said the only job that needed to be done was for us to sit at his feet and learn from his teachings. The Lord would miraculously supply all our needs if we just had faith!’

The Lord instructed Rocky to ‘go south.’ So, Gramps wanted to sell the house, load the family in the car and head south. Grandma Pearl was not as sure about God’s will and refused to sell the house and go south.

Sometime later, Rocky and his perpetually unemployed brother Tom decided to start a church together. According to their divinely inspired plan, the brothers would dedicate all their time to prayer, Bible study, and preaching while their wives and other family members worked full-time to support them until the ministry took off and ‘rivaled that of Billy Graham’s.’ Also, Rocky's house was to be sold for the down payment on a church building.

Again, Grandma Pearl was not so sure of the Lord’s will and refused to sell their house. But the money she made could not replace what Grandpa earned as a car salesman and they were falling behind on the mortgage. Fearing the outright loss of their home, Pearl begged Rocky to start working.

After berating his wife with Scripture and condemning her unbelief, Rocky proclaimed, ‘I am Abraham, and you are Sarah. You will call me Lord as she did him! I am Jesus Christ to you, and you must obey me as you would him!’

‘I may not know the Bible like you,’ Pearl replied, ‘but I certainly know that you ain’t Jesus Christ. And you’re no Abraham either. Abraham worked and provided for his family!’

Grams packed Rocky’s bags and threw him out.

‘What else could I do?’ Grams asked. ‘I had to feed the kids and save the house. I couldn’t get any help from the state as long as there was an able-bodied man in the home who wouldn’t work.

‘Rocky preached at the judge in divorce court, talking about how it ain’t the state’s place to provide for his family. You know what the judge said? He quoted 1 Timothy 5:8: But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever. You should’ve seen the look on your grandfather’s face when he heard that!’

*

About a year after the divorce, Pearl’s friend Gloria called after her husband Al pulled a gun on her and their five kids. ‘Gloria was asking me what to do,’ Grams said, ‘and I told her to get those kids out of that house and stay the night at my place because Al didn't know where we lived.’

At 2 AM, everyone was awakened by the sound of someone pounding on the doors and windows. ‘I thought it was Al with his gun and called the police,’ Grams said. ‘Do you know who they caught outside? Rocky!’

When the policeman asked what he was doing there, Gramps said, ‘The Lord took and told me to go see my kids.’ After determining Rocky arrived on foot, the officer noticed that he was not wearing shoes. Gramps walked barefoot from his parents’ house nearly twenty miles away!

‘The officer said he was going to drop Rocky off on the highway out of town,’ Grams said. ‘I couldn’t let him do that because he had no shoes on! So, I told the officer to take him to a restaurant where I would arrange for his father to pick him up.

‘The kids were upset and crying, asking why I let the police take their daddy away. It was 2:30 in the morning for crying out loud! I told Rocky that he could come get the kids anytime he wanted, all he had to do was call, and he shows up unannounced in the middle of the night instead?’

Rocky never arranged to see his kids in a conventional way. He just popped up unexpectedly. One time he ambushed them at church. After noticing Martha’s pierced ears, he unleashed a harsh sermon on her, calling his eleven-year-old daughter a ‘streetwalker’ in front of everyone before the pastor threw him out.

Sometimes Rocky materialized out of thin air bearing gifts for his children. Once, Teddy wanted to give his father a present in return but did not have one on hand. ‘Then I remembered a leather jacket I stole out of a car that was too big for me,’ Teddy said. ‘Dad jolted when he touched the jacket, told me to get in his car, drove straight to the owner’s house, and made me return it!

‘Johnny, there was no way Dad could have known who that jacket belonged to. It was hanging in my closet for two years before I gave it to him! When asked how he knew where to take me, Dad said the Lord gave him directions as he drove.’

Rocky followed the voice of the Lord wherever it led. Soon after the divorce, he went south and preached on the streets of New Orleans. Later, he was told to ‘wander the earth like John the Baptist’ in the Western desert. How long he did that or where he went next, I have not a clue.

No matter where Gramps went, he preached at everyone whether they liked it or not. His sermons were anything but brief or intelligible. Countless souls suffered through his wild-eyed orations for hours on end out of politeness or fear. Gramps could not find a church to preach at or belong to because ‘they would not take and accept my