The final parts of this series on the band’s given missions of God concern the keyboard-synthist Bryan, also called Bry, who is also well connected with bikers, which mostly make up the band’s roadies. Bear in mind that his parents, also musicians, were hard-core atheists and obsessed with Darwinian evolution theory.
Here is an irony—the first biker Bryan had ever met was Christian!
The snippet below, from Chapter Twelve of The Prodigal Band (© 2018 Deborah Lagarde), explains part of why Bry considered accepting Christ, as he tells the rest of the band and manager Joe Phillips, in his ‘revelation.’ After telling then that a Christian summer camp worker convinced him Darwinian evolution was bogus, he then brings up this Christian biker he’d met at a previous local Walltown music festival in 1981.
. While milling around the various food and drink stands on the extreme north end of the park among perhaps close to a thousand people, Bry, tired of simply associating with either rationalists like his folks or musicians like his fellow Conservatory students, decided at age fifteen he was going to try breaking out on his own, knowing a likely notable and profitable music career would come, regardless of whom he hung out with. So sheltered in his youth, he sought what could lead to excitement, or even a bit of risk. Near the bar stand where Ale abounded, he then noticed rows and rows of motorcycles, then stools and stools of bikers. He wondered if a couple of neighbor boys, who used to tease him about joining their Walltown biker group, would be around. Looked and looked for them, then—
“Watch out for my bike, eh?” a biker lashed out, nearly sending Bry to the ground as he nearly toppled the man’s bike over.
Picking himself up, Bry stuttered, “S-s-sorry a-about-that! I didn’t see you or the bike.”
“Well I didn’t mean to push you to the ground, either. And the bike is fine.”
“Is it a Motorduke?”
“Come around over here.” The biker pointed to the other side where he was. “You’ll see that it is indeed a Motorduke.”
So when Bry joined him on the left side of the bike, the word ‘Motorduke’ screamed out at him. “Now that’s what I want. A Motorduke, new, used, whatever.”
The man looked him over. “You know you look like a biker! What are you, eighteen, nineteen?”
“Fifteen, and my birthday is coming up. But—”
“Your folks don’t want you biking, right?”
“No, they don’t. I’m a Conservatory student and they are first chairs in the Walltown Symphony Orchestra and they are playing at the south end of the park tonight. Dad does piano and mom does oboe.”
“Don’t really do classical. Country—American, Scottish, Welsh, whatever, you know, like folk music, blue grass.” The man rearranged his bike so it wouldn’t likely topple over if some other kid walked into it by mistake. “But if you’re good at music, likely you’ll make good money doing it. Me?” he laughed. “I’m a preacher. A biker preacher, and believe it or not, there are former biker gang members in my group.”
Bry listened with astonishment at what he said next. “We have a group Stateside and about half of them are former members of biker gangs. And here’s the funny thing. None of these biker gangs are anything close to being devil worshipers, but they do get into lots and lots of bar and pub fights, and do some crimes every now and then.”
Bry sat up against the railing where the bikes were hitched, very, very interested in what this man had to say. “So your group are Bible preachers to bikers?”
“Yeah. We do Bible studies and sermons and stuff like that, all on the road. In the States, every year there’s a huge biker meeting at The Hills in the Dakotas. Thousands, and I mean thousands—I’ve been to a few—meet there every year in August. And our group, ‘Biker Brothers for Christ’—BBC, right?” Laugh. “Oh, and molls are invited too by the way, and they even have a group, ‘Biker Sisters for Christ.’ We have a tent there every year and we get huge numbers of attendees, including just about any biker gang one can name.”
Bry remembered back to the Christian camp worker and what he said about creation. “Do you preach creationism?”
The man waved his hand up and down, side to side, as if to say, ‘not really.’ “Well, if someone asks us to, but likely not. We are more into the words of Christ. Gospel stuff. New Testament stuff.” Laugh. “I’d love to preach on prophecy but I’m not a huge Bible scholar on that.” Looked at Bry, smiling. “I really do not think creationism is science, but neither is evolution if that’s what you mean. Because, well, I’ll put it to you this way. If a motorcycle was one of God’s creatures created on day five or six when He created birds and mammals and other animals and humans, then it would have been called ‘cheetah,’ which can run about 80 kilometers per hour, and, one second later, can rotate its body around, and head off reaching 80 kilometers per hour in about five seconds. And, son, no freaking motorcycle could ever do that without destroying the engine or crashing the bike! Evolution is a construct.”
“What’s a construct?”
“A construct is a way we express something we have no clue about to justify why we do or believe something so that it makes sense to us. Since no man was around when God created cheetahs, and since man cannot explain how God created cheetahs in truth since they don’t know how God works and most don’t even think He even exists, they have to make up a construct, call it ‘evolution,’ and convince everyone that Darwin knows all there is to know about creation. And of course they can’t prove evolution is fact, so they diss everyone who says creation is a fact! That’s how these so-called ‘rationalists’ work.”
“Wow,” Bry shouted so even the ale drinkers could hear it. “That’s what this Christian camp worker once said, pretty much the same thing, only with buildings, not cheetahs! And your argument makes even more sense!” Crestfallen. “I just wish I could convince my folks of that. They are rationalists, you know? They literally worship Darwin.”
“Well that’s too bad. And you might not want to bother with them. Of all the people on Earth, rationalists are the hardest people to get to. Atheists. All of them. And proud of it, too.” Shook his head. “Look, I have to go, but before I go let me tell you one more thing. When I say God created all things, it was actually Christ that had the hand in it. There’s one of the Gospels, the Gospel of John the Apostle, who was Jesus’s favorite apostle by the way. And the first verse of this Gospel says, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ And Who was the Word? Jesus Christ. Christ IS the Word! Christ IS God, but God that became flesh, and, when He was flesh, He prayed to His Father God. God, in fact, is a triune entity, three-parts-in-one. The third part is the Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit. When a person accepts Christ as Savior, they receive the Holy Ghost as spirit, and the Holy Spirit keeps them on the proper course so they don’t take part in evil. And I will say this—if you don’t want evil influencing your life, now’s the time to accept Christ, and accept the Holy Ghost.”
Which is why, at the 2000 local Walltown music festival, as singer Erik held his final song note and as the rest of the band were given their missions of God, Bry heard one of the angels of the Tooters tell him this, from Chapter Ten of The Prophesied Band (© 1998 Deborah Lagarde):
Just as Tooter Two instructed Keith to lead the working and gang youth, the angel told Bry to lead the bikers and free-spirits…
Thus, it makes sense that one of Bry’s missions was to lead bikers to Chrit, inspired by the fact that a Christian biker began to lead Bryan to consider accepting Christ. Which he did do, at a 2004 biker festival in the Dakotas. Which by the way, is where the annual Sturgis biker rally takes place, the Dakotas. Featured in the snippet below is a biker preacher named Walter and a Christian rocker Walter ‘converted’ earlier, named Larry. From Chapter Seventeen of The Prodigal Band:
Early August, 2004, at the annual biker gathering in the Dakota Hills
Walter, the burly biker who convinced Larry of SalvationSquad to get right with Christ, was not the same biker Bry had met at the Trade Festival in 1981.
Walter, head of the ‘church’ of bikers that annually met during this event, within a large covered tent that could hold several hundred people, was glad to see Larry again.
And thrilled to meet the signature rocker-biker who had accepted Christ as Savior. And even more thrilled to know he would not be the only ‘biker-missionary’ out there.
Walter had never met Bry before, but he did know the biker in 1981 who did.
“Carl—that was his name, I think. Carl was a key biker brother from England—”
“Yeh, he was English, I know that much. Had a southeast accent.”
“Yeah, he was from some Channel city. Can’t remember.”
“He had said he attended this biker gathering a few times. Do you know if he—”
“No way, Bry. Carl died six years ago. He got blindsided by a drunk driver.”
Bry hung his head. “But at least he’s in Heaven.”
“Happened near the university there. I heard they had a memorial service for him at a local pub.”
“A local, eh? ‘Cos that’s where we have our Bible Studies.”
Walter laughed. “It’s a funny thing. Seems to me like true Christians don’t seem to meet in churches much anymore. And when I’m not doing this mission, like when I’m home, which is outside of Pittsburgh, we meet in each other’s homes.”
And later, Walter had Bry give the hundreds of bikers a ‘sermon’ so to speak on the fallacy of evolution and the truth of God’s creation, based on what Carl had told him.
“I mean,” he explained remembering how Carl used the cheetah as an example, “how does Darwin or any other evolutionist explain why a cheetah can rotate its body going 50 miles-per-hour into the opposite direction when the animal it supposedly evolved from, the sabre-tooth-tiger, could only go 20 miles-per-hour? Now, if anyone thinks their motorcycle could do that, speak up now and show us outside this tent and prove it! And then explain how if mankind is so bloody smart why they can’t get a simple motorcycle to do the same thing!”
Laughs all around.
“And why am I even bringing this evolution vs. creation issue up? Because the biker this sermon is based on, Carl from southeast England, told me the same thing back in 1981 in Walltown, where a miracle happened. I don’t mean that one-minute note sung by a certain singer we all know. The miracle was that I, who grew up being told God did not exist and could not exist, actually started believing in God once Carl explained about the cheetah. ‘Cos I had prayed a year before to understand Who created all things. Because I just couldn’t accept random acts of evolution when no one had seen these acts occur. Science is supposed to be based on empirical evidence, right? So then how is evolution science? Carl has passed on. He was a member of Biker Brothers for Christ. But I feel like I need to take his place. Kind of.”
Many cheers from the crowd.
After his sermon Bry asked several there what he had to do to preach Christ to fellow bikers who were not yet believers. As with advice to Keith, it came down to going out and preaching, and that bikers who wanted answers would come to him.
Walter gave him another piece of advice—start with your road crew.
Which he would also mission to, but that’s another story.
Next up, hopefully before Thanksgiving, will feature Bry’s other given mission, in Part B. This mission concerns a loved one previously trapped in a New Age cult.
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