Levi, Little Warrior of God

Krysta Denzer

     Levi was a young boy, only seven years old, about to turn eight. His little brother, Sagan, was only nine and half months younger; he was also seven. But Levi was very different from Sagan. For little Levi was a Christian, while his brother, like most people, was not.

     It all started with Levi’s friend Michael. Michael’s family was a Christian one, and they had invited Levi to many secret church meetings with them. They had told him all about Christ, and Levi came to know and love his wonderful Savior.

     But then one day a terrible thing had happened. The whole church was gathered together in secret, as always, and they were praising and worshipping God, when suddenly the old barn was raided by the city police. Everyone screamed and panicked. The police quickly seized the woman who stood in front of the rest, leading the others in song. Everyone fled from the old barn, screaming and shouting out for one another. Levi fled with them.

     But before he had escaped the barn, already he had seen the police shoot several of the worshippers. Others were being beaten. They were even stripping the clothes off of the woman who had led the singing.

     Levi escaped unharmed and made it safely back to his own home, but he would never forget that day. Nor would he ever see his friend or any of his friend’s family again; they had fled the city for a more remote location.

     But, despite the fact that he no longer went to church or attended prayer meetings, Levi’s faith in the Lord remained strong, and in fact began to grow. He would never forget the day that he got into so much trouble at school, all because of his faith.

     The teacher had told the class that Jesus was not the Son of God, that He was Satan’s son, and that He was evil. She said that there was only one god, and that that god was all gods put together, that he did not care what people did, that he had no son, and that he hated the idea of Jesus Christ. Levi spoke up and told the entire class not to listen to her, that she was lying and that Jesus really was the Son of God and that He loved all of them so very much that He had come and died so that they might live in Heaven. All but two of his twenty-five classmates laughed and mocked him. “You baby,” they said to him. “Don’t you know that all of that is just a little kid’s fairy tale?” The teacher took him to the principle, who immediately called Levi’s parents, threatening to have him expelled.

     Back at home, his parents yelled at him and made him do all of the chores in the house, then sent him to bed early without dinner. The next morning, his mother found him kneeling in prayer by his bedside when she went in to wake him up.

     “What are you doing?” she asked him.

     “I am praying and thanking Jesus for dying for me,” Levi replied innocently.

     But his mother was enraged. “Levi, stop it!” she yelled, yanking him to his feet. “Jesus Christ is evil! Pure evil, Levi! And his father was no god, not by any means!”

     “But that’s not true!” Levi cried. “Jesus is good, and He did die for me, and He is the Son of God!”

     His mother slapped him hard, and a tear sprung to his eye. “Shut up and don’t you dare speak such evil in my house!” she raged. “It is for disrespect and lies such as this that you get into so much trouble at school!”

     But, despite all this, Levi still remained strong in the good Lord Jesus Christ.

     A couple of weeks later he went with the rest of his family to get a strange stamp on his right hand. They said that it was called a “chip”.

     Finally, after waiting for a very long time in a very long line, Levi got his stamp. He was rather disappointed when he saw what it looked like. It was nothing special, just a little square with a bunch of little lines in it, and the number 666 on the side. Yes, he was very disappointed. But then again, everyone else’s stamp looked just the same.

     About a week later he got into some more trouble with his mother. She had caught him telling his little brother about how much Jesus loved him. When she yelled at him and spanked him, he threw up his hands and cried, “But I am a Christian, and Christians are supposed to tell people about how much Jesus loves them!”

     “No,” his mother said, “you are not a Christian, and you never can be now. You see that mark on your hand? No one who is a Christian is allowed to have that mark, only those who aren’t Christians have it. Christians hate it and refuse to have it, but you took it. That’s why you can never be a Christian; no one with the mark can be a Christian, and the mark never comes off.”

     Poor little Levi, he was very troubled by this. The next day he sat down at the little table in front of the fireplace and prayed to Jesus for strength. Then he took out his pocket knife and cut away the flesh where the mark was. He cried out in pain, dropping the knife onto the table and clutching his hand to his chest.

     “What are you crying about, you big baby?” asked Sagan, who sat on the couch behind him playing his Setito LX. “Did you bite your tongue?”

     Levi moaned, then managed a reply. “I wish,” he said.

     Sagan narrowed his eyes and looked up questioningly, staring at his brother’s back. Then he lowered his eyes back down to his game. “Yeah, whatever, you baby. I have better things to do.”

     A few minutes later, when his pain had subsided a very tiny bit, Levi took the small piece of flesh with the mark on it and threw it into the fire. Half a second later, a sound like a small explosion echoed through the room, and the chip was no more.

     “What was that?” Sagan asked, glancing up from his game. He had just begun to lower his head again when Levi whimpered at the sight of his hand. Instantly his head was raised again. “Are you still crying over there, you big baby?”

     “No,” Levi whimpered, and Sagan went over to see what was causing his brother to act like such a baby.

     When Sagan saw his brother’s hand and the bloody pocket knife sitting on the table, his eyes went wide with shock. “You—you shouldn’t have done that,” he stammered. Then he ran to get his parents.

     Levi got up and backed into the corner when he saw his parents enter the room. “Go look what Levi did,” Sagan was telling them. “Look at his hand!”

     Levi’s parents stared at his left hand, which gripped the arm of the chair beside him so hard that his knuckles were white. His right hand was held behind him.

     “Look at his right hand,” Sagan said.

     Levi’s father reached out and took hold of his right wrist. He pulled Levi’s hand into view. Then he and his wife gasped in unison as they saw the bloody patch upon his hand and realized what he had done. His father was furious. He yelled at Levi, and then he beat him.

     That was the day that the beatings started. And after that, for the next week and a half, they just seemed to get worse and worse every day until there was not even a single unbruised spot upon him. Even his mother beat him, and she began to stab him with needles whenever he prayed or mentioned God or Jesus. Finally they locked him away in the basement with no food and no water, and only one small window that was just a few inches above the ground.

     For seven days little Levi, God’s little warrior, stayed trapped in that terrible basement, hungrier than he had ever been and still more thirsty than ever despite the water he had managed to drink from the dripping pipes. But on the evening of the seventh day, Jesus appeared before Levi in that basement and filled it’s darkness with His glory and His light.

     “Levi,” Jesus said to him, “for seven days now you have been trapped here in this basement. But tonight, because of your faith, I will send a fire. Now do not be afraid, for this fire will set you free, and it will not harm you. Then you are to go out to the world and continue sharing your faith, just as you did before, and shall be a powerful witness for me. And remember, little Levi, that I am with you always, that I am always beside you.”

     And that night it happened exactly as Jesus had said. The house caught on fire, killing Levi’s parents and brothers while they slept. But as the flames moved into the little basement, forcing Levi into the corner, the whole room suddenly exploded with pressure. The room shook, and the window busted. Smoke, black and thick, covered Levi in a wave and rushed out the now broken window.

     Levi ducked his head, coughing, and when he looked back up, there was a fireman leaning in through the window, holding out his arms to Levi. Levi ran into those arms, and he was quickly pulled from the basement and carried to an ambulance a good distance away.

     The fireman put an oxygen mask over Levi’s mouth and patted him on the head. Then he looked around cautiously before removing his right glove to wipe the soot and sweat off his face. He wiped his face quickly and then hurried to put his glove back on, but Levi had noticed something strange. He reached out quickly and drew the fireman’s hand near to himself, his small eyes grown large with eagerness as he met the fireman’s gaze, then stared back down at it.

     The fireman saw the eagerness in his eyes and feared that he was the tattle-tale kind of boy, feared that he would love to get the fireman in trouble and that he would cry out. And little Levi did cry out.

     He ripped the oxygen mask from his face in one swift motion. “You don’t have the mark!” he exclaimed in joy.

     The fireman tore his hand away from the boy, replaced the oxygen mask, and glanced quickly around to see if anyone had heard. No one had.

     Levi shoved the mask out of his way again. “No,” he said, trying to explain. He held up his own right hand for the fireman to see. “I don’t have one either.”

     The fireman stared at Levi’s hand. “What is that terrible scar there?” he asked.

     “I cut my mark off,” Levi explained. “I did not know what it was when I got it; I thought it was just a stamp. But then my mom told me that it meant that I wasn’t a Christian and that I could never be one as long as I had it. So I had to cut it off. It hurt really bad. But I’m glad to be free now. Do you have any water and food?”

     The fireman stared at Levi in wonder. “Did your parents lock you up in there because you were a Christian?”

     Levi nodded. “For seven days. But this evening Jesus came to me and told me that he was sending a fire to set me free, and he did.” Levi smiled. “Jesus really loves me…” He smiled again. “And now I’m free.” Then his stomach growled very loudly, and he frowned. “But I’m really hungry.”

     So the fireman took Levi to get some food and water, and after that he took Levi with him back to his own home and his own family of devout Christians. And Levi stayed with them and had a new, loving Christian mother, a new Christian father, and a new Christian sister and brother. And, many years later, the three children came to be known as the Three Witnesses: Ruth, singer of songs that made even the most insensitive cry or leap with joy; Joseph, dreamer of dreams and man of wisdom; and Levi, man of faith, worker of miracles, and caller of the Holy Spirit.

 

* Disclaimer: This is a fiction story intended to inspire Christians to stand up for Christ even in the face of terrible persecution--nothing more, and nothing less.