— I Corinthians 12:7, 11

Gerald Lowe settled into his seat as the flight attendants demonstrated a litany of safety precautions and emergency scenarios for the passengers. Lowe wondered to himself how many of his fellow travelers might flee the plane and seek other transportation to Duluth, Minn., had they known how many attempts had been made on his life in the past several years.

A letter bomb in Paris, amysterious auto accident in London, a house fire in Portland, Maine, and another handful of ill-fated attempts to snuff him out made him a less-than-stellar traveling companion. Other than Osama bin Laden, Lowe supposed he might be the most sought-after man on the face of the earth — both by those who wanted to learn more about his expertise and those who no longer wanted that information disseminated. If he was a cat, he was quickly running out of lives.

Dwelling momentarily on his past brushes with death caused him to pause, close his eyes and offer up a quick prayer of thanks and supplication — his fifth such prayer since he boarded the plane. This did not go unnoticed.

“I don’t blame you for praying before our flight,” whispered an older lady sitting next to him. “I always make sure to pack a long list of prayers before going on any trip — especially when they involve flying on an airplane.”

Lowe opened his eyes. His prayer was interrupted, but he didn’t mind. He turned toward the woman that he estimated must be close to 80 years old. She was dressed in nearly all yellow and smelled strongly of a perfume that reminded him of his mother.

“How did you know I was praying? I could have been trying to get some sleep,” Lowe asked gently.

“I don’t know … you just seem like the praying type, that’s all,” she replied, punctuated by a meek smile. “My name is Betty Hughes, by the way.”

Lowe took a sweeping glace around the cabin, quickly scouting as many hands as possible. No red flags. The one advantage he did have was being able spot a Scout Seeker (as many Soul Scouts called their enemies in spiritual warfare) from a mile away. Usually.

“I’m Harold … Harold Floyd,” Lowe said and shook her hand. He hated lying, but it was too dangerous to go around dropping his name to complete strangers, even if they were innocent old ladies.

“Nice to meet you, Harold,” Betty replied. “What is bringing you to Duluth?”

“Oh, just catching up with some old friends,” Lowe replied. That wasn’t a lie. Stuart Kolleen was an old, dear friend, but the two men weren’t going to be sitting on any porches, knocking back tall glasses of lemonade and swapping stories from decades past. No, that would have to be some other time — if there was another time. This trip was all business, and it was likely to be deadly.

Betty also was traveling to Duluth to “meet some old friends.” Lowe was thankful for the diversion from the heavy thoughts he carried onto the plane along with his carry-on bag. Betty was pleasant enough and engaging, and their conversation pushed aside thoughts of Soul Scouts, Scout Seekers and the danger Kolleen and his friends were facing in Duluth, as well as the enigma named Wakeman Pells.

“You’re right, by the way. I am the praying type,” Lowe said. “I don’t think it’s possible to pray too much. Right?”

Betty smiled and nodded, “God loves conversation, and too often we give Him the silent treatment.”

Lowe laughed, “We don’t talk with Him often enough — except maybe for when we’re flying.”

As nervous as he was moments ago, Lowe felt very much at ease after spending just a few minutes with Betty. He grew even more relieved, however, when he saw that the symbol of the cross on her left hand was a brilliant, golden hue. Goodness, I’m shaking hands with a true saint, he thought. She’s probably not carrying plastic explosives in her handbag.

It wasn’t long before the plane was off the ground, speeding toward Duluth, and his conversation with Betty began to wane. Alone in his thoughts again, Lowe looked out his window into the dark night.

Kolleen had contacted Lowe with a plea to visit the Soul Scout group in Duluth. The encrypted e-mail was brief, but to the point. 

Apparently Scout Seekers attempted to kill a Soul Scout recruit, Pells; and although the security of their location had not been breached, Kolleen believed his crew couldn’t remain safe for long. 

Plus, there was considerable debate among the leaders there whether to bring Pells into the pack. He wasn’t a Christian, and that was usually a nonstarter — too many other Soul Scouts had lost their lives by being lulled in by recruits who showed interest in the codes, but not the Scripture. Still, Kolleen briefly, but passionately wrote that he was convinced Pells would become a Christian and accept Jesus Christ as his Savior sooner than later.

Lowe sighed quietly. He longed to be back in a classroom, teaching the next wave of college students about American history, particularly the Civil War. That period of time fascinated him, and after teaching it for a handful of decades, it still interested him. 

He wondered what the generals Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant would do in his situation. Or how about Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain — the college professor from Maine who won fame for his brilliant defense of Little Round Top for the Union Army during the Battle of Gettysburg?

But Chamberlain volunteered, I merely opened an old book and my life changed forever. I accept my lot in life. It is the Lord’s will, but I never asked for it, and I’m not sure that I have shown any bravery along the way.

For most of his life, Gerald Lowe’s world revolved around teaching. 

He loved the relationships he forged with students and colleagues, getting lost in research in the corner of a dry, dusty university library, walking across a campus in the fall as leaves fell all around him or trudging through snow on the way to his classroom. He rarely vacationed and had no interest in marrying or raising children.  Why would he marry? He was already wed to university life.

But academia had no answers for him when he began seeing weird symbols on people’s hands — first on a couple of students, and then on another professor in the history department at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. Soon, they were everywhere, except his own hands. Lowe’s first reaction was amusement, but then that quickly morphed through the stages of unbelief, bewilderment and fear. It didn’t help that his own hands were bereft of any such symbols. His need for answers soon superceded his responsibilities at the college. He spent long hours scouring the Bible and other books in search of answers. He even Googled them. 

Nothing.

Lowe began taking vacations more often to travel and search used bookstores, leaf through ancient manuscripts and snap pictures of stained glass windows that adorned ageless cathedrals. He hoped beyond hope that he would find enough clues to solve the great puzzle staring him in the face each time he shook someone’s hand.

When his vacation time ran dry, he frequently took sick days.

Pastors, priests and Bible scholars were often the target of his searches — when he first saw the colorful array of crosses and myriad symbols that resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics, his gut reaction was that they were signs from God and not some malevolent symbols — and 90 percent of the time they referred him to the latest literature on stigmata, the phenomenon where people mysteriously develop sores, pain and/or wounds in spots of the body corresponding with the Crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ.

He prayed — no begged — God to reveal what the symbols stood for and what His plans were for the people who unwittingly bore them. He asked God why he didn’t find them on his own hands.

The long-awaited answer came in spades. In the midst of a book-hunting expedition in Grand Rapids, Mich., Lowe walked into a tiny store, grabbed an ages-old book about codes used during the Middle Ages, and the answer to his prayers literally fell out of the book and onto his lap.

Spiritual warfare’s version of the atomic bomb.