Chang hurried back to his quarters after work that day, eager to check on the rest of the world. The Tribulation Force had trimmed its sails and pulled in its cannons. They were back in hiding, picking their spots, strategizing for returning to an after-dark schedule.
Carpathia remained tireless and expected the same of others. He held another high-level meeting with the brass that had spent much of the day moving back to his floor. Even Viv Ivins was invited, and from what Chang could hear, all had been forgiven.
“For the first time in a long time,” Nicolae said, “we play on an even field. The waterways are healing themselves, and we have rebuilding to do in the infrastructure. Let us work at getting all our loyal citizens back onto the same page with us. Director Akbar and I have some special surprises in store for dissidents on various levels. We are back in business, people. It is time to recoup our losses and start delivering a few.”
The new mood lasted three days. Then the lights went out. Literally. Everything went dark. Not just the sun, but the moon also, the stars, streetlamps, electric lights, car lights. Anything anywhere that ever emitted light was now dark. No keypads on telephones, no flashlights, nothing iridescent, nothing glow-in-the-dark. Emergency lights, exit signs, fire signs, alarm signs—everything. Pitch-black.
The cliché of not being able to see one’s hand in front of one’s face? Now true. It mattered not what time of day it was; people could see nothing. Not their clocks, watches, not even fire, matches, gas grills, electric grills. It was as if the light had done worse than go out; any vestige of it had been sucked from the universe.
People screamed in terror, finding this the worst nightmare of their lives—and they had many to choose from. They were blind—completely, utterly, totally, wholly unable to see anything but blackness twenty-four hours a day.
They felt their way around the palace; they pushed their way outdoors. They tried every light and every switch they could remember. They called out to each other to see if it was just them, or if everyone had the same problem. Find a candle! Rub two sticks together! Shuffle on the carpet and create static electricity. Do anything. Anything! Something to allow some vestige of a shadow, a hint, a sliver.
All to no avail.
Chang wanted to laugh. He wanted to howl from his gut. He wished he could tell everyone everywhere that once again God had meted out a curse, a judgment upon the earth that affected only those who bore the mark of the beast. Chang could see. It was different. He didn’t see lights either. He simply saw everything in sepia tone, as if someone had turned down the wattage on a chandelier.
He saw whatever he needed to, including his computer and screen and watch and quarters. His food, his sink, his stove—everything. Best of all, he could tiptoe around the palace in his rubber-soled shoes, weaving between his coworkers as they felt their way along.
Within hours, though, something even stranger happened. People were not starving or dying of thirst. They were able to feel their way to food and drink. But they could not work. There was nothing to discuss, nothing to talk about but the cursed darkness. And for some reason, they also began to feel pain.
They itched and so they scratched. They ached and so they rubbed. They cried out and scratched and rubbed some more. For many the pain grew so intense that all they could do was bend down and feel the ground to make sure there was no hole or stairwell to fall into and then collapse in a heap, writhing, scratching, seeking relief.
The longer it went, the worse it got, and now people swore and cursed God and chewed their tongues. They crawled about the corridors, looking for weapons, pleading with friends or even strangers to kill them. Many killed themselves. The entire complex became an asylum of screams and moans and guttural wails, as these people became convinced that this, finally, was it—the end of the world.
But no such luck. Unless they had the wherewithal, the guts, to do themselves in, they merely suffered. Worse by the hour. Increasingly bad by the day. This went on and on and on. And in the middle of it, Chang came up with the most brilliant idea of his life.
If ever there was a perfect time for him to escape, it was now. He would contact Rayford or Mac, anyone willing and able and available to come and get him. It had to be that the rest of the Tribulation Force—in fact, all of the sealed and marked believers in the world—had the same benefit he did.
Someone would be able to fly a jet and land it right there in New Babylon, and GC personnel would have to run for cover, having no idea who could do such a thing in the utter darkness. As long as no one spoke, they could not be identified. The Force could commandeer planes and weapons, whatever they wanted.
If anyone accosted them or challenged them, what better advantage could the Trib Force have than that they could see? They would have the drop on everyone and everybody. With but a year to go until the Glorious Appearing, Chang thought, the good guys finally had even a better deal than they had when the daylight hours belonged solely to them.
Now, for as long as God tarried, for as long as he saw fit to keep the shades pulled down and the lights off, everything was in the believers’ favor.
“God,” Chang said, “just give me a couple more days of this.”
EPILOGUE
Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.
Revelation 16:10-11
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JERRY B. JENKINS, former vice president for publishing at Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and currently chairman of the board of trustees, is the author of more than 175 books, including the best-selling Left Behind series. Twenty of his books have reached the New York Times Best Sellers List (seven in the number-one spot) and have also appeared on the USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal best-seller lists. Desecration, book nine in the Left Behind series, was the best-selling book in the world in 2001. His books have sold nearly 70 million copies.
Also the former editor of Moody magazine, his writing has appeared in Time, Reader’s Digest, Parade, Guideposts, Christianity Today, and dozens of other periodicals. He was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine in 2004.
His nonfiction books include as-told-to biographies with Hank Aaron, Bill Gaither, Orel Hershiser, Luis Palau, Joe Gibbs, Walter Payton, and Nolan Ryan among many others. The Hershiser and Ryan books reached the New York Times Best Sellers List.
Jenkins assisted Dr. Billy Graham with his autobiography, Just As I Am, also a New York Times best seller. Jerry spent 13 months working with Dr. Graham, which he considers the privilege of a lifetime.
Jerry owns Jenkins Entertainment, a filmmaking company in Los Angeles, which produced the critically acclaimed movie Midnight Clear, based on his book of the same name. See www.Jenkins-Entertainment.com.
Jerry Jenkins also owns the Christian Writers Guild, which aims to train tomorrow’s professional Christian writers. Under Jerry’s leadership, the guild has expanded to include college-credit courses, a critique service, literary registration services, and writing contests, as well as an annual conference. See www.ChristianWritersGuild.com.
As a marriage-and-family author, Jerry has been a frequent guest on Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio program and is a sought-after speaker and humorist. See www.AmbassadorSpeakers.com.
Jerry has been awarded four honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Dianna, have three grown sons and six grandchildren.
Check out Jerry’s blog at http://jerryjenkins.blogspot.com.
DR. TIM LAHAYE (www.timlahaye.com), who conceived and created the idea of fictionalizing an account of the Rapture and the Tribulation, is a noted author, minister, and nationally recognized speaker on Bible prophecy. He is the founder of both Tim LaHaye Ministries and The PreTrib Research Center.
Dr. LaHaye speaks at many of the major Bible prophecy conferences in the U.S.
and Canada, where his prophecy books are very popular.
Dr. LaHaye earned a doctor of ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary and received an honorary doctor of literature degree from Liberty University. For 25 years he pastored one of the nation’s outstanding churches in San Diego, which grew to three locations. During that time he founded two accredited Christian high schools, a Christian school system of ten schools, and San Diego Christian College (formerly known as Christian Heritage College).
There are over 59 million copies of Dr. LaHaye’s 50 nonfiction books, some of which have been published in over 37 languages. He has written books on a wide variety of subjects, such as family life, temperaments, and Bible prophecy. His fiction works include the Left Behind series and the Jesus Chronicles, written with Jerry B. Jenkins. LaHaye’s other fiction series of prophetic novels consist of the Babylon Rising series and The End series. Dr. LaHaye is the father of four grown children, grandfather of nine, and great-grandfather of eleven.
TEST YOUR PROPHECY IQ
Where is the Euphrates River, and what part does it play in the end times?
See answer at the end of this section.
THE TRUTH BEHIND THE FICTION
THE PROPHECY BEHIND THE SCENES
One character who plays a major part in the Tribulation is the false prophet. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins devoted a chapter to describing his role in their nonfiction book Are We Living in the End Times?
The False Prophet
We have all heard of spin doctors—people whose skill at communication is used to cast their clients in the best possible light. In the end times, the world will witness the most charismatic spin doctor of all time, the false prophet described in John’s Revelation.
The Beast with Two Horns
John first describes the vision he had of the false prophet as a beast with two horns. (Revelation 13:11-14). Most commentators believe he is of Jewish descent, since John says he comes up “out of the earth” (Palestine) rather than out of the “sea” (the Gentile world) as does the Beast. That he has two horns “like a lamb” suggests he will try to appear as gentle as “the Lamb of God,” but this is nothing but a sham, for he speaks “like a dragon,” eager to declare the very words of the devil.
John says that in Babylon the false prophet will imitate the image vision of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2) by building an image to the Antichrist, demanding that people around the world bow down and worship him through it.
The Image that Speaks
“He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed” (Revelation 13:15).
Everyone knows Satan and his demons do not have the power to create life or human beings. There have been many fanciful suggestions of how Satan and the Antichrist would deceive the people with such a creature who could actually speak. But the technology of animatronics makes this appear a good deal less like science fiction than it used to.
And do not forget: People will not worship this image solely because it talks but because the false prophet will kill “as many as would not worship the image of the beast.”
The Mark of the Beast
It is interesting that the famous mark of the Beast is actually administered by the false prophet (Revelation 13:16-18). Everything the false prophet does is calculated to increase the power and authority of the Antichrist. That is not surprising, for he receives his own power and authority from the Antichrist.
The Satanic Trinity
Satan has always been a counterfeiter of spiritual realities, and in the Tribulation he hones his devilish art to a fine point. As God is a Trinity, so the devil tries to create his own kind of trinity: Satan in the role of the Father, Antichrist in the role of the Son, and the false prophet in the role of the Holy Spirit. Just as the Holy Spirit does not call attention to Himself but directs all worship to the Son, so the false prophet does not call attention to himself but directs all false worship to the Antichrist. The three members of this unholy trinity work together to accomplish their foul ends (Revelation 16:13-14).
A Common Destiny
It is appropriate, then, that the members of this satanic trinity share the same destiny. At the conclusion of the Battle of Armageddon the false prophet and the Antichrist are plucked alive from the battlefield and tossed bodily into the lake of fire, where they are joined a thousand years later by Satan.
IN THE MEANTIME . . . since the Left Behind series was first published.
Over its nearly seven-year history, the Left Behind Prophecy Newsletter (2003–2009) presented a number of articles on the topic of America’s apparent absence in end-times prophecy.
In a series of articles in the summer of 2004 based on his book Is America in Bible Prophecy? (Multnomah, 2002), Mark Hitchcock outlined three roles that some scholars have assigned to America: America as Babylon the Great (Revelation 17–18), the unnamed nation in Isaiah 18, or the “young lions of Tarshish” (Ezekiel 38:13), none of which he felt were valid.
At that time, the shock of September 11 was still profound, and America was engaged in the War on Terror. Russia, marred by the breakup of the Soviet Union only a decade earlier, was beginning to build alliances with Middle Eastern and other nations—predominantly Muslim—and has intensified that effort since then.
The exact alignment of nations predicted in Ezekiel 38 was clearly evidenced in the Gulf War. The United States, Western Europe, and Saudi Arabia were allied against Iraq, while Russia, Iran, Sudan, Libya and most of the other nations of the Middle East and Persian Gulf were aligned with Iraq or at least against America. . . .
Hitchcock concluded that the young lions of Tarshish allude to Western Europe, not the United States. Along with his rejection of America as Babylon or the unnamed nation of Isaiah 18, he writes, “I conclude that the role of the United States in the end times is not specifically discussed in the Bible.” He suggested four reasons why this might be.
Option 1. America will still be a powerful nation in the last days, but the Lord simply chose not to mention her specifically.
Option 2. America is not mentioned specifically in Scripture because she will be destroyed by other nations. She will suffer a fall from the outside.
Option 3. America is not mentioned in Bible prophecy because she will have lost her influence as a result of moral and spiritual deterioration. She will suffer a fall from the inside.
Option 4. America will be brought to her knees by the Rapture. The Rapture is key.
At that time (2002–2004), Hitchcock felt that option 4 was the most likely. The U.S. was a strong ally of Israel and the most religious of all Western nations, with a small but significant population of genuine Christ-followers, many whose loss from positions of leadership would generate enormous chaos. By the end of the first decade of the new century, the U.S. was still engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the world experienced a global financial crisis in 2008, and American foreign policy under newly elected president Barack Obama created an ambiguous relationship with Israel. Research by the Pew Forum and the Barna Group began to show a significant increase in the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation.
In late 2008 and early 2009, another series of articles reviewed the topic again, this time based on Hitchock’s latest book, The Late Great United States (Multnomah, 2009).
By any standard of measurement America occupies center stage in the world arena. No one disputes the fact that America has a distinctive history during which it has risen to dominate global affairs. . . . Today, America stands as the world’s lone superpower. The last one standing. But the role of lone superpower hasn’t been the smooth ride that many optimistically envisioned. . . . America’s past is glorious and inspiring, her present is unstable, yet with glimmers of cautious optimism, but what is her future? Is there any sure word?
As we look into the pages of the Bible we quickly discover that as alarming as curr
ent events are, they really aren’t surprising in light of the end time prophecies of the Bible. The geopolitical situation we see today in the headlines bears a remarkable correspondence to the trend of world events and what the Bible predicted millennia ago. As we probe biblical prophecies for clues, we discover where we are in God’s program and some of the predicted events that may occur in our lifetime. Prophecies, that in the past were sometimes carelessly brushed aside as unbelievable, are now sparking interest again. But perhaps no issue has created more interest than the possible role of America in the end times. This is the question that people everywhere are asking.
All kinds of theories about America’s future have been proposed, but the most commonly held view is that America is not a major player and certainly not the superpower she is today. While Bible prophecy experts have presented this view for decades, it appears that others are now beginning to say the same thing.
On November 20, several articles appeared reporting on the findings of the National Intelligence Council. The NIC is America’s leading intelligence organization. It produces a detailed report every four years. The report released in 2008 looks ahead to 2025, as its title indicates—“Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed.” The Guardian ran an article based on the report that was titled “2025: The End of US Dominance.” The article noted that “the US will become ‘less dominant’ in the world—no longer the unrivalled superpower it has been since the end of the Cold War, but a ‘first among equals’ in a more fluid and evenly balanced world.”
In its November 3/10 edition, U.S. News & World Report ran an article by Thomas Omestad in which he views the 2008 financial crisis as a “bellwether event” that could herald “a long-predicted decline in U.S. global power—nothing short of the beginning of the end of the American century.” He quotes Peer Steinbruck, the finance minister of Germany, who says, “The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system.”