“Sorry.”
“No, I want every detail. You going back out?”
“Thinkin’ about it, pardner. Seems risky.”
“I’d think you’d be throwing caution to the wind at this point.”
“I want to be alive when it happens, Ray. That’s all.”
“I’ll bet old Chaim here would even be tempted to go with you, once the sign appears in the sky.”
“Oh no, gentlemen,” Chaim said, chuckling. “My place is here. I want the entire remnant out in the high places, watching for the return. We must all be in place, singing, praying, ready to worship Him in spirit and in truth, and best of all, in person.”
“I’ve at least got to be there,” Rayford said. “Mac, can you make sure of it?”
“Unless you talk me into getting back in the air, sure.” All three men jumped when lightning shot from straight overhead to the ground, followed by an immediate resounding roar. The strike had to be less than half a mile away. It shook the dwelling and echoed for half a minute among the surrounding mountains and hills.
“Here we go,” Chaim said. “Keep your eyes on the heavens.”
“Don’t need to tell me that,” Mac said.
“Supposed to rain?” Sebastian said. “Looks like it might, but I didn’t count on that.”
“Don’t think so,” Otto said. “I don’t recall hearing that in any of the teaching, but that may say more about my attention span than the prophecies.”
“I don’t want my guys out here in a downpour,” Sebastian said. “’Specially if we have a choice.”
“What’s the choice?”
“Got me there. We don’t have nearly enough vehicles, and no one wants to be back in Petra when everything goes down.”
“Speak for yourself, Big Dog,” Otto said. “I’m into creature comforts. I mean, I want to see what there is to see. But I have nothing against a poncho and an umbrella.”
Sebastian threw his head back and guffawed. “‘Here am I, Lord,’” he mocked in a bad German accent. “‘Put galoshes on me!’”
That made even Razor laugh, but he quickly recovered. “Begging your pardons, sirs,” he said. And soon all three were howling.
After leaving Rayford’s quarters, Abdullah had taken a small jet with a large Plexiglas hood over the cockpit, giving him a panoramic view. He flew over the masses assembled near Petra, then rocketed north, all the way to Jerusalem, nearly overcome by the expanse of the Unity Army. He knew. He’d heard. He’d been taught. But to see it for himself made it hard to breathe.
How far he’d come in just a few years! He’d made it a practice not to show his emotions in public. It was his culture, the way he was raised. Oh, he had been amused, mostly by Mac, and he had been prodded to anger—also by Mac. But to ride above the elements that made up the final chapter of history and realize how easy it would have been to miss it all, Abdullah couldn’t stem the tears.
He had been raised in another religion altogether, and to convert to Christ was to turn his back on his family and, it seemed, his country. Yet the truth had pressed in upon him. His decision for Jesus was a towering leap of faith, yet from the beginning the rightness of it, the truth with a capital T, had become clear. He had always been a student, after all.
Abdullah had been amused that his friends, particularly the Americans, seemed to think him intellectually limited because of his broken English. Something about his speech patterns, with his Jordanian accent, rendered his sound childlike to Americans. He could tell in how they looked at him, how they responded to him. Sometimes, he admitted, he played to it. One could garner more information by sounding young and innocent.
He was anything but, however. Abdullah had been put through the rigors of military training to where he was certified to fly jets of almost any type. Did his friends really think all Jordanians were so childlike and stupid that they would entrust a young man of limited mental capabilities to pilot fighter-bombers worth tens of millions of dinars? It was laughable. He had been a celebrated pilot, eventually a trainer himself.
Abdullah wondered what Rayford and the others thought of his serious study of prophecy under Tsion Ben-Judah and Chaim Rosenzweig. Unlike the others, he was mostly quiet and didn’t ask many questions. But he put to use the same gray matter that allowed him to understand the myriad technical specifications of sophisticated modern aircraft and had made him an accomplished pilot.
Perhaps because they were humble Middle Easterners themselves, neither Dr. Ben-Judah nor Dr. Rosenzweig acted surprised at Abdullah’s intellectual proclivities, evidenced in private e-mails and conversations. And while the teaching could be heavily theological and deep, the most persuasive parts of all were the almost daily fulfillments of prophecy.
Abdullah had no doubt that the ancient Scriptures were authentic, penned thousands of years before the birth of Christ. Hundreds and hundreds of prophecies had been fulfilled, many before his eyes. In spite of his grief over the loss of his family, in the midst of constant fear of being discovered without the mark of Carpathia, and yes, even with his private offense over his friends’ clearly assuming he was not as bright as they, Abdullah’s fledgling faith had grown more solid every day.
He knew Mac and Rayford and Buck and the rest really loved him. Perhaps he could educate them in the next chapter of this unfolding of history and then they would see that, while they no doubt did not even realize they were doing it, there was no reason to condescend to him.
The lightning had increased, and Abdullah loved it. It cast eerie, intermittent bursts of light upon the restless troops below. And it lit up the clouds, which he otherwise could not see due to the absence of moon and starlight. Oh, what a glorious, frightening scene!
Abdullah prayed, thanking God for how far he had come, for allowing such an unlikely prospect into His kingdom, for protecting him even now from the killing power of the enemy.
Over Jerusalem Abdullah noticed tiny campfires dotting the city, many at the Temple Mount. The lightning revealed Unity troops surrounding that area, which he now knew was the last stronghold of the stubborn resistance. He had to chuckle. If only they could see their plight from his vantage point. It was as if a parakeet believed he had commandeered his own cage. Still, he admired them. He was on their side. They were God’s chosen people, and in the end, Jesus Christ would give them the victory.
Oh, Jerusalem was to fall, Abdullah knew. But because every one of the other prophecies he had ever studied had literally come true as it was spelled out, he also had zero doubt that Jesus would make things right again. With a full fuel tank and a lightning show to illumine the playing field, he felt he was in the prime spot for the greatest show on earth.
With a steep left bank and a flyover of the millions of troops in the great Valley of Megiddo, Abdullah turned his screaming craft back to the south. Next on the agenda was Carpathia’s showing up in Edom to lead a third of his forces against Petra. Unity Army searchlights from the ground crisscrossed the sky and occasionally locked onto Abdullah’s craft. But he was fearless. “Launch your surface-to-air missiles,” he whispered. “They will bounce off this plane like shuttlecocks.”
* * *
Rayford was speechless. He’d never been considered particularly quiet, but among this trio, he might have been a church mouse. Chaim had always loved to talk everything to death—every truth, idea, or concept. It was his way. And Mac was his Texan counterpart, maybe not as articulate and intellectual but always prepared to weigh in with a homespun opinion on everything.
But now it was eerie. All three were silent. The lightning had become almost constant; long, thick streaks of gold fired from cloud to cloud, cloud to ground, and—Rayford knew—though beyond detection of the human eye, often from ground to cloud.
The length and severity of the bolts varied, but they snaked through the heavens with such speed and abundance that the air crackled and snapped. Boom! Boom! Boom! came the deafening crashes of thunder that rattled the walls of Rayford’s flimsy q
uarters.
The flashes lit up the clouds. Rayford could not have imagined them getting larger or more active, and yet they had. They seemed miles wide and deep now, gray and black and pregnant with moisture, as if about to burst. And these blotted out everything above. Were it not for his faith, this would be a horrifying scene. Indeed, the power and wrath of the God of the universe were being unleashed, and those without confidence in His love had to be terrified.
“Astounding,” Rayford whispered, but the other two men, silhouetted in the constant flashes, neither moved nor responded. His lame summary must have hit them as feebly as it had him.
Sebastian trained his night-vision goggles on the skies, reminding himself to breathe. He felt Otto pressing in on one side and Razor on the other, and strange as that might seem in any other circumstance, it reminded him of his childhood when he and his younger brother hugged each other in fear while watching a thunderstorm from their bed, a storm a thousandth the size of this.
And just when Sebastian believed the sky could contain itself no longer, the lightning seemed to ratchet up to a ridiculous speed. Hundreds, thousands of bolts crashed to the desert floor every second, deafening roars of thunder piling atop each other in such an overwhelming invasion that he was forced to let the goggles drop and dangle from his neck as he covered his ears with both hands. The sky from east to west and north to south was ablaze, blinding streaks firing every which way. The ground heaved and rolled, and Sebastian knew that had to be from a combination of the lightning, the thunder, and the thorough panic of Antichrist’s mounted forces.
He sent Otto to check on Ree Woo’s troops on the other side of the perimeter and Razor to check his own on this side.
Enoch sat in Illinois with his Bible tucked under his arm, trying to protect it should the rain come. But when the lightning seemed to lose all sense of proportion, all he could do was stand, thrusting the Bible over his head in both hands, offering it to God as a form of worship. What a show! The awful and terrible wrath of the Lord on display for the whole world!
Enoch thought of Old Testament Scriptures he had bookmarked and quickly sat again, riffling through the pages and reading them by the almost constant light of the electrical extravaganza, shouting them to the heavens.
“‘Enter into the rock, and hide in the dust, from the terror of the Lord and the glory of His majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up—and it shall be brought low.
“‘They shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, from the terror of the Lord and the glory of His majesty, when He arises to shake the earth mightily.’”
Finding the prophetic warnings in the books of Hosea and Joel, Enoch read of the enemies of the Lord. “‘They shall say to the mountains, “Cover us!” and to the hills, “Fall on us!”
“‘The Lord gives voice before His army, for His camp is very great; for strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; who can endure it?’”
I can endure it, Enoch thought, just like anyone who sees past His wrath and trusts God’s mercy.
He read from Joel 2:12: “‘Now, therefore,’ says the Lord, ‘turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.’”
Turning to Nahum 1:6, Enoch read: “‘Who can stand before His indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him.’”
The very next verses offered hope and yet another dire warning: “‘The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knows those who trust in Him. But with an overflowing flood He will make an utter end of its place, and darkness will pursue His enemies.’”
Near the end of the Old Testament, Enoch came to Zephaniah and read from chapter one, verses 14 to 17: “‘The great day of the Lord is near; it is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of the Lord is bitter; there the mighty men shall cry out.
“‘That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of devastation and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet and alarm against the fortified cities and against the high towers.
“‘I will bring distress upon men, and they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord; their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like refuse.’”
Beyond all comprehension, Chang thought, the Global Community News Network ignored the nature show. He knew from pirating the feeds from all over the globe that the constant lightning was a universal phenomenon. From Sri Lanka came visual feeds of a metropolitan area ablaze, the downtown having been ignited by thousands of lightning strikes. People rioted, trampling each other, screaming, pleading for mercy.
A GCNN cameraman, or his brave producer, transmitted images of a tiny band of anti-Carpathia Jews kneeling amid the lightning flashes beneath an ancient Israeli flag, a Star of David, and a rough-hewn cross. They were thumbing their noses at the god of this world, boldly showing that they had never received the mark of loyalty to the supreme potentate, but had now staked their claim with Messiah.
From South America came the same. Regardless of where the feed originated, it came as if at midnight. The only light came from the lightning and artificial sources. Citizens were hysterical. Even many with Carpathia’s mark screamed obscenities at him through the cameras and demanded to know where he was and what he was doing about this. Chang asked a Hispanic coworker to translate what the South Americans were shouting.
“They are saying,” she said, “that this is obviously an offensive from God Himself, and so what does the potentate have to say about that? Who will win? They want to know, who will win?”
Even the producers, who worked directly for the GC, sent in harshly worded demands to know why GCNN was ignoring their feeds. What, they asked, was more important than a cosmic disturbance like this, one that saw global panic and devastation? People were being killed, committing suicide, looting, rampaging. Yet GCNN ran wall-to-wall coverage of the war effort.
“Unity Army troops assigned to Egypt are already on their way back to the Valley of Megiddo,” intoned an anchorwoman, showing clips of overwhelming victories for the GC. “Reports from the northeast mirror these, and Unity generals report they will have their platoons back to Israel in plenty of time for the siege on Jerusalem.”
An interview with Carpathia himself showed the folly of the so-called objective coverage. The potentate was shown mounting his enormous horse, just outside the cargo plane that had delivered him and his generals to Ash Shawbak, about halfway between Petra and Buseirah. That put Carpathia and his people about ten miles east of the edge of his massive Unity Army that extended to the border of Petra.
“I am pleased with the reports from the south and from the northeast,” he said. “And now we are about to embark on one of our most strategic initiatives. A third of our entire fighting force will advance upon the rebel stronghold cowering in Petra. Intelligence tells us that a paltry defensive unit has rung the city round about, but they are hopelessly outnumbered and have already offered to surrender.”
Carpathia was interrupted by nearly continuous crashes of thunder, which he and the reporter appeared to ignore.
“Was this enclave not attacked twice before, Excellency?”
“Attacked would not be the proper term,” Carpathia said, making Chang laugh aloud. The first failed attempt saw the GC bring huge numbers of troops and weapons, only to see them miraculously swallowed up by the earth. The second was a double bombing that produced a spring of water that provided sustenance for the people to this day, and which also resulted in the inhabiting Jewish remnant and a few of the Tribulation Force being supernaturally protected from the ensuing firestorm.
“In fact,” Carpa
thia continued, “we made peaceful overtures to the leadership, offering amnesty for any who would voluntarily leave the stronghold and take the mark of loyalty. Our understanding is that many wished to make this move, only to be slaughtered by the leadership. Many will recall that it was this very leadership who assassinated me, serving only to give me the opportunity to prove my divinity by raising myself from the dead.
“Well, this time around, there will be no negotiating. Loyalists to our New World Order have either been murdered or have escaped, so intelligence tells us Petra is now inhabited solely by rebels to our cause, murderers and blasphemers who have thumbed their noses at every attempt to reason with them.”
The cameras homed in on the potentate as he was handed an almost cartoonishly oversized silver sword with gold rococo inlays and a garishly overdone handle. He strapped it around his waist, then theatrically unsheathed it with a long, slow, metallic screech. He pointed it skyward.
Chang couldn’t help praying silently that just one of those bolts of lightning would find that tip and roast the enemy where he sat.
“Therefore,” Carpathia said, “our plan is annihilation. I shall personally lead this effort, with the able assistance, of course, of my generals. We shall rally the troops as soon as we arrive, and the siege should take only a matter of minutes.”
As Carpathia yanked the reins and turned his mount to the east, racing off at a gallop, the reporter called after him, “All the best to you, holy one! And may you bless yourself and bring honor to your name with this effort!”
Chang called Mac and filled him in on the lunacy. “You guys ought to turn this on,” he said. “Things are coming to a head.”
Abdullah had heard the broadcast over the radio and flew over Ash Shawbak. Carpathia’s planes and rolling stock were visible, but Abdullah was a little high to make out individuals or horses. He could, however, see the Unity Army to the west and knew it wouldn’t take Nicolae long to get there.