The Sealing

by Patrick Higgins

  Yamamoto was right again. Someone had coached them in advance.

  Now that the Henriksen’s had been tracked to the Trenton, New Jersey area, a 50-mile dragnet was set up. The award amount was increased from $1K to $5K for anyone helping in their capture…

  Jacquelyn watched at home, with her husband and mother-in-law. She was so terrified that, for a brief moment, she thought she would go into labor two months early. To hear her “fake” name being mentioned on air chilled her to the bone.

  Sarah said, “Is that you?”

  Jacquelyn nodded yes, then sat down. She was too frightened to speak. She felt like fainting.

  “Oh, my…” Sarah sat next to her daughter-in-law and rubbed her back. She was wondering what else had happened in the 4 months she was hibernating. She knew Braxton Rice was dead and Craig Rubin had committed suicide. Now this? She hoped there wouldn’t be anything else.

  If there was one thing Sarah was grateful for, it’s that Donald and Mary Johnson would remain in Chadds Ford for the time being. Manuel Jiminez too. It was too risky for Christians to be seen out in public, let alone taking international flights at this time.

  Brian said, “About the only good thing is the pillow under your sweater worked. They’ll be searching for women with newborns, not someone two months away from giving birth.”

  Jacquelyn didn’t reply. All she could think about was Matthew 24:19, “How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!”

  Not even living in a walled-in, guarded community, comforted her. Her nerves were too shredded to feel comfort. She rubbed her belly, silently wishing she was no longer pregnant…

  MEANWHILE, CLAYTON AND TRAVIS watched the breaking news with Charles, Lee Kim and Amos Nyarwarta, at the safehouse on the Georgia-Tennessee border, where Ernest and Evelyn Stone resided.

  When Dr. Kim heard his name mention in the media, he buried his face in his hands and started hyperventilating. His legs trembled; his palms were sweaty and his mouth was dry like cotton.

  Lee felt God calling him back to South Korea, to help ETSM members get better organized over there. Many who’d attended megachurches in South Korea, before the Rapture, were left behind with the rest of the false converts on the planet. They quickly repented of their sins and were false converts no more.

  The plan was that Nigel Jones would fly him back to the country of his birth when the time was right. Now his former boss and friend was dead and his three planes were confiscated.

  Dr. Kim silently prayed this wouldn’t be the end of the road for him. How can I help my fellow Koreans, Lord, if I’m put in prison? If that happens, it will surely mean death for me…

  Clayton looked at Travis and gulped hard. “They’re on to us!”

  Travis lowered his head and sighed. “Do you think they’ll ever link us to everyone we gave money to?”

  Clayton rubbed his chin, “All I can say is I hope not.”

  Charles asked, “So, what do we do now?”

  “We wait and we watch. And we pray. If God intends for us to house many of His children, not to mention the hundred and forty four thousand, He will surely protect us. Perhaps not all locations, but at least some.”

  Clayton sighed, “Not gonna lie, fellas, I’m scared like you. But if Yogesh could be so strong to the very end, not to mention Braxton and Nigel, so can I, if only to honor their memories.”

  Miss Evelyn said, “Amen!”

  “Amen!” Amos Nyarwarta declared, before doing what he always did when he was nervous. He praised God with song and prayer.

  It didn’t take long for everyone else to join him.

  One hour turned into two. Then four. Then six. They prayed and sang songs to the Lord all through the night. They kept going until the sun came up.

  Before sleeping, everyone at the safe house praised God for protecting them through the night, and for filling their hearts with peace.

  It was just what they needed.

  It wouldn’t last…

  52

  AJIT LAGHARI HEARD THE metal key slowly unlocking the steel gray door to his cell. He was too weak to look up at his captors.

  The only time guards came into his cell the past two days was to bring him food he never ate and give him new gauze to put in his mouth, to absorb more blood. It was changed every few hours.

  Normally, not acknowledging their presence would warrant another beating at their hands. But it was beyond that point. They weren’t here to beat or torture him this time.

  In his fragile condition, one more blow might kill him.

  But dying in a prison cell wasn’t the way Ajit would leave this earth, especially with the whole world watching. If he did, as the face of Romanero’s rehabilitation program, they would have to answer for it.

  Taking a moment to make sure their bodycams were turned on, the same two guards grabbed Ajit under his armpits. “Today’s your big day!” the man said. “Let me be the first to shake your hand! What’s left of it!”

  His female counterpart burst out in laughter, then said, “What’s wrong with you, sunshine? The whole world’s watching, yet you didn’t even fix your hair! And you stink to low heaven! Even with this heavy-duty mask on, I still smell you!” She sighed. “Hey, it’s your party…”

  They dragged Ajit’s naked body down the long corridor of the prison. As usual, the smell of bodily fluids and human-laced dog food, wafted in the air with each cell he passed by. Gone, however, was the soft whimpering and blood-curdling screams. The prison was eerily silent.

  Had his brothers and sisters been killed? If he had the strength to shrug his shoulders, he would have. But he didn’t. And his mind was too numb at this point to give it any further thought. His body was limp, worthless. If so, good for them!

  His vision was permanently blurred from having cigarette smoke blown in them, flashlights shoved in them, and from suffering so many blows to the face. The first-time blood trickled out of his eye sockets was during the second electrocution stage. It happened many times since.

  If someone gave him an eye examination, no doubt he would be declared legally blind. And his hearing was severely affected from having cigarettes and marijuana butts extinguished in his ears.

  But his soul, weary as it was, was still intact. Even though he didn’t know to where he was being taken or what measure of torture he would be subjected to next, he still had God’s salvation, and the countless promises that came with being adopted into His eternal Family.

  Hoping to tame the fear he felt of the unknown, he meditated on key verses in the Word of God he’d memorized, day and night.

  Toes dragging on the hard tile floor below him, he mumbled John 16:33 to himself, once again changing some of the pronouns to make it more personal to him, ‘These things You have spoken to me, that in You I may have peace. In this world I’ve had great tribulation; but I am of good cheer, because You have overcome the world.’”

  “Dadu Deduj!” he mumbled under his breath. He was trying to say, “Thank you, Jesus!” It was the best he could do without a tongue.

  His diabolical jailers couldn’t understand a word he said. But the Most High did. He was waiting to love on Ajit with an everlasting love the moment his tortured child stepped into eternity. This love would only intensify as the ages passed, as he became the object of His eternal love.

  A steel door opened. Then another. Then another. For the first time since his detainment, Ajit was taken outside to an open courtyard.

  Through blurred vision he saw a small patch of grass, but his toes never touched it. They were dragged mercilessly over the course cement littered with stones, pebbles, broken glass and cigarette butts.

  His moans were softer now. He was 90 pounds lighter than when he first arrived at this place; he was too weak to bellow.

  Another thing Ajit could see from his disadvantaged vantagepoint, was shackles fastened to the ankles of hundreds of his fellow prisoners. All inmates were forced outside to watch what would ultimately
become the fate of them all. The only prisoners not there were expectant and nursing mothers.

  All were naked, and were at various stages of the torture process. All were ghastly thin. Some bordered on the skeletal, very much resembling the man being dragged before them, as they were forced outside to witness perhaps his final moments.

  Some were new inmates and had just finished the fierce interrogation period. Most had been brutally raped before their bodies became too disgusting to further violate. But it wasn’t only women being raped. Just as many men were being violated by male and female prison guards.

  Like everyone before them, they were missing teeth, and had bruises and burn marks all over their bodies, from cigarettes and marijuana joints being extinguished in their ears, up their noses, and on their rectums and genitals.

  Seeing others who were further along in the “rehabilitation” process, caused new inmates to quake in terror. The pain and dread they felt, while excruciating, paled in comparison to what was still to come.

  Ajit thought, this explains why the prison was so silent...

  Upon reaching the center of the courtyard, a voice said, “Bring him here!”

  The two guards obeyed the command, then let go of Laghari’s limp body. He fell to the ground with a hard thud, shattering his left cheekbone in the process. He groaned in agony for the thousandth time since coming to this death camp.

  No longer their responsibility or their concern, the two guards lit cigarettes and waited for the show to begin.

  Both tingled with anticipation knowing that hundreds more would soon be sent to their part of the prison, then thousands, now that Laghari was out of the way. This gave them so much to look forward to.

  “This is so much better than having sex!” the male guard said to his female counterpart. She nodded agreement.

  Two more guards reached under Laghari’s arms and hoisted him to his feet. His head throbbed and his body was so limp that if they let go, he would collapse to the ground again.

  Ajit opened his eyes and looked down at his badly cut and bleeding toes. Least I still have all ten. Let’s see, that makes ten toes, five fingers and two thumbs…He was amazed he could count at all. Or think!

  With what little strength he still had left in his tortured body, he looked up and saw the most beautiful sight his eyes had seen since being confined to this house of evil—the sharp blade of a guillotine.

  “Dadu Deduj! (Thank you, Jesus!),” he exclaimed, with as much energy as he could muster, which wasn’t much.

  If the best moment in a believer’s life was his last, because that’s when he was closest to Heaven, Ajit rejoiced with everything in his now all but useless body that he had finally reached that point.

  Soon, very soon, they could never hurt him again. If he had any tears left to shed, blood-filled as they were, they would be tears of joy...

  With his neck securely fastened in the stocks, he closed his eyes and ignored the severe pain seizing his entire body. With his physical death mere moments away from happening, all he could think about was the thief on the cross, who asked Jesus to remember him in His kingdom.

  Ajit mumbled what Jesus said to him in Luke 23:43, “‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’ Dadu Deduj!”

  With the whole world watching, Ajit lifted his eyes toward Heaven and forced a weary smile, before closing them again. Next time I open my eyes, I will truly be free…

  With no speeches or fanfare, the moment the command was given, the heavy vertical blade fastened between two upright posts was dropped, making Ajit Laghari the first Christian prisoner beheaded by guillotine, post-Rapture. His final words, before his head was chopped off, were found in 2 Corinthians 5:8: “‘To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.’”

  A Satan-worshipping prison guard picked up the severed head and raced through the courtyard, praising the Master Deceiver in a loud chant only he himself knew. He did this to remind each prisoner, as if they needed reminding, of their collective fate if they didn’t wise up.

  He even pressed Ajit’s dead bloody lips up against the lips of some of the chained female prisoners. The desperation he saw on their faces had nothing to do with his threats; but from knowing they would be forced back into their dungeons, the very last place on Earth they wanted to be.

  More than anything, they wanted to be sent to the guillotine, so they could finally be put out of their misery and go to the place where Ajit Laghari now was. But no one dared ask their prison guards for that favor.

  They knew it would only lead to more torture...

  SALVADOR ROMANERO POUNDED THE table as hard as he could with his fist. “Can you believe that man?” he snapped.

  “Are you okay, your Grace?” Former U.N. Secretary-General Li Ping asked, taking a sip of wine, something he did with greater frequency these days.

  Romanero gritted his teeth, “Really? Smiling just before his head was chopped off! How arrogant! His sickness was worse than I thought!”

  Jurgen Staat said, “At least he’s dead.”

  The two former Secretary-Generals were invited to Romanero’s residence in Spain for dinner and a progress meeting, to include discussing Salvador’s future relocation to the Middle East.

  Shortly before Ajit Laghari was led to the guillotine, they were in mid-discussion over the great progress being made on so many fronts.

  Even before the mass detainment of Christians, nearly 2,000,000 people were dying every day, post Rapture, from mass starvation, disease, murder, suicide, and from drug and alcohol abuse. While that number hadn’t changed much since before the disappearances, with the population cut in half, the death rate had essentially doubled.

  Even more astounding was that they’d managed to reduce the global population by half in little more than a year. Who would have believed it possible before the disappearances? It was a mind-boggling statistic.

  With more than 3,000,000,000 adults still on the planet, they still had a long way to go to reach the goal of 500,000,000 global citizens, the vast majority of whom would be children.

  But they were well on their way…

  The last thing Jurgen Staat said before Laghari was beheaded was, “If we keep averaging 2,000,000 deaths per day, we will reach our goal in less than four years!”

  Li Ping followed by saying, “But we need more Christians to be part of that number. Only a few have been silenced at our hands thus far.”

  Staat nodded agreement.

  The focus then shifted to the TV monitor. Thoughts flooded their minds of the day Prince Javier of Spain was executed the same way, in a stadium full of his people. It was difficult deciding which one was more exhilarating. Both felt eerily similar and equally exciting.

  Then Laghari smiled faintly, mockingly, just before the blade was dropped, and ruined the mood, throwing Salvador into a fitted rage. If they could sew his head back on and chop it off again, they would do it.

  The reason for Romanero’s outburst was, even despite being tortured mercilessly, being raped, having his brain shocked, his body electrocuted, his tongue cut out, fingers cut off, and being fed the ground up remains of his fellow Christ followers, he never denounced Jesus.

  He knew his condition was hopeless, but it mattered not to him.

  Ajit wasn’t alone. As of yet, not a single person had been converted in any of his prisons thus far. If he remained faithful and true to His Savior to the very end, why would he expect the other prisoners to do otherwise?

  It seemed the more Romanero tortured Christ followers in his prisons, the more bolstered they became in their stance for Jesus.

  This ate away at his insides like nothing else. He glared angrily at the two men at his table, deep in thought. Will they willingly suffer for me to the point of death, without denying me, like the hundreds of thousands in prison keep doing for their Savior?

  It was a question for which the Miracle Maker had no answer…

  Hence, his erratic behavior.

&nb
sp; 53

  WITH SCORES OF CHRISTIANS languishing in prisons all over the world, and thousands more joining them each week, it seemed Romanero’s plan to silence Christianity was working nicely.

  By having no access to the Word of God in any way, shape or form—including online, the millions living in hiding had no way of sharing the Gospel message to a lost and dying world.

  The situation looked bleak for those belonging to the Most High God. Not counting the day Christ died on the cross for all who would believe in Him, this was the darkest period for God’s chosen people to date.

  Throughout the centuries, so many unspeakable atrocities had been perpetrated against God’s faithful servants. Much blood had been shed. So much so that a steady flow of blood from Christian martyrs, ran thick and wide and deep, stopping only at Heaven’s pearly gates.

  Even so, all past persecutions combined, horrific as they were, couldn’t compare to what was happening now. The steady crimson flow of blood would soon turn into a gushing river, as more Christians would be martyred in the next three years than in any 100-year period of time.

  This was only the beginning…

  Romanero and the Pope would soon become drunk on the blood of countless martyrs with no way of stopping it.

  The situation appeared increasingly hopeless...

  Then it happened, the Most High placed His seal on the foreheads of His 144,000 servants. With an absolute command of the Scriptures emblazoned on their minds, hearts, and on their tongues—both the Old and New Testaments—Yahweh sent them out to even the remotest places on earth, to fulfill their Missions.

  THE INSTANT THE 144,000 were sealed, Salvador Romanero felt it deep in his spirit. It was as if his insides had been twisted so violently, he thought they would spill out of him, like a freshly gutted pig.

  The antichrist of the Bible knew this time was fast approaching. Even despite his constant full court press against the children of God, there was nothing he could do to stop these Jewish preachers from leading multitudes to his archenemy, the Lord Jesus Christ.