“Well put,” the interviewer said as she nodded agreement.
“But there is a reason for renewing my efforts right now.” With this, his tone became deathly serious, “And that, quite frankly, is that the suffering and death must stop.” His expression revealed both fervor and distress, almost to the point of tears. “The suffering and death must stop,” he repeated. “And we must do everything in our power to stop it.”
“Which brings up the current crisis,” Suzanne Wright said. “Reportedly millions have died already from lack of water, and millions more are at death’s door. From what you’ve said, can we take it that you feel the Security Council was justified in reinstating capital punishment for leaders of the fundamentalists?”
“I’m a man of peace. In general I am absolutely opposed to capital punishment. However, as you said, millions of people have already died and millions more are close to death. Without support from the Cult of Yahweh, this crisis simply wouldn’t be occurring. When you think about it, the people we’re talking about, the fundamentalist leaders, are no different than the Nazis of World War II. If the involuntary life completion of a few fundamentalist leaders will result in breaking Yahweh’s hold on the planet and thereby save the lives of innocent millions, then as unpleasant as it is for all of us, we must not shirk our responsibility to ourselves and to our children. The life completion procedure shouldn’t be carried out in anger or malice or out of revenge; but for the sake of all Humankind, it must be carried out.”
“Right now, only the leaders face involuntary life completion,” Wright said. “I think the question all of us are wondering is, will that be enough?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Dowd confessed. “Let’s hope it is. Because if it’s not, I fear that even worse plagues will follow.”
“That’s a horrible thought,” Suzanne Wright winced.
“Which is why we must give our total support to Christopher and the Security Council. I’m not a soldier,” he said, shaking his head, “but I know that in time of war, it’s the responsibility of the troops to support their commanding officer. The more desperate the situation, the more important it is that orders are followed to the letter. Yahweh has declared war and, like it or not, we’re either soldiers or we’re victims.”
Looking to her notes, Wright asked, “Do you think that the decision to use involuntary life completion was influenced by the recent discoveries concerning reincarnation?”
Reverend Dowd nodded thoughtfully. “Absolutely,” he said. “Let me give you an analogy, Suzanne, that might make the decision easier to understand. When a woman terminates a pregnancy, the fundamentalists call it sin. But, of course, we know that’s ridiculous. For many women, carrying the pregnancy to term would lock them into a cycle of poverty — if not financial poverty, then emotional and spiritual poverty — because they’d never have the time to discover their true selves. And quite often, the unwanted child would become a burden for society. How many thieves and murderers were unwanted children? It would have been better for those people and for their victims if they’d never been born. Love — self-love — is the greatest and most important. That’s the foundation upon which the New Age is built. A child can’t learn to love himself if he’s not loved by the one who bore him. It’s better for those children that their spirits return to the ‘collective unconscious’ — to use Carl Jung’s terminology[134] — before they’re even born.
“The elimination of regressives in the Cult of Yahweh is really the same thing. Their inability to achieve self-love is evidenced by the fact that they rely on someone else, in this case Yahweh, to give their life meaning. They place a burden on society so great that their very existence prevents Humankind from advancing to the next stage in its evolution. Like the unwanted pregnancy, the regressives must be removed so that the rest of Humankind can advance.
“Of course, this should be accomplished in the most humane manner possible. That’s why the Security Council chose the method of life completion that it did.”
“I was wondering about that,” Wright cringed. “It seems rather . . . well, gruesome to me.”
“As I understand it,” Dowd counseled , “despite appearances, doctors consider the method to be both quick and painless. And while it may be upsetting to us, I think we’re obliged to think first of those who must undergo the procedure.”
Suzanne Wright nodded in agreement. “And of course,” she acknowledged, “no one is forced to watch.”
“On the other hand,” Dowd added, “because decapitation does appear brutal, hopefully it will deter other fundamentalists and help them realize the futility of their intolerance.”
It was obvious that the thought of it still made her squeamish.
“But I think all of us and, in fact, even those who are to undergo involuntary life completion, should take consolation in the knowledge that their death is temporary.”
“We’re almost out of time,” Wright said, “but can you tell us very briefly what it will be like for those who die?”
“Our reliable data,” he explained, “is limited to information gathered from people who have undergone detailed analysis of their past life experiences. Based on this, there’s strong evidence that when we die, we don’t remain dead long. Many are born again within just a very few years; for some, it’s only days. And, of course, when a person dies and is reborn, they almost never remember events of their past lives without undergoing past life therapy. What that means — and I’m thinking now primarily of those who undergo involuntary life completion — is that those who die leave behind all the regressive tendencies they’ve learned in their former life. They’ll return, stripped of the vestiges of the old paradigm, to a world in which the New Age is in full bloom.”
“So there is hope, even for the most fanatical of the fundamentalists?” Suzanne Wright asked, her voice filled with sanguine optimism.
“There is hope,” Reverend Dowd concurred with certainty.
“Our guest today has been Reverend Timothy Dowd,” Suzanne Wright concluded with an optimistic smile for her audience. “We’ll be back after this.”
Allahabad, India
As cameras watched, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims waited anxiously upon the banks of the tongue of land at Allahabad, where the Yamuna, Sarasvati, and Ganga (Ganges) Rivers join. Few had enough strength to stand, many were near death from dehydration, and tens of thousands more had died trying to get there. To this, the site of the “true Prayag,” or place of sacrifice, where annually millions of devout Hindus come to wash away their sins in the sacred river and where also is held the great festival called the Magh Mela, had come the prophet of Babylon, Robert Milner. Wearing the same robes as he had the week before in Tel Aviv, and again waiting until twilight to begin his work, Milner walked barefoot to the point where the rivers united and the swift current was sufficient to prevent the blood from scabbing over.
[Photo Caption: Pilgrims gathered in Allahabad on the banks of the Ganges]
This time he bore no crystal spheres. Also, unlike before, he didn’t stop at land’s edge, but continued into the river until the blood washed around him up to his knees. The fabric of his robe reacted like a straw and drew the blood through it up toward his waist. Reaching into a pocket hidden by the robe’s many folds, Milner retrieved a large knife, made of ivory and bearing unusual markings. A few in the crowd recognized it as the ceremonial knife of the Khond sacrifice of the Meriah, a ritual not openly practiced in India for two centuries, where a human sacrifice was put to death by strangulation and his body dismembered and spread over the fields to entreat the gods for a good harvest.
Standing there, Milner raised his eyes to the heavens. His right hand formed a defiant fist and was bent at the wrist so that the mark he bore there faced the sky. In his left hand he held the knife, point up, as if ready to stab at the heart of Yahweh. Then, as he had in Tel Aviv, he shouted, “In the name of the Light Bearer, and of his son, Christopher, and in the name of myself and those
with me, and all of Humankind, I declare my defiance of Yahweh, the god of sickness and disease and death and oppression! We will not yield to you! We will not submit to you! We will not bow to you! We declare our freedom from you! We spit upon you and upon your name!”
Then, with his arms still upraised and all the world watching, he held the point of the knife to his right wrist. Placing the blade against his flesh, he pulled down sharply, cutting a deep gash that cleanly severed the ulnar artery. Immediately blood poured from the wound, spurting with each heartbeat, and ran down his arm.
Those watching nearby and on live-net gasped in surprise, and though Milner already stood knee deep in blood, some still turned their heads in revulsion. For a few seconds the cameras focused on Milner, who stood unflinching with blood running down his arm, the knife still raised high. Then someone noticed that, as his blood mingled with the blood in which he stood, a change began to occur. Then everyone saw it. Rapidly, the river around Milner lightened and then turned crystal clear, clearer than anyone had ever seen it. With great speed, the reformation rushed up and down stream in all three rivers. In three minutes it had spread as far as the Bay of Bengal at the mouth of the Ganges, south of Calcutta. From there the cleansing began to occur in other rivers and springs, traveling around the world just behind the setting sun.
In Allahabad there was no great cheer as there had been in Tel Aviv. Instead, all who had strength to move, walked or crawled or clawed their way to the water to drink.
With a sigh drowned out by the rushing waters, Robert Milner dropped his arms and staggered back to shore. Struggling past cameras and reporters who cleared a path, he turned and collapsed onto the ground in exhaustion. There was an initial flurry of concern, but as he lay there still conscious and assuring those around him that he was fine, the cameras revealed an amazing image: His arm was entirely healed.
Chapter 15
The Fourth Angel
Saturday, June 26, 4 N.A.
Derwood, Maryland
It didn’t take a genius to see the pattern. Each of the recent plagues had begun on Sunday of the past three consecutive weeks. If another plague was coming, it was only logical to assume that the same pattern would be continued. That meant that whatever the next affliction was, it would probably start within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. There was no way to know exactly when, for though the turning of the salt and fresh water had occurred relatively quickly, the lesions had originally appeared only as dry itchy skin and had grown worse throughout the day. Perhaps the next plague would also start as something minor and grow worse over a day or two. There was, however, a way to know what the next plague would be.
Decker sat on the couch in his living room and took Elizabeth’s Bible from the leather satchel on the coffee table where it had been sitting since he arrived from Israel three weeks before. When Scott Rosen gave it to him in Petra, Decker had thought of it as simply a remembrance of Elizabeth. He had read her handwritten notes and the sections she marked by yellow highlighter only to see into her thoughts during the time he had been held in Lebanon. To read it now, though — after having the dream again, after entertaining doubts about Christopher — seemed like collusion with the enemy or tacit admission that there was value in its words. He didn’t need that additional guilt added to what he felt already. There he was, hiding like a hermit in a cave while the world suffered around him — hiding, in truth, from Christopher, who except for that cursed dream, had never done anything to cause Decker to doubt him. And so the satchel had remained unopened since he left Petra.
Now, however, he told himself that there was a good reason to read it: to understand the adversary. For that same reason a year and a half earlier Decker had read a Bible and found the verse that gave him the idea to use the mark to prevent the fundamentalists and the KDP from taking the communion.
On the plane to Jerusalem after his resurrection, Christopher had said that the plagues brought on by John and Cohen had occurred exactly as they were predicted in the book of Revelation. But that was before John (the author of Revelation) and Cohen had died. Decker assumed their deaths had put an end to such catastrophic events; the past three weeks offered convincing evidence to the contrary.
So, if by reading Elizabeth’s Bible he could determine what Yahweh was going to do next, Decker reasoned, it wouldn’t be disloyal to Christopher for him to do so; rather it would be insane for him not to. Still, the discomfort didn’t pass.
Finally Decker opened it and turned to the book of Revelation. He quickly found what he was looking for: There was the plague of sores,[135] and the seas turning to blood,[136] and the fresh water turning to blood.[137] And there was the description of the next plague, which would be the fourth in the recent series:
The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.[138]
Well, he thought, that was certainly plain enough. It even acknowledged Yahweh’s responsibility for the whole thing. But how hot would it get? How much heat was ‘intense heat’? More important, Decker wondered, how could he prepare for it? The subject of air-conditioning had been a major concern when plans for housing were being made for Babylon, where temperatures can often reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit. He remembered hearing that standard air conditioners could cool a house only about 25 degrees below the outside temperature. The air conditioner in his house was old, which meant it wouldn’t cool nearly as well. There wasn’t enough time to do anything about that, though. Nor did he have time to better insulate the exterior walls. Whatever preparations he could make had to be completed in the next twelve to twenty-four hours.
After some consideration, Decker decided to limit his efforts to a single room. The house didn’t have a basement, which would be naturally cooled by the earth around it, so the obvious choice was the laundry room. It was on the ground floor and the concrete slab had never been covered, and thus was the coolest room in the house. It had water and a floor drain, down which he could flush waste. It was also small enough that he could quickly add insulation to the walls and ceiling.
Decker prepared a list of materials and got on the phone to Bert Tolinson, the caretaker. So far, Tolinson had been willing to get whatever he asked for, never realizing that by making such purchases he was in violation of UN law and could have been jailed. He just assumed Decker had the mark and transferred the money directly out of the account that had been established for upkeep of the house. The account was well funded in case of emergency, but Decker’s shopping list raised some questions.
Until now, Decker had tried to get by without running the air conditioner to keep anyone from realizing the house was occupied. Now that the neighbor knew, it didn’t matter anymore. So even though it was a pleasant day, Decker closed all the windows and turned the air conditioner on full blast to cool the house in preparation for what was coming. If it got too cold, he would put on a coat. Next, he found his hand tools — a handsaw, a drill, a hammer, and a pair of pliers — and then moved everything he could out of the laundry room. He would turn off the gas to the hot water heater after he had finished his preparations and showered.
When Bert Tolinson arrived, Decker was ready, all bandaged up, including his right hand. Tolinson might well think he was crazy because of the shopping list, but he wouldn’t leave thinking that Decker didn’t have the mark. It took Tolinson fifteen minutes to get everything into the house. Looking over the items, which except for some groceries, Decker had him leave in the foyer and living room, Tolinson removed the Washington Nationals baseball cap he always wore, wiped the sweat from his brow, and scratched the back of his head where he still had hair. “If you don’t mind me asking,” Tolinson said, “what’s all this stuff for?”
Decker looked at the items stacked and displayed before them — ten rolls of fiberglass insulation, a staple gun, twelve rolls of duc
t tape, two battery powered lamps, two flashlights, two dozen assorted long life batteries, a large plastic tub, two boxes of twelve-penny nails, four large picnic coolers filled with nine bags of ice (which was all that Tolinson could get because of the recent water problems), half a dozen eight foot two by fours, three window air conditioners, and three heavy duty hundred foot electrical extension cords.
He wanted to answer Tolinson’s question. If he could help it, there was no reason to let Tolinson and his family suffer through what was to come. But how could he explain how he knew that the next plague would be heat? He sure couldn’t say he read it in the Bible. Not that the Bible was outlawed or restricted or anything. But only the fundamentalists actually read it or believed what it had to say. Then an idea occurred to him.
“There’s going to be another plague,” he said. “Starting tomorrow, I think. It’s going to get terribly hot.”
“How do you know?” Tolinson asked, his voice registering his concern. “Did Secretary Goodman tell you?”
That was an explanation he hadn’t considered and he paused for a second, thinking it might be a better answer than the one he had planned. Ultimately, though, he saw the flaw and rejected it. If Bert Tolinson warned anyone else, he would have to explain how he knew and, even though he was pretty good at keeping a secret, it might come out that he had gotten the information from Decker. That, of course, would draw attention to the fact that Decker was in Derwood. He needed to give an answer that was of a source common enough that if Tolinson repeated it, no one would question its origins.
The Christ Clone Trilogy - Book Three: ACTS OF GOD (Revised & Expanded) Page 21
