Apostasy Rising
Page 1
Apostasy Rising
Ichthus Chronicles / Season 1 • Episode 1
J. A. Bouma
Copyright © 2019 by J. A. Bouma
All rights reserved.
EmmausWay Press
An Imprint of THEOKLESIA
PO Box 1180 • Grand Rapids, MI 49501
www.emmauswaypress.com
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, organizations, products, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and experience, and are not to be construed as real. Any reference to historical events, real organizations, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual products, organizations, events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
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Chapter 1
Tripolitania, AD 2123.
Deep in the soil of ancient Tripolitania lies the ruins of ancient Christianity.
The apostle Mark was born here, the one whose Gospel bears his namesake. As was the early Church father Tertullian, who cut his chops on its dry, hardened, beige soil before pastoring in Carthage and battling heretics by pen’s might. The blood of Christian martyrs slaughtered at the swords of ancient and modern foes alike has flown thick with mayhem and memory on these lands, bodies laid buried along with the buildings in which they used to live and worship.
It is this soil that Alexander Zarruq has faithfully tilled and cultivated for the past few years in his small parish overlooking the Mediterranean. Though most of the ancient ruins that testify to that ancient faith lay submerged under its darkened waters, a sort of catacomb of eternal veneration to the midwives of the Church after having been consumed in the past century by rising seas, Alexander was lucky enough to have received a parish assignment that charged him with caretaking one of the remaining edifices still standing from that ill-forgotten era—a beacon of hope for the faithful in a grim world crushed by the wickedness and cruelty of humanity, both the paupers and propers in its ranks.
A chord of cascading and descending notes thrummed gently throughout Alexander’s bedroom, joined by a chorus of trumpeter finches nesting outside his open window greeting the dawn with delight. He groaned at both sounds, feeling miles away from joining in their happiness. He commanded his AI assistant Barnabas to snooze the alarm, then flopped over onto his side, his back to the window filtering the early morning sunlight. As he returned to dreamland, he cursed himself for sleeping in well past his normal waking hour. But after a night of restless sleep, he mustered up a modicum of grace for himself.
The familiar chords returned nine minutes later, but this time he sat up, reaching for his handkerchief resting on his nightstand. The torrential downpour brought on by the season’s westerly winds combined with an unseasonable head cold had done little to help his slumber or his sinuses. The cyclonic storms gave way to a thick, sticky morning punctuated by strong rays of sun. He blew his nose that was just as thick and sneezed into the well-used cloth, then blew one more time for good measure.
He leaned back into his bed again, closed his eyes, and let out another moan before crossing himself. It was going to be one of those days.
Father Zarruq, as he was known to his people and town, finally eased out of bed and shuffled over to his closet to change into his day clothes, the cold tiles from the climate-controlled dwelling sending a shiver through his feet and up his spine. He sloughed off his t-shirt and linen pants, and put on a loose linen shirt and equally loose pants, the traditional garb of North Alkebulanan men stretching back millennia. He slipped in his clerical collar around his neck then checked himself in the mirror. While the centuries had brought massive changes to the continent, a change in clothing styles wasn’t one of them.
Same for the ancient rituals of the Church of Tripolitania. Stretching back to the early Church, such rituals consisted of fixed-hour prayers combined with confession and Scripture reading. The priest readied himself for a day filled with all three—beginning with himself.
Still foggy from a lack of sleep and an overactive nose, Alexander left his modest yet ultramodern dwelling to make his way into his pride and joy. Leaving behind his parish quarters at the start of each day for morning prayers inside his church, it was as if he travelled back in time two-thousand years. His small one-level home, a gleaming brushed steel and curved glass abode that bespoke the advancements of human civilization, stood in stark contrast to the pale structure of stone pockmarked by centuries of conflict and decay still standing proud atop the bluff overlooking the Mediterranean. It was one of the few buildings fortunate enough to have been placed on higher ground, avoiding the fate of Poseidon’s clutches when the seas rose.
Alexander hummed an ancient tune to himself as he shuffled along the short soggy path from his home to his beloved parish. ‘Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see…’
A smile curled upward as he continued humming the nearly four-hundred-year-old tune penned by a simple Methodist minister from Noramericana, thankful for the truth of its words originally found in the book of Lamentations: ‘Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.’
The priest reached the front entrance to his parish, blowing into his handkerchief again. He crossed himself before entering, thanking the good Lord above that his mercies were indeed renewed each morning. He just hoped that day those mercies would extend to his nose as well.
He grasped the burnished bronze handle and heaved open the sturdy wooden door, the smell of damp stone and even damper wood escaping Alexander’s senses as he walked into the great hall. His breath still caught in his chest at the sight of the holy space, marveling that it was he who got to caretake it and its people and drinking in the majesty and wonder that was but a pale reflection of heaven itself.
Gleaming titanium columns stretched up toward the heavens, carved with laser-cut vines and whorls of flowers along its polished sheen, a reinforcement that added both an artistic and structural layer to the modest millennium-year-old cathedral. Windows of red and green and blue stained glass arranged in panels telling the story of Christ’s death through the stations of the cross were arrayed on either side of the vast hall. A massive circular window anchored the front above the high altar depicting the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit looking down with approval and love. Above, seraphim floated amongst a sea of clouds stretching the length of the ceiling, its paint flaking from yea
rs of neglect. As he soaked in the view, Alexander noticed a large darkened pattern spreading from a point above the altar, and his young assistant standing underneath it.
Father Zarruq huffed and returned to the chorus of the ancient hymn of the faith, his cloth shoes whispering across the beige stone tiles stretching the nave as he hummed and hustled down the center aisle making his way toward the small chapel off to the right. He approached his assistant, Deacon Zakaria, gazing into the ceiling while jostling a large aluminum bucket, moving it this way and that.
“Is that blasted thing leaking again?” Alexander complained, his curse echoing throughout the vast space.
“Afraid so, Father. And leaked. Past tense.”
While much of the ancient structure had been renovated and reinforced over the centuries to preserve this testament to the staying power of the Christian faith born in the soil of North Alkebulana, the roof had proven troublesome for generations of priests, including his own father. As he approached the front, Alexander could see water still trickling from the ceiling down toward a massive stain darkening the ancient floor beneath, the remnants of a night’s worth of dirty rain water stained brown from the pitched roof.
“I tell you what, Zakaria,” Alexander said, planting his hands on his hips and following his assistant’s gaze. “After my morning prayers, how about you and I set the roof on fire and sip tea from my porch whilst watching the blasted thing burn to the ground!”
Zakaria smiled as he grabbed a mop from the floor to continue his clean-up work. “Yes, Father.”
Alexander went to leave, but stopped and sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you to drop the Father routine? Alexander is fine. I’m barely a decade older than you. We’re peers, partners in ministry. My father was Father, not me.”
The man nodded and smiled, white teeth gleaming behind his dark face. “Yes, sir.”
“And no sir, either,” Alexander huffed as he continued toward the chapel.
“Sir…err, Alexander,” Zakaria called. “Did you see the troubling news this morning?”
Father Zarruq stopped short and turned around. “Zakaria, what did I tell you? Never give a priest bad news before his morning prayers.”
“Sorry, but you’ll want to check with DiviNet when you’re finished.”
He waved him off and turned back around. “Yes, alright. Thanks for the warning. And thanks for cleaning up and making our sanctuary presentable to God again.” Alexander continued walking toward the chapel and shouted, “Though it seems like he reneged on his rainbow promise after last night’s deluge!”
Another ‘Yes, Father’ echoed through the narrow stone hallway behind him, eliciting a chuckle from the priest. Until Zakaria Mwanyanyi arrived a year ago, Alexander was about to throw in the towel. Shepherding Christ’s people was a lonely, tiresome task made all the more burdensome by the increased pressures to conform to the pattern of this world. Doubts needled him nearly every day about the future survival of Ichthus, the remnant of Christianity in these last days, the designation taken from the ancient identifying symbol of the Church and turned into a curse by the ultramodern world. Then there were the doubts about faith itself clawing at his soul, the questions begging for answers in a world that boasted of peace, prosperity, and progress, yet left little room for traditional spirituality.
And when his father died so tragically, so ghastly…he didn’t know how he could go on anymore tending to a profession the man had strong-armed him into pursuing in the first place. The pain of his death and all the confusion and questions surrounding it was too much to bear.
Then Zakaria was sent to him as a deacon to help him bear his load. The man was a welcomed presence of calm, a refuge in the midst of an impending storm looming on the Church’s horizon, much less his own heart. He reached the door to the small chapel and thanked the good Lord for gifting him Zakaria’s companionship, then pushed through for his morning ritual.
Though later than his normal 6:00 a.m. prayer session, he was just past the 9 o’clock hour that his spiritual discipline required. The Daily Office, the ancient spiritual practice of praying at fixed hours throughout the day, had been a staple of Alexander’s life-rhythm since discovering it during his university days at Oxford. He found it to be a grounding, centering practice amidst the trappings of ultramodernity. He often imagined the ancient fathers of his faith kneeling where he himself knelt, hands outstretched in petition before God, Bible open to the morning reading. This morning was no different, especially given the shifting currents rippling through Ichthus the past year.
Alexander drained his nose in his handkerchief before kneeling on the well-worn, dull-red kneeling pillow his father had given him at his ordination, a lasting testimony to his father’s influence before his death. He folded his hands and propped his elbows on the narrow wooden ledge forming a half circle in front of a large icon anchored to the stone wall depicting Christ the Giver of Life, surrounded by candles on the floor.
He stared forward at the gleaming portrait of a bearded Jesus set against gold gilding, the man wrapped in an indigo robe holding a jewel-studded Book of the Gospel in his left hand, his right-hand fingers bent in the Greek letters of his name. A smile curled at one end of his mouth as he gazed into the ancient religious portrait, sensing the invitation to taste and see that the Lord Jesus Christ is good.
“Most merciful God,” Alexander began, eyes closed and palms raised upward, “I confess that I have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what I have done, and by what I have left undone. I have not loved you with my whole heart; I have not loved my neighbor as myself. I am truly sorry, and I humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on me and forgive me; that I may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.”
“Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,” Alexander continued, making the sign of the cross from his forehead to mid-chest, from left shoulder to right. “As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever. Amen.”
He continued tracing the steps of this ancient practice through the prayer book given to him by his college mentor and godfather, Father James Ferraro, the binding having been stitched back together with care over the last decade. Alexander was eighteen when he entered Oxford at the urging of his father. Father Jim had immediately taken him under his wing as a favor to his old friend and in fulfilling his duties as godfather, helping him navigate his new life and encouraging him to pursue a life dedicated to the Church. Alexander would spend as much time as a medical doctor in academic and practical training before being ordained and called to his parish back home in Tripolitania in the ancient region of Libya, the northern province of Alkebulana, the name of the continent previously known as Africa before the Great Reckoning unified all continental nation-states under the commonwealth banner of this ancient, indigenous name.
After reciting the Venite, Alexander turned to his morning lesson in the ancient Christian book of 2 Thessalonians, chapter one.
He read aloud, “We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so,” he read aloud, “because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.”
Timely.
Alexander paused, thinking about the other day’s news he had received from fellow parishes just outside of Tripoli, one in a series of horrifying news events rocking Christ’s Church. Several parishes had gone underground last year when the largest church was destroyed in a well-planned attack designed to bring ultimate devastation and ultimate shock to one of the strongest groups of Christians in northern Alkebulana.
The building had been rigged with explosives like a demolition company might rig a dilapidated building in order to make way for a new apartment complex. During Sunday worship, the timed charges exploded in one gigantic, unified, horrifying b
loom of destruction, bringing the whole structure down at once. Hundreds of women, children, and men died amidst the twisted metal and chunks of concrete that bore witness to the prayers of the dying faithful.
As if last year’s act of terror wasn’t enough, just last week a series of bombs, this time by the hands of suicide bombers, had exploded in synchronized mayhem among several of those underground church parishes meeting in homes throughout the area. The event had shaken Ichthus to its core worldwide. Persecution had become fierce in several regions throughout the world across Solterra Republic, but nothing to this degree of coordination and espionage. And just two days ago, Alexander had been warned of a coming wave of affliction making its way across Tripolitania.
He shook his head at the thought and continued reading:
All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.