by Wid Bastian
“That you’re actually some form of alien life using our religious beliefs to manipulate us, or a mutant human being capable of extraordinary feats of psychic power by some unknown means, or that we’ve all gone mad and this is a mass delusion and you simply do not exist.”
“You believe in God, don’t you, Mr. President?”
“Yes, Peter. Yes, I do.”
“Then behold His vision.”
The President’s head snapped back, his skin bleached and he fell in a heap in his chair. The Secret Service agents and the other staff in the room wanted desperately to come to his aid, but found themselves unable to move. After a few seconds it was apparent that the President had not been harmed, but it was also obvious that his attention was now totally focused elsewhere and not on his immediate surroundings. He was staring off into space, his head and body twitching in reaction to some unseen stimuli.
For almost five minutes, this eerie drama played itself out as the President was forced to endure whatever trial he was facing alone, unable to receive help in any form.
Then, as abruptly as it started, it was over. Men who could now move again rushed to the President’s side. Two Secret Service agents had intentions of arresting Peter and his entourage on the spot, or at least forcibly removing them from the room, but of course their plan to use violence to accomplish these goals was, for now, an impossibility. Try as they might, the agents’ minds could simply not order their bodies to follow instructions.
The President quickly regained his composure and after a couple of minutes his color returned. He was once again lucid and focused.
But he was not the same man that he was before the vision, nor would he ever be.
“Peter,” the President said, as he shooed away the physician who was trying to examine him, “do you know what I saw?”
“Yes, Mr. President, I do. I know that the Lord has given you a glimpse of what the future will be for us if we fail to heed His call.”
“I did more than glimpse things, Peter, I experienced them. I felt all types of physical sensations; pain, hunger, sickness, death, and emotions too. I know it sounds crazy, but I believe I could not only listen to the thoughts of the people I saw, I also somehow shared in their existence. It was like I was a part of them. Weird does not … ”
The President stopped talking. He realized through their stares and silence that everyone in the Oval Office not associated with Peter Carson was asking themselves the same question.
“Have I gone mad, Peter?”
“No sir. In fact, I believe you’ll find that the more you pray about and reflect upon your vision, the greater your ability to make sense of the world, to truly grasp reality, will become.”
“Leave now, get the Vice President on the phone,” the first senior advisor whispered to his top aide. “I know he’s returning from Europe and his plane isn’t due in for two hours. Tell him I said we have a leadership crisis going on here.” These instructions were given in the back of the room, as far away as possible from Peter and the President.
“Sir, what do I tell the V.P. when he asks for details?” the aide asked, speaking as softly as he could into his boss’s ear.
“Tell him the President may no longer be mentally fit to hold office, that we may need to take extraordinary measures to protect the nation and the Presidency.”
Confused and frightened the aide quickly left, saying nothing more.
“Peter, if I told you that I was exhausted, more tired than I have ever been in my whole life, would that make any sense to you?” the President asked.
“When I received my first vision I slept for more than twenty-four hours afterwards, sir,” Peter acknowledged.
“Well, I don’t have that kind of luxury, but by God if I don’t get to bed right quick, I’m probably going to pass out in this chair.”
The two attending doctors and the Secret Service men then bounced back to the President’s side, called for a stretcher and an ambulance, and barked orders into their cell phones and radios.
“I swear, if you gentlemen don’t take your hands off of me and back off right now, I’ll fire the lot of you. I feel fine, maybe even tremendous, but I’m tired. Now leave me alone.”
The President motioned for Peter to come to him.
“Peter, walk with me to my bedroom, will you please? I really don’t have the patience for these dolts that I should right now.”
“Yes sir, Mr. President.”
If looks could kill, Peter Carson would have been murdered right then and there. The powerful men that surround the President had been rebuked and perhaps, in their minds at least, replaced by some low-life convict witchdoctor.
Men of such stature do not stand idly by and allow themselves to be reduced to irrelevancies. They take action. Every problem has a solution.
No one really noticed, but sometime during all of this commotion, Saul Cohen dropped to the floor in the back of the Oval Office. While the other disciples and Alex and Gail were busy talking to each other or trying to help Peter, Saul was hiding under the furniture. He was terrified, more so than he had ever been before in his life.
What Saul Cohen saw, no one else could see. It was a beast, a horrible and vicious image standing directly behind the President. Far beyond any image of hell or ghastly apparition he had ever endured before, this was something new, bigger, and more powerful.
Whatever it was, whatever its name, it knew Saul was watching him and the creature clearly did not like being observed.
The beast communicated only with Saul and only non-verbally, consciousness to consciousness.
“Shut up, ape boy,” the beast thought and Saul heard. “Or I’ll rip out your intestines and make you watch as I eat them.”
It wasn’t the threat itself that made Saul panic, other demons he’d battled had been just as vile and far more creative, it was the way the beast expressed himself, like it was a done deal. As if God and Christ had no authority over him. As if the beast feared nothing and had no need to.
Saul reacted to the monster’s threat as any sane man might, he shut down. Saul’s body and brain simply slipped into neutral. He sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes wide open, mouth agape and drooling, skin clammy and green, and was unable to think, speak, or move.
Nineteen
The twentieth of June was a day unlike all others that had come before it. A new version of reality was dawning along with the sun. No previous human experience could provide any context for what people everywhere would soon be calling “the restriction.”
Homo sapiens are genetically designed to take for granted that their brain controls their body. Without any noticeable delay, because neurons fire and muscles and tendons react virtually simultaneously, we think move left arm and it moves. Step and our leg extends. For the most part, we don’t consciously command ourselves at all, the directive and the action are one in the same. God indeed designed and built for us a magnificent physical machine in which to house our souls.
In order to teach His creation a lesson, to demonstrate for them His divine standards and expectations, and to make evident His power in a way never before seen on earth, the Lord God of Israel, who is above all natural laws and exists on a heavenly plane beyond our ability to understand, applied His will to our bodies and to our technology, and temporarily took away from us our ability to hurt each other.
But our hearts remained conflicted; good and evil were still at war within us because God did not further intervene and force anyone to think or feel differently about anything. People filled with hate and anger toward others, for any reason, could simply no longer act on their passions.
Battlefields in the several regional wars scattered across the globe fell silent. Criminals could no longer threaten people with harm in order to take advantage of them and the police were unable to offer their usual evil for evil in return. No abusive husband could beat his wife; no wayward father could pummel his children. For however long it was going to last, two and a half more
days according to the American prophet Peter Carson, who overnight had become the world’s most famous man, people were going to have to figure out how to get along peacefully. They simply had no other choice.
Other truly bizarre circumstances arose. Somehow, while no one could forcibly restrain them, across the globe some prisoners were simply unable to take advantage of the situation and walk away from whatever institution was confining them. Some could leave and did. It soon became obvious that those who could leave had, by whatever means, made the decision to obey God’s commandment to be good citizens and respect righteous civil authority. The Lord, in effect, instantly pardoned a few million rehabilitated criminals. Christ knew their hearts and restored freedom to those capable of handling it.
Everyone was safe, as were their possessions. Minds corrupted by evil were still corrupted by evil, but the Lord simply would not allow anyone to take advantage of the restriction. No one could walk into a bank and walk out with stolen cash, or go to a car lot and drive away in a new automobile without paying for it. The restriction was anything but a bonanza for thieves; it temporarily put them out of business.
What was happening could not be understood or appreciated unless it was viewed from God’s perspective. But, taken on the whole, considering the billions of souls alive on earth, initially at least God’s perspective was not the foremost concern.
Fear was the most common first reaction to the restriction, followed by indignation. Whatever else it might have been, the restriction was most certainly a type of biological and cultural shock therapy. The primitive aspect of the human personality, that part of us most basic and animalistic, that arose when the world was nothing but flesh and teeth, no longer had an outlet.
God was making a bold statement. He was saying to His children that the time had come for us to take a huge step forward, to truly become more Christ-like, and to leave behind the aggressive and violent part of our natures, to spiritually evolve.
The other revolutionary and existence-altering aspect of the restriction was that it forced the created to acknowledge the Creator, or to put forward some other theory to explain what could not be denied. For many, this was a far more difficult thing to do than to live without violence. Until now, the subject of God could be dodged or dealt with circuitously, with each person picking and choosing what he chose to believe. This luxury was now gone. Direct evidence had superseded theory.
This was the new world that those in the White House faced on the twentieth of June, one in which the power of God had taken center stage above all else.
“Any change?” Peter asked the nurse.
“None, Mr. Carson. Mr. Cohen’s vital signs are stable, but his brain is producing intermittent coma-type activity. It’s really crazy; he seems to be alternating between deep but active sleep and a near total shutdown of all higher brain functioning. To be honest, I didn’t think that was medically possible.”
“He’s fighting them.”
“Fighting who, Mr. Carson?”
“Whatever servants of hell put him in this condition, ma’am.” The young nurse looked at Peter as if he were speaking Latin. After briefly considering it, Peter thought better about the idea of trying to explain the workings and powers of demonic forces to the already bewildered and shaken nurse. He graciously dropped the subject so they could both move on. “Thank you so much for attending to our brother. We are in your debt,” he told her.
After catching a few hours of much needed sleep, Peter’s first task when he awoke was to check on Saul. Shortly after the President retired to his bedroom, Peter and Alex discovered Saul curled up and catatonic in the corner. Peter had no doubts as to the cause of his brother’s affliction.
“The same?” Alex asked, as he came up from behind and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“Afraid so. Our prayers haven’t pulled him out if it yet. We need to help Saul, Alex. Look at him. He’s almost scared himself to death.”
“And without Saul around we can’t see what’s coming at us, can we?”
“Perhaps that’s best for now,” Peter said, as he made the sign of the cross over Saul. “If we could, we might end up like him.”
In a room adjacent to where Saul was being attended to, a television set was on. The five disciples and Gail were gathered around it watching the news.
“You guys get any sleep?” Alex asked, as he and Peter walked in and joined the others.
“No,” came the response from all, nearly in unison.
“Men in dark suits keep walking in here periodically and handing this stuff to me,” General Vargas said. “I’ve looked over some of it, but this is your department.”
“The morning’s press clippings?” Alex asked.
“Apparently,” Vargas replied, “but I’m a hundred percent sure that you’ve never read accounts like these before.”
The White House staff had been busy printing out selected newspaper articles from around the world as soon as they were electronically published. Write-ups from foreign countries had been translated into English.
Alex took the stack from Vargas. The General was correct, he’d never read headlines like these. But how could he have? This was the most important and unique event ever covered by modern journalism.
From New York the headline read, “Is God Real?” in huge bold type that filled half the front page. Alex skimmed the text, which included the statements “the theory that a force more powerful than ourselves exists in the universe has been confirmed” and “this phenomenon, quickly becoming known as “the restriction,” is without question both genuine and global.”
The Los Angeles paper went with, “A Prophet of God?” This story chose to focus on Peter and the details of the events over the past few months from “Solomon’s Porch” and Atlanta. The reporter asked, “If Mr. Carson is to be believed, and certainly it is an undeniable fact that some very real power has boldly intervened in human affairs, then the Christian faith has been empirically validated. Those who remain skeptical of this conclusion find themselves unable yet to offer a reasonable competing hypothesis to explain the phenomenon people everywhere are calling ‘the restriction.’”
In London, they seemed to be more interested in the effect than in the cause. “Thou Shalt Not!” was the banner of England’s biggest daily. Fully half the newspaper was devoted to exploring and chronicling all aspects of the restriction.
Alex skimmed through the rest of the pile, but quickly lost interest. Peter had already told him that few would accept what was happening for what it was. Rather than a miracle God was using to help his people by example, most of the world was trying to explain the restriction some other way, or simply hoping to ignore it until it was over. Once everything returned to normal, it would be far easier to offer alternative hypotheses and spin the facts.
Denial and skepticism are rooted in fear. For most people acknowledging the restriction was neither welcome nor easy, because if Jesus is truly the Son of God and this is no longer a belief based on faith, but rather a reality as plain as the law of gravity, then the revelations of Yahweh both ancient and modern cannot be ignored. The “Great Debate” would be over. God is real, Christ is the risen Messiah, and all other spiritual systems and beliefs instantly become false mythology and obsolete.
Peter told Alex when they were together at the estate that even with direct and irrefutable evidence, most would still not believe. Some will simply refuse to abandon the false tenets of their previous faiths because, in their eyes, to admit a lifetime of error would be shameful and degrading. Rather than see the simple truth that, to some degree at least, God’s grace and wisdom were present in all the major religions of the world, they will allow Satan to use their pride to keep them from accepting Christ. The atheists and the agnostics will hold out for a “rational” explanation. Even most Christian leaders will reject the God they profess to serve simply because His message to the world was not brought through them.
As Alex Anderson was thinking about Pete
r’s predictions, hoping perhaps that his brother had been too pessimistic, all he had to do was watch the news on television to see that Peter’s cynicism was valid.
“Turn that up, Mr. Simpson, won’t you?” Alex asked.
“If you insist, Alex, but it’s kind of depressing.” Kenny increased the volume just as a new interview segment began.
“Do you go to church, Mrs. Wafer?” the reporter asked.
“Yes sir. Been a God-fearing Christian all my life. Southern Baptist, sir.” Mrs. Wafer was a very large and unattractive white woman, perhaps fifty or so, and was clearly used to her spiritual views dominating any religious discussion within her earshot.
“What do you think about all this, Mrs. Wafer? Is God acting?”
“Well, let me tell you this, sir. I don’t know about all this “restriction” business. Oh, it’s true alright, can’t nobody hurt another, but how is this really being done? I think it’s the government.”
“The government, Mrs. Wafer?”
“Oh, yes sir. In the last days before the rapture and the second coming, the anti-Christ will use the government to play tricks on all of us. A false prophet uses the devil to work miracles, sir. People should read their Bible. Otherwise this business just makes no sense.”
“What makes no sense, Mrs. Wafer?”
“God using a bunch of no account criminals to tell us what to do. What nonsense! It’s the devil, I tell you! Next Carson’s going to say Mormons and Catholics are God’s chosen, just you wait and see. It’s nothing but the devil!”
“Poor lady,” Peter said, reacting to the television. “Her spirit is polluted by her flawed theology and her prayers are blocked by her arrogance.”
“She’s got a lot of company, Panos,” Gail said, pointing back at the screen.
“This is W. Monaghan coming to you live from Vatican City. For hours now we have been trying to get some sort of statement from the Pope, or perhaps from another Vatican official. Now we are told, yes, there he is, Cardinal Andretti will be addressing the crowd in Vatican Square, now estimated at over one hundred thousand. Is he? Yes? Okay, let’s go to the Cardinal.”
