Nicolae High (3 page)

Vicki’s mind was reeling, as it had been since the day of the disappearances. At times she still wondered if this was some crazy nightmare. In an instant she had gone from a rebellious teenager to a fanatical believer in Christ. She wanted to press Bruce, to ask him about this treaty. That would be proof, if nothing else was, but how did he know? She didn’t want to interrupt him.

“All I know,” he was saying, “is that the closer I get to God, the deeper I get into the Bible, the heavier the burden seems on my shoulders. The world needs to know it is being deceived. I feel an urgency to preach Christ everywhere, not just here. This church is full of frightened people, and they’re hungry for God. We’re trying to meet that need, but more trouble is coming.”

When he paused, Vicki jumped in. “But the treaty. Has he really announced a treaty?”

Bruce looked at her and nodded. “The news that really got to me yesterday was the announcement that the next major order of business for Carpathia is what he calls ‘an understanding’ between the global community and Israel. I don’t know what form it will take or what the benefit will be to the Holy Land, but clearly this is the seven-year treaty. If that announcement says anything about a promise from Carpathia that Israel will be protected over the next seven years, it officially ushers in the Tribulation.”

“C
AN
we go soon?” Ryan asked. “I have no idea what you guys are talking about.”

“Figure it out, short stuff,” Lionel said. “It’s only the end of the world.”

Bruce leaned forward. “I understand you two haven’t been getting along,” he said. “Lionel, you know this stuff, don’t you? Better than Ryan, I mean?”

“’Course,” Lionel said. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“And is that his fault?”

“No. I was raised in church. He wasn’t.”

“So he’s not stupid or a dummy?”

“Unless he doesn’t want to learn.”

“And I think he does, especially if he understands what we’re talking about. You should teach him.”

“Why me?”

“You’re closest to his age,” Bruce said. “He listens to you whether you think so or not. It’s important that you’re positive. He acts like he’s mad at you, and sometimes maybe he doesn’t like you because you keep putting him down. But he needs you, and he would look up to you if you treated him better.”

Lionel looked down, and Judd hoped Bruce was getting through to him. It was a good idea—Lionel’s being Ryan’s teacher. The question was whether either of them would tolerate it.

“You two work it out,” Bruce said.

Lionel rolled his head to gaze at Ryan, who looked back with brows raised. Judd took that to mean that both were willing to give it a try. Now that could be interesting.

Judd missed his parents and his little brother and sister, and he knew the others missed their families too. But he was excited about doing something positive, not sitting around feeling sorry for himself. They had only a few years left, and he wanted to see their group be just as eager to stand and fight as the adult Tribulation Force.

“Bruce,” he said, raising his hand. “Do you have time for us, with all the other stuff you’re doing, I mean?”

“I’ll make the time if you’ll all get serious about it. The adult Force meets here every night for two hours. I can meet with you guys after school whenever possible. I’ll outline what God has revealed in the Bible. If I’m right and if the treaty with Israel comes within the next few days, we have no time to waste. I want this church to start new churches, new groups of believers. I want to go to Israel and hear the two witnesses preach at the Wailing Wall. Imagine the stories I’ll come back with. By the way, you know there’s a place on the Internet where you can watch what’s happening at the Wall twenty-four hours a day.”

“Yippee,” Lionel said, and Bruce looked hard at him.

“Just kiddin’,” Lionel said, “but isn’t most of that in Jewish?”

Bruce smiled. “Their language is Hebrew, but often there are subtitles or even interpreters. You might find it interesting, especially when the witnesses are preaching. The Bible foretells of 144,000 Jews springing up and traveling throughout the world to preach the gospel. There will be a great soul harvest, maybe a billion or more people, coming to Christ.”

“Wow!” Judd said. “Does it say there’ll be that many?”

“Well, this is a good study for you. Lionel, grab that King James Bible over there. Thanks. Usually we use the New King James, or the New International, or the New Living Translation, so we can understand it better. But let’s look at this in an older version and see if we can figure it out. Ryan, find Revelation 9:16, and read it to us.”

Ryan took the Bible from Lionel, and Judd was pleased to hear Lionel whisper, “Last book in the whole Bible.”

Ryan found the verse and read, “ ‘And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.’ ”

“Stop there,” Bruce said. “What was the number he heard?”

“Me?” Ryan said.

“If you know.”

“Anybody knows that,” he said. “A thousand thousand is a million, so the number he heard was two hundred million.”

“Good,” Bruce said. “Now, at the risk of being too simple, would you say that army of horsemen, even though it was two hundred million, could be counted?”

“Of course,” Ryan said. “The number’s right here.”

“Right. It’s obvious. So, Judd, read Revelation 7:9.”

Judd took the Bible from Ryan and read, “ ‘After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.’ ”

“That’s enough,” Bruce said. “Anybody catch it?”

Vicki said, “I don’t know who they’re talking about, but it’s a crowd so big nobody can number it.”

“Exactly. That’s how we know there will be a huge soul harvest. This is talking about people who come to Christ during the Tribulation. If an army of two hundred million can be counted, how many must there be in a crowd no man can number?”

Judd stole a glance at Ryan, who looked excited. “Is all this stuff this interesting?” Ryan said.

“That’s nothing,” Bruce said. “You’ll be as amazed as I have been with what’s in here.”

“All those people becoming believers,” Vicki said. “We should be thrilled.”

“I
am,”
Bruce said. “But we’re not going to have much time to celebrate and certainly no time to rest. Remember the seven Seal Judgments Revelation talks about?”

“You said something about them, yes.”

“Those will begin with the signing of the treaty. There will be eighteen months of peace, but in the three months after that—twenty-one months into the eighty-four-month Tribulation—the rest of the Seal Judgments will fall on the earth. One-fourth of the world’s population will be wiped out. Do you understand what that means?”

“One-fourth of the people who have been left behind?” Lionel said.

Bruce nodded.

“I don’t like the odds,” Judd said. “There are four of us kids.”

“One of us is going to die before even two years are up?”

Bruce didn’t say anything. Judd saw him just looking at them, one by one.

“Whew!” Ryan said. “Maybe some of this isn’t that interesting after all. I mean, it’s interesting, but it’s like stuff you don’t really want to know.”

“I want to know about it,” Vicki said, speaking louder and more quickly than Judd had heard her before. “I want to know everything, every detail. There’s no guarantee I won’t be the one who’s killed by the twenty-first month. I want to make sure I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing in the meantime.”

“To earn your way to heaven,” Bruce said. “Right?”

“Right! I mean, no! I know better, Bruce. I know I can’t earn my way. I just want to do the right thing because it’s the right thing. Millions of people are going to die in the first quarter of the Tribulation, so we have to tell them the truth as fast as we can.”

“That’s what I like to hear. One of the adults last night said the same thing. He said, ‘We don’t want to just survive; we want to take action.’ ”

Now they were talking Judd’s language, and he was thrilled that they all seemed excited about it. There was a reason God had put them together, and they were going to do important things for him.

Vicki raised her hand. “How many people will be left at the end?”

“When Jesus returns again,” Bruce said, “at the Glorious Appearing?” She nodded. “With all the judgments—fourteen more following the seven Seal Judgments—there will be war and famine and pestilence and plagues. My study tells me that several of the judgments wipe out another third of the population. That’s a third of the three-fourths who are left, then a third of the two-thirds left after that, and so on. It’s confusing, but if you put a calculator to it, it looks like only one of every four people who were left at the Rapture will be left standing at the Glorious Appearing.”

“The rest will be in heaven or hell?” Ryan said.

“Right. And the ones in heaven will return with Christ to set up his earthly kingdom, his thousand-year reign.”

Ryan looked at the others. “I’d like to be the one left standing, but if I’m not, I get to go to heaven
and
come back? That would be cool too.”

That afternoon Judd worked at the computer, looking for the Temple Mount Web site in Jerusalem. Vicki sat in the kitchen with her Bible and some books Bruce had given her to study. Lionel and Ryan watched television, but Lionel also told Ryan Bible stories that were new to him.

Late in the afternoon, Lionel hollered up the stairs. “Hey, Judd, some guy on TV is talking about announcements from the UN and all that. You want to hear it?”

“I do!” Vicki said, emerging from the kitchen.

Judd joined the others in front of the TV, where a commentator said: “Moving the UN out of New York and into the ruins of Babylon, south of Baghdad, is a good thing. If Carpathia is sincere about disarming the world and stockpiling the remaining 10 percent of the weapons, I’d rather he store them in the Middle East than on an island off New York City.

“But the world will never settle on a single religion, and as streamlined as it may be, there will never be fewer than three currencies either.”

“What are currencies?” Ryan asked.

“Types of money,” Judd said. “Like now we have American dollars, European marks, and Asian yen. Carpathia wants to go to just dollars. Bruce thinks eventually Carpathia wants to go to no cash.”

“How would they do that?”

“Everybody would have an account and a credit card. Anything you want, you just put on that card. No cash.”

“Cool!”

“Yeah,” Vicki said, “but what happens when they do away with the card and put a chip or a mark on you to be scanned?”

“Even better,” Ryan said. “Nothing to carry.”

“But these books Bruce lent me say it will be the mark of the beast, the Antichrist, and then he’ll own you. It’s right in the Bible.”

“Not me,” Ryan said. “They’d have to kill me first, so then I’d be in heaven.”

As Vicki headed back to the kitchen and Judd toward the stairs, she told him, “Bruce says the only woman in the adult Tribulation Force is the daughter of the pilot.”

“I know.”

“And she’s memorizing three books of the Bible.”

“I didn’t know
that.”

“She’s going to be Bruce’s research assistant and help him teach. Maybe she’ll teach us when he’s out of town.”

“That’d be neat. What’s she memorizing?”

“The three books with the most end-times prophecies: Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation.”

“Those are not short books.”

“No kidding. But what a goal. Maybe I’ll try that. It would be more important than school. But you’re right. If I want to tell people, there are going to be a lot of people to tell at Prospect, I mean Nicolae High.”

“Nine more days and we’re back to class,” Judd said.

“I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning. Bruce says he’s got a message that excites him. This is so weird. He told me that this woman, Chloe Steele is her name, said she never thought the Bible would interest her, and now she’s reading it like there’s no tomorrow. Get it?”

“Huh?”

“Like there’s no tomorrow. There aren’t many, are there?”

Back in his dad’s den, Judd sat thinking. Bruce had told Vicki about Chloe Steele, and he had told Judd about Buck Williams, the magazine writer. On the way out of church, Bruce had told Judd the latest thing Buck had told him. “He said he found himself turning to the Gospels rather than the Old Testament or the Revelation prophecies. He was surprised to see what a revolutionary Jesus turned out to be.”