The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (180 page)

“I was shocked to see him attacked,” T said, “but part of that had to have been my fault. For days he sounded interested, said Ken was urging him to log on and check out what Tsion Ben-Judah was teaching. He asked so many questions, especially about the mark, that between what he learned from Tsion and what Ken and I said about it, he was able to fake it.”

Rayford looked out. The sky was still filled with the locusts, but all but a few had moved away from the door. “I never thought about anyone being able to counterfeit the mark. I figured the mark, distinguishable only by another believer, was a foolproof test of who was with us and who wasn’t. What do we do now—try the smudge test on anybody who’s bearing the mark?”

“Nope,” T said. “Don’t have to.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re not testing
my
mark, are you? Why do you assume I’m legit?”

“Because you weren’t attacked.”

“Bingo. For the next ten months, that is our litmus test.”

“Where are you getting ten months?”

“You haven’t read Dr. Ben-Judah today?”

Rayford shook his head.

“He says the locusts have five months to find their prey and sting them and that the victims suffer for five months. He also believes, though he admitted it was just conjecture, that the locusts bite a person once, and then they move on.”

“Have you taken a look at these things?” Rayford said, studying one on the other side of the window.

“Do I want to?” T said, approaching. “I didn’t even like reading about them in Dr. Ben-Judah’s lessons. Oh, boy, look at that! That is one ugly monstrosity.”

“Be glad they’re on our side.”

“Talk about irony,” T said. “Ben-Judah says they’re demons.”

“Yeah, but they’re moonlighting for God for a while.”

Both men cocked their heads. “What’s that sound?” Rayford said. “Tsion said their flight would sound like horses and chariots riding into battle, but I hear something else.”

“Are they chanting?” T said.

They cracked the door an inch or so, and a locust tried to squeeze through. Rayford shut the door on it, and it squirmed and flailed. He released the pressure, and it flew back out. “That’s it!” Rayford said. “They’re chanting something.”

The men stood still. The cloud of locusts, on its way to fresh targets, called out in unison, “Apollyon, Apollyon, Apollyon!”

“Why would God do this to me?” Chaim whined. “What did I ever do to him? You know me, Cameron! I am not a bad man!”

“He did not do this, Dr. Rosenzweig. You did it to yourself.”

“What did I do that was so wrong? What was my sin?”

“Pride, for one,” Buck said, pulling up a chair. He knew there was nothing he could do for his friend but keep him company, but he was past gentility.

“Proud? I am proud?”

“Maybe not intentionally, Doctor, but you have ignored everything Tsion has told you about how to connect with God. You have counted on your charm, your own value, your being a good person to carry you through. You get around all the evidence for Jesus being the Messiah by reverting to your educational training, your confidence only in what you can see and hear and feel. How many times have you heard Tsion quote Titus 3:5 and Ephesians 2:8-9? And yet you—”

Chaim cried out in pain. “Quote them to me again, Cameron, would you?”

“‘Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. . . . For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.’”

Chaim nodded miserably. “Cameron, this is so painful!”

“Sad to say, it will get worse. The Bible says you will want to die and won’t be able to commit suicide.”

Chaim rocked and cried in anguish. “Would God accept me if I relent only to ease my torture?”

“God knows everything, Doctor. Even your heart. If you knew you would still suffer, worse and worse for five months, regardless of your decision, would you still want him?”

“I don’t know!” he said. “God forgive me, I don’t know!”

Buck turned on the radio and found a pirate station broadcasting the preaching of Eli and Moishe from the Wailing Wall. Eli was in the middle of a typically tough message. “You rant and rave against God for the terrible plague that has befallen you! Though you will be the last, you were not the first generation who forced God’s loving hand to act in discipline.

“Harken unto these words from the ancient of days, the Lord God of Israel: I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.

“So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me. . . .

“I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens . . . increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me. . . . I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, . . . yet have ye not returned unto me. . . . I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me. . . .

“Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The Lord, The God of hosts, is his name. . . .

“Thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live: . . . Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth, Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name. . . .

“Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time. Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. . . .

“Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

“But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

“Wow,” Buck said.

“Please, Cameron!” Chaim said. “Turn it off! I can take no more.”

Buck sat another two hours with Chaim, helpless to ease his suffering. The man thrashed and sweated and gasped. When finally he relaxed a moment, he said, “Are you sure about this getting worse and worse until I despair of my life?”

Buck nodded.

“How do you know?”

“I believe the Bible.”

“It says that? In those words?”

Buck knew it from memory. “‘In those days men will seek death and will not find it,’” he said. “‘They will desire to die, and death will flee from them.’”

During the ensuing five months, the demon locusts attacked anyone who did not have the seal of God on his or her forehead. And for five months after that, those among the last bitten still suffered.

The starkest picture of the interminable suffering came from Hattie’s ordeal at the Tribulation Force’s safe house in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Her torment was so great that everyone—Rayford, Tsion, Chloe, and Floyd—begged her to give in to Christ. Despite her anguished screams at all hours of the day and night, she stubbornly maintained that she was getting what she deserved and no less.

Listening to her around the clock became so stressful to the Force that Rayford made an executive decision and moved her to the basement where Ken had lived. As weeks passed she became a shell of even the unhealthy frame she had been. Rayford felt as if he were visiting a living corpse every time he went down there, and he soon quit going alone. It was too frightening.

Doc Charles tried to treat her symptoms, quickly discovering it was futile. And the rest took turns delivering her meals, which were rarely touched. She ate much less than should have been required to keep her alive, but as the Bible predicted, she did not die.

It got to where Rayford had to visit Hattie with one of the others, and even then he didn’t sleep well afterward. Hattie was skeletal, her dark eyes sunk deep into her head. Her lips stretched thin and taut across teeth that now looked too big for her mouth.

Eventually she could not speak, but communicated by a series of grunts and gestures. Finally she refused to even turn and look when someone came down.

Hattie finally forced herself to talk when Chloe somehow located her sister Nancy, working at an abortion clinic out west. All the other members of Hattie’s family had died in various ways before the plague of locusts. Now Hattie spoke to her sister for the first time in months. Nancy had somehow avoided for a few months the sting of a scorpion locust, but now she too was a victim.

“Nancy, you must believe in Jesus,” Hattie managed, though she spoke as if her mouth was full of sores. “It’s the only answer. He loves you. Do it.”

Floyd had overheard Hattie’s end of the conversation and asked Rayford and Tsion to join him in talking to her. But she was more belligerent than ever. “But it’s so obvious you know the truth,” Tsion said. “And the truth shall set you free.”

“Don’t you see I don’t want to be free? I only want to stay alive long enough to kill Nicolae, and I will. Then I don’t care what happens to me.”

“But we care,” Rayford said.

“You’ll be all right,” she said, rolling over and turning her back to them.

Chloe, getting toward the end of her pregnancy, finally couldn’t navigate the stairs. She told Rayford that the prayer of her life now was that Buck would somehow make it home before the baby was born.

Tsion was busier than ever. He passed on miraculous reports from the 144,000 witnesses who had fanned out to serve as missionaries to every country, not just their own. Stories poured in of obscure tribal groups understanding in their own languages and becoming tribulation saints.

Tsion wrote to nearly a billion Web site visitors every day that this was the last period during the end of time when believers would have any semblance of freedom. “Now is the time, my dear brothers and sisters,” he wrote. “With everyone else vulnerable to the attacks of the locust hordes, they must stay inside or venture out only with bulky protective gear. This is our chance to put into place mechanisms that will allow us to survive when the world system requires its own mark one day. We will be allowed to neither buy nor sell without the mark, and it is a mark that once taken seals the fate of the bearer for all time—just as the mark we now bear has sealed us for eternity.

“I beg of you not to look upon God as mean or capricious when we see the intense suffering of the bite victims. This is all part of his master design to turn people to him so he can demonstrate his love. The Scriptures tell us God is ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness. How it must pain him to have to resort to such measures to reach those he loves!

“It hurts us to see that even those who
do
receive Christ as a result of this ultimate attention-getter still suffer for the entire five months prescribed in biblical prophecy. And yet I believe we are called to see this as a picture of the sad fact that sin and rebellion have their consequences. There are scars. If a victim receives Christ, God has redeemed him, and he stands perfect in heaven’s sight. But the effects of sin linger.

“Oh, dear ones, it thrills my heart to get reports from all over the globe that there are likely more Christ followers now than were raptured. Even nations known for only a minuscule Christian impact in the past are seeing great numbers come to salvation.

“Of course we see that evil is also on the rise. The Scriptures tell us that those who remain rebellious even in light of this awful plague simply love themselves and their sin too much. Much as the world system tries to downplay it, our society has seen catastrophic rises in drug abuse, sexual immorality, murder, theft, demon worship, and idolatry.

“Be of good cheer even in the midst of chaos and plague, loved ones. We know from the Bible that the evil demon king of the abyss is living up to his name—Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek, which means Destroyer—in leading the demon locusts on the rampage. But we as the sealed followers of the Lord God need not fear. For as it is written: ‘He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. . . . We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.’

“Always test my teaching against the Bible. Read it every day. New believers—and none of us are old, are we?—learn the value of the discipline of daily reading and study. When we see the ugly creatures that have invaded the earth, it becomes obvious that we too must go to war.

“Finally, my brethren, with the apostle Paul I urge you to ‘be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

“‘Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

“‘And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.’

“Until next we interact through this miracle of technology the Lord has used to build a mighty church against all odds, I remain your servant and his, Tsion Ben-Judah.”

Buck knew that Jacov and Hannelore and Stefan had grown in their faith when they insisted on moving into the Rosenzweig estate and caring for Chaim and Jonas for several months. They brought with them Hannelore’s mother, who had received Christ the day the locusts attacked. Even in her suffering she read and studied and prayed, often pleading with Chaim and Jonas to also come to Christ. Even after Jonas did, Chaim remained resolute.

Unable to find a commercial flight that had a full crew, Buck desperately searched among the saints to find someone who might charter him back to the States for the birth of his child. At wit’s end, he tried calling Mac in New Babylon but was unable to get through. He tried e-mailing him a heavily coded message, and an hour later received a lengthy reply.

How do you like the e-mail system David has set me up with here? He’s built into it all the safeguards you could imagine. If someone walked in on me right now, they wouldn’t be able to read what I’ve just written.

I gather you need a charter flight out of there. Try Abdullah Smith in Jordan. The name looks weird, but he has his reasons. And he is a believer. Mention my name and he’ll charge you double (just kidding). If he can handle the job, he’ll take care of you.

I’ll copy this to your people so they’ll know what’s going on here. David Hassid and I had to fake locust stings to keep from revealing ourselves. In the process we discovered several other clandestine believers in the ranks here. Carpathia and Leon are quarantined in a fallout shelter that has served to keep out the locusts too, though almost everyone else, including the ten rulers and even Peter the Second, have been stung and are suffering. When you see Carpathia on the news telling everyone that the stories of poisonous bites are exaggerated while he sits there with a locust on his shoulder as a pet, don’t believe it. It’s a trick of photographic technology. Of course, the real things probably wouldn’t bite Nicolae or Leon out of professional courtesy.

A few of us believers have been able to pretend we are simply recuperating more quickly, so we don’t lie around the infirmary twenty-four hours a day listening to the agony. Carpathia has sent me on some missions of mercy, delivering aid to some of the worst-off rulers. What he doesn’t know is that David has picked up clandestine shipments of literature, copies of Tsion’s studies in different languages, and has jammed the cargo hold of the Condor 216 with them. Believers wherever I go unload and distribute them.

Word has gotten back to Leon that all this Christian literature is flooding the globe, and he’s furious about it. So is Peter the Second. I hope someday they both find out how it was transported. But not yet. Pray for us. We’re your eyes and ears in New Babylon, and light as I try to make it all sound, we’re in very precarious positions. Subversives are punished by death here. Two close members of Peter Mathews’s staff were executed for mentioning to Global Community personnel something Peter thought was private. Carpathia heard about the executions and sent him a note of congratulations. Of course, Peter is on Nicolae’s hit list, or at least for sure on Leon’s. Leon believes there’s no need for
any
religion because we have His Excellency the potentate to worship.

I say that with irony, but Leon is dead serious. David was in the room when Leon suggested passing a law that people have to bow in Nicolae’s presence. That may be the end of me.

The believers here cannot meet for fear of suspicion and detection, but we encourage each other in subtle ways. Fortunately, David has been elevated to a position that puts him on a level close to the senior pilot (yours truly), so we are expected to interact a lot. We love the late Ken Ritz’s idea for the believers’ commodity co-op, for lack of a better handle, and we think your wife will make an absolutely smashing CEO. You know who her direct competition will be, of course. Carpathia himself is personally (really) taking charge of global commerce, effective immediately. You heard it here first. He wants those ten kings in his hip pocket, doesn’t he?

You know, Mr. Williams, I heard something on the Condor a few days before the locusts attacked that proved one of Dr. Ben-Judah’s points. Remember when he wrote that this period is not just a grand war between good and evil, but also a war between evil and evil? I think his point was that we were to love each other and make sure the crises don’t turn us on each other and spur fights between good and good. But anyway, Mathews and Saint Nick and the ever-present Leon-my-whole-Fortunato-is-tied-to-you-Excellency are aboard the Condor 216. (I finally figured out the significance of Carpathia’s obsession with that number, by the way. Well, actually David told me. He thought everybody knew. Your quiz for the week.)

So on the plane ol’ Mathews is really putting the screws to Carpathia. He’s demanding this and urging that and begging for more share of the taxes for all the wonderful stuff Enigma Babylon is going to do for the Global Community. Nicolae is yessing him and uh-huhing him to beat the band. Mathews takes a bathroom break and Nicolae tells Fortunato, “If you don’t have him hit, I’ll do the job myself.”

Of course Leon tells him, “He’s outlived his usefulness, and I’m working on it.”

Well, didn’t mean to ramble, but with all the afflicted here, I’ve got more alone time than I’ll probably ever have again. All the best with the little one. We’ll pray you get home in time and that Mama is up and around in time to get back to work and make a parent out of you. Greet everyone for me.

In the name of Christ, Mac M.