The Portent

by Michael S. Heiser

  “Rage against evil is no sin,” Sabi’s calm voice interrupted. “but we must let Jesus fight such battles for us. I have known such anger as well. Where I was kept before the Lord delivered me … it was a terrible place. The people there did horrible things to me. I was powerless to defend myself. But you must release this to God in prayer. The only place to find a spiritual victory is on the other side of a spiritual battle.”

  “He’s right, Malcolm,” said Brian. “That’s what imprecatory prayers teach us. God will curse those who curse us. As believers, we’ve inherited that covenant promise. We can’t take matters into our own hands. But I’ll admit, I’m guilty there, too. After I got Neff’s call, I wanted to just pound the guy right there in the restaurant.” He paused. “And since we’re being honest here, I’m with you. I want him to get what he deserves. He’s taken so many lives.… But Sabi is right. Frankly, we both need to pray we don’t get the opportunity.”

  “I hear that.”

  “Malcolm,” Melissa broke in.

  “Yes?”

  “Look at me. Do you remember who I was—and why?”

  Malcolm started to reply, but stopped. He looked at Melissa’s face, which was full of sincerity and concern. The episodes of the past summer she was referring to hadn’t faded from his memory.

  “Let it go, Malcolm. Things will come full circle.”

  “Such battles are what forge true disciples,” Sabi encouraged him. “You can train a chimp to carry a Bible. Such outward things do not demonstrate a heart humble enough to be obedient unto death. We put down the sword that would punish our enemies, because the resurrection and the judgment will demonstrate before every spectator—from worlds seen and unseen—who won and who lost. We can wait for resolution.”

  Malcolm nodded gratefully. “Amen. I’ll need all of you to keep me accountable, though.”

  Sabi smiled. “All of us here—we are our brother’s keeper.”

  “Right,” he nodded, and returned the gesture.

  “As for service to God,” Sabi said, “my prayer is selfish. I pray that you will find your calling here. The task is great—even greater now after what we have learned. We must work to complete the mission set before us while it is yet day. We must believe that we will see our sister again, in this life or the next.”

  “That’s actually been on my mind a lot,” Brian confessed.

  “Do not fear,” Sabi replied. “Many who we find estranged from Jesus are not in that condition because they do not know the truth. Many are in pain, seized by anger and loss.”

  “How do you know that’s the case with Dee?” asked Brian.

  “Fern and I spoke with her several times. Your friend knows the gospel. She grew up with it. But she has suffered many things, sometimes because of the words and deeds of those who would take the name of Christ. At other times … there were abuses that seem connected to the evil that knows your names,” he said ominously, yet without fear.

  “What did you say to her?”

  “We shared our stories. Her pain was no barrier to us, for we have known terrible things. That is where evil is blind. It cannot see that those who suffer speak the same language. God had one son on earth without sin, but no son without suffering. When this penetrates the heart, it becomes hard to continue to rage against the one who loved you enough to suffer in your place.

  “That was our message. I believe Jesus will have the final word in her heart, regardless of what the rest of her life here holds. The Spirit will attend to her though we cannot.”

  55

  There is strong shadow where there is much light.

  —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  “I want you all to hear me out,” Clarise began, surveying the troubled expressions in front of her. “It might sound a little crazy, but I’m absolutely certain this whole episode—the whole reason Father Fitzgerald was kidnapped—was about Dee from the beginning.”

  Brian looked at Melissa and Malcolm’s unsettled faces. “What are you saying?” he asked. “How do you know that?”

  “The more I think about what I know now, any other conclusion doesn’t seem possible. Where’s Fern—and Nili and Sabi?”

  “They took Summit to her room to play a board game after lunch,” Ward explained. “We didn’t want her to feel excluded again. I told them she wouldn’t do well with this stuff—no need to fill her head with the details.”

  Clarise nodded. She opened a manila folder she’d brought to the gathering. “Let me just lay out the facts.” She began distributing papers. “I’ve got two sets of DNA test results here.”

  “Two sets?” asked Neff, holding a page, lines forming on his brow.

  “Yes. Dee and her baby.”

  “How did you manage that?” asked Malone.

  “It was actually pretty straightforward. There was no problem matching the blood on Dee’s coat to blood I’d drawn earlier in Maine. Once we got Malcolm and Dee stateside, given her condition, I gave her a complete physical. It didn’t take long to learn she was anxious about her pregnancy, though I didn’t know why at the time, so I suggested we conduct some tests. Malcolm convinced her to let me. One of them involved a draw of amniotic fluid, which you can get the baby’s DNA from. I kept some and brought it here.”

  “If this was all about her like you think, I can’t believe they’d harm her,” Melissa said, removing her glasses. “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know, but I agree. I can’t see them harming her deliberately. It’s not unusual for a pregnant woman to be jolted into serious labor if she’s severely stressed or injured.”

  “Was she far enough along for that?” Malcolm asked

  “Dee was close to thirty-two weeks—a week or so ahead of Melissa. If she delivered, the baby would have survived, unless whatever caused Dee to hemorrhage involved an injury to the fetus. I think we can assume the Colonel’s people had the medical capability to take care of her and the baby on board the craft. After all, that’s what they came for.”

  “So you said,” Brian replied. “But why? I take it that the DNA results are driving the conclusion?”

  Clarise took a breath to steady herself. “The first set is Dee’s. The page after that … I don’t know what this means. I had a hunch on the way back here.” She paused again and looked at Melissa, then Brian.

  “What is it?” Brian pressed.

  “That computer printout you took from Area 51 …”

  “Yes?” Melissa sat up and looked expectantly into Clarise’s eyes.

  “Well, that wasn’t part of your DNA profile.… It was part of Dee’s.”

  “What?” Brian gasped.

  “The printout was a section of Dee’s genetic profile, not Melissa’s. The second page of what I just handed you is from that printout. I marked the place on the profile I just took from Dee’s DNA so you can do a visual comparison of the sequence if you want to. It’s a perfect match.”

  “How in the world can that be?” Brian asked. He turned to Melissa, who was speechless, caught totally off guard.

  “I don’t know,” Clarise answered. “I’ve been running your story through my mind. I can only guess that when your friend Neil saw that printout and took it, he thought he was looking at something associated with Melissa. He must have made a mistake, at least about who it belonged to. He didn’t know what he was really looking at. But I do. It belongs to Dee.”

  “I don’t know what to say—to even think,” Melissa stammered. She stopped and looked at Clarise. “What about the marks on the paper?”

  “I can’t be completely sure about them, but I can say I have some reasonable guesses. I looked through a dozen journal articles this morning after I confirmed the match with the printout. If I had to guess, I’d say that Dee was being genetically inspected to make sure she could carry a child to term. At least two of the locations on the printout are consistent with some things that geneticists have studied to explain spontaneous abortion after implantation of the conceptus on the
uterine wall. I think they wanted to make sure she was a good candidate for implantation. There’s nothing else I can see with the marked locations on the printout that would be amiss.”

  Clarise paused to let the news sink in. She wanted to give them a minute. She’d been wondering how to approach what she had to say next, and she still didn’t know, but the time had come. Malone could tell from her expression that she was a little on edge. He nodded to her as if to say, “Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.”

  “What about the baby’s DNA?” Neff’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Is there something unusual about it?”

  “Well, yes and no,” she answered. “Or maybe I should say yes and maybe.”

  “Just tell us,” Malone pressed gently.

  “As far as the DNA itself, there’s nothing unusual. Dee was pregnant with a normal baby boy … but it had no genetic relationship to her. The child is Caucasian by race. She was obviously a surrogate.”

  “That’s not unexpected,” Brian replied. “We all knew she and Melissa had been implanted.” He paused. “Is there something else?”

  “I’m not sure …”

  “You’ve got to be sure!” Melissa blurted out. Brian took her hand. She sank back into the couch and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “I’m so sorry.” Clarise got out of her seat and crouched in front of Melissa, touching her knee. “I don’t mean there’s anything wrong the baby. I know this brings back the fear all over again, but I have no reason to think there’s anything unusual about any of the babies—really. I’d tell you if I did.”

  “I apologize,” Melissa said, catching her breath. “I—”

  “There’s no need. What I’m not sure of is that, for some reason, I can’t shake the notion that I’ve seen this DNA somewhere else.”

  “How could you remember a DNA profile?” Malcolm asked. “A sequence is phenomenally long.”

  “It’s not the sequence that’s familiar—it’s certain features that derive from the description. The thought may be completely wrong, but it keeps nagging at me.”

  Melissa touched Clarise’s hand. “Really, I’m sorry for overreacting. You’ve helped us so much already.”

  “Forget it,” Clarise said. “Maybe we should switch gears a bit. That article you asked me to read—I’m through that, too.”

  Melissa’s expression became more focused. “And?”

  “It’s legit. The research and the conclusions are solid. Whatever you’re angling for that rests on the work described in that article should be secure.”

  “Thanks.” Melissa paused. “I don’t know whether to be enthused or troubled.”

  “Ward also got the autopsy reports you asked for.”

  “Autopsy reports?” Brian gawked at her. “What did you—?”

  An abrupt, unexpected commotion coming from one of the corridors that opened into Miqlat’s central foyer caused all their heads to turn in that direction. A rapid crescendo of footsteps, accompanied by indiscernible shouts, reverberated louder and louder. Without warning, Kamran shot through the opening, one arm holding his laptop, the other grabbing a rail to divert his momentum toward the bewildered cluster of onlookers. He put the laptop down on an end table and began grunting and gesticulating wildly, trying to communicate.

  “Slow down!” Madison shouted, trying in vain to read his signs. “Just calm down and tell me!”

  Kamran’s signals slowed a bit, but his urgency didn’t diminish.

  “He says he’s found something … terrible … and exciting—but more terrible than exciting,” Madison sputtered, trying to translate. “Slower!” she demanded.

  Kamran bent over to both catch his breath and gather his composure, hands on his thighs. After a few seconds he stood up and, wearing a determined expression, resumed signing to Madison. They all watched the look on her face change from concentration to curiosity, and then to uneasiness. Kamran nodded insistently, pointing to Brian. Madison turned to him.

  “Kamran says he understands something the Colonel is planning. It has to do with something his priest friend told him.”

  “Father Mantello?”

  Kamran clapped and waved a finger at Brian.

  “He wants to show you,” Madison explained.

  “How does he know … whatever it is he knows?”

  “Isaiah 40. He says he knows why the Colonel quoted Isaiah 40—and it scares him.”

  56

  “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him?” says the Holy One. “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.”

  —Isaiah 40:25–26

  “What do you think he’s come up with?” Brian asked Malcolm.

  “Well, Andrew and I discussed Father Mantello’s ideas a couple of times,” Malcolm answered as he, Brian, and Melissa watched Ward and Madison setting up the equipment for Kamran’s presentation. “My guess is that it’s going to be something about signs in the sky. But with this kid, I’m expecting the unexpected.”

  “Why?” Melissa asked.

  “He’s way outside the box. He’s brilliant, but half the time you’re not sure what he’s talking about. I don’t have any background in astronomy to speak of. Madison and Nili told me he spends almost every free minute fiddling with his astronomy software. If he comes out here, it’s basically for food. When I talked to him it was like listening in on a conversation between Origen and Isaac Newton. I’m amazed sign language even works for what’s in his head.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Okay, folks, looks like we’re ready to roll,” Madison announced as she walked up to the front and handed Kamran an open laptop. She paused as Nili, Summit, and Fern found seats in the Pit, accounting for everyone. She motioned to Kamran and pointed to a lead on the floor, which the young man promptly picked up and plugged into the laptop.

  “I’ve helped Kamran get his material together so that we can go as quickly as possible without needing to sign or text back-and-forth. I put all his material into a text-to-voice program and saved the results in an audio file that I mapped to his slides. The result is that you’ll be able to hear what you are seeing as though he is narrating it. If you have questions, feel free to ask them as he goes. He’ll type responses onto his laptop, and you’ll all hear the audio results through the speakers. Got it?”

  Madison saw some nods and then sat down on a stool adjacent to Kamran. Kamran began typing on his laptop. A computerized voice began the lecture, its artificial, awkwardly-punctuated rhythm articulating Kamran’s thoughts: “In order to understand what I see in the Colonel’s words to Dr. Scott, we must begin with the birth of Jesus. We all know that Jesus was not born on December 25. That is just the day that Christians historically celebrate his birth. We will see tonight that we can know the real date. Once we have that date, you will begin to see what I see. First we’ll talk about Revelation 12 and how it helps us understand what the magi saw when Jesus was born. Let’s look at that passage as we begin the slides.”

  Kamran hit his remote.

  And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.

  His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

  “The signs that appear in the heavens are
astronomical: sun, moon, and stars,” the mechanical voice communicating Kamran’s words explained. “It is also clear that this passage is not describing an angelic rebellion before or at creation. The ‘third of the stars’ are not called angels, but even if they are angels, as many think, they are swept down after the birth of the child, which is clearly Jesus.”

  Kamran paused the presentation and typed a short message into his laptop. “Do you agree, Dr. Scott?”

  “Look out,” Malcolm whispered.

  “I do,” Brian replied. “Verse 5 quotes Psalm 2, a messianic psalm. The ‘rod of iron’ reference comes from Psalm 2:9. The child is certainly Jesus the Messiah, and so this casting down of a third of the stars has nothing to do with primeval creation, though a lot of Christians think that. There’s nothing in the Bible about a third of the angels falling before creation. It’s a myth.”

  Kamran nodded appreciatively and began typing once more. “Please stop me if you hear anything you disagree with. If you don’t, I will assume you are in agreement. I will also ask questions now and then for you to answer. We must all know your thoughts.”

  “Sounds fine,” Brian answered.

  Kamran pressed the remote to continue. “Several points of the description need our attention. The woman in the vision is described as ‘clothed’ with the sun. She has twelve stars around her head. The woman gives birth to a child, who is the messianic Jesus. After giving birth to the Messiah, the woman is persecuted and has to flee into the desert.”

  Kamran paused to type. “Dr. Scott, who do scholars—including you—think the woman in the vision is?”

  “Just about everyone would say the woman is Israel,” Brian answered, “because the Old Testament describes Israel as the virgin daughter of Zion who produces the messiah in fulfillment of prophecy. We, of course, think of Mary, but Mary was not persecuted and never ran into the desert for safety—her life in the New Testament has no parallel to the description here. Israel was scattered after Jesus was here—mainly in the Diaspora after the resurrection and the destruction of the temple. The ‘Virgin daughter Israel’ is obviously the best fit for both parts of the description.”