“Bryan Litfin combines his vivid imagination with his knowledge of theology, history, literature, geography, ancient languages, and even apothecary (!) to give us a marvelous book about ‘a mysterious book.’ The Kingdom is more than a fascinating, enjoyable, quick read; it is also a great story about The Great Story—‘Iesus, the Pierced One’ and his past, present, and future church. Three cheers for this final volume in the trilogy!”
DOUGLAS SEAN O’DONNELL, Senior Pastor, New Covenant Church, Naperville, Illinois; author, God’s Lyrics and The Beginning and End of Wisdom
“In the darkness of Chiveis, where hope is a rare commodity, some dare to believe the promises of the sacred text. The adventure that follows not only grips your imagination, it also enriches your faith.”
CHRIS CASTALDO, author, Holy Ground
“The Chiveis Trilogy concludes with yet another page-turner, full of action, adventure, suspense, intrigue, and inspiration. Litfin’s deep love for Scripture, reflected in his characters’ passionate pursuit of the Sacred Writings, can’t help but challenge and inspire readers to treasure their own Bibles and read them more often!”
CHRISTIN DITCHFIELD, conference speaker; syndicated radio host, Take It To Heart®; author, A Family Guide to Narnia
“Bryan Litfin’s writing is colorful, witty, and engaging. The story of Chiveis is compelling and rich. The beautiful gospel themes constantly remind me of the wonder of the True God and the power of his Word. This last installment of the Chiveis Trilogy concludes the adventures of Teo and Ana with heart racing and mind stirring pace and resolution. This is indeed the work of an artist and theologian.”
JAY THOMAS, Lead Pastor, Chapel Hill Bible Church, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
“The climatic conclusion of Bryan Litfin’s Chiveis Trilogy does not disappoint. With his mastery of language, Litfin brings to life the struggles of Teo and Ana as they reintroduce God to a post-apocalyptic world that has forgotten Him. The cunning and captivating plot is layered with deep currents of real everyday Christian struggles. It is a thrilling novel that captured my imagination and challenged my soul.”
JASON HUBBARD, MD, FAANS, FACS, Neurosurgeon
Praise for the Chiveis Trilogy
“Theologian and scholar Bryan Litfin has accomplished a rare feat—he has fashioned a land and time unique to any reader’s experience.”
JERRY B. JENKINS, author, The Left Behind series
“Ever wonder about a world with an ‘almost-absence’ of God? Theologian turned ‘futurist’ Bryan Litfin provides us a compelling tale of the endurance of God’s amazing love—even to a distant remnant.”
MARK, ELFSTRAND Executive Producer/Host, Morning Ride, Moody Radio, Chicago, Illinois
“Pulling us into the future to reveal the past, Bryan Litfin’s great what-if story discovers instead what is, laying bare the tendencies of the human soul, the strategies of our adversary, and the gentle sovereignty of the eternal God. In the Chiveis Trilogy, discovering truth is as exciting as discovering love, for, as Litfin skillfully portrays, they are one and the same.”
AMY RACHEL PETERSON, author, Perpetua: A Bride, A Martyr, A Passion
“A captivating narrative that journeys into the discovery of a living religion that seems lost and unrecoverable, this tale imagines how a sovereign God might reveal its mysteries anew. Any lover of theology and Western history would enjoy watching believers uncover lost symbols and writings, piecing together the greatest paradoxes of the faith in the drama of a fictional narrative. Action, conspiracy, romance, and faith combine in a tale depicting how the treasured beliefs of Christianity might first appear to a generation that had never seen its wonders.”
W. BRIAN SHELTON, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Toccoa Falls College
“Litfin draws readers into an evocative post-apocalyptic world, where the true faith is emerging from the ashes of the past—a faith the enemy is intent on destroying. A suspenseful story, skillfully woven with characters who risk their lives for loyalty, honor, and truth.”
C. S. LAKIN, author, Someone to Blame and The Wolf of Tebron
“Few authors touch my heart so deeply that all of their books make my favorites list, but Bryan Litfin has done it with this series.”
MICHELLE SUTTON, author, Letting Go and It’s Not About Me
T H E K I N G D O M
The Chiveis Trilogy:
Book 1: The Sword
Book 2: The Gift
Book 3: The Kingdom
The Kingdom
Copyright © 2012 by Bryan M. Litfin
Published by Crossway
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.
Cover design: Josh Dennis
Cover image: Cliff Nielsen, Shannon Associates; illustrator
First printing 2012
Printed in the United States of America
Scripture on pages 7 and 8 taken from the ESV® (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
All other Scripture quotations are the author’s translation.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-2520-9
ISBN-10: 1-4335-2520-8
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-2521-6
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-2522-3
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2523-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Litfin, Bryan M., 1970–
The kingdom : a novel / Bryan M. Litfin.
p. cm. — (Chiveis trilogy ; bk. 3)
ISBN 978-1-4335-2520-9 (tp)
I. Title.
PS3612.I865K56 2012
813'.6—dc23 2012003083
Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
VP 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I
now
dedicate
this trilogy
to Jeff Ligon,
a loving father,
a godly husband,
a skilled physician,
and my beloved friend.
Since grad school at UVa,
until cancer took you home,
we hiked through life together.
Twice we criss-crossed Europe:
you drove, and I came up with plot,
and you let me call the Alps “Chiveis.”
So rest until the Lord returns, my brother.
I’m keeping your boots until I see you again.
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
Thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:55, 57
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed,
saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
Psalm 2:1– 6
C O N T E N T S
MAP
PROLOGUE
P A R T O N E
D E P E N D E N C Y
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
P A R T T W O
M I N I S T R Y
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
P A R T T H R E E
C A T H O L I C I T Y
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX: CHIVEIS TRILOGY LOCATIONS
P R O L O G U E
The rulers of the earth took counsel together, and the Pact they made defined the centuries to come. Jean-Luc Beaumont convened the historic meeting at which the Pact was signed. It was his second greatest achievement.
His first was still being alive.
In the summer of 2042 no one knew the world was about to end. Beaumont, the cocky young CEO of a Swiss chemical company, didn’t pay much attention to the story he read in the Tribune de Genève about the strange virus devastating Japan. But the human race was about to learn what the murderous X-Virus could do.
The new supervirus raced around the globe like a bullet train, claiming every life it touched. Death came with agonizing cramps and a gush of vomit and blood. As the body count rose, panic set in. Citizens rioted, governments crumbled, and the horrified superpowers watched their worst nightmare come true. When a few ruthless dictators pulled the nuclear trigger against their long-hated rivals, retaliation was impossible to resist. In this way modern civilization met an ugly death under poisoned skies.
For several decades apocalyptic chaos reigned across the globe. Food was the only thing on anyone’s mind. Tribal bands pursued agriculture by primitive methods while ruthless warlords guarded the communal fields. Farming and fighting—those were the two occupations in the brave new world. Each tribe was separated from its neighbors by empty spaces that eventually returned to forest, though that did not prevent raids. Brutal wars over the food supply characterized the middle decades of the twenty-first century. The anarchy devoured the weak and timid, yet it opened doors of opportunity to men with the iron will to survive—men like Jean-Luc Beaumont.
By the time he was fifty, Beaumont was king of Europe’s Genevan tribe. Old Geneva was gone, of course. A ballistic missile had erased all traces of the Jet d’Eau, the Reformation Wall, and the splendid St. Pierre Cathedral on the hill above the lake. But a tribe of warriors and farmers had coalesced in the region, producing crops in the Rhône Valley to fill their stomachs and wines along Lac Léman to numb life’s pain. For ten years Beaumont ruled his tribe with ruthless efficiency until a coup in 2070 forced him out.
The exiled king sailed up the Aar River with forty tough warriors and nothing to eat. The year was waning, and winter’s chill was already in the air. Harassed from behind, Beaumont pressed upstream until dense wilderness finally swallowed the refugees. They approached the foothills of the Alps with little hope of survival but were surprised to discover a rabble of German-speaking peasants making a decent living off dairy cattle in the Bernese Oberland. Beaumont thanked his god and ordered his men to halt.
The winter that year was a hard one, with too little bread for supper and too much cheese, yet the refugees survived by assimilating into the mountain culture. When spring came, Beaumont knew where he would establish his new kingdom. La Nouvelle Suisse, he tried to call it, but the peasants preferred their own name: Schweiz.
Most of Beaumont’s warriors were young, which meant they had no memory of the vanished world that existed before the Great War of Destruction. But as a former chemical engineer, Beaumont recalled ancient secrets he could turn to his advantage. He amassed charcoal from willow and hazel, saltpeter from stables and chicken coops, and sulfur—always the hardest ingredient to obtain—from nearby hot springs. The king picked three men to gather these substances, empowering them as archpriests of a new religious triad whose gods were borrowed from classical mythology. However, the secret of combining the ingredients into gunpowder remained unknown to each priest. Such arcane knowledge could only be entrusted to one person. For this, Beaumont chose Greta, the peasant witch he had taken as his lover.
Greta had long served her village as the mediatrix of the dawn god. She was a dark-haired vixen dripping with occult magic. Beaumont recognized Greta’s beguiling power, and he used it, though not without caution. Together the king and his consort established a new religion under a divine overlord, the Bright Star, Astre Brillant. He was the Bringer of Light, or Lucifer as the Bible described him. Beaumont and Greta hated that book and hated even more the God of its pages—for Astre Brillant, the deity who supplied their power and position, hated him too.
La Nouvelle Suisse grew strong, and with it grew Beaumont’s lust for vengeance against the Genevans who had evicted him. In time he made a treaty with the German tribes of the north. They were rough men who dwelled in tangled forests, but they fought with violence and vigor. In the ninth year of Beaumont’s reign he ordered the troops of his Royal Guard, allied with German mercenaries, to invade the Genevan lands. The thunderous explosions and acrid stench of Beaumont’s gunpowder bombs sent the Genevan warriors fleeing the battlefield. Crops were destroyed, blood was spilled, and the elderly king savored his revenge.
But then Greta brought disturbing news. Missionaries of the Christian God had arrived in Geneva, having navigated up the Rhône from Marseilles. “Astre Brillant came to me in a dream,” Greta said. “He commands us to eradicate that religion once and for all.” The prophetic words of Greta’s decree launched Beaumont on his last great quest.
After the missionaries were rounded up and murdered, an expedition set out for Marseilles. A hundred German confederates joined the Royal Guardsmen sailing down the Rhône. At last Jean-Luc Beaumont, king of La Nouvelle Suisse and conqueror of Geneva, met the prince of Marseilles with great fanfare. In no time he managed to worm his way into the city’s politics and manipulate the foolish prince into summoning delegates from the three kingdoms that ringed the nearby seas.
Soon the ships began to arrive, each bearing an important guest. Ambassadors came to Marseilles from Liguria, from Rome, and even from the Isle of Sicily, which sent as its delegate the firstborn son of the crime boss who ran the Clan. When the chessboard was laid out and the pieces were in place, Beaumont made his opening move: he summoned Greta to invoke the forces of darkness upon the momentous council. Greta’s magic impressed the gathered delegates. Their awe made it a simple matter to convince them to sign a treaty.
The Pact was an alliance based on common interest. The Romans, Sicilians, Ligurians, Marseillans, Germans, and Swiss all realized they had little to gain by fighting each other. Stability had finally been achieved in the post-nuclear world. Riches flowed to the elite at the top. The iron fist of oppression ensured that the peasants’ crushing poverty produced extreme wealth for the lords. To maintain this lucrative status quo, the delegates agreed not to meddle in one another’s affairs, a policy that would lead to deep and long-lasting xenophobia.
Yet a nonaggression pact wasn’t all Beaumont wanted. He knew a single powerful force could overthrow the wealthy rulers’ reign: Christianity, the faith that dignified human beings by giving even the lowliest peasant a sense of value before God. That religion had proven it could unify people across economic, political, and social lines. Beaumont recalled how Christianity had appealed to Middle Easterners, Africans, Westerners, Latinos, and Asians alike. “The last Pope was even Chinese!” he complained to the men at the council, though most of them were too young to know what he meant. Yet when old Adolfo Borja of Rome nodded his head, the gathered rulers couldn’t help but notice. Beaumont must be right: Christianity was their greatest threat.
Greta returned to the room then, resplendent in the garb of a Swiss High Priestess. Her aura was terribly exotic. The sc
ent of the netherworld was upon her, and the men in the room were transfixed. Beaumont smiled, confident the Pact he desired would soon be achieved. Greta produced a razor, its silver blade reflecting the light from candle sconces on the wall. A single pitcher and six glass vials were placed on the table among the men. A hush fell upon them.
Beaumont offered his arm.
Greta opened a vein.
And so it was that on that fateful day each man left the room bearing a vial of intermingled blood as proof of his sacred vow. A secret society of assassins would be formed. All followers of the Enemy would be exterminated. Their scriptures would be destroyed. The name of Jesus would be blotted from the earth. At last the rulers of the nations had burst the bonds of the Creator God. Christianity had come to an end in Europe. The faith would be forgotten by everyone. And for many years it was.
But then, more than three centuries later, a young army captain named Teofil followed Anastasia of Edgeton into the Beyond to rescue her from evildoers. Teo and Ana wanted only to return to the land they called Chiveis, yet a mysterious hand seemed to lead them in the opposite direction. In the ruins of an ancient cathedral, high upon the single-spired roof, they discovered a mysterious book. Though they did not know what it was, they brought it home, opened it, and looked into its pages.
And things began to change.
P A R T O N E
D E P E N D E N C Y
C H A P T E R
1
Teo set down his quill and picked up a parchment containing the words of life. Rising from his desk, he gazed out the window of the seaside convent at Lido di Ostia. A lone woman sat near the water, her head shaded from summer’s rays by a wide-brimmed hat. She wore a simple cotton sundress and leather sandals. The wind blew her honey-blonde hair to one side, draping it across her suntanned shoulders. Teo smiled as he looked at the beautiful woman on the beach. Though he had loved Anastasia from the day he met her two years ago, he had only just admitted that fact last week.
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