by Wid Bastian
“Matthew, chapter five, verses forty-three through forty-eight.”
“That’s on the button, Peter. It is very hard to bless those that curse you and to pray for those who spitefully use you.”
“You must help us, Roger. Pray to the Father on our behalf. The Lord is calling you to leadership, brother Stone.”
“That’s it, isn’t it Peter.”
“Brother Stone?”
“Why you’re here, you and the brothers. To help us find true mercy, to find Christ in our daily lives, before it’s too late.”
“Time, Roger, is running out. I’m afraid we no longer have the luxury of half stepping His commandments. Our situation is critical, even if it appears perhaps not to be.”
“Oh, it is critical, Mr. Pete,” Malik Graham said, walking on to the East Room stage. “You need to get these folks on out of here and right now. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this.”
Peter could feel the disruption too, tremendous energies were being expended. At the same time both Peter and Malik looked up to see how Gabriel was reacting to the developing conflagration.
But he was gone.
Twenty-Six
Malik chose to directly intervene rather than to signal Peter because what he was seeing wasn’t merely a threat, it seemed to him much more like the end of the world.
On the earthly plane of existence, Peter’s nod to the President and the President’s order to the Secret Service were all that it took to clear the White House of its guests in less than fifteen minutes. While no one could be physically compelled to leave, the strong suggestion that forces beyond understanding now posed a serious threat to human life was, after everything the blessed had just experienced, more than enough incentive for the audience to promptly evacuate.
When Gabriel disappeared he did not actually leave the East Room, he simply switched dimensions. Through senses indescribable in human language, the Archangel knew that his ancient nemesis, Satan, was posturing, presenting himself in such a way as to create the possibility of angelic conflict. This was a very rare and dangerous development.
The true Power in the universe, the Uncreated Energy that binds all things, exists primarily in a spiritual domain that human beings can only occasionally glance. While dominated by the Light, darkness also exists within the Energy and manifests itself through hosts that have freely chosen to reject God.
Once, eons ago, the Uncreated Energy was one Force, pure Love, pure Light; then came Satan’s rebellion, and the creation of creatures in the image and likeness of God, human beings. A battlefield was established on earth, a place where conflict could continue within limitations. Both Light and darkness knew that to bring their war back to their own dimension was to risk it all; the loser surely would be vaporized into nothingness.
The Light claims that ultimate victory over darkness is a foregone conclusion and expects its human creation to believe this on faith. St. John, the youngest apostle of Christ, was given a vision in the first century of what this final conflict between Good and evil would look like. John wrote down what he saw in the book of the Apocalypse, or Revelation as it is more commonly known.
All men are creatures of their times, St. John was no exception. He knew nothing of airplanes, missiles, spaceships, nuclear weapons, submarines, tanks, or lasers. His world was primitive by modern scientific and technological standards, so while John did his best, much of what he saw in his apocalyptic vision was inadequately described.
Malik Graham was a twenty-first century man. His limitations were far less than St. John’s. It was not possible for him to diminish the horror of Armageddon through confusion or symbolism.
In a matter of seconds, the spiritual dimension Malik could see from his seat in the East Room expanded a thousand fold. Two armies were poised on either side of the “room,” which now appeared to be miles, not yards, long.
On one side, Malik saw the beast in all of his repulsive ugliness. Around him were uncountable hordes of demons holding themselves back behind some invisible line of demarcation. The forces of darkness radiated hate, a loathing of God and His favorite creation, man. Malik could sense the devil’s unity of purpose, to destroy humanity and through the process of doing so become a god in his own right, to elevate evil above the Light, to vanquish the Lord.
The second army shone collectively like a blazing star. Its beings projected a reticence for fighting, a desire for peace, and a regret and disgust over being drawn into conflict. Malik absorbed the energy of the army of Light, it filled him with hope and joy and a confident assurance that victory over Satan was indeed inevitable. He was moved by a powerful desire to join them, to become one with them, but he knew that as long as he remained a mortal man he could not do so.
Then Satan extended one of his hideous claws and stretched out a vision from it that filled the space between the opposing forces. Malik was shown the destruction of human civilization, an all encompassing shredding of flesh, the unimaginable suffering caused by total global warfare. It was clear to him that Satan believed that this was the unalterable destiny of man, to destroy himself in a perverted orgasm of senseless brutality.
Then Gabriel appeared from amidst the beings of Light. With a wave of his hand, Satan’s nightmare disappeared and was replaced by a vision of prosperity and peace. Malik saw gleaming metropolises with towers of shining glass and metal separated by open, green spaces. Within these magnificent cities, millions of people were working for their mutual benefit without strife or greed or hatred. Poverty was eliminated, disease tamed, crime abolished. God was established as the true ruler of man, Christ enthroned as an earthly king.
Then Gabriel’s vision vanished and the empty space between the combatants was restored. As soon as this happened, the two armies began moving closer together, activity within each force increasing as they slowly crept toward each other.
That’s when Malik decided it was time to get everyone out of the White House. Once the evacuation was complete Malik could no longer see the vision of the heavenly battlefield. Since he was still alive, Malik assumed that either the angels or the demons must have retreated.
“I’ll never be afraid of the damn devil,” Malik told Peter after he finished describing what he’d seen for him, “but I’m scared to death God and the evil one will battle it out. Don’t think we’d make it through that. We don’t amount to much stacked up ‘gainst all their power. It’s real humblin’ to see that, Mr. Pete, to know how weak we humans really are.”
“You made the right call getting the audience out of there, Malik,” Peter told his brother. “I could feel it too, a sense of dread, foreboding. I felt like, well … ” Peter hesitated.
“Bro?”
“I felt like I was an insect lining up to get squashed.”
The President did not delay action. At noon Eastern Time on the twenty-second of June, he announced a bold set of new federal government initiatives. He declared that “the moment in history has arrived when America must lead the way as a truly Christian country, we must put ourselves in accordance with the Lord’s will for our national destiny and we must simply start doing more godly things and less evil ones.”
Pledging that the United States would “act only in limited self defense” after the restriction ended, the President called for an immediate international summit of world leaders with the express purpose of forging an agreement to eliminate all armed forces and to forever abolish the practice of war. “Imagine the earth with no armies and no need for them,” the President said in his globally televised speech. “All conflicts resolved peacefully through negotiation and compromise. A lunatic’s fantasy, some say. But how can we ignore the fact of the restriction and the other miracles being reported from around the globe? Is it crazy to believe that warfare can be abandoned as a human institution, or is it insane to ignore the will of God? If we must choose between destruction or peace then I say the only rational option is to pick survival.”
Professing his conviction that hung
er and want for the basic necessities of life could be eliminated planet-wide in less than a decade, the President proposed an “effort of total commitment” to raise the standard of living for the “poorest and most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters.” The problem of “systemic economic inequality should be attacked with all the vigor of a world war and on all fronts,” he said, from the greater sharing of resources by the affluent, to the elimination of political and economic corruption in the Third World and through an “unprecedented outpouring of love and concern.”
But the President did not stop with asking for the world, he added the moon and the stars. He called for the creation of a new American health care system, one based on “the maximum application of Christ’s mercy, not upon material greed.”
“The right to receive quality health care is a basic human right,” the President said. “Anyone arguing that it is not should be ashamed of himself and fear his day of judgment before the Lord.”
The President signed an Executive Order forbidding any U.S. law enforcement officer from “pursuing or apprehending” any of the estimated four hundred thousand inmates that were able to leave American prisons during the restriction. For the federal felons who walked off, he issued a blanket clemency. For state and local prisoners whom “God paroled,” as he phrased it, he threatened states that refused to pardon them with “any and all monetary sanctions at my disposal as President.” He called for a commission, to be jointly chaired by Tim Austin and Gail McCorkle, to “review all aspects of our current criminal justice system, from statutes to bureaucracies,” and to offer “concrete proposals to the President for reducing the number of incarcerated persons, increasing educational, vocational and spiritual training options throughout the prison system and to provide practical ideas to bring our criminal justice system more in line with Christian values and by doing so, create conditions that will minimize criminal conduct and reduce recidivism.”
“I know full well how these proposals will be received in some quarters,” the President said, as he wrapped up his nearly hour long speech. “I will be called a madman, a dreamer, a threat to the social order. So be it then. I stand on the idea that the time has come for us to move closer to Christ, both as individuals and as a society. We must do so boldly and with faith. I ask you to pray for yourselves, to pray for your country and to pray for your President.”
In a separate press release, not desiring to mix his positive message with an unpleasant task, the President called for the immediate resignation of his Vice President. He cited “not only serious personal and political differences brought to the surface by the restriction and related events” but also “significant ethical lapses by the Vice President better left unpursued in the interests of national harmony and Christian forgiveness.”
Working together with the President and using the resources of the White House, Peter Carson announced that at six p.m. tomorrow, June the twenty-third, he, the President, and the disciples would be present at RFK stadium in Washington to “celebrate the Lord’s miracles.” The event was to be a culmination of Holy Thursday, and a rallying point for God’s faithful. It would also serve as the beginning of a global ministry for Peter and the disciples. Solomon’s Porch was coming to the four corners of the earth.
“It’s almost too good to be true, my friend. Perhaps you were right, I am too pessimistic. Those fools are delusional to hold such a public spectacle right after the restriction. We could not ask for a more perfect scenario.” Some sleep, tranquilizers, and an unhealthy dose of single malt scotch had calmed the President’s former first advisor over the past eighteen hours.
“Everything is set. The assets are in place in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They slipped into the harbors last night completely undetected.” As he spoke, the President’s second former senior advisor was busy operating a small bank of computers set up in the conspirator’s makeshift war room.
“And our assassin, he is ready too? No problems?”
“No problems. He’s staying at the Watergate under the name of Mustapha al-Elyan. He’s posing as a trade minister from Oman.”
“And his assassin?”
“That’s the least of your worries, my friend. He’s guarding the President.”
“My, my. Nice of you to tell me about that interesting wrinkle. Don’t trust me?”
“Of course, I just thought you would enjoy the surprise.”
“Not as much as the President will, I’m sure.”
Twenty-Seven
There was no way to know precisely when the restriction would end. Some guessed ten p.m. sharp, others swore it would be ten o’two, o’three, or o’five. It was simply impossible to determine the exact moment the blessing began.
The ten o’clock sharp prediction proved to be accurate.
Dr. Howard Simms, now working through the Office of the President, coordinated an extensive network of resources whose purpose was to report on the immediate post restriction response of individuals and groups. In less than twenty-four hours, Simms put in place thousands of “special observers,” as he called them, across the globe that had objective criteria they applied to record and categorize everything they measured and witnessed.
In a few months, Simms intended to publish “The Report,” a massive tome detailing all the raw data collected about the restriction and its aftermath. He also planned to offer analyses and conclusions at that time, but certain post restriction activity was “significant” and “merited immediate comment,” in Simms’ view, so he issued a brief statement to the press shortly before noon on the twenty-third.
For about two hours after the restriction ended, a wave of “pent-up frustration,” as Simms labeled it, was “released.” Assaults, murders, fights, basically all categories of measurable personal violence, rose well above pre-restriction norms. Some in the media jumped on this early eruption of hate and predicted a widespread return to “worse than business as usual.”
But they were wrong.
According to Dr. Simms, “the effect of being forcibly restrained from committing acts of violence caused many millions of persons across a variety of societies to reassess their personal values and their relationship with God.” As the morning of the twenty-third of June progressed, less and less violence was being reported. Despite the initial violent surge, the “early post-restriction trend is clearly toward more, not less, peace.”
Of course, all of Simms’ data was preliminary. Extrapolating any long term trends from a few hours worth of activity would be foolhardy and Simms made no attempt to do so. He merely described and summarized what his small army of “special observers” reported to him.
Calling it “opinion and informed speculation,” Simms was willing to climb out a little bit on a limb. He said “the restriction has altered attitudes and expectations, but for how long and to what ultimate degree remains uncertain. However, it seems undeniable that a significant step in the right direction has taken place. The social environment is not the same as it was seventy-two hours ago.”
On the political front, about ninety percent of the invitations issued by the President to the global peace summit were accepted and confirmed by noon on the twenty-third. The impossible now seemed tantalizingly within reach. More and more people were beginning to believe that the President might actually pull off a miracle of his own.
The “Day of Fasting and Prayer” was also having an impact. In their homes and in public gatherings, hundreds of millions of souls fasted for all or part of the day and asked God to help Peter and their political leadership. Roger Stone led this effort from his home in Wisconsin, hourly conducting a prayer service that was televised worldwide.
Hope was rapidly supplanting fear. The belief that God had spoken, that the Creator of the universe had delivered a positive message of love for His children, was taking wide root, blossoming, and bearing fruit.
Then Satan struck back.
Two ships, both non-descript cargo vessels, exploded simultaneously in Los Ang
eles and San Francisco harbors. It was ten a.m. Pacific Time on June the twenty-third.
Each ship contained a nuclear warhead manufactured by the former Soviet Union and stolen from its Ukrainian owners by a radical Islamic group. The weapons had actually been missing for years, although they had supposedly been accounted for in one of the many desultory international weapons inspections of the Ukraine in the post-Soviet era.
In the blink of an eye, tens of thousands of people were vaporized, and hundreds of thousands more were subjected to lethal doses of radiation. Billions of dollars in property was destroyed and, far worse, two of the largest cities in America and their environs were contaminated and made uninhabitable for decades to come.
Those pursuing peace suddenly not only looked naïve, but recklessly dangerous as well.
Peter was sitting in a small office in the White House going over his sermon for the RFK event when he heard the terrible news. He watched as shocked faces hurried up and down the corridor. Many of them looked in angrily as they passed by, their eyes accusing him of somehow being responsible for bringing the unthinkable horror of a nuclear attack to American soil.
“Many will blame you,” Bishop Kallistos said, as he strode into Peter’s office and closed the door. “People, how you say, expect you can end all evil by yourself. Through lies like that and fear of death, Satan will tempt them. This is horrible tragedy, but as I told you, Panos, tragedy can be part of God’s plan too. Are you ready? Time has come for you to face the enemy.”
Peter was listening, but not responding. He was deep in prayer asking God to help those in California who were suffering and to give him the strength to do what must be done.