A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3)
Page 1
A
BROKEN
PARADISE
BROKEN
PARADISE
Book 3 of The Windows of Heaven
A Novel Series by K.G. Powderly Jr.
Copyright Page
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2012, by K.G. Powderly Jr.
Original version Copyright © 2004 by K.G. Powderly Jr.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Createspace
Cover Art Copyright © 2012 James Cline, Kanion Rhodes Studio
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For Shannyn and her husband Wes: No father could be more proud of his daughter, and no man could hope for a better son-in-law, who held up my right hand, as Hur did for Moses when under attack For my granddaughter, Laurelin Mae Jordan—grow strong and courageous in Christ, Mini-Mae!
For Jim Cline, who held up my other hand as Aaron did in the heat of battle
For Rob Mullin, without whose help and encouragement this whole project would not rise like the Phoenix
For young Katarina and for Mary Jean, may your broken paradises, as very different from one another’s as evening is from morning, be transformed for you by our Father’s kindness and mercy For the Promised Seed—the suffering servant, wonderful counselor, mighty God, and the once and future King who waits to welcome us with those who are willing at Time’s End
Acknowledgements
Chapter epigraphs appear from the following books with thanks and respect:
All Bible quotations not from the King James Version (KJV) or Revised Standard Version (RSV) come from the New King James Version (NKJV) © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
R.H. Charles – The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament © 1913 Oxford: Clarendon Press Plato, Critias, translated by Benjamin Jowett, The Harvard Classics, ©1909–14
Slavonic Enoch (2 Enoch) Translated by W.R. Morphill, M.A.
Ethiopic Enoch (1 Enoch) Translated by Richard Laurence, LL.D in The Book of Enoch the Prophet, Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co. (1883) Paul C. Vitz, Psychology as Religion, © 1977 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2nd edition © 1994 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. and Paternoster Press C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, © 1933 by Clive Staples Lewis, reprinted by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1979
Judd H. Burton, Encyclopedia Mythica, Judaic Mythology, Nephilim, © copyright 1995 - 2004 Encyclopedia Mythica. All rights reserved. On-line at http://www.pantheon.org/
John Woodmorappe, Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, © 1996 ICR
Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, © 1989 Baker Lynn E. Catoe, UFOs and Related Subjects: USGPO, 1969; prepared under AFOSR Project Order 67-0002 and 68-0003
Dr. Jaques Vallee, Confrontations, © 1990, Ballentine Books Norman Wirzba, Caring and Working: An Agrarian Perspective, The Christian Century, 116:25, September 21-28, 1999, pp. 898-901
John Ankerberg and John Weldon, The Facts on UFOs and Other Supernatural Phenomena, © 1992 by Harvest House Publishers
Table of Contents
Introduction
Prologue 1
1: Shrine 11
2: Moon Goddess 29
3: Armistice 47
4: Tactics 69
5: Brothers 83
6: Aeden 95
7: Architecture 113
8: Campaign 129
9: Colossus 145
10: Guides 167
11: Encounters 183
12: Cause and Effect 205
13: Minstrel 223
14: Union 241
15: Offerings 255
16: Drydock and Flood-Haven 283
17: Barque of Aeons 307
Epilogue 323
Appendix: A Chronology of the World-that-Was
Glossary of People and Terms (Revised for Book 3)
But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
—Matthew 24:37-39 NKJV
Previously in The Windows of Heaven…
Our distant past is not what we think.
Long ago, a violent cataclysm of water and runaway continental plate movements re-surfaced our planet. Another world richer in vast rainforests and gigantic animals once existed on the sphere we call Planet Earth. Many overlook evidence that men also lived there.
The Creator God E’Yahavah gave this forgotten world to the charge of humanity’s long-lived first parents, Atum and Khuva.
Yet they were not alone.
E’Yahavah had created other beings, among them the Watchers, whose proper abode was in the heavens. The brightest of the heaven dwellers was Shining One, bard and chieftain of the Ninth Heaven. Given vast authority in the heavenly dimensions, Shining One grew envious of the two domains E’Yahavah had kept from him—the Tenth Heaven, wherein the Creator alone dwells, and the newborn Earth.
Unable to storm the gates of the Tenth Heaven, Shining One and his cohorts penetrated Earth. In the sacred Orchard of Aeden, they seduced Atum and Khuva to revolt. There E’Yahavah subdued them all and issued a Great Curse upon the universe. He transformed Shining One into the Basilisk and banished him to the cosmos of Earth to wait out the ages for judgment.
Nor were the man and woman exempt.
Everything Atum could see, measure, and touch—even the very stars—was changed. Death became the agent of natural balance in Atum’s cosmos, instead of love. The inner thought-world of the man and his wife became a labyrinth of fear, confusion, hatred, and guilt; while E’Yahavah subjected the outer universe entrusted to their care to a matching upheaval: Dragons and pack-hunting wurms grew hostile and swarmed from thorny rainforests, followed by natural disasters, decay, and ultimately death.
Even so, hope remained. Although marred by a self-destructive nature acquired in the First Insurrection, the image of E’Yahavah remained in mortal humanity, along with a promise more powerful than the Curse.
Nevertheless, the war in heaven was not finished. Shining One had left a seed of discontent to fester even in the minds of those who remained loyal—or who at least seemed to. That seed germinated among the heavenly order known as the Watchers.
Fascinated by humanity’s ability to multiply, some of the Watchers grew apprehensive at the idea. When Earth became full, would the human race expand into the heavens? The situation on Earth worsened every year. Wars raged, and cruelty increased. Could E’Yahavah really restore the monstrous creature that man had become?
A cartel of Watchers thought they had the answer. They petitioned the Creator for permission to go to Earth and civilize humanity. The seed of fear that Shining One had planted in their thoughts had grown to fruition. The Watchers had become obsessed with the idea of multiplying themselves through an evolutionary process that would slowly merge their kind with the human race. For this, they needed human women—which further opened the doors for an entirely new and unnatural obsession.
One man remained on Earth not deceived by them; Q’Enukki the Seer spoke for E’Yahavah and taught men laws that laid the foundations for a rapidly advancing civilization. But it was not to last.
Watchers led by Samyaza and Uzaaz’El descended to Earth
against the counsel of E’Yahavah. Self-willed and self-deceived, they gave the tribes of men new laws and new knowledge—weapons and other prematurely advanced technologies for the elites that served them. Believing that they had established a Third Order between E’Yahavah and the Basilisk, the fallen Watchers became far more dangerous than even the Basilisk had hoped. Their obsessions grew, with inflated ends justified by any pragmatic means. Yet they refused to admit to themselves that they had now made a Second Insurrection, and had thus become subject to the Basilisk.
Q’Enukki the Seer withstood the Watchers and their illicit offspring—the titans, giants, and demigods—powerful men and women, contorted spiritually and often physically by religious and even genetic manipulation. Q’Enukki promised that a deliverer would come for the faithful, but not until after E’Yahavah destroyed and restored the world twice—by fire and by water. However, before these World-ends, a Comforter from E’Yahavah A’Nu would arise to lead the faithful to safety.
At the height of his influence, Q’Enukki vanished into the heavens to fulfill a new and mysterious mission. His descendants, the Seer Clan, continued to spread his message across the world. In the centuries that followed, the fallen Watchers slaughtered most of them for opposing their agendas. Finally, a remnant of the Seer Clan retreated to the beleaguered land of Seti, Q’Enukki’s distant ancestor; father of the Orthodox Archons, which were a remnant of an older order from Atum.
Dawn-Apocalypse Rising began the story of the Seer Clan Prince A’Nu-Ahki, who lived centuries after Q’Enukki had vanished.
A’Nu-Ahki grew up in the shadow of a prophecy his father had uttered over him in the cradle. A convergence of signs pointed to the prince as Q’Enukki’s foretold Comforter from A’Nu.
A’Nu-Ahki found his own seer gift after the giants of the Samyaza Cult slaughtered his wife and family while making war on the Lumekkor Empire. The Seer Clan found itself trapped between these two antediluvian superpowers clashing in the thorny rainforest mists.
But not all of A’Nu-Ahki’s daughters were killed. The giants took Uranna and Tylurnis as concubines to the Samyaza homeland of Assuri. The “Century War” followed, while the Seer Clan became a vassal of Lumekkor. To keep some independence for his people, A’Nu-Ahki entered a political marriage with Na’Amiha, sister of Tubaal-qayin the Great of Lumekkor.
Over time, the Seer Clan grew complacent in the political protection purchased by A’Nu-Ahki’s marriage. Yet they rejected A’Nu-Ahki as A’Nu’s Comforter because he had broken taboo by marrying a woman raised in Lumekkor, which all but worshiped the hated Watcher Uzaaz’El.
The war raged, until a giant comet blazed as a warning sign that even those outside the Seer Clan could not easily ignore. E’Yahavah visited A’Nu-Ahki with a vivid apocalypse. Everywhere on Earth, society reinforced the evil in humanity and undermined good. The Watchers, who had come to civilize men with presumptuous noble intentions, had fallen to the same seductions faced by men. Chaos and tyranny resulted. In one hundred and twenty years, E’Yahavah would send a cataclysm to end the world. Only those who followed the Comforter of A’Nu would survive.
Seventy of those years passed, while A’Nu-Ahki and Na’Amiha had three sons. A’Nu-Ahki’s abducted daughters remained missing even after the Century War ended, and E’Yahavah revealed nothing further about the coming world-end.
The Watchers soon began to squabble again, pushing the world powers toward another global clash of demigods, giants, and men.
In The Paladin’s Odyssey, the corrupt Archon of Seti illegally conscripted A’Nu-Ahki and his son U’Sumi to fight the invading forces of Aztlan. U’Sumi had heard about the prophesied World-end from the comfortable hearth-side stories of childhood. Faced with mass death and mechanized war, questions about his father’s God soon overwhelmed him, with the only immediate answers so unthinkable as to threaten his sanity.
Captured by Aztlan, U’Sumi and his father were taken to the distant capitol of the titan Psydonu. When confined in the temple complex of the techno-sorceress Pandura, a young priestess named Pyra T’Qinna befriended and aided them. U’Sumi, his father, and the young priestess escaped across the wastes of a dying world, forced by warfare to circumnavigate the globe to reach home. After crossing the treacherous Great Outer Ocean, they endured the toxic sands of the Desolation of Nhod. There, in a land of religious mass-murder, disease, and population control, U’Sumi faced the terrible necessity for cataclysm—that when evil is unchallenged, it eventually grows to consume entire worlds.
Escaping Nhod, A’Nu-Ahki, U’Sumi, and Pyra T’Qinna entered Assuri, where they became prisoners of the Samyaza Cult. In the city of Samyaza, A’Nu-Ahki discovered that his lost daughters were not dead, but had become willing slaves of the Samyaza Cult—wives of the Watcher’s titan sons. Aboard the command craft of Samyaza’s flying fleet, U’Sumi and his fellow travelers watched as the mysterious Guardians of the sacred Orchard of Aeden annihilated the Watcher’s misguided winged assault against what he thought was the Basilisk’s stronghold.
When Samyaza’s airship crashed in the dragon-infested Haunted Lands, it forced A’Nu-Ahki to face the truth about his two daughters; that ‘Ranna and ‘Nissa chose freely to stay with Samyaza rather than come home.
Meanwhile, all was not well in the Valley of the Seer Clan during A’Nu-Ahki’s absence. The descendants of Q’Enukki had broken further into quarreling sects, each with opportunistic visions of World-end and rescue. Self-proclaimed “Comforters” now competed for converts and financial backing, while hope dwindled for A’Nu-Ahki’s wife and other two sons…
A
BROKEN
PARADISE
One theory which can no longer be taken very seriously is that UFOs are interstellar spaceships.
—Arthur C. Clarke
New York Times Book Review, 07/27/75
The symbolic display seen by the abductees is identical to the type of initiation ritual or astral voyage that is imbedded in the [occult] traditions of every culture… the structure of abduction stories is identical to that of occult initiation rituals… the UFO beings of today belong to the same class of manifestation as the [occult] entities that were described in centuries past.
—Dr. Jacques Vallee
citing the research of Bertrand Meheust in Confrontations, p. 146, 159-161
But the UFO phenomenon simply does not behave like extraterrestrial visitors. It actually molds itself in order to fit a given culture.
—John Ankerberg and John Weldon
The Facts on UFOs and Other Supernatural Phenomena,
p. 10
UFO behaviour is more akin to magic than to physics as we know it… the modern UFOnauts and the demons of past days are probably identical.
—Dr. Pierre Guerin,
FSR Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 13-14
And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.
—2 Corinthians 11:14 (NKJV)
Prologue
The Creature pulled the fabric of space-time past itself on all sides like an unraveling shroud, sliding the universe around its own extra-spatial location beyond the lower five heavens. Time on its “created universe” side dilated to a crawl within the living liquid-metal of its glassy transit bubble. Inside that shape-shifting transport compartment, a man and a Watcher continued their age-long discussion while hours slipped by as centuries outside the Creature’s protective pouch. The Watcher felt it best to keep the man occupied. The man’s feelings were still a mystery.
None of this would have been visible from the Creature’s “created universe” side, even from a hypothetical second “window-gate creature” that slid space like a multi-dimensional sheet, parallel to the first creature, at the same rate of speed. Relative velocities would normally make two such synchronized objects perfectly visible to one another, but the Watcher had ensured that conditions would be anything but normal from here on out.
The man—a Seer named Q’Enukki from the Prime World that wou
ld someday be called Planet Earth—had just been significantly enhanced. His body and brain remained physically unchanged—for now. The non-material information code sequences that operated his brain—his mind—on the other hand, had been upgraded to use more of the brain’s original design capacity than was usually wise for humans in his condition.
The Watcher, whose name was Samuille, had extraordinary orders from above, however—extraordinary orders for an extraordinary mission.
Q’Enukki could now perceive and process information from his senses in two additional dimensions. Until now, his mind had operated in a “back-up mode” that inhibited most sensory input from the higher dimensions—as was the rule since Curse Protocols had been imposed on the universe as a safety mode. This had blinded humanity for their own good to much of what went on around them—similar to when parents protected their children from information they lacked the maturity to handle.
Samuille had no experience parenting, but he had seen the principle in action enough to know that love often demanded it.
However, Samuille’s orders concerning Q’Enukki were unique.
As for the Watcher’s gate-window-creature and its transit bubble, transparency was a simple thing compared to down-loading new operational mind-code into a fragile mortal human brain. People were not just machines, after all.
Samuille projected orders to his unseen navigators to decelerate the surrounding space until the only thing moving parallel to their nexus was a giant comet whose gravity signature the Creature-window recognized.