Tsion nodded, pursing his lips. "Praise the Lord," he said quietly. "She is coming back to us then?"
"Tonight. We expect Ray and Albie and Hattie after dark."
"I will pray for their safety. And we must continue to pray for her, of course. God has given me such a weight of care for that woman."
Buck shook his head. "Me too, Tsion. But if ever there seemed a lost cause…"
"Lost cause? Cameron, Cameron! You and I were lost causes! All of us were. Who was a less likely candidate than Chaim? We pleaded and pleaded with him, but who would have believed he would eventually come into the kingdom? Certainly not I. Don't give up on Miss Durham."
"Oh, I haven't."
"With God, all things are possible. Have you taken a close look at this young man you brought home last night?"
"Zeke? Oh, yeah."
"Clearly this was not a churchgoing boy. He is so delightful, so bright! Shy, bashful, uneducated. Almost illiterate. But what a sweet, gentle spirit! What a servant's heart! And, oh, what a mind! It would take him the next three and a half years to read one of the many books Chaim will finish by tomorrow, and yet he has proclivities for this technical stuff that I could not learn in a lifetime."
Buck smacked his palms on his thighs and began to rise, "Don't let me keep you."
"Oh, you're not! My mouth is keeping me from it. If you are not too busy today, I could use your help."
Buck sat back down, and Tsion handed him a sheaf of papers from the printer. "I have many pages to go, but I need a first impression. I will not transmit these until I know they are right."
"They are always right, Tsion. But I'd love to get the first look at them."
"Then begin! I will try to stay ahead of you. And if I start talking again, feel free to become parental with me."
That'll be the day, Buck thought. He tapped the papers even and settled back to read. Every so often Tsion printed out the next several pages, and Buck idly pulled them from the printer as he read, sitting, standing, pacing. All the while he thanked God for the gift of Tsion Ben-Judah and his incredible mind.
To: The beloved tribulation saints scattered to the four corners of the earth, believers in the one true Jehovah God and his matchless Son, Jesus the Christ, our Savior and Lord From: Your servant, Tsion Ben-Judah, blessed by the Lord with the responsibility and unspeakable privilege of teaching you, under the authority of his Holy Spirit, from the Bible, the very Word of God Re: The dawn of the Great Tribulation My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, As is so often true when I sit to write to you, I come in both joy and sorrow, with delight but also soberness of spirit. Forgive me for the delay since last I communicated with you, and thank you each and every one for the expressions of concern for my welfare. My comrades and I are safe and sound and praising the Lord for a new base of operations. And I always want to remember to also thank God for the miracle of technology that allows me to write to you all over the world.
Though I have met few of you personally and look forward to that one day, either in the millennial kingdom or in heaven, I feel deeply that family bonds have been created by our regularly sharing the deep riches of Scripture through this medium. Thank you for your continued prayers that I will remain faithful and true to my calling and healthy enough to continue for as long as the Father himself gives me breath.
I ask that all of you who have volunteered to translate these words into languages not supported by the built-in conversion programs begin to do that immediately. As I have been unable to write to you for several days, I anticipate that this will be a longer than usual communique. Also, as always, in those areas where computers or power sources are scarce and this message is reproduced as hard copy, I ask that those responsible feel free to do so free of charge with no credit necessary, but that every word be printed as it appears here.
Glory to God for news that we have long since passed the one-billion mark in readership. We know that there are many more brothers and sisters in the faith who are without computers or the ability to read these words. And while the current world system would, and does, deny these figures, we believe them to be true. Hundreds of thousands join us every day, and we pray you will tell more and more about our family.
We have been through so much together. I say this without boasting but with glory to God Almighty: As I have endeavored to rightly divide the Word of Truth to you, God has proven himself the author over and over. For centuries scholars have puzzled over the mysterious prophetic passages in the Bible, and at one time I was one of those puzzled ones. The language seemed obscure, the message deep and elusive, the meanings apparently figurative and symbolic. Yet when I began an incisive and thorough examination of these passages with an open mind and heart, it was as if God revealed something to me that freed my intellect.
I had discovered, strictly from an academic approach, that nearly 30 percent of the Bible (Old and New Testaments together) consisted of prophetic passages. I could not understand why God would include these if he intended them to be other than understandable to his children.
While the messianic prophecies were fairly straightforward and, indeed, led me to believe in Jesus as their unique fulfillment, I prayed earnestly that God would reveal to me the key to the rest of the predictive passages. This he did in a most understated way. He simply impressed upon me to take the words as literally as I took any others from the Bible, unless the context and the wording itself indicated otherwise.
In other words, I had always taken at its word a passage such as, "Love your neighbor as yourself," or "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Why then, could I not take just as straightforwardly a verse which said that John the Revelator saw a pale horse? Yes, I understood that the horse stood for something. And yet, the Bible said that John saw it. I took that literally, along with all the other prophetic statements (unless they used phrases such as "like unto" or others that made it clear they were symbolic).
My dear friends, the Scriptures opened to me in a way I never dreamed possible. That is how I knew the great Seal Judgments and Trumpet Judgments were coming, how I was able to interpret what form they might take, and even in what sequence they would occur.
That is how I know that the Bowl Judgments are yet to come, and that they will be exponentially worse than all those that came before. That is how I knew that these plagues and trials were more than just judgments on an unholy and unbelieving world. That is how I knew that this whole period of history is also one more evidence of the long-suffering, loving-kindness, and mercy of God himself.
Believers, we have turned a corner. Skeptics-and I know many of you drop in here now and then to see what we zealots are up to-we have passed the point of gentility. Up to now, while I have been forthright about the Scriptures, I have been somewhat circumspect about the current rulers of this world.
No more. As every prophecy in the Bible has so far come to pass, as the leader of this world has preached peace while wielding a sword, as he died by the sword and was resurrected as the Scriptures foretold, and as his right-hand man has been imbued with similar evil power, there can be no more doubt:
Nicolae Carpathia, the so-called Excellency and Supreme Potentate of the Global Community, is both anti-Christian and Antichrist himself. And the Bible says the resurrected Antichrist is literally indwelt by Satan himself. Leon Fortunato, who had an image of Antichrist erected and now forces one and all to worship it or face their own peril, is Antichrist's false prophet. As the Bible predicted, he has power to give utterance to the image and to call down fire from heaven to destroy those who refuse to worship it.
What's next? Consider this clear prophetic passage in Revelation 13:11-18: "Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.