"How I wish that too," Chaim said.
"No, no! If you are God's man in God's time, you must never want out of this most sacred duty and calling! The history of this country carries much discussion of a manifest destiny. Well, my brother, if ever a people had a manifest destiny, it is our people! Yours and mine! And now we include our Gentile brothers who are grafted into the branch because of their belief in Messiah and his work of grace and sacrifice and forgiveness on the cross. Jesus is Messiah! Jesus is the Christ! He is risen!"
"He is risen indeed," Chaim said, but he did not match Tsion's energy.
"Do you hear yourself?" Tsion mimicked Chaim, mumbling, "He-is-risen-indeed. No! He is risen, indeed! Amen! Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! You could go to Jerusalem, a leader of men, a conqueror! You would stand up to the lying, blaspheming enemy of the Lord Most High. You would expose Antichrist to the world as the evil man indwelt by Satan and rally the devout believers to repel the mark of the beast!
"Oh, Chaim, Chaim! You are learning so much. That old brain is still good, still facile, still receptive. You are getting this-I know you are! If not you, who shall go? You seem uniquely qualified, but much as I dream it, I cannot presume to make this assignment. How I wish I were the one and could be there in person to see it! If it is you, I will want every detail. Should the forces of evil come against you and you should be overwhelmed by the power of the enemy, God would provide a way, a place, and you, you my friend, would lead the people to that place. And the Lord God himself would protect you and care for you and watch over you and provide for you. Do you realize, Chaim, that God has promised that it will be as in the days of old? Think of it! Weak and frail and wicked as they were, unfaithful, ignorant, impatient, and dallying with other gods, the God of the universe himself catered to the children of Israel.
"Do you understand what that means? You could lead your people, his people, to a place that will be almost impossible to go into or out from. If you were to be there until the Glorious Appearing of the Christ, what would you eat? What would you wear? The Bible says God himself will provide as he did in the days of old! He will send food, delicious, nourishing, fulfilling food! Manna from heaven! And do you know about your clothes?"
"No, Tsion," Chaim said wearily, a tease in his voice, "whatever you do, do not neglect to tell me about my clothes."
"I won't! And you will be grateful, not to mention amazed. If I amaze you, will you admit it?"
"I will admit it."
"Promise me."
"My word is my bond, my excitable young friend. Amaze me and I will say so."
"Your clothes will not wear out!" Tsion stopped with A flourish, his hands in the air.
"They won't?"
"Are you amazed?"
"Maybe. Tell me more."
"Now you want to hear it?"
"I always want to hear it, Tsion. I am just unworthy. Scared to death, unqualified, unprepared, and unworthy."
"If God calls you, you shall be none of those! You would be Moses! The Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would go before you, and the glory of the Lord would be your rear guard."
"I would need a rear guard? Who would be chasing me?"
"Not Pharaoh's army, I assure you. But if it were, God would make a way for you to escape. Carpathia's hordes would be pursuing you. And for all his talk of peace and disarmament, who has access to the residue of the world's weapons, surrendered willingly to the lying purveyor of peace? But if you needed the Red Sea parted yet again, God would do it! For what have we learned, my little Hebrew schoolchild?"
"Hmm?"
"Hmm? Don't hmm? me, Chaim! Tell the rabbi what you learned about the great stories, the miracles from the Torah."
"That they are not just stories, not just examples, myths for our encouragement."
"Excellent. But rather, what are they? What are they, my star pupil?"
"Truth."
"Truth! Yes!"
"They actually happened."
"Yes, Chaim! They happened because God is all-powerful. He says they happened-they happened. And if he says he will do it again, what?"
"He will."
"He will! Oh, the privilege, Chaim! Deal with your fears. Deal with your doubts. Give them to God. Offer yourself in all your weakness, because in our weakness we are made strong. Moses was weak. Moses was nobody. Moses had a speech impediment! Chaim! Moses, the hero of our faith, had less to offer than you do!"
"He was not a murderer."
"Yes he was! You forget! Did he not kill a man? Chaim, think! Your mind, your conscience, your heart tells you God cannot forgive you. I know the guilt is fresh. I know it is grievous. But you know, down deep, that God's grace is greater than our sin. It has to be! Otherwise we all live in vain! Is anything too hard for God? Anything too big for him? Any sin too great for him to forgive? It would be blasphemy to say so. Chaim! If you are the one who can commit a sin too great for God to forgive, you are above God. That's how we can wallow in our sin and still be guilty of pride. Who do we think we are, the only ones God cannot reach with his gift of love?
"He found you, Chaim! He pulled you from the miry clay! Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up!"
"Back to my clothes," Chaim said. "I could wear clothes from now until Jesus comes again, and they wouldn't wear out?"
Tsion sat back and waved dismissively. "Chaim, if he can save you and me, of all people, forgive us our sins, bring us back from spiritual death, this clothes thing is one of his lesser miracles. Forget the extra buttons, the patches, the thread. Go there with something you like, because you'll still be wearing it when this is all over."
David had pushed the limits of his ability to virtually set up the entire GC compound for his own remote computer monitoring. He breathed a prayer of thanks to God for allowing him to focus and work in spite of his grief. Mac and Abdullah were set to visit him in an hour to finalize the escape plan that included David and Hannah, and all four had agreed to carefully watch for believers they had been unaware of. It was already apparent that the brilliant teenager, Chang Wong, might be tagging along. David just had to figure out how to pull it off.
While waiting word from Ming Toy, David checked his archives for meetings he had recorded but never listened to. In his Carpathia file was the one with Suhail Akbar, Walter Moon, Leon Fortunato, and Jim Hickman the day he himself had chatted with Hickman. David felt a chill as he prepared to eavesdrop, and he did a quick walk-through of his area to make sure everyone was gone for the day. He could close a program and shut down with a single keystroke, but still he didn't want to be surprised by the wrong person.
Something Hannah had asked a few days before haunted him too. She had said, "How do you know there isn't someone just as technically astute as you are who is doing exactly what you're doing?"
"Such as? "he had said.
"Monitoring you, maybe."
He had brushed it off. He had developed antihacking programs, antibugging devices. He had electronic ears everywhere and believed he could hear if someone breathed a word of something like that. It was impossible, wasn't it? Surely the brass wouldn't be so free to speak if they thought he was listening in. And if they were onto him, it seemed they would have shut him down long before this.
David believed the security chips he'd inserted in his phones and E-mail programs were impenetrable, and he had tried to explain it to Hannah.
"I don't pretend to have a clue, David. Maybe you are the top computer genius alive, but ought you not be very careful?"