"I should like to have been there, Excellency."
"You're my chief of security and you didn't even know this! I'm going to make you Supreme Commander, but you have to get in step!"
"I'll do my best."
"Leon called me at dawn, telling me with great relish that he had ordered destroyed every Vatican relic, every icon, every piece of artwork that paid homage to the impotent God of the Bible. There were those among the potentates and even among the Carpathianists who suggested that these so-called priceless treasures at least be moved here to the palace to preserve their worth and to remind us of history. History! I don't know when I've been prouder of Leon. Before he returns, the Vatican will be left no vestiges of any sort of tribute to any god but the one my people can see and touch and hear."
"Amen, Your Holiness. You are risen indeed."
"Of course, and the whole world was watching! Now when I spoke the other day of a host of enforcers, I wanted you to gather that I meant the very core of my most loyal troops, the GCMM. They are already armed. I want them supported! I want them fully equipped! I want you to marry them with our munitions so their monitoring will have teeth. They should be respected and revered to the point of fear."
"You want the citizenry afraid, sir?"
"Walter! No man need fear me who loves and worships me. You know that."
"I do, sir."
"If any man, woman, young person, or child has reason to feel guilty when encountering a member of the Global Community Morale Monitoring Force, then yes, I want them shaking in their boots!"
"I understand, Excellency."
"Do you, Walter? I really need to know."
"I absolutely do, sir."
"I don't care whom you replace yourself with as chief of security. All I want you to know is that I hold you personally responsible for carrying out this wish."
"Of giving more muscle to the GCMM."
"The understatement of the century."
"Any budget for this?"
"Walter, you report directly to me. I control the globe politically, militarily, spiritually, and economically. I have a bottomless sea of resources. Spare not one Nick in your effort to make the GCMM the most powerful enforcement juggernaut the world has ever seen."
"Yes, sir!"
"Have fun with it! Enjoy it! But don't dawdle. I want a full contingent, at least one hundred thousand fully equipped troops, in Israel when I return there in triumph."
"Sir, that is but days away."
"Do we not have the personnel?"
"We do."
"Do we not have the armaments?"
"We do. Are you lifting the embargo against showing military-style strength in the form of tanks, fighters, bombers, and other such?"
"You're catching on, Walter. I want to crush resistance in Israel before it even arises. From whom should I expect opposition?"
"The Judah-ites and-"
"You've already told me they are unlikely to show their faces. They take their potshots from behind the trees of the Internet. From whom shall I expect flesh-and-blood opposition within, say, Jerusalem itself? You know my plans."
"Not totally, sir."
"You know enough to know who will be outraged."
"The Orthodox, sir. The devout, religious Jews."
David heard chairs squeak, and it was obvious Carpathia had stood and Moon followed suit. "Now, Walter. I ask you. How dangerous to me will be the funny-looking men with their beards and their braids and their skullcaps once they have seen one hundred thousand heavily armed troops, there to protect me and those who worship me?"
"Not very, Excellency."
"Not very indeed, Walter. Good day to you."
David guessed Walter still had time to make their appointment. His goal was to schmooze Walter, flatter Mr. Wong, and somehow get rid of them so he could plot with Chang how to get out of there with the other four believers. He sat, earphones in place, ready to shut down his computer. But then he heard Carpathia humming, then singing, as if he were writing a song, trying a line, improving it, starting over. David listened, transfixed.
Finally perfecting it, to a military-sounding tune Carpathia softly sang:
Hail Carpathia, our lord and risen king; Hail Carpathia, rules o'er everything. We'll worship him until we die; He's our beloved Nicolae. Hail Carpathia, our lord and risen king.
Just before midnight in Chicago only Rayford and Tsion were awake. All were excited about the expected return of Buck and Albie and their next new member, Ming Toy. Chloe and Leah asked to be awakened as soon as the chopper arrived.
Tsion had been working all day on a new, though brief, message. "I'm about to transmit it," he told Rayford. "But I'd appreciate your looking at it. It's an interesting study, but it's not for the beginners. We have hundreds of thousands of new believers joining our ranks every day, but I have to think also about moving the more mature ones from milk to meat. Perhaps the day will come when someone like Chaim can take over the teaching of the newest."
Rayford eagerly accepted Tsion's hard copy, always feeling privileged when he was among the first to get a glance at something a billion people would benefit from.
Dear ones in Christ:
From your letters to the message board, I sense some questions about certain passages and doctrines, one of which I address today. I am most encouraged that you are reading, studying, curious, and that you so plainly want to learn and grow as believers in Messiah. If you have placed your trust in Christ alone for salvation by grace through faith, you are a true tribulation saint.
While we all rejoice in our new positions before God-we went from old to new, from death to life, from darkness to light-no doubt all are sobered by the reality that we are living on borrowed time, now more than ever.
I have gathered from many that one of your loftiest goals is to survive until the Glorious Appearing. I share that longing but wish to gently remind you that that is not our all in all. The apostle Paul said that to live is Christ but that to die is gain. While it would be thrilling beyond words to see the triumphant Lord Christ return to the earth and set up his thousand-year reign, I believe I could learn to deal with it if I were called to heaven in advance and saw it from that perspective instead.
Beloved, our top priority now is not even thwarting the evils of Antichrist, though I engage in that effort every day. I want to confound him, revile him, enrage him, frustrate him, and get in the way of his plans every way I know how. His primary goal is ascendancy for himself, worship of himself, and the death and destruction of any who might otherwise become tribulation saints.
So, as worthy and noble a goal as it is to go on the offensive against the evil one, I believe we can do that most effectively by focusing on persuading the undecided to come to faith. Knowing that every day could be our last, that we could be found out and dragged to a mark application center, there to make our decision to die for the sake of Christ, we must be more urgent about our task than ever.
Many have written in fear, confessing that they do not believe they have the courage or the character to choose death over life when threatened with the guillotine. As a fellow pilgrim in this journey of faith, let me admit that I do not understand this either. In my flesh I am weak. I want to live. I am afraid of death but even more of dying. The very thought of having my head severed from my body repulses me as much as it does anyone. In my worst nightmare I see myself standing before the GC operatives a weakling, a quivering mass who can do nothing but plead for his life. I envision myself breaking God's heart by denying my Lord. Oh, what an awful picture!
In my most hated imagination I fail at the hour of testing and accept the mark of loyalty that we all know is the cursed mark of the beast, all because I so cherish my own life.
Is that your fear today, friend? Are you all right as long as you are in hiding and somehow able to survive? But have you a foreboding about that day when you will be forced to publicly declare your faith or deny your Savior?