Just when I was starting to enjoy my surrogate Dad’s companionship I caught myself in a situation of loneliness again. That was my pet peeve: loneliness. I glared at my belongings, retrieved from my apartment in New Canaan.
I proceeded to inspect them. Finding them in good condition, I stashed them away under my bed. All except for my iPod which I powered on, filling the room with Mendelssohn. I immediately lost myself in the opus. I let the lilting melodies – from the mournful and elegiac to the ceremonial and lofty – sweep me away to a distant and imaginary location: it was an exotic vista awash with the rich colours of Matisse. I felt relaxed, so relaxed I might’ve been dozing on and off. When the tracks in my iPod had run their course forty minutes later, I found Mika at the end of my bed, back from base. He had been sitting on the wooden trunk, patiently waiting for me.
“How’s the angel, Zuriel?” I asked, so glad to see my surrogate parent. (I had been missing him and longing for him for seemingly aeons but, no, I’d be too mortified to admit this to his face.)
“Doing well,” he answered. “He’s had a rest. By the time I met him at the barracks, he was already insisting on returning to Djibouti to watch over the Halfling, Jeremiel.”
“What happened to him before?” I asked next.
“He was accosted by Milcom,” my elder replied. “Milcom’s one of Lucifer’s chief angels, a principality; he was the demonic god that used to rule over the nation of Jordan and the Arab population that had been calling themselves Palestinians since the ‘Sixty-Seven War. Milcom and his minions seconded to the African continent and its surrounding regions when many of the territories of Jordan were seceded from the nation after the disintegration of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been pivotal for organizing the global jihad to annihilate Israel.
“(You recall, of course, that the Muslim Brotherhood was an organization of Islamic radicals that had instigated the unknowing populaces of the Middle East to rise up against their ruling governments in the Arab Spring, governments that used to have a diplomatic understanding with Israel; the radicals wanted to form an Islamic caliphate that would destroy Israel before seizing Jerusalem and Islamizing the world to put it under the subjugation of the Islamic Mahdi. Opposition was arrayed against the agenda of the radicals by the Lord who intervened to eradicate the Brotherhood. Therefore, the fate that had beset Jordan also befell Iran, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon since these nations had used to be the mainstays of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political machine.)
“Anyhow, Milcom’s unseen army ambushed the angel, Zuriel, while the latter was keeping watch over Jeremiel. Jeremiel was in the process of rescuing the Lord’s saints from Antichrist’s prison there. Zuriel was bound and Milcom gave orders to his demons to burn his feet with hot coals.”
“Evil,” I sighed.
“As Oreniel has reported, it’s nothing serious,” Mika asserted. “Zuriel suffered some discomfort for a brief while – by God’s provision our skin doesn’t burn albeit we do feel the heat of a burn. He’s already healing.”
“And Jeremy, um, I mean, Jeremiel?” I asked.
“His task wasn’t interrupted by Milcom,” Mika reported. “Zuriel’s telepathic distress signal was received by his Commander, Raphael, whose regiment was immediately in Djibouti to take over Zuriel’s beat. As a result, Jeremy was able to complete his mission. The saints have been rescued; they’re being transported to Petra by the angel, Jekuthiel, even as we speak. Jeremy’s going to be based in Djibouti for another week; after that he will commence his deployment around the Greater Horn of Africa. Raphael will remain his handler till he gets settled into his various tasks.”
“So the mission in Djibouti was a success,” I surmised.
“Yes, the Lord God’s to be praised,” Mika nodded.
“Have you time to sit up with me for a bit?” I asked him hopefully.
He nodded, getting up and approaching me: “I have time to sit up with you the rest of the night, if you like.”
I nodded, requesting: “Will you catch me up to where you’ve been to and what you’ve been doing this past week? I’ve just sat through Gabriel’s regaling me with tales of his mission in Borneo. I’ve been encouraged to hear of the Lord’s goodness and compassion for His disciples there.”
“Gabriel’s a talented raconteur who makes a point of injecting a didacticism in all his anecdotes,” he elucidated, sitting down beside me. “But that’s the way it should be: the point of storytelling is its moral or instruction; without it, the activity degenerates as persiflage devoid of rhyme and reason. You’ve come across them – they’re the usual fare that caters to the baser instincts of man: the personal memoirs masquerading as social commentaries served up in reality shows; the sarcastic one-liners masquerading as irony that abound in situation comedies. There’s a place for them, no doubt but, in the end, you’re left wondering what the point of it all is. As for how I spent my time this past week . . . well, as you know, it has mostly been taken up ‘surveilling’ you.”
“Yes,” I cried, my sense of chagrin building, “you mean to say spying. ‘Surveilling’ – is this really even a word?”
“Spying is an unpalatable word,” he smiled. “It’s apt to give me indigestion.”
“Except that you don’t eat,” I maintained, “so your defense is moot.”
“Exactly right; that I do not eat is debatable,” he offered.
Still slow on the uptake, I scratched my head. Mika had lost me already: the Lord’s angels were known to bewilder me with their non sequiturs.
Shaking my head, I requested: “In that case, tell me what else you’d been doing when you were not engaged with your brand of Big-Brotherism.”
He nodded and, then, thought for a while. “Well,” he started, “I was in New Zealand a week ago and Ukraine two days ago.”
“Ukraine,” I said, “that used to be part of the Soviet bloc before the collapse of Communism.”
“Mm-hmm,” he replied. “The Lord had sent us there to assist Remiel’s troop. Our mission was to smuggle food and other provisions to an underground orphanage run by the Russian Jews in the Ukraine. Suffice it to say, the angel, Remiel, and I ran into Antichrist’s agents – there were checkpoints everywhere owing to the international embargo on this nation – but we supernaturally put blinders over their eyes so that they let us through their cordon. Our mission was a straightforward one from that point.”
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| “The angel, Remiel, and I ran into Antichrist’s agents.” |
“Were there any encounters with the Evil Ones?” I asked, remembering what Gabriel had told me.
“Oh, yes, Little One,” Mika nodded. “There are always encounters with Lucifer’s armies everywhere we’re sent. Earth is temporarily Satan’s domain. That’s the reason we’re engaged in spiritual warfare for this war is between the Lord Jesus and Lucifer. The actions of Antichrist’s agents may be dictated by their leader, but it’s always one or more of the principalities in high places that are pulling their strings backstage. The same is true when a human being commits an act of extreme wickedness or indulges in a proclivity. For instance, if you should ever pay a visit to a casino lounge, you would likely see the Enemy’s mechanisms of sorcery hard at work with their invisible balls and chains, fastening the gamblers’ ankles to the legs of the tables and chairs. This is the reason many addicts lack the willpower to withdraw from an addiction. It is spiritual warfare.
“So, to answer your question: yes, as a matter of fact, the sword of one of Molech’s followers had inflicted the angel, Shealtiel, with a slight head injury. In addition, I had spied Molech himself skulking about in the shadows hoping to steal one of the little ones my troops were protecting. However, as long as the Lord has His restraining hand on the principalities, they remain nothing more than toothless lions. All they can do is prowl about.”
“What’s the story with the orphans?” I asked again.
“Well, Mish, they’re children born after the Harpazo. Some of their parents were killed while attempting to elude Antichrist’s forces. Many others died of natural causes or of some pestilence. Still others perished from the plagues of the Lord.”
“That the Lord’s protecting the children while He’s judging the world supports the belief that He deems them innocent of their parents’ sin and rebellion,” I opined.
Mika nodded. Then he became quiet.
“Mika?”
My Dad gripped my wrists, saying: “I’m not going to mince words here, son: we must get you back in shape. You’re skin and bones.”
“Wow, aren’t you just the most random individual on the face on the earth,” I deliberately muttered unintelligibly.
Mika hadn’t heard me . . . quite the outcome I was expecting. I watched him amble the short distance to the kitchenette. There he proceeded to search the fridge from top to bottom. He trawled about for something I might like and drew out the only carton of yogurt he was able to find there. Returning to me, he handed the yogurt, the seal already broken, and a spoon to me.
“You haven’t made your acquaintance with the refrigerator, have you?” he asked, removing the infernal ox liver from the nightstand. “It’s chock-a-block.”
“Only once, but I haven’t had much desire for food of late,” I answered. “Contrary to Gabriel’s assumption, I wasn’t deliberately starving myself. The feeding tube was, therefore, unnecessary and a waste of resources. I was humiliated!”
“Little One,” Michael reprimanded, “whether the starvation had been deliberate or not, you were at risk of emaciation, even death. That warranted the forced feeding. Besides, son, you had the onus to speak up and defend yourself. If you hadn’t taken that vow of silence . . .”
“All right, Dad,” I interposed with some cheek. “I get it. Anyway, the truth is that I haven’t felt much like eating anything – until today. Besides, most of what’s in the fridge requires some skill in food assembling.”
“And is it beneath you to assemble for yourself a sandwich or a salad?” he chided again while making his way back to the kitchenette. There, he busied himself making up a cheeseboard, arranging on a small platter little cubes of gruyere cheese, thick slices of pumpernickel bread and a bunch of blackcurrant grapes.
He added: “It’s not as if you need to engage in any food preparation. You may have noticed that knives have already been adequately applied to your food while still at Shelumiel’s kitchen.”
“Yes, I did notice. I also know why – you were worried I would use a knife on myself,” I maintained.
“Can you blame me?” he asked.
I caught myself biting down on my lower lip. I told him: “And I’m not above assembling a snack for myself. It’s nothing like that at all. I’ve just told you, I’ve simply had no appetite for food. Now, can we talk about you instead? Tell me about the mission in New Zealand.”
The General set down the platter on my nightstand. “It’s a long story,” he cautioned, sitting back down beside me. “Better get snug.”
Leaning back against the bed head, Michael began: “All of earth has been convulsing under the judgments of the Lord, which Scripture has called the Trumpet judgments and the Vial or Bowl judgments. As prophesied in Scripture, those who bear the Mark of Antichrist are drinking of the cup of the Lord’s indignation. As a result of God’s judgment on the earth dwellers and the Antichrist’s war on the Lord’s saints, the world’s population has dwindled to a fraction of the pre-Rapture eight billion. Those that remain are being afflicted by the twin cataclysms of pestilences and plagues. For example, a while ago, the Lord’s angel had unleashed His Fifth Trumpet judgment plague of the Fallen Ones, underlings of Abaddon that were released from their imprisonment in the abyss by an angel of the Lord. Granted permission by the Lord, they mounted their scourges on the world’s population. The nature of each scourge had its equivalent in a scorpion’s sting. Those afflicted could find no reprieve from their suffering, not even death, though they longed only for the sting of death.
“In addition to the plagues are the incessant occurrences of natural disasters that are laying waste to cities. These disasters are all but natural: just a fortnight ago, at least ten cities in various places were destroyed by Magnitude-10 earthquakes and devastating tsunamis. Several other countries reported a number of their towns having been besieged by hailstones, each with a sizable weight of about one hundred pounds. Worldwide, water sources such as oceans, rivers, streams and lakes have been contaminated by blood causing pestilences and plagues. Also, with much of the earth suffering great scorching from the sun, food has become a scarce commodity since lands have ceased being irrigable. This has had a ripple effect on the world’s agriculture and produce. With output nearly at zero percent of gross domestic product, famine has pervaded the nations so that the desperate are resorting to theft, robbery and looting to feed their families.
“A few families, the ones that had the insight to recognize the signs of the Endtimes, long ago sold their houses in the cities to buy land in the country in order to start over. However, the powers-that-be got wind of the rebels’ plans to escape Antichrist’s austere food rations. They quickly ratified Agenda 21, which had been implemented by the United Nations years before. Under Agenda 21, which they later renamed Agenda 2030, people who were not otherwise trained in agriculture were disqualified from purchasing land on the grounds that their activity could be unsustainable and lead to the degrading of the environment. As a result, those who wanted to live off their own land had to go rogue, squatting illegally and living off the grid. Their bucolic way of life is now liberally providing for their daily living since they’ve had the foresight to stockpile non-hybridized seeds while their lands could still be cultivated. But even these people are now at risk of being looted and burgled: as soon as word has gone out concerning their existence, they have become the targets of men and women without scruples, who do not hesitate to plunder them for a sack of potatoes or corn or, worse, betray their hiding places to Antichrist in order to obtain extra food rations from the state.
“Illegal squatting in the remote country has also become a commonplace pursuit of the political dissidents fleeing from Antichrist’s forces. In spite of so much instability, life must still go on for these people who have only one objective now for themselves and their families: surviving the Tribulation Hour. One such place of refuge in the remote country is Hidden Valley, located in the North Island of New Zealand.
“My deployment to the valley began two years ago as a staff of Operation: Angels Unawares. As you know, I’ve been back there several times since. For your information, O:AU is an international outfit that has been jointly conceived by the saints in Petra in collaboration with the Lord’s armies. With chapters in every continent, O:AU’s goal is planting shelters where the Lord’s sheep have need of asylum from Antichrist’s persecution but, for a spectrum of reasons, are unable to escape to Petra. Aside from the saints, we also welcome the dissenters of Antichrist to our camps; in fact, it is at these shelters that a significant number of the dissenters have come to accept the Lord’s gift of grace after hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ preached to them.
“The half-angel, Nethanel, and his handler, Uzziel, had been ministering to the saints at Hidden Valley from the beginning and had been there for half a year when I first arrived to assist with the construction of its shelters. Hidden Valley was O:AU’s Australasian chapter and embryonic project; whatever succeeded there was going to form the basis by which other chapters designed their operating procedures.
“Together with the Kiwi refugees that comprised the proselyte Christians and political dissenters, O:AU Australasia established a small township at Hidden Valley, building alcoves of transportable houses, each of bijou dimensions and constructed out of pre-fabricated or recycled building material. In just over a year, the community had grown to more than one hundred residents who came from twenty-eight separate families. These families survived on the bounty of their land and pig game.
“I became acquainted with Aroha-Sage Asi and her daughters when I first arrived at the valley. They knew me as the human, Micah ben Israel. Aroha-Sage was a long-time former resident of Rotorua, whose grandparents had arrived there from Tonga in the late nineteenth century. She was of Tongan, Maori and Irish extraction, who had spent most of her adulthood pursuing a life of upward mobility. She married a hedge-fund man, someone of immense means, though not of discretion, and Aroha-Sage would later pay dearly for her husband’s indiscretion. Keighan Southgate abandoned her when their three daughters were still toddling in diapers, and had many affairs outside of marriage, the sowing of his wild oats producing a son out of wedlock. Mr. Southgate tested positive for the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus in the mid nineteen-eighties and, within three years of being diagnosed, died of complications resulting from pneumonia. By that time, he had also been battling with the aggressive form of skin cancer called Karposi’s Sarcoma.
“Meanwhile, Aroha-Sage was raising her daughters as a single mother. She had also adopted Mr. Southgate’s illegitimate son as her own. She had felt sorry for the boy, Somerset, intervening in time to oust him of a life without adult direction and parental guidance. Aroha-Sage had been training to become a nurse when her ambitions were interrupted by her hedge-fund suitor. When the latter died bankrupt and intestate, Aroha-Sage was left without alimony or child support and, so, she had felt under duress to return to school, doing a correspondence course in child psychology. It was the only way, she felt, for if her children were going to have any chance at a meaningful life, she would have to finish school, get a diploma and earn a decent living. She had had aspirations to social work by the time she completed her course. However, to finance her studies, she needed to find a part-time job, which she did, working most of her evenings and weekends at a fast food restaurant.
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| Aroha-Sage was raising her three daughters, Seattle, Aspen and London, as a single mother. |
“It was there that a co-worker, Penelope Wormald, would begin to witness to her, and she did this whenever the Lord gave her the opportunity; however, each time, Aroha-Sage would put off thinking seriously about the Afterlife. She wanted to get her present life in order first, to ‘get all my ducks in a row before I think about heaven and hell’, as she would use to say. It excused her from making a decision for the Lord. Ironically, her co-worker, with whom she kept in contact years after her graduation, would preach the gospel to her for the very last time; it was the day before the Lord translated His church to heaven to be with Him forever. On that day, Penelope had had a stronger inkling than usual that something was in the air.
“‘Don’t delay making a decision for Jesus Christ,’ Penelope had warned Aroha-Sage as tactfully and lovingly as she had the patience to muster. ‘Tomorrow is promised to no one. You can’t keep ignoring all the signs. Things have gone from bad to worse since the string of earthquakes that devastated Christchurch not long ago. The city’s never recovered her former glory and, almost every year after that, there’s been a major quake somewhere in our country and many more aftershocks. These quakes are growing in frequency, even in parts of the country which aren’t conventionally considered to be on the fault lines. But there is calamity not just in our country, but also in all other parts of the world. Somewhere there is a storm, a tornado, floods almost of Noahic proportions, taking place. There are seismic activities, floods and droughts occurring simultaneously in diverse parts of the world. And volcanoes that have been dormant for centuries are seeing activity again. The Lord Jesus, in the Bible, has described these calamities as a sign that this age is drawing to a close and He’s coming back soon to judge the world. Christ calls these signs “birth pangs”; like a woman in labour whose labour pains get more intense and numerous the closer she approaches her baby’s birth, these birth pangs will also progressively intensify as the Day of the Lord approaches. Can’t you discern the signs of earth’s travails? All these calamities causing manifold destruction, death and loss are getting more intense and pervasive. God is allowing them to happen to shake us from our apathy so that we have time to recover our moral bearings and put our houses in order: this includes getting right with our Creator and deciding which side of eternity we want to be – heaven with the Lord who created us, or hell with Satan.’
“Well, all this was told to Aroha-Sage. But Aroha-Sage had reacted in her usual sceptical manner. ‘You doomsday purveyors are so fond of using fear to win converts to your religion,’ she had replied. ‘We’ve known each other for a long time, Penelope, and from the first, you’ve been telling me that the world was coming to an end. Look around you; things are going on as usual, so the world’s not coming to an end, at least, not in our lifetime. As for the earthquakes, the only reason it looks like earthquakes are increasing in frequency is because the technology to detect them has improved over the years. There, probably, is the same average number of large quakes today as there always have been.’
“Feeling a little embarrassed about the contretemps and being put in a defensive mode, Ms Wormald had contended, saying: ‘I’m aware that you probably think I’m some Doomsday Nutter, Aroha-Sage. Your argument about improved earthquake-detection technology is a popular one but one that is nothing more than myth. In reality, the technology to detect quakes over Magnitude 5.0 globally has been in place since the nineteen-sixties. Any subsequent improvements in the equipment cannot improve their ability to detect the number of earthquakes which, unequivocally, have increased exponentially.’
“Sadly, that was the last time Aroha-Sage would see Penelope again. At this stage, Aroha-Sage was a mother not just to London, Aspen, Seattle and Somerset, but also to her seven grown-up nephews and nieces and her nine grown-up grandchildren. She was the reluctant family matriarch who was held up as a role model of altruism.
“Aroha-Sage had no regrets in life, save one, and that was the fact that she had ignored the Lord time and again when He had knocked on the door of her heart to let Him come in. Recognizing Penelope’s disappearance for what it was, Aroha-Sage repented of her past sins, her rebellion and her rejection of His grace. She, then, asked the Lord Jesus for His forgiveness and invited Him to be her personal Saviour. Straight away, she had felt like a new person; she would later parlay her gift and training as a social worker into mobilizing her friends and neighbours, those who refused to worship Antichrist or take his Mark, to flee to Hidden Valley. She spearheaded a campaign to raise money so that they could begin their trek to the valley, a closet hangout of trampers and eco-tourists, which had been the North Island’s best kept secret because portions of the valley were tapu to the local Maori tribe.
“O:AU had been in the valley settling in two families of refugees when Aroha-Sage and her friends arrived there. With the aid of O:AU, the four new families made the valley their new homestead, convinced that it was the perfect hideout owing to its labyrinth of caves, silica geysers and thick foliage. Aroha-Sage started a home church in her house, just as soon as she had settled in; the home church was shepherded by her sons-in-law, Ryder Wixted and Declan L’Estocq. Under their guidance and that of Somerset’s wife, Schuylar Van Leeuwen, and Seattle’s husband, Issa Conteh, a former ordained minister from Sierra Leone, many others including their children were led to salvation in Christ Jesus.
“Well, about six months ago, Aroha-Sage’s home church, several of whom had Jewish roots, had applied for asylum from the Israeli authorities. They were finally granted asylum last month but needed funding to pay for passage to Israel. At the behest of the Zionist loyalists in Jerusalem, my troops and I undertook to conduct the Kiwi émigrés to Judea.
“Our arrival at Hidden Valley was in the nick of time. The asylum seekers had run out of supplies in their bunkers. While the men were away to procure food and water, the women and children were set upon by a band of marauders who detained them in their camp site. The women and children were bound while the marauders began to raid their houses.
“Realizing this, my invisible troops supernaturally engulfed the camp site with police sirens, which reached the ears of both the bandits and the captives. Shaken by the sirens, the bandits fled. After that, we showed up, this time with the forms of men, to rescue the captives. Later, when Aroha-Sage’s neighbours, in the same camp site, were enquired about the police sirens, no one could attest to having heard them or seen a police van in the vicinity. That night, the asylum seekers, including Aroha-Sage’s families, were flown on an IDF jet to Judea.”
I gushed: “That’s an excellent story. Hah, the fear on the bandits’ faces when they were being assailed by the supernatural sirens must be priceless to behold. About Ethan – he’s becoming a permanent fixture in Australasia, isn’t he?” I stated.
“Nethanel – Ethan – will be repatriated nearing the end of the twelve hundred and sixty day-reign of Antichrist,” Mika informed me. “This is why I make regular trips to that region, to encourage Ethan. As well, it’s a time for the angel, Uzziel, to debrief me on the goings-on there. Uzziel and the angel, Jediael, are the only elders on long-term deployments in their respective continents.”
“Aside from the marauders, have the refugees at Hidden Valley ever come close to being discovered by anyone else, like Antichrist’s global forces?” I asked.
“It’s been rare,” my elder responded, “but when there was a threat that one time, the Lord had supernaturally intervened with a diversion to drive back their advance. Even though the valley is off the industry grid, it isn’t difficult to ascertain its location as long as you’re initiated to its exact coordinates on a map. Thence, despite the threat of Antichrist’s satellite surveillance, the reason O:AU has been successful as a covert resistance corps is God’s intervention in preserving every one of its refugee camps around the globe.”
I nodded, appreciating the significance of the Lord’s operation behind the scenes. I opined: “We do what we can to protect the Lord’s saints and elect, but those who survive the Tribulation are in the minority. The Word of God teaches that before the end of the Great Tribulation, as many as refuse to worship the image of Antichrist will be martyred – beheaded – for their belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“You make a very important point,” Mika nodded. “Had they foreseen this day, had they believed when they still had the chance, they would have avoided so much suffering and hardship.”
I nodded. I recalled the saints I had left behind in New Canaan with a lump in my throat.
“It’s in God’s hands,” Mika assured me, reading my mind. “You’re worried about your friends in New Canaan. They’re in Yah’s hands. We’re getting as many people removed to Petra as quickly as possible.”
I looked up at him. I nodded again.
