Reconciliation
Excerpts from Mishael’s Journal
For God hath not given us a spirit of fear,
but of power, and of love,
but of power, and of love,
and of a sound mind.
~ 2 Timothy 1:7 (NWV)
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Chapter 1
Infirmary in Petra; mid-morning.
The wall was smashed after a week. Erecting my figurative edifice had been an unconscious effort at turning my brothers into unwitting victims and hostages of my dysfunctional ego. Nothing less than emotional blackmail, it neither worked nor served my cause. Just when I had resolved to behave like a grown-up, I would regress toward puerile conduct by making an ignoble attempt at taking my own life. I would further discredit myself by falling to my knees and weeping ridiculously before Gabriel. I hadn’t meant to but, sometimes, my emotions simply refused to cooperate with the best of my intentions. I was out of control.
Gabriel was telling me that it was up to me; everything I wanted was all up to me. The ball was in my court, he kept making the point. Then, he picked up my lunch plate and pushed it under my nose. I snubbed the meal; I wasn’t being difficult, but it was liver, for crying out loud. After all this time, no one remembered that I detested liver. My feelings in a topsy turvy state, I retired to my bed, throwing my arms over my eyes.
The faucets in the bathroom were turned on.
“Why don’t you have a bath?” my elder suggested from the bathroom. “You will find your disposition much improved after a bath.”
I took his advice, swinging my legs over the edge of my bed. “Yes, I think I will have a bath,” I said, thanking him for drawing my bath water.
My elder reappeared from the bathroom. There was a conspicuous water mark in the middle of his tunic. “I’m sorry for sullying your garment earlier,” I told him, feeling mortified.
“It’s a non matter,” he smiled graciously. “Your bath water’s getting cold.”
Gabriel was right: my mood started to improve as soon as I felt the warm water caress my skin. Fifteen minutes later, I hopped out of the tub to change into my white linen tunic; this was my preferred nightwear when the temperature plunged. Which frequently was the case with the new season in transition. Although the forecast was for a moderate low tonight, I always found the temperatures in the night unpredictable and would rather be geared up for unexpected changes. While buttoning up my tunic, I peeked round the door to look for my superior. He was in the oriel, admiring the native flora.
“I don’t mean to be inhospitable, Gabriel, but don’t you have somewhere you need to be?” I asked. “I don’t want to hold you up.”
“I can stay for a bit longer,” my Commander replied, his concentration engrossed in examining the thorny leaves of the Bismarckan palm outside my chamber.
I emerged from the bathroom and he turned toward me: “Would you like us to read together? We used to read together a lot before your posting to New Canaan. You still enjoy this, don’t you?”
I nodded but, afterward, had a change of mind: “Actually, Gabriel, I’ve read, and re-read, every single book on that shelf. Would you tell me a story instead? I know you were recently in Borneo. What happened there?”
I tunnelled under the bed covers. I quickly got toasty.
“What would you like to know about Borneo?” Gabriel asked.
Shrugging, I replied, “Anything. Everything. Whatever you’d like to tell me.”
“Well,” he said, “I guess the best place to start is the beginning.”
“Yes,” I urged him, “start at the beginning.”
My mentor got comfortable beside me. While he took his time to commence his story, I studied his long dark eyelashes. His eyes had been closed for quite a while. His pupils were rolling under his bisque-coloured eyelids as if he was in deep concentration. I surmised that he was either editing or censoring the picture-making reels of his memory that had documented every minute detail of his experiences in Borneo. Perhaps he was concerned about some of the components of his experiences that, if repeated, could be construed as defamatory or idle gossip.
“This is Borneo in Southeast Asia, you realize,” the Archangel finally began, looking intently at me with eyes a rare shade of peridot, “and it’s the half-angel, Eranael’s mission field. He’s Jeremiel’s sibling; you know them both well, I believe.”
“I do know them very well, in fact, both Eran Reisig and his brother, Jeremy,” I replied, interrupting him. “My brother, Ariel, and I have sparred with them numerous times during our training in sword play. But isn’t Borneo in Uriel’s jurisdiction?”
“Well,” Gabriel resumed, “yes, but Uriel was in deployment in Ulaanbaatar, so Raphael was called there in his stead. My responsibility was to witness to the refugees there. In any case, the brethren are always on call to be deployed to another jurisdiction at a moment’s notice. We’re expected to wear many hats. My designation is primarily as the Lord’s messenger but, since the Hour of the Lord began, my function has evolved to include warfare.
“As I was about to tell you: Eranael had been in Borneo from the beginning of the Great Tribulation. He’d been sending us periodic updates on the developments of her political situation. Raphael and I were sent to assist Eranael during the start of Antichrist’s persecution of the saints because he, Eran, had reported strong opposition to his presence by the army of the Fallen One called Chemosh.
“Let me set the political stage and tone of the ensuing story for you: in the twenty ‘noughties’, Borneo was just coming into herself as an economic powerhouse, in part owing to the peaceful and stable co-existence of her multiethnic citizens forged by the strong alliance between members of the governing National Front and the Christian party. Foreign investors were drawn to her stable and peaceful economy.
“A decade on, radicals from within and neighbouring nations had successfully pushed through their agenda to Islamize the entire region. Fuelled by the Arab uprisings in the Middle East, hailed as the Arab Spring, the rebel propaganda convinced the local populace to overthrow the ruling coalition with cries for change being championed by the country’s youth and unemployed. The vox populi of these change agents was subsequently heard at the ballot box. Although the coalition was able to hold on to a handful of seats in the local parliament, in the ensuing years, it would lose even those.
“As with many parts of Southeast Asia, the nation had radicalized herself: what was once a democratic constitutional monarchy had been transformed into a strictly Islamist state with a one-party Islamist parliament. It was the death of freedom of religion and expression for her people. The monarch was deposed and exiled, and a new leader from among the radicals was picked to take up the governing mantle. He was a tyrant and oppressor that ordered the arrest of all infidels and dissenters. Christians, both evangelical and orthodox, fled the country, and those who remained suffered intense persecution for their faith. And, then, the Harpazo caught up the true believers to be with the Lord in heaven.
“Thence was launched the Tribulation Hour some time later and the global political tides turned with the emergence of the International World Order under the Antichrist, whose rule and influence swept across the world. Under Antichrist, the political and social landscape of Borneo was transformed again but only slightly since its parliament continued as a single-party system. The transition hadn’t been difficult since it was merely a matter of replacing one autocrat with another. So you see, Mish, right from the start, the campaign to depose the monarch in Borneo and, later, the rulers in the neighbouring countries, had been manufactured by the powers-that-be, since the abolition of monarchies all over the world was necessary to pave the way for the global One-world Order to emerge under Antichrist.”
“Time out, Gabriel,” I interrupted, “but who were these powers-that-be?”
“Well, Mish, they were the globalists of the world that included select world political rulers; economic elites – leaders of big corporations such as the Big Tech’ and Pharmaceutical companies; educationists; religious councils; media moguls and officials of legislature and judiciary,” the Archangel replied.
I nodded: “I see. And they abetted the rebel propagandists to bring about the political changes in all parts of the world?”
“It’s likely that they instigated them to produce the changes,” my elder clarified. “It’s the Hegelian Dialectic. You would’ve been taught this in Shimael’s class on Philosophy and Ethics. Well, applying this philosophical notion, the powers-that-be pitted one ideology against another in order to create change toward the path of their choosing: thesis against antithesis to produce synthesis.
“A study of history reveals that this tactic has been employed in many areas of society, not just politics. It’s a most efficacious way of forming public opinion without the public’s knowing it. And, so, they instigated any group that was disenfranchised such as the unemployed. Only a few nations in East Asia and the Lord’s remnants all over the world were left to defy Antichrist and defend their freedoms and national sovereignties. Antichrist had underestimated the peoples in the Orient: decried as reactionary, these peoples were impervious to all manners of persuasion to overthrow their monarchs and kowtow to Antichrist. For many of these peoples, it was sacrilegious to swear allegiance to another ruler since, historically, their kings or emperors had been equated with and venerated as god.”
I nodded, understanding.
My mentor continued: “Now, Borneo was a land that teemed with National Parks and big game reserves, within which were some of the world’s largest and most complex systems of caves. They had been gazetted a UNESCO World Heritage Site; it was to these caves that dissidents opposed to Antichrist would flee to shelter from persecution. A small number of new proselyte Christians had also taken refuge in these caves. And it was in one of these mountainous grottoes that we were alerted to the plight of its occupant, Avasi Mantug.
“She was the daughter of a tribal chief. She had adopted her family’s religion of orthodoxy, and she had two sons, the elder whose name was Kokiroto Kinsim and the younger, Aparu Kinsim. The two men founded the United Church of Christ in their borough in the days when religious freedom was still a constitutional right.
“Now, Avasi Mantug used to attend a different church from the one her sons had founded. A faithful church attendee, she thought her salvation was ironclad: she had sat in the pew on the Lord’s Day every week and was actively involved in church ministries. She was in the women’s ministry, prison ministry and hospice ministry. It was not likely that she would miss the Rapture. Oh, she knew all about the prophecies: about the Rapture and Tribulation. She had read about them and heard her sons talk about them.
“As it turned out, Avasi had never accepted the Lord into her life. Instead, she had thought she was saved by her good works, which was the social gospel that had been preached at the pulpit of her church week after week. For the church she attended had typified the church of her age, the age of Laodicea described in the Book of Revelation. This was also known as the postmodern age, a time when the epistemological pendulum had swung back to the Dark Ages.
“The Dark Ages was a time when the light of the Bible was suppressed – hence the appellation Dark Ages. It was also a time when the deliberate misinterpretation of the Word of God was endemic, and lies were propagated by the powers-that-be to facilitate mass mind control. Most recently, we saw evidence of this same suppression of the truth occurring in the postmodern churches, where change agents from the heretical Emergent and New Spirituality movements began to infiltrate the mainline, liberal and evangelical churches to transform them from within: their agenda included the corruption of accurate Scriptural hermeneutics and the displacing of the importance of teaching doctrine in favour of emotional and opinion-based interpretations of Scripture. Their influence over time led to the denial of absolute truths and the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus Christ alone.
“This is where I start going into the heavy stuff, Little One, which could be overwhelming, so stay focused.
“It wasn’t too difficult for the globalists to manipulate the mindset of the postmodern church youth: long before the postmodern thought infiltrated the churches, it was already being taught in the secular arena, in public schools and colleges, for instance. This was in compliance with the United Nations’ global charter: no longer was any nation an island unto itself but all nations were part of the global village.
“In a global village, no one nation, culture or idea was superior to another, or had a monopoly on the truth; therefore all cultures, beliefs and ideas must be tolerated and treated as equally valid. No one was right or wrong about anything, but rather held to different perspectives about it. This was the postmodern paradigm and it went hand in hand with globalism. To push through the globalist’s agenda, the United Nations made it imperative that succeeding generations must be educated in pluralism, environmentalism and the postmodern maxim, ‘there are no absolutes and truth is relative’.”
“But this maxim was self-contradictory since it was making an absolute truth claim itself,” I interjected.
“Quite so,” Gabriel nodded, “postmodern relativism was self-defeating because it made an absolute statement when it tried to plug the line that there were no absolutes. In other words, ‘there are no absolutes’ was itself an absolute statement.
“Well, at the height of the globalist thrust, which was in the nineteen-nineties, there was a paradigm shift in education: ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ became the catchphrase on the lips of the global educationists. Therefore, the postmodern way of thinking and looking at life became a universal charter to be included in the curriculum of all the world’s schools and colleges, beginning in the United States, Australia and New Zealand and, subsequently, spreading to other nations in the West and East. All this to dumb down and manipulate the thinking of a one-size-fits-all generation of youth who was raised to question and deny the existence of absolute truth and morality.”
“The global village was the postmodern rehashing of the Tower of Babel,” I commented.
“Yes, Little One,” Gabriel nodded, “that’s exactly right. Just like the Tower of Babel episode, the globalist agenda was man’s attempt at uniting the world with a common cause, which contradicted the will of Yah. ‘Globalism’ became the catchall for everything that had gone wrong with earth worldwide: war, poverty, climate change, ethnic and gender inequality and intolerance, and rising costs and other economic crises.”
“But not sin,” I maintained.
Gabriel shook his head: “No, not sin; the postmodern attitude denied the Scriptural doctrine of man as inherently sinful, but taught that man’s problems were the consequence of social conditioning. As with Nimrod’s Babel, the globalists were really uniting the world as one to rebel against God: among the offshoots of globalism were manmade causes to address social ills, causes that were anathema to Yah, such as pluralism, validation for the chosen homosexual lifestyle, ecumenicalism and the Emergent church movement. Today, look where globalism has moved the world toward: acceptance of Antichrist’s global rule and the worship of Antichrist and the False Prophet’s ecumenical religion, which are the acme of all that is abominable to Yah.”
“Some call Antichrist the modern-day Nimrod,” I added.
“Indeed,” he stated. “Nimrod was a type or foreshadowing of the Antichrist . . . a harbinger. Lucifer was behind Nimrod’s endeavours just as Lucifer was behind the globalists’ endeavours. Globalism proved subtly deceptive and this is because Lucifer is the most subtly deceptive of the forces of darkness in the high places.
“With the exception of the Lord Jesus’ disciples, to whom the Holy Spirit gave discernment to recognize the satanic root of globalism and postmodern relativism, the rest of the world had bought into the globalists’ deception. How bad could it be, they thought – their elected political and economic rulers were uniting the world together to advance social justice through the redistribution of wealth. Their elected spiritual leaders were uniting together the world’s religions to do good works such as eradicating humanitarian crises – war, famine, poverty, genocide – through ecumenicalism and syncretism.”
“Explain,” I requested.
Gabriel nodded: “Sure, syncretism was the globalists’ focus on extricating from the world’s religions their common ideologies in order to make them the basis of dialogue, cooperation and unity. Ecumenicalism . . . well, that can be defined as the synthetic unity of religions to create universal brotherhood within the frameworks of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. The end goal of syncretism and ecumenicism was the uniting of the world’s religions to eradicate humanitarian crises but this marked the beginning of the decline of the Evangelical Right and evangelicalism in general. Churches were assimilating the experiential practices of pagan spirituality and rituals of eastern mysticism that had their basis in Hinduism and Buddhism. Some examples of these satanic practices being imported into neo-evangelicalism were Christian yoga . . . an oxymoron of terms, the Law of Attraction . . . a term synonymous with the Power of Positive Thinking, as well as Contemplative Prayer and Centering Prayer. The uniting of religions through syncretism and ecumenism made it possible for the world to accept the ascension of the False Prophet as the ruler of the present One-world religion, which is the false religion of pagan spirituality.”
“Niall Ferguson was known to have described the failure of the twentieth century to alleviate war and poverty as a stunning indictment on secular humanism,” I commented. “The globalist postmodern vision was seen as a way to address the failure of secular humanism.”
“Well, yes,” Gabriel nodded, “but as it turned out, the postmodern mindset, which began as a political vision in the corridors of the United Nations, was as much a failure as it led to moral, religious and family breakdowns. Consider its spillovers: in the judicial systems, for instance, because morals were no longer absolute, what used to be considered as sin when an individual broke one of the Lord’s Ten Commandments – murder, theft, adultery, abortion – which would be deserving of punishment, was given a new name with the adoption of legal positivism. The lawbreakers were not sinners since sin – or rebelling against a holy God – was not observable and contradicted the philosophy of positivism. The laws they broke were not absolute laws since the notion of absolute standards, measured against an absolute God, was considered abstract. Instead, the lawbreakers were victims of society and social conditioning, or they had an abusive childhood and upbringing. The crimes they committed were crimes of passion. And standards were relative as determined by one’s cultural and societal norms. All these were provable because observable. Ironically, in many societies, the courts were still retaining the laws that were modelled after God’s absolute moral framework of the Ten Commandments. Witnesses were still swearing by the Word of an absolute God they had dismissed as unprovable. Go figure. As a result of the ideology of positivism, punishment ceased being relevant as a means to deter crime or recompense an offense: offenders were rehabilitated or issued with work orders to perform community services. Crimes and recidivism in virtually all societies escalated as a consequence.
“Now, changes to judiciary also included changes to international laws on trade and commerce: one of the changes to world trade was the adoption of the carbon emissions tax to deal with the deteriorating environmental crises, which were another ruse of the globalists for world domination. The environmental hoax of anthropogenic global climate change was hyped up to justify soaring food and gas prices, which would consolidate the globalists’ power over the masses so that they might further their agenda of global hegemony. What the masses failed to understand was that the false religions of pantheism, panentheism and animism were being dressed up as environmental causes. Indeed, many in the environmental movements, including their votaries in the frontlines, were worshippers of Gaia, the earth goddess, and placed animals and trees on equal standing with, and in some cases, higher than, humans. Many had been involved in the New Age movement, which later became known as the New Spirituality movement to give it more credibility and remove its adherents from the mental image of a dope-smoking hippie with his head wrapped in the smoke while he recited his mantras of self-deification.”
“I Ohm,” I satirized three times.
“Indeed,” Gabriel chuckled. “In addition, the postmodern changes to legislature led to the redefining of the meaning of family and family life. Starting in the West, in the United States, in particular, many countries were turning the page on the traditional family institution with the recognition of de facto and civil unions, and on traditional marriages with the legalization of same-sex marriages. The civil union bill rendered non-married couples de facto without community responsibility such as protecting community property and single parents and their children. The traditional template of marriage between one man and one woman for the purpose of procreating was seen as antediluvian. The legalizing of same-sex marriages, which were, and still are, an abomination to God, however adamant Hollywood was in disproportionately featuring gay coupling in normal family contexts and settings, further destroyed the family institution. All this resulted in changes to religion and religious practices: the adoption of the controversial hate crimes bill was an example. If your religion held to tenets that espoused exclusivity and exceptionalism by not admitting practising homosexuals into your house of worship or marrying them, you could face legal indictment under this bill. Thanks to the liberal slant of the western media and governments, much damage was done to unravel the moral fabric of all the western civilizations in the postmodern First World bloc.
“Casualties of moral relativism, churches were left with one of these choices: assimilate into the ecumenical worldview where all religions were equally valid; adopt the Emergent heresies of salvation by good works and Universalism where all paths led to heaven; or cease to exist. The majority of mainline and evangelical churches chose to follow the Emergent path, blurring the lines between the liberal Left and the conservative Right. This was to the detriment of the church congregations since they were all lost and on their way to hell.
“The Lord’s Bride was face to face with the proverbial Enemy Within; the assaults on the Church’s traditional Judeo-Christian precepts came mostly from those within the congregations themselves, not just from the Left-leaning liberals, but also from the so-called Evangelical Right that taught the gospels of Dominionism and Reconstructionism and preached the heresies of Ecumenicism and Contemplative Spirituality. Their leading proponents were able to draw cult-like followings to themselves by claiming to have received extra-biblical revelations from God’s angels. Angels – well, that should be a red flag. Many a new religion founded by a false prophet was the result of angelic revelations, which, as you’re well aware, were truly the revelations of fallen angels sent by Satan.”
“And, so, believers who would not assimilate into the new Emergent and Ecumenical orders were pressured to leave and they started their own home churches,” I summarised. “Other churches closed their doors for good owing to widespread apostasy, since all faiths were seen as equally valid and fundamental Christianity – then the only faith which made the truth claim that Christ Jesus was the only path to heaven – was no longer seen as relevant. Christian talk radio was either taken off the air or became defunct because the hosts were espousing the exclusivity of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ and speaking out against homosexuality and other false religions.”
Gabriel nodded: “These people that were objecting to moral relativism and adhering to the exclusive claims of Scripture and Jesus Christ were accused of being judgmental and intolerant. However, the irony was that this action itself was an intolerant judgment of Bible-believing Christians. Thus we have another example of the self-defeating nature of the postmodern worldview.
“Slowly, people started realizing that their freedoms were being eroded. As I said, Mish, postmodern relativism turned out to be deceptive because long-held ideas of morality were being questioned and turned upside down. Right was wrong and wrong was right.”
“It seems to me that the fundamental tenets of the currently trending Woke cult aren’t at all dissimilar from those of postmodernism,” I submitted.
“Oh, absolutely, but there were some minor differences,” Gabriel contended. “All had their basis in Classical Liberalism, of course, but even the Classical Liberals would eventually distance themselves from the Woke crowd. This was when the ideology of those self-described Progressive leaders had moved so far left as to outrage the vast majority with their anti-Judeo/Christian ideas, some of which included gender-neutral bathrooms, sex ed. for kindergarteners and the dismantling of white patriarchy and whiteness.
“Now, to pick up from where we left off: in all the world’s churches, the youth started to question and deny such absolutes as the historicity of the Genesis record, the inerrancy of Scripture, moral objectivity and the existence of a just and holy God who punished everyone that rejected His Son as His one and only provided solution for humanity’s problems, which all stemmed from sin. The Lord Jesus Christ was no longer accepted as the only way to salvation, as per His claims. In place of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ was the gospel of works and social justice, which fitted with the postmodern idea that all faiths were equally valid.
“This was the new churchianity, which was welcomed by all religions. People of many stripes embraced the gospel of good works and social justice for it exempted them from acknowledging the problem of their sin nature and having to justify their chosen lifestyles, which were usually antithetical to the traditional Judeo-Christian model of probity. And, so, the seeker-friendly mega-churches of the gospel of feel-goodism became very popular: they couldn’t expand fast enough to accommodate their congregations, most of whom did not hold to the fundamentals of Christianity. Their young people were inculcated in the misperception that their place in heaven was airtight as long as they were charitable to their community, helped the poor, infirm and widowed, and involved themselves in projects that professed to alleviate poverty and illiteracy, and protect the environment. And, as far as the atheists were concerned, unless they were facing an existential crisis, they couldn’t care less about the new churchianity; they had many reasons not to be antagonistic toward the neo-Church, not the least of which was her politically-correct false doctrine of Universalism. In fact, the new churchianity was on a slippery slope toward being indistinguishable from atheism.
“In just fifty years, you were hard pressed to find a young person who knew who Jesus Christ was; or believed in God, heaven and hell; or could articulate the gospel message in one sentence.”
“Fifty years?” I exclaimed. “So the postmodern attitude had been embraced as a worldview for several decades when it finally infiltrated the churches?”
“Indeed,” Gabriel replied, “since the nineteen-sixties, in fact. Postmodern relativism in its nascent form could be pinned down in the points of view of such dubious luminaries as Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe. From critics’ perspectives of their works, what one regarded as salacious was considered as pulchritude by another, but both assessments were equally valid. That’s practical relativism.
“Of course, there had been moral relativists in every epoch prior to that; after all anthropocentrism is as old as the original sin and is symptomatic of man-centeredness. There really is nothing new under the sun as King Solomon has adduced. However, to call moral relativists of past epochs postmodernists, by the very definition of the term, would be anachronistic. But I digress.
“Once more, continuing where I left off: because the church youth were being raised on postmodern relativism, their churches became filled with members who saw themselves as cultural attachés instead of ambassadors for Christ, as cultural warriors instead of spiritual warriors. As well, the postmodern churches became filled with leaders who replaced creed with deed, and with missionaries who were involved in communitarianism instead of the Great Commission, which should be the true role of a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Now what have globalism and postmodern relativism to do with my story of Avasi Mantug of Borneo? As I said, the global mindset had been all-pervasive. Even a remote and tiny nation such as Borneo was not spared the long tentacles of its influence. Like many members of her church, Avasi was a child of the postmodern church of the Laodicean age. She’d been deceived by the Emergent heresies. Subsequently, without Jesus Christ, she found herself left behind at the Rapture. She knew that it had occurred, for her sons and their families had been taken up.
“Avasi escaped to the jungle fringes where she was found by several refugees who set her up in a vacant cave. Now, Avasi was getting on in her years; the daily distress of evading Antichrist’s armies was also taking a toll on her health. She contracted malaria while in her cave dwelling and she was dying. Even with medical intervention, she wasn’t going to live more than another month.
“When Eranael, Raphael and I found her in her cave, she was a skeleton of a woman. She was barely alive and breathing erratically. We took her into our care and nursed her to some health with food, medicine and a fire by which to keep warm at night. She had no knowledge we’d been sent by the Lord, only that we were attached to an underground non-governmental organization known as Operation: Angels Unawares that had dispatched us to the jungles to provide food and medicine for the refugees there. Soon she became strong enough to sit up and listen to us bear witness to Christ Jesus’s death on the cross as the only propitiation for sin. Unbeknownst to Avasi, she was facing spiritual opposition from the demonic angel, Chemosh, who was determined that she died without salvation in the Lord. While Eran and I were witnessing to her, Raphael’s troops would be engaged in spiritual warfare with Chemosh’s invisible army. But with the Lord Jesus as our Commander-in-Chief, we always succeeded at demolishing the adversary’s forces.
“Avasi’s sojourn on earth was drawing to a close but, before she drew her last breath, she accepted the Lord Jesus into her life for the very first time. One of the last statements she made while on her death bed was that she saw heaven opened and the Lord Jesus waiting to receive her into His kingdom. Then, she thanked us, saying that she believed we were the Lord’s angels that had come to warn her about eternal condemnation without Christ. Eran had a huge grin on his face when she called us her angels. When she died, she had been living in the cave for about a year.
“Raphael had been dispatched to Azerbaijan by this time. It was up to Eran and me to give her a dignified funeral and burial, and we stayed on in Borneo for another week to witness to the other cave dwellers there. All who listened to our witness came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. After that, we departed.”
“And it was mission accomplished,” I whispered. “That’s an excellent and didactic story, Gabriel. But what of the remaining survivors? Are they still hiding in the caves today?”
“Yes,” Gabriel replied, “and Eranael’s still there with the Asian chapter of Operation: Angels Unawares, ministering daily to them. They’re building houses for the refugees to transfer them out of their cave dwellings so that they’d have access to sanitation as well as heating and water. But we’ve always got Eran’s back. Eran sometimes needs reinforcement to push back Chemosh’s invisible forces, which, I might add, have contracted considerably after their battle with Raphael. A large number of Chemosh’s demonic angels were bound and consigned to Tartarus at that battle.”
My mentor got up. He added, “Stories of conversion to faith in Messiah are good indeed. Praise and glory be to the Lord God Almighty.”
I smiled: “Thank you for the story again; I feel edified but I don’t think I can stand to be on my own for much longer. Must you go this very minute?”
Gabriel sat back down on the foot of my bed.
“What do you need, Little One?” he asked. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I glared at him as I brooded over his words. For what seemed like an eternity I couldn’t bring myself to speak my mind. At the same time, I thought it incredulous that he hadn’t been able to read me by now.
And why was he still unaware of my needs? Hadn’t there been adequate histrionics and tantrums displayed this morning expressing my longings? What did he expect from me? Did he expect me to exhibit more of my lachrymose self at the expense of my pride? Couldn’t he let me keep what little was left of it?
Was he my mentor? Or my tormentor?
“It’s nothing,” I mumbled at last, feeling deflated. “Don’t worry about it. I just thought we could do something tonight. Um . . . I mean, you need to let me beat you at chess fair and square this time. You owe me this much. But I know you’re busy.”
My Commanding Officer sighed: “When are you going to start being candid with me, Mishka? Of course I know what your needs are. And I’m well aware of who it is you’re longing to see. But you already know what his conditions are.
“Make no mistake: Mika loves you unconditionally and faultlessly; howbeit there are conditions you must meet before you’re permitted to return to our garrison.
“But as for me, I’m afraid I won’t be able to sit up with you tonight. If I do, I shall certainly be late for my mission in Rajasthan. When I’ve completed my mission there, I shall journey to Mexico to meet up with the angel, Jediael. There, we shall be delivering an essential proclamation from the Lord. I don’t expect to take long to accomplish both these tasks, but you’d probably be fast asleep by the time I return.”
“What’s the urgency there?” I asked, feeling embarrassed that I had been so wrong about my mentor. I bit down on my lower lip.
“These are alien hot spots, to borrow man’s lexicon,” my mentor replied. “You’ve been taught that where evil is pandemic in a nation, there you’d always find the forces of darkness hard at work, manipulating the humans by deceiving them, and planting seeds of doubt and carnality in their minds, so that they’d do works of iniquity and rebel against the will of God. In addition, the Evil Ones also know that the easiest way to get humans to do what they want is to make them think it’s their idea.
“In Rajasthan and Mexico, as well as in many other nations, deception on a grand scale by the rulers of darkness has blinded mankind to the Lord’s gospel. These rulers of darkness are Satan’s angels in the guise of extraterrestrials. They are commingling with the earth dwellers who are willing beneficiaries of their advanced medical and scientific technologies. These technologies falsely promise to enhance the humans’ genetic makeup and increase their life span by several decades.
“Led by the demonic angel, Azazel, the Fallen Ones are tempting their daughters to participate in carnal knowledge with their extraterrestrial brothers. Little do the earth dwellers realize that their daughters are being made pregnant with the seed of fallen angels, and the offspring they’d be raising are a new generation of Nephilim.
“For the past year, Haziel and I have been sent to warn the nations that the interstellar invaders are nothing less than an imposture of Lucifer’s demonic angels who are returning to earth in droves. Thus, the proliferation of reports on UFO sightings and crop circles all over the world. The scenario in many places on earth would soon be likened to the Genesis record, which describes the earth as overrun by the Nephilim prior to the worldwide deluge; hence, the Lord has prophesied concerning the latter days of the Tribulation Hour: ‘As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.’
“The difference is that the sum total of the Nephilim population in these last days shall be multiplied to infinity when you add to them the number of the new generation of transhuman progeny being born to the daughters of man.
“I’ve made numerous trips to these nations to bear witness to the sin of their inhabitants but their hearts prove time and again to be stubborn and resistant to the Lord’s warnings. They prefer to indulge in the worship of the ‘alien invaders’ than of the living God. Tonight I’m sounding to them their final warning before the Lord gives them over to their delusion. The Lord’s been long suffering over the nations.”
My mentor paused. I feared where he was going next; in fact, I knew where he was going next, so I rolled over. I prepared for a mea culpa lecture.
