The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (176 page)

Rayford was frustrated that he had not made it to Palwaukee that day. And he wouldn’t make it the next day either, or the next. The reduction of solar power affected every facet of an already difficult existence including the transmission of Tsion’s lessons. Dr. Rosenzweig’s endorsement of Tsion’s teaching resulted in the most massive number of hits on what was already a site ten times more popular than any other in history. And yet broadcasting Tsion’s daily messages became an arduous chore that forced Rayford to delay any other activity.

Repeated failures on the Internet were blamed on the solar problems. Believers all over the globe rallied to try to copy and pass the teaching along as necessary, but it became impossible to track the success of that effort.

Chloe’s efforts at building a private marketplace in anticipation of the mark of the beast nearly ground to a halt. Over the next several weeks, seasons were skewed. Major Midwest cities looked like Alaska in the dead of winter. Power reserves were exhausted. Hundreds of thousands all over the world died of exposure. Even the vaunted GC, having conveniently ignored adjusting their initial assessment, now looked for someone to blame for this curse. Confused in the tragic panic surrounding the crisis was the role of Ben-Judah. Had he predicted it, as Rosenzweig had asserted, or had he called it down from heaven?

Peter the Second decried Ben-Judah and the two preachers as reckless practitioners of black magic, proving it by showing live shots of the Wailing Wall. While snow swirled and drifted and Israelis paid top dollar for protective clothing, stayed inside, and used building material for fuel, there stood Eli and Moishe in their same spot. They were still barefoot! Still clad only in their loose-hanging sackcloth robes, arms bare. With only their deeply tanned skin, their beards, and long hair between them and the frigid temperatures, they preached and preached and preached.

“Surely,” the self-ascribed supreme pontiff railed, “if there is a devil, he is master of these two! Who other than deranged, demonic beings could withstand these elements and continue to spout irrational diatribes?”

Nicolae Carpathia himself was strangely silent and his visage scarce. Finally, when the Global Community seemed powerless, he addressed the world. During a brief season of solar activity at midday in the Middle East, Mac was able to place a call to Rayford, who answered a cell phone with ancient batteries that had been recharged by a generator. The connection was bad, and they couldn’t talk long.

“Watch the potentate tonight if you can, Ray!” Mac shouted. “We’re warm as toast even in the snow here because he has marshaled all the energy we need for the palace. But when he goes on TV he’s going to be wearing a huge parka he had shipped in from the Arctic.”

Mac was right. Rayford and Floyd worked to store as much energy as they could from various sources so they could watch on the smallest TV in the safe house. The whole lot of them huddled to watch and stay warm, Hattie continuing to maintain, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m only getting what I deserve.”

Tsion said, “My dear, you will find that none of the sealed of the Lord will die due to this judgment. This is an attention-getter aimed at the unbelievers. We suffer because the whole world suffers, but it will not mortally harm us. Don’t you want the same protection?”

She did not answer.

Buck, shivering underground with Stefan and Jacov, could not find the power to watch Carpathia on TV. The group listened on a radio with a signal so weak they had to hold their collective breath to hear him.

In Mount Prospect, Rayford, Tsion, Chloe, Floyd, and Hattie watched as Carpathia came on TV in a bare studio, clapping his mittens and bouncing on his toes as if freezing to death. “Citizens of the Global Community,” he intoned, “I applaud your courage, your cooperation, your sense of loyalty and togetherness as we rise to the challenge of enduring yet another catastrophe.

“I come to you at this hour to announce my plan to personally visit the two preachers at the Wailing Wall, who have admitted their roles in the plagues that have befallen Israel. They must now be forced to admit that they are behind this dastardly assault on our new way of life.

“Apparently they are invulnerable to physical attack. I will call upon their sense of decency, of fairness, of compassion, and I will go with an open mind, willing to negotiate. Clearly they want something. If there is something I can bargain with that will not threaten the dignity of my office or harm the citizens I live for, I am willing to listen and consider anything.

“I shall make this pilgrimage tomorrow, and it will be carried on live television. As the Global Community headquarters in New Babylon naturally has more power reserves than most areas, we will record this historic encounter with the hope that all of you will be able to enjoy it when this ordeal is finally over.

“Take heart, my beloved ones. I believe the end of this nightmare is in sight.”

“He’s going personally to the Wall?” Buck said. “Is that what I just heard?”

Stefan nodded. “We should go.”

“They won’t let anybody near the place,” Jacov said.

“They might,” Buck said. He suggested the three of them bundle up as thickly as possible and find a location with a clear view of the wrought-iron fence. “We can build a shelter there that looks like just a wood box.”

“We’re down to our last few sheets of plywood for fuel now,” Stefan said. “That green stuff in the cellar.”

“We’ll bring it back with us,” Buck said, “and use it for fuel later.”

The plan proved his most foolhardy yet. His face was still tender in spots and numb in others since getting the stitches out several weeks before. He had not expected to have to deal with frostbite in Israel. He and his two compatriots found a stairway that led to an abandoned building with a sealed door, fewer than a hundred yards from the Wall. With Carpathia expected at noon, they built their shelter in the pitch-blackness of the morning. If others ventured out in the howling blizzard, Buck and his friends didn’t see them.

They were raw and cold by the time they climbed into their rough-hewn box with slits for viewing. Buck, ever the journalist, just had to see what the thing might look like to a passerby. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

“You’re going out in this again?” Jacov said.

“Just for a minute.”

Buck jogged a hundred feet from the staircase and tried to make out the box in the blowing snow and low output from a nearby light pole.
Perfect,
he thought. It would draw no one’s attention. As he trudged back, he squinted in the darkness toward the Wall, knowing the witnesses were there but unable to see them. He detoured to get closer.

From what he could tell, they were not by the fence. He drew closer, confident he could not surprise or frighten them and that they would know in their spirits he was a believer. He stepped as close to the fence as he had ever been, recalling one of the first times he had ever conversed with them from just a few feet away.

A break in the wind allowed him to see the two, sitting, their backs against the stone building. They sat casually, elbows on knees, conversing. They were not huddled, still impervious to the elements. Buck wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind. They didn’t seem to need encouragement. They didn’t seem to need anything.

When in unison they glanced up at him standing there, he just nodded with his stiff neck, like a kid in a binding snowsuit, and raised both fists in support. His heart leapt when he saw them smile for the first time, and Eli raised a hand of greeting.

Buck ran back to the shelter. “Where you been, man?” Jacov said. “We thought you got lost or frozen or something.”

Buck just sat, wrapping his arms around his knees, hunching his shoulders, and shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said.

GC troops kept crowds several blocks away, once the motor coach arrived bearing Nicolae and his entourage. The wind and snow had stopped, but the noonday sun hardly warmed the area.

Carpathia remained on the bus as TV personnel set up lights and sound and cameras. Finally they signaled the potentate, and several of his top people, led by Fortunato, disembarked. Carpathia was the last to appear. He approached the fence, behind which the two witnesses still sat.

As the world watched on television, Carpathia said, “I bring you cordial greetings from the Global Community. I assume, because of your obvious supernatural powers, that you knew I was coming.”

Eli and Moishe remained seated. Moishe said, “God alone is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.”

“Nonetheless, I am here on behalf of the citizens of the earth to determine what course we might take to gain respite from this curse on the planet.”

The witnesses stood and stepped forward. “We will speak to you alone.”

Carpathia nodded at his minions, and Fortunato, clearly reluctant, led them back to the motor coach.

“All right then,” Carpathia said, “shall we proceed?”

“We will talk with you alone.”

Carpathia looked puzzled, then said, “These people are merely television technicians, cameramen, and so forth.”

“We will talk with you alone.”

Nicolae cocked his head in resignation and sent the TV crew away as well. “May we leave the cameras running? Would that be all right?”

“Your quarrel is not with us,” Eli said.

“Beg pardon? You are not behind the darkness, the resultant global chaos?”

“Only God is omnipotent.”

“I am seeking your help as men who claim to speak for God. If this is of God, then I plead with you to help me come to some arrangement, an agreement, a compromise, if you will.”

“Your quarrel is not with us.”

“Well, all right, I understand that, but if you have access to him—”

“Your quarrel is not w—”

“I appreciate that point! I am asking—”

Suddenly Moishe spoke so loudly that the sound meters had to have maxed out. “You would dare wag your tongue at the chosen ones of almighty God?”

“I apologize. I—”

“You who boasted that we would die before the due time?”

“Granted, I concede that I—”

“You who deny the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?”

“In the spirit of ecumenism and tolerance, yes, I do hold that one should not limit his view of deity to one image. But—”

“There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”

“That is a valid view, of course, just like many of the other views—”

“It is written, ‘Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.’”

“Do you not see that yours is such an exclusivisti—”

“Your quarrel is not with us.”

“We are back to that again, are we? In the spirit of diplomacy, let me suggest—”

But the two witnesses turned away and sat down again.

“So, that is it, then? Before the eyes of the world, you refuse to talk? To negotiate? All I get is that my quarrel is not with you? With whom, then, is it? All right, fine!”

Carpathia marched in front of the main camera and stared into it from inches away. He spoke wearily, but with his usual precise enunciation. “Upon further review, the death of the Global Community guard at the Meeting of the Witnesses was not the responsibility of any of the witnesses or any member of Dr. Ben-Judah’s inner circle. The man killed by GC troops at the airport was not a terrorist. My good friend Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig was at no time and in no way holding Ben-Judah or his people at our behest. As of this moment, no one sympathetic to Dr. Ben-Judah and his teachings is considered a fugitive or an enemy of the Global Community. All citizens are equally free to travel and live their lives in a spirit of liberty.