The Children of Eternity (13 page)

“My father died when I was just four years old,” she continued. “He died of a disease that may have been curable almost anyplace else, but North Korean hospitals are very poorly equipped, and my family didn’t have sufficient political connections, so he died. My mother and I lived with my grandparents for a time. But when my grandfather died a year later, we found ourselves on the street, left alone to fend for ourselves. Single women trying to take care of children in North Korea are not very popular with the government. They are a bother, really.

“The fact that my mother was a practicing Christian in an underground church didn’t help our cause. Others in the church tried to help us, but it wasn’t very long before her activities landed us in a concentration camp. So there we lived, under conditions that I doubt you could imagine. She did her best to feed me…but you see, prisoners in the camps are expected to grow their own food, and she wasn’t a particularly strong woman. Yet, through her faith, and God’s help, we survived. She said that God had chosen me for great things. At the time, I didn’t understand it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Christopher. “I guess it was real rough.”

“It was,” confirmed Lilly. “What made it worse for us was that the Holy Spirit of God fell upon me in that camp when I was five. Somehow my mother knew it was going to happen. I was given a gift of prophecy, among other things, and I immediately started to use it. Words came out of my mouth that I didn’t even understand. I only knew that they were from my heavenly Father. My mother was overjoyed, but the guards at the camp were not. I spoke out against them, against their superiors, and against the government. They backhanded me many times, placed my hands in boiling water, even branded me on the cheek, yet still I prophesied against them.

“But worst of all, my prophecies were coming true. The guards became very afraid of me. Yet, seeing what was happening, prisoners all over the camp—and several of the guards as well—were giving their lives over to Jesus Christ. Though Bibles were not allowed within the camp, my mother was a living Bible and led many people to our precious Savior.”

Christopher shook his head sadly. He placed his arm around Lilly. “I’m so sorry, Lilly. I lived on Earth too, but my experience was a wonderful one. I had loving parents, a good home, and I lived in the greatest country on Earth. I guess I still look back at Earth and see only the good things. My friend Jerry has a very different view. He never saw the light of day there. Looking at Earth from a distance, he feels like it is a very evil place. Maybe it is.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” replied Lilly. “There are good people there, really there are. I saw some of them in the camp, people who tried to help us. But Satan and his demons have ruined our home world. They tempt and destroy, entering the minds of the rich and powerful—people whose minds and moral fiber have already been weakened by their own greed and desire.

“I became a threat to people who were desperately holding onto power that could only be bought through the blood and toil of those weaker than they were. The words of the righteous were a threat to their very way of life. In the end, they found a way to get rid of me. I was shipped off to another camp called Holding Place Twenty-Two when I was seven…to a hospital where they did medical experiments on me. I died of typhoid fever, which the doctors themselves had infected me with. They silenced the messenger—but not the message.

“The day after I died, his majesty Kim Jong Il died also. It was a death that I had prophesied, and a prophecy that had led to my death. Now I’m here, and I’m going to take the battle right to Satan and his legions of demons—we all are.”

Christopher was overwhelmed by the story of this brave girl. Never in his entire life had he encountered someone quite like her.

“You think that I was being weak by giving in to Jonathon’s impulse to go surfing,” said Lilly.

Christopher felt practically naked before Lilly. Had she been reading his mind all along? “No…I mean, well…yes, I guess I did.”

“It’s OK,” said Lilly, placing her arm around Christopher as well. “You are very intense, very driven by our crusade. That is good and that drive will serve us well. But you still lack vision. You are about to see why we are down here at the beach.”

A few seconds later there was a flash to the northwest, beyond the bluffs to their right. The flash was followed by another, then another. Bolts of lightning and balls of fire flashed across the horizon. It was nearly a minute before low, distant rumbling filled the air, accompanying the visual display with sound.

“A battle,” deduced Chris, rising to his feet.

“Yes, a battle,” confirmed Lilly.

“That’s why we’re here,” said Christopher. “This is why you went along with Jonathon’s idea of going surfing. You wanted us to see this.”

“Yes,” said Lilly.

By now, even the surfers had taken notice of the terrible firestorm beyond the cliffs to the north. Gladys and Jonathon sat on their boards just beyond the breakers watching in wide-eyed amazement, while Jerry made his way back through the swells toward the shoreline. A minute later, Jerry had joined Christopher and Lilly on the beach.

“I reckon the war is coming to us,” he said, gazing out at the firestorm in the sky.

“Not quite yet,” replied Lilly, her eyes never turning from the pyrotechnical display.

“What do you figure we should do?” asked Jerry.

“Nothing,” replied Lilly. “We’re not ready yet.”

It was another several minutes before Gladys and Jonathon joined the group on the beach. By then a cloud of smoke was rising up into the sky below the firestorm.

“That’s the town of Phillipsburg over there,” observed Gladys.

“It looks like the demons are attacking it,” said Jonathon.

“They are,” confirmed Lilly.

“My husband said that the people over there had been openly siding with the angels,” continued Gladys. “I guess the demons have decided to make an example of them. Right now, I sure wish that I could materialize weapons that actually worked.”

After another ten minutes the bombardment ended. The cloud of dark smoke drifted off to the west, away from them.

“We need to head back up to the house,” announced Gladys. “I think we have some planning to do.”

Twenty minutes found the group gathered around the dining room table talking strategy. Yet even after three hours, none of them, not even Lilly, had a workable plan. In the end they decided to take a chance and gate over to Phillipsburg.

Gladys retreated to her sewing room, and within ten minutes had materialized a nice dress and shoes for Lilly and shirts, socks, trousers, and good walking shoes for the boys.

“These aren’t your typical clothes,” she said. “They are fire and puncture resistant. They may even deflect a sword thrust or two.”

Christopher looked at Gladys incredulously. “You can make clothing like that?”

“Sure, if I need to, honey,” she replied. “These are likely to be very hard times, so I guess I need to think a bit out of the box, as they say.”

Twenty minutes later the group materialized on the road just outside Phillipsburg. What they saw filled them with horror. The town had been virtually leveled, and there were burned and suffering people all around them, people who no longer had homes. Yes, their glorified bodies would heal within a few hours, but the pain that they felt now was all too real.

Lilly went right to work. She moved quickly from person to person. Her very touch removed their pain and even accelerated their healing.

Jonathon had brought his particle rifle with him. He scanned the skies for any sign of demonic invaders, yet they were long gone. “Too bad,” he lamented, “I’d really have liked to disintegrate a few of those demons. Too bad.”

It didn’t take long to piece the story together. The demons had arrived in force—tens of thousands of them. They blasted the city from above and attacked the citizens in the street. They spoke of giving the humans of Heaven a taste of the anguish felt by their brethren in Hell. They spoke of the townspeople paying the price for siding with the angels. Amid the crying of the townspeople, the resolve of the children was strengthened. There would be no more time for play. The time had come for their training to begin. Some ideas were finally beginning to crystallize within their minds. For them, childhood was over.

Well past midnight Christopher and Jerry were awakened by a strange sound from somewhere outside. It was like the crackling of powerful electricity. They met in the dimly lit hallway and walked down the steps. Reaching the ground floor, they heard sounds coming from the workroom and headed in that direction. They were both tired. They’d only gotten a few hours of sleep. They had sat around the kitchen table the following evening for hours, yet they hadn’t accomplished a whole lot.

The workshop door was open just a crack, and a shaft of light emanated from the brightly lit room beyond. They opened the door fully to find Jonathon standing there with the particle rifle in his hand. He looked up at Christopher and Jerry.

“Hi guys,” he said. “You can’t sleep either?”

“No,” lamented Jerry. “I feel like I’m carrying the weight of all of Heaven on my shoulders. I’m praying for guidance, but I’m not getting anything.”

“It was the same with me,” said Jonathon, “so I came down here to the workshop. I was just test firing the rifle. Sorry if it woke you up.”

“That’s OK,” said Christopher. “I’m sort of curious to see how it works anyway.”

“Come on, then,” said Jonathon, heading out the door and into the meadow. “You can squeeze off a few rounds for yourself. It doesn’t run out of ammo; it draws power directly from the Father’s Holy Spirit. It channels that power into a beam of pure, destructive energy. I’m here to tell you…it’s a thing of beauty.”

The boys walked about 100 feet from the house, nearly to the trail that led down the slopes to the beach. The night was dark and full of stars. Jonathon pointed to a boulder exposed by the low tide at the water’s edge, just barely visible by starlight.

“Watch this,” said Jonathon, flipping a switch along the side of the weapon. Immediately a growing hum came from the weapon. Two small red lights just in front of the stock lit up. “That sound was the capacitor charging up.” Jonathon directed the weapon at the boulder. “This is just fifty percent power,” he announced. He slowly squeezed the trigger.

A brilliant beam of light erupted from the weapon accompanied by an electric crack. The 15-foot-diameter boulder practically exploded, scattering glowing fragments of rock for 20 feet around. The boys watched in total amazement.

“Now you try it,” said Jonathon, handing the weapon to Christopher. “You sight using this scope on top.”

Christopher carefully lined up his shot, placing ever more pressure on the trigger. The weapon fired, blasting another several feet of rock off of the top of the boulder.

“This is some weapon your friend gave you!” exclaimed Christopher, handing it back to Jonathon.

“This isn’t the one David made,” corrected Jonathon. “This is the one my great-grandmother made.”

“But I thought that one didn’t work,” said Jerry, gazing at the glowing boulder 150 feet away.

“It didn’t,” replied Jonathon. “Then I decided to open it up and take a look inside. It only took a minute to find the problem. One of the modules had a small piece of insulation on the plug that was preventing it from making good contact. I just cleaned the base and sealed it in again. It works fine now.”

“So she could make more of these,” deduced Jerry.

“Sure, I guess so,” said Jonathon. “Let me tell you, I don’t know anyone who can do materialization as well as she can, and that includes David. My grandma has way more experience than he does.”

“She could make hundreds,” continued Jerry.

“I don’t see why not,” said Jonathon. “She enjoys doing this sort of thing. I’m starting to think that maybe I could give it a try too.”

“We might be able to equip a small army,” concluded Jerry.

“Yes,” said Jonathon. “Still, my grandma is only one person. I imagine she could make eight or ten of these a day. At that rate it would take a long time to make enough of these to equip an army. I don’t know if we have that much time, and it usually takes years to master the skills of materialization. I’ve worked on it for seven years to get to where I am now. I might be able to make one of these, but I’m just not sure.”