“And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophecy for 1260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”
Revelation 11:3
Raleigh, North Carolina
“Mothers of America, once a blessed country, I must ask you a question from Yahweh.
Mothers of Europe and other free societies, I ask you the same. Listen carefully.
“Why do you go to church or synagogue and then you let your little girls dress up to look like prostitutes? Does your eleven year old daughter really need thong underwear so her panty lines won’t show? Do you think that’s suitable with Yahweh? It isn’t.”
“Whoooaaaa! Who’s that?” Jeff was shocked. He hit the recall button on the remote. WRAL-TV was simulcasting from a park or somewhere, a CNN satellite van in the background.
Melissa didn’t answer Jeff’s question, her head elsewhere, the trip, the comet, Soufriére Hills and the loss of Robert.
“Did you hear what that guy just said, Melissa?” Jeff turned up the volume. “Who is that? Somebody’s gonna throw a shoe at him, I feel it. And who is Yahweh?” He had not heard the term before.
The crowd for the most part was quiet and listened to the man speak; but many looked confused? The broadcast continued.
“Yahweh is not as concerned for the unbeliever as he is for the believer. Are you confused? When you let your daughters go to the prom, why do you allow them to wear dresses so short that leaves nothing to the imagination, and garters and tattoos and piercings? Do you really think that is what Yahweh would want from you? Is that your sacrifice? Don’t you remember the Scriptures about corrupting the children? You idolize tattoos, not Yahweh; and then you call it body art? That’s not art. That’s narcissism. You love yourself more than you love Yahweh. It’s all about you.
“Fathers of this land, I deplore you, where are your children? Do you know if you even have children? Will you ever be faithful to Yahweh? You men, you know who I’m talking about, can’t even be faithful to your wives!”
Melissa interrupted, suddenly excited.
“That’s the man from Raleigh! The one who was in the wreck! The man Audry knows. And Yahweh is the Hebrew name for God. Actually, the Hebrew name for God is YHWH, but vowels were added to make it pronounceable. Is pronounceable a word?”
“It is. You mean Chuck Hutz? I thought he died?” Jeff turned the volume up slightly. Melissa was in a hurry, packing, busy- busy. She was like that, always planning. Jeff would look up pronounceable later, to see if it really was a word.
“He did die or so the doctors thought. His internal injuries were so extensive his brother had them take him off life support. His neighbor, Ophelia, stayed right by his side until his heart stopped and his blood pressure was nonexistent. His brother had a bowling tournament to attend. Nice huh?”
“He doesn’t look or sound dead.” Jeff spoke matter-of-factly. “No, listen to me. When Chuck was declared dead, they covered him with a sheet and left him on a gurney in the hallway, waiting for someone from the morgue to pick him up.”
She chuckled and continued, recalling cousin Sheri’s story and feeling a little guilty that she found it funny.
“Well, about 30 minutes later, when the morgue guy showed up, Mr. Hutz sat straight up and started talking in Hebrew. There was a drunk stumbling his way out of the emergency room when Chuck sat up, and it nearly scared the poor guy to death. He went running out the door yelling he would never drink again. Someone filmed it with their iPhone. The morgue attendant fainted.”
“Did you say he was speaking Hebrew?”
“Yes, Hebrew. Since his miraculous recovery he still speaks English, but sometimes he goes in a trance or something and starts speaking Hebrew. He says he doesn’t remember much about who he was before the accident, but he remembers Ophelia and Audry and said he had never spoken Hebrew in his life, though he is Jewish. He has no effects from the accident. Now he’s appearing on Oprah, The View, you name it, even National Geographic.
“Did you understand what he was saying?” Melissa asked. “Did I what? Of course I did. Didn’t you?” Jeff was getting a headache.
“Not a word. I don’t understand Hebrew. That’s the really weird thing. Some people can understand him even though they can’t speak the first word of Hebrew. Others don’t. That’s bizarre that you understand him.” She pointed to the TV. “Audry does too.”
“See? There’s Ophelia, the little lady with the light-gray hair. She has never spoken Hebrew either but suddenly understands it like an Israeli. She translates for him. That’s how most of those people are understanding him. What did he say?”
“You’re kidding me? So you’re saying you do not understand a word of what he said?”
“Not a word.”
Jeff thought a minute and was tired. He still wasn’t sure if he believed this story, though he just experienced it with his very own eyes and ears.
“Let’s talk tomorrow. It’s late for me. I’m gonna hit the sack.”
Melissa hugged him goodnight, squeezed him tightly. Her warm body felt good against his, and a flood of memories made him feel faint. She kissed him on the cheek and left for Sandy Springs where traffic would be slow, more so than usual since the National Guardsmen were on every corner checking strange behavior, but not profiling. That was illegal.
Jeff noticed that Melissa’s goodnight hugs were getting a little more personal, maybe a little more intimate. Beyond friendly but not quite… the thought of Divine Intervention briefly entering his thoughts. He would not read anything into the hugs.
Jeff seemed to tire easily since the accident at Park Place, and his ears still rang from the blast. His intention was to get a glass of juice and turn the kitchen TV off; but he lay down on the bed first, just for a minute, and he prayed.
“God, if you really do exist, I wish I knew for sure, please bring Melissa back to me. It’s not that I think I deserve it; because if you are real, I definitely do not deserve any gifts. I would be forever grateful though. What do you think?”
As he drifted off, the words of Jeff’s prayer became slower and more faint; and he entered the world of dreams. Subconsciously his thoughts surrounded and captured Chuck’s final statement of the evening:
“The black comet headed to Earth is from the Kuiper belt, and the blip is from the Oort cloud. Like the warming climate, these are God-made, not man-made. It is the beginning of Yahweh’s wrath.”
Jeff’s new NIV Study Bible adorned his nightstand, Gideon still in the closet. The NIV was a gift from Melissa. He dreamed about the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud; and in his dream, he was surprised that Hutz the Putz would know anything about those. Then his dream changed as his sleep deepened and entered a world of darkness and gloom.
The next morning, Melissa met Kara for lunch at The Divide in Duluth. Kara had a friend with her and introduced Lynn. “Oh, you must be Lynn Tomay, the Earthquake Lady?”
Melissa recognized the attractive woman from her beautiful, chestnut hair. She had seen her in pictures from Haiti, passing out light bulbs to small children, children who were the couriers for their still sick and injured parents, a people that so much of the world had forgotten quickly, at least in Melissa’s mind. Obviously not everyone, she knew, thinking about all the free light bulbs and the volunteers.
“Yep, the Earthquake Lady would be me.”
Lynn Tomay was often referred to as Earthquake Lady by many of her friends and peers. She was in Haiti at the time of the January 2010 quake. The time was approaching happy hour at her hotel when the earthquake-monster shook its gnarly head. Two weeks and many aftershocks later, nearly 250,000 human beings were dead; and the screams of the amputees could be heard through the darkness when all was quiet. There had been no anesthesia or pain medication, just rum.
“When are you going back to Haiti?”
“Soon,” Kara replied, a crumb of The Divide’s famous spinach-eggplant quiche lingering on her lower left lip. Melissa reached over, napkin in hand. “That is, depending on Soufriére Hills. She’s rumbling like never before, and the French military is evacuating everyone on the island. Seismologists think the next eruption could be the largest in Montserrat’s history.”
The lunch was brief, everyone busy with all the stuff going on. The massive space object did not come up in their conversation, and the ladies seemed nonplussed by the whole situation. Kara commented on the assistant manager.
“Kara, you’re staring!” The three ladies laughed.
“That guy’s gorgeous. Who is that? I wish I wasn’t so shy, I’d introduce myself. Oh well, I’m leaving for Haiti soon anyway. But check out those buns!”
Kara always seemed to have an excuse not to meet anyone new. She wished Lynn was going to Haiti with her, but Lynn would be heading northwest to Missouri and the New Madrid fault, and then on to Yellowstone National Park. It seemed that Yellowstone was doing some grumbling of its own and numerous dead antelope and deer had been found around the hot springs.
Abe, mostly recovered from his injuries and managing the new Duluth restaurant and nightspot, overheard Kara’s comment and escorted Prince Charming to the table.
“Hey Melissa, I want to introduce you to the assistant manager of The Divide, Scott Johnson; and this is my sister, Joanna. If there’s anything you ladies need, Scott will be happy to take care of you.” Kara blushed, but she enjoyed Scott’s attentiveness.
Joanna told everyone her last name was Berger. Unlike Abe, she had managed to get married, several times. Scott explained how he ended up in Duluth, of all places, a referral from his new friend Chad at Goddard Space Flight Center and an introduction to Abe, the restaurant manager and bartender.
Two days later, Jeffrey, Melissa, Gray, Andi, Abe and Bill celebrated Christmas on Seven Mile Beach, which was really only a five mile beach; but who cared. Christmas on Grand Cayman Island was a beauty that had to be seen, at least once.
Except for Melissa, they all pondered to themselves, silently. Would this be their last Christmas together? Melissa believed the Biblical version of the end; and that version did not indicate that a comet or asteroid was going to wipe out the world, at least not in the beginning of the seven-year Tribulation. She did wonder if the Tribulation had started.
Bill was in great shape, but he was not the Wild Willy Briggs of the past. Age could slow even the best. He briefed Jeff on the new Israeli Spybot’s test flight into several caves in Korengal Valley, undetected. Though the conversations were somewhat garbled, the audio enhancement technology solved that problem. The CIA and Mossad have a pretty good idea what the fish is, and it wasn’t good.
The new version of the USS Trieste made the descent where the K-155 Nerpa disappeared, 33,000 feet to the bottom, not really expecting to find anything. The currents were strong, so wreckage could be anywhere. It was a big place, the Marianas Trench and no trace of the submarine was found.
The Indian government had informed other world powers that the K-155 was not the sub they all thought it to be and explained the mini-ICBM pods carried by the ship and the nuclear-tipped Cruise missile capabilities.
The world’s leaders were cooperating much more closely than ever, all powers equally concerned about the comet, or asteroid. Jeff remembered the comment by Ronald Reagan, in 1987 at the United Nations so many years before:
“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
The leaders were not in denial and most prayed that the ship was crumpled on the bottom of the sea, somewhere. If not…
The day after Christmas, Jeff drove Bill to the Owen Roberts International Airport, about a mile outside Georgetown, the capital of Grand Cayman. On the way, they listened to Condi Zimmerman on XM satellite radio, counting down to the New Year and listing all the disasters of 2011. It seemed that people everywhere were talking about December 21, 2012.
The fragrant air of Grand Cayman knew nothing of the worldly travails and was filled with the sweet smells of bougainvillea blooms and other tropical plants, the trees erupting in and umbrella of pink and red.
Before boarding the plane to Atlanta, and then to Tel Aviv, Bill informed Jeff that nearly all scientists consulted do not believe that the whole world has enough nuclear missiles to divert the space object from its course. They would probably, if anything, break it into a few pieces, leaving multiple asteroids headed Earth’s way.
Jeff steered the rental car back to the Cayman Grand, listening to the news, as usual.
“You live in a great country, a free country. Do you know what that means? Yahweh laid a blessing on you and gave you a great nation. It’s not that nation anymore, and he is like a disappointed parent. You have taken the laws of Yahweh and made the bad things good and the good things, bad. You chose not to follow the easiest Commandment of all, the fourth. Why?” There he was, Hutz the Putz on the radio in Grand Cayman.
Jeff briefly wondered if God was trying to tell him something. He had a date with Melissa, and that was all that was really on his mind. Their goodnight kiss last night had been the real thing, and his heart still fluttered. She had almost stayed for the night.
He changed the station on the rental car. The news was scratchy and barely audible, but Jeff heard something about another solar flare that might disrupt electricity. And something about Soufriére Hills.