Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama Of Those Left Behind (3 page)

“But, sir—”

“I’m sorry, Verna, is there more? Am I not being clear, or what’s the problem? Just tell him to order his equipment, charge it to the Chicago account, and work directly for us here. Got that?”

“But shouldn’t he apolog—”

“Verna, do you really need me to mediate some personality conflict from a thousand miles away? If you can’t handle that job there … ”

“I can, sir, and I will. Thank you, sir. Sorry to trouble you.”

The intercom buzzed. “Alice, send him in.”

“Yes, ma’am, and then may I—”

“Yes, you may go.”

Buck sensed Alice taking her time gathering her belongings, however, staying within earshot. He strode into the office as if he expected to talk on the phone with Stanton Bailey.

“He doesn’t need to talk with you. He made it clear that I’m not expected to put up with your shenanigans. I’m assigning you to work from your apartment.”

Buck wanted to say that he was going to find it hard to pass up the digs she had prepared for him, but he was already feeling guilty about having eavesdropped on her conversation. This was something new. Guilt.

“I’ll try to stay out of your way,” he said.

“I’d appreciate that.”

When he reached the parking lot, Alice was waiting. “That was great,” she said.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” He smiled broadly.

“You listened too.”

“That I did. See ya.”

“I’m going to miss the six-thirty train,” she said. “But it was worth it.”

“How about if I drop you off? Show me where it is.”

Alice waited while he unlocked the car door. “Nice car.”

“Brand-new,” he answered. And that was just how he felt.

Rayford and Chloe arrived at New Hope early. Bruce was there, finishing a sandwich he had ordered. He looked older than his early thirties. After greeting them, he pushed his wire rims up into his curly locks and tilted back in his squeaky chair. “You get hold of Buck?” he asked.

“Said he’d be here,” Rayford said. “What’s the emergency?”

“You hear the news today?”

“Thought I did. Something significant?”

“I think so. Let’s wait for Buck.”

“Then let me tell you in the meantime how I got in trouble today,” Rayford said.

When he finished, Bruce was smiling. “Bet that’s never been in your personnel file before.”

Rayford shook his head and changed the subject. “It seems so strange to have Buck as part of the inner core, especially when he’s so new to this.”

“We’re all new to it, aren’t we?” Chloe said.

“True enough.”

Bruce looked up and smiled. Rayford and Chloe turned to see Buck in the doorway.

Buck didn’t know how to respond when Rayford Steele greeted him warmly. He appreciated the warmth and openness of his three new friends, but something nagged at him and he held back a little. He still wasn’t quite comfortable with this kind of affection. And what was this meeting about? The Tribulation Force was scheduled to meet regularly, so a specially called meeting had to mean something.

Chloe looked at him expectantly when she greeted him, yet she did not hug him, as Steele and Bruce Barnes had done. Her reticence was his fault, of course. They barely knew each other, but clearly there had been chemistry. They had given each other enough signals to begin a relationship, and in a note to Chloe, Buck had even admitted he was attracted to her. But he had to be careful. Both were brand-new in their faith, and they were only now learning what the future held. Only a fool would begin a relationship at a time like this.

And yet wasn’t that exactly what he was—a fool? How could it have taken him so long to learn anything about Christ when he had been a stellar student, an international journalist, a so-called intellectual?

And what was happening to him now? He felt guilty about listening in on the phone while his bosses discussed him. He would never have given eavesdropping a second thought in the past. The tricks and schemes and outright lies he had told just to get a story would have filled a book. Would he be as good a journalist now with God in his life, seeming to prick his conscience over even little things?

Rayford sensed Buck’s uneasiness and Chloe’s hesitancy. But mostly he was struck by the nearly instantaneous change in Bruce’s countenance. Bruce had smiled at Rayford’s story of getting into trouble on the job, and he had smiled when Buck arrived. Suddenly, however, Bruce’s face had clouded over. His smile had vanished, and he was having trouble composing himself.

Rayford was new to this kind of sensitivity. Before his wife and son had disappeared, he had not wept in years. He had always considered emotion weak and unmanly. But since the disappearances, he had seen many men weep. He was convinced that the global vanishings had been Christ rapturing his church, but for those who remained behind, the event had been catastrophic.

Even for him and for Chloe, who had become believers because of it, the horror of losing the rest of their family was excruciating. There were days when Rayford had been so grief-stricken and lonely for his wife and son that he wondered if he could go on. How could he have been so blind? What a failure he had been as a husband and father!

But Bruce had been a wise counselor. He too had lost a wife and children, and he, of all people, should have been prepared for the coming of Christ. With Bruce’s support and the help of the other two in this room, Rayford knew he could go on. But there was more on Rayford’s mind than just surviving. He was beginning to believe that he—and all of them—would have to take action, perhaps at the risk of their very lives.

If there had been a moment’s doubt or hesitation about that, it was dispelled when Bruce Barnes finally found his voice. The young pastor pressed his lips together to keep them from quivering. His eyes were filling.

“I, uh, need to talk to you all,” he began, leaning forward and pausing to compose himself. “With all the news coming out of New York by the minute these days, I’ve taken it upon myself to keep
CNN
on all the time. Rayford, you said you hadn’t heard the latest. Chloe?” She shook her head. “Buck, I assume you have access to every Carpathia announcement as it breaks.”

“Not today,” Buck said. “I didn’t get into the office until the end of the day, and I didn’t hear a thing.”

Bruce seemed to cloud up again, then he gave an apologetic smile. “It isn’t that the news is so devastating,” he said. “It’s just that I feel such a tremendous responsibility for you all. You know I’m trying to run this church, but that seems so insignificant compared to my study of prophecy. I’m spending most of my days and evenings poring over the Bible and commentaries, and I feel the press of God on me.”

“The press of God?” Rayford repeated. But Bruce broke into tears. Chloe reached across the desk and covered one of his hands with hers. Rayford and Buck also reached to touch Bruce.

“It’s so hard,” Bruce said, fighting to make himself understood. “And I know it’s not just me. It’s you guys and everybody who comes to this church. We’re all hurting, we’ve all lost people, we all missed the truth.”

“But now we’ve found it,” Chloe said, “and God used you in that.”

“I know. I just feel so full of conflicting emotions that I wonder what’s next,” Bruce said. “My house is so big and so cold and so lonely without my family that sometimes I don’t even go home at night. Sometimes I just study until I fall asleep, and I go home in the morning only to shower and change and get back here.”

Uncomfortable, Rayford looked away. Had he been the one trying to communicate with his friends, he would have wanted someone to change the subject, to get him back to what the meeting was about. But Bruce was a different kind of a guy. He had always communicated in his own way and in his own time.

Bruce reached for a tissue, and the other three sat back. When Bruce spoke again, his voice was still husky.

“I feel an enormous weight on me,” he said. “One of the things I had never been good at was reading the Bible every day. I pretended to be a believer, a so-called full-time Christian worker, but I didn’t care about the Bible. Now I can’t get enough of it.”

Buck could identify. He wanted to know everything God had been trying to communicate to him for years. That was one reason, besides Chloe, that he didn’t mind relocating to Chicago. He wanted to come to this church and hear Bruce explain the Bible every time the doors were opened. He wanted to immerse himself in Bruce’s insight and teaching as a member of this little core group.

He still had a job and he was writing important stuff, but learning to know God and listening to him seemed his primary occupation. The rest was just a means to an end.

Bruce looked up. “Now I know what people meant when they said they feasted on the Word. Sometimes I sit drinking it in for hours, losing track of time, forgetting to eat, weeping and praying. Sometimes I just slip from my chair and fall to my knees, calling out to God to make it clear to me. Most frightening of all, he’s doing just that.”

Buck noticed Rayford and Chloe nodding. He was newer at this than they were, but he felt that same hunger and thirst for the Bible. But what was Bruce getting at? Was he saying that God had revealed something to him?

Bruce took a deep breath and stood. He stepped to the corner of the desk and sat on it, towering over the other three. “I need your prayers,” he said. “God is showing me things, impressing truths on me that I can barely contain. And yet if I say them publicly, I will be ridiculed and maybe put myself in danger.”

“Of course we’ll pray,” Rayford said. “But what does this have to do with today’s news?”

“It has everything to do with the news, Rayford.” Bruce shook his head. “Don’t you see? We know Nicolae Carpathia is the Antichrist. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Buck’s story of Carpathia’s supernatural hypnotic power and the murder of those two men is ridiculous. Even so, there’s plenty of evidence that Carpathia fits the prophetic descriptions. He’s deceptive. He’s charming. People are flocking to support him. He has been thrust to power, seemingly against his own wishes. He’s pushing a one-world government, a one-world currency, a treaty with Israel, moving the U.N. to Babylon. That alone proves it. What are the odds that one man would promote all those things and _ not_ be the Antichrist?”

“We knew this was coming,” Buck said. “But has he gone public with all that?”

“All today.”

Buck let out a low whistle. “What did Carpathia say?”

“He announced it through his media guy, your former boss, what’s his name?”

“Plank.”

“Right. Steve Plank. They held a press conference so he could inform the media that Carpathia would be unavailable for several days while he conducted strategic high-level meetings.”

“And he said what the meetings were about?”

“He said that Carpathia, while not seeking the position of leadership, felt an obligation to move quickly to unite the world in a move toward peace. He has assigned task forces to implement the disarming of the nations of the world and to confirm that it has been done. He is having the 10 percent of the weaponry that is not destroyed from each nation shipped to Babylon, which he has renamed New Babylon. The international financial community, whose representatives were already in New York for meetings, has been charged with the responsibility of settling on one currency.”

“I never would have believed it.” Buck frowned. “A friend tried to tell me about this a long time ago.”

“That’s not all,” Bruce went on. “Do you think it was coincidental that leaders of the major religions were in New York when Carpathia arrived last week? How could this be anything but the fulfillment of prophecy? Carpathia is urging them to come together, to agree on some all-inclusive effort at tolerance that would respect their shared beliefs.”

“Shared beliefs?” Chloe said. “Some of those religions are so far apart they would never agree.”

“But they are agreeing,” Bruce said. “Carpathia is apparently making deals. I don’t know what he’s offering, but an announcement is expected by the end of the week from the religious leaders. I’m guessing we’ll see a one-world religion.”

“Who’d fall for that?”

“Scripture indicates that many will.”

Rayford’s mind was reeling. It had been hard for him to concentrate on anything since the day of the disappearances. At times he still wondered if this was all a crazy nightmare, something he would wake up from and then change his ways. Was he Scrooge, who needed such a dream to see how wrong he’d been? Or was he George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart’s character from
It’s a Wonderful Life
, who got his wish and then wished he hadn’t?

Rayford actually knew two people—Buck and Hattie—who had personally met the Antichrist! How bizarre was that? When he allowed himself to dwell on it, it sent a dark shiver of terror deep inside him. The cosmic battle between God and Satan had crashed into his own life, and in an instant he had gone from skeptical cynic, neglectful father, and lustful husband with a roving eye, to fanatical believer in Christ.

“Why has the news today set you off so much, Bruce?” Rayford asked. “I don’t think any of us doubted Buck’s story or had any lingering question about whether Carpathia was the Antichrist.”

“I don’t know, Rayford.” Bruce returned to his chair. “All I know is that the closer I get to God, the deeper I get into the Bible, the heavier the burden seems on my shoulders. The world needs to know it is being deceived. I feel an urgency to preach Christ everywhere, not just here. This church is full of frightened people, and they’re hungry for God. We’re trying to meet that need, but more trouble is coming.

“The news that really got to me today was the announcement that the next major order of business for Carpathia is what he calls ‘an understanding’ between the global community and Israel, as well as what he calls ‘a special arrangement’ between the U.N. and the United States.”

Buck sat up straighter. “What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know what the U.S. thing is, because as much as I study I don’t see America playing a role during this period of history. But we all know what the ‘understanding’ with Israel will be. I don’t know what form it will take or what the benefit will be to the Holy Land, but clearly this is the seven-year treaty.”