Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal (1623
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1662)
French scientist, philosopher
CHAPTER 9
THE GOOD REVEREND
The temperature in the studio was set at ninety degrees. Ira liked it that way. With sweat on his brow and stains on his finely-tailored French-cut shirt, he made it look like doing God's work was hard work. He often talked how he, when viewing the tape afterward, looked more convincing that way, like he was a laborer, like he was one of them.
The Reverend Ira Swanson knew all the tricks of the TV game. Numerous other occasions, on taped segments of course, he would lower the temperature to that reminiscent of a meat locker. On close
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ups, it gave him an ethereal appearance, with steam accenting the words of the gospel. It takes a trick or two to be the spokesman for the number one TV ministry in the world.
Sound effects were also a part of the magic the Reverend could conjure up on command. A crack of thunder plus a flash of lightning on the backdrop at just the right moment, went a long way toward punching home a passage. You would have to call Ira, whether you liked him or not, electric. He had the kind of big personality that demanded attention, and if he couldn't demand attention with his ideas, he could get it done by the sheer volume of his voice.
He wore his inky black hair long, swept straight back, and always greased down. It had a tendency to fly in front of his eyes and needed to be swept back continually with his hand during particularly intense moments. It was just another calculated prop in Ira's seemingly endless bag of tricks. He liked to wear his sideburns unfashionably long. He said it made him look like Elvis, and Elvis was one mesmerizing dude. He was five-foot-five inches tall and very self conscious about it—he appeared much taller on the pulpit, though. He felt that way too.
One of Ira's best assets was his unusually sonorous, vivid speaking voice. He used that voice, with the stereotypical preacher's cadence, to produce ear
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piercing highs, and profound lows. He could, with his chicanery and technical attributes, evoke a myriad of emotion. He was at his best this particular night.
"The times in which we live is searching for answers, searching for truth. This generation is also overlooking the most authentic voice of all, the voice of the Hebrew prophets. They predicted that when the end was near a precise pattern of events would loom up before us. My friends and neighbors, that time is here!” Ira placed both hands on the lectern and gazed into the faces of the stupefied studio audience. More than a few whoops and amens were heard.
"The first and most important sign was the Jews returning to Israel after years of being nomads. This should have sent up warning flags to all of us. But no, we were too busy with our own little lives, our own greed, to take heed. Or worse yet, we sought out guidance from false prophets.”
"Let me ask a question of those gathered here," he said in a more confidential tone, a pause for emphasis. "How many of you read your horoscope in the newspaper before attending service this morning?" He stopped and surveyed the crowd. "Go on, raise your hand, don't be embarrassed."
The TV camera panned the dozens of hands that went up in the flock.
"Just as I thought," he said. "We as Americans spend more than a billion dollars a year on astrology, fortune tellers, and books on the occult. In New York City alone there is one charlatan for every 120 New Yorkers; compared with one doctor for every 400; and one priest for every 8,000.
"These same quacks and gimmicks ask you to put your brains and the faith that saves you on the shelf. Well, there is a better, more statistically accurate way to predict future events. A way that does not ask you to shelve your intellect. It is, of course, the Bible."
Ira grabbed his jacket off the chair and slowly put it on. It gave the message a chance to sink in. He picked up his Bible and sat on the edge of the stage.
"If one of our popular psychics . . ." he said very intimately, his feet swung back and forth making him look like he was sitting on a dock, “said the State of California is going to slip into the Pacific Ocean on January 1
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, on January second, they would not be facing a firing squad. By today's standards, a clairvoyant only has to be right about one in ten times to be considered great. Not so for the prophets in this book." He patted the scriptures.
"If you look in Jeremiah 20, verse 2, you'll see that the prophets were persecuted even when they were right. And right they had to be, or they would have been put to death. Can you imagine if the same stipulations were applied to today's prophets? I can tell you right now, we'd see a drastic reduction of people willing to make predictions." He made eye contact as he grinned into the faces of the smiling congregation. It was moments like this that the home viewers really savored. It was what set Reverend Ira apart from the rest. Little did the home audience know that a laugh track they were hearing was added in post-production.
"In Deuteronomy it asks 'How do we know it is the word that the Lord has spoken?' In other words, how do we know whom to believe? Moses gives the answer later in the same chapter. 'When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, it's not the Lord that has spoken.' It is said in Peter, 'Often these men didn't even understand the significance of their own prophecies.' Yet, these same predictions are of exact historical events that predict the end of the world. They are exact predictions of the times in which we now live." Ira surveyed the crowd as did the camera, finally settling on the face of a very troubled man to drive home the point.
"You don't need me to tell you these are disquieting times. The end of the world as we know it is upon us. Our own government, even the atheists are taking heed and calling it Apoc.” The look of supreme satisfaction crossed Reverend Ira’s face.
Reverend Ira Swanson would be forever in debt to the lazy bureaucrats. For lack of a better name, they decided to call the disease “Apoc” and its victims “Apocs”. In one fell swoop they gave credibility to him, his preachings, and his crusade. Ira never passed up the opportunity to bring this one word to every one's attention. Ira never let a good crisis go to waste.
"People love to discredit the Book of Daniel, yet it was Daniel who said in times of the end 'the beast will be more ferocious than all the rest; exceedingly dreadful; whose teeth were like iron; its nails are like brass; it devours; and breaks in pieces.' Now what I'm about to show you is not pretty. In fact, it probably will shock you. But it takes something this graphic, something this shocking, to get past the prejudices of the non
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believers. Go ahead and roll the tape. What you're about to see was filmed on the streets of the city where this broadcast originates, only yesterday,” Reverend Ira turned to view the studio monitor.
"The scene you are watching was filmed with a night
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vision camera, it is lowly-lit but very revealing. Now watch the upper right
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hand corner of your screen." As he said this a large wrinkled creature stepped into view from around a corner of a building. Its hideous face stared into the camera. The studio audience let out a shudder.
"The beast knows the camera man is there, watch its expression of recognition, listen to its voice as it moves closer," Ira said in an ominous voice.
"Wayne, I've been waiting for you. Come to me and all your worries will disappear," the hideous man/thing said.
"Wayne is the name of the camera man," Reverend Ira told his now-enraptured flock. "And later when we questioned him he said he was extremely anxious about filming this particular shot."
The crowd watched as the beast moved closer into view. Its sharp teeth were the first things the audience noticed. It raised a hand to the side of its face and raked long nails down its cheek. It laughed hauntingly and then giggled childishly as it moved straight for the camera. The dark puffs of hair on its balding head were blowing in the slight breeze.
"Come to me, and be one of the lucky. You'll live forever in the house of the Prince." The diseased man moved into better range of the camera's microphone.
Now twenty feet from the camera, a hand was seen reaching from behind and then gripped its shoulder. It swung around with blinding speed. The camera caught, what looked at first to be a look of terror, turn to rage. The creature was standing face to face with a man of about thirty years of age.
"You killed my family. You murdered my wife and children. Now I've come to kill you," the young man said to the beast.
The creature put its elongated hands on its hips and let loose with a roaring laugh. "And just how do you plan on to do that?" the thing said through its laughter.
"With this," the man said as he removed a handgun from under his coat. He pulled the trigger and the cameraman jumped. The mighty crack of the gun was deafening. The bullet slammed into its stomach hitting the creature at point-blank range. It continued to laugh—the bullet seemed to have little or no effect.
The creature finally appeared bored with the man's attack. He knocked him into the wall with an effortless sweep of his hand. The Apoc still seemed very concerned with the cameraman. As it took another step in Wayne's direction, it began to smile again.
"You didn't think I forgot you, now did you Wayne?" It cackled.
The man, knocked into the wall and then the ground, grabbed the creature by the leg. It fell flat onto the pavement.
"If a gun won't stop you, you bastard, I'll kill you with my bare hands!" The nameless man scrambled on top of the creature and began to strangle it.
With lightning-fast speed the creature brought both hands up and caught the man under the chin. His tongue was caught between his teeth right before they shattered. Both hands shot up to grasp his bleeding mouth. The creature rolled opposite and was back on his feet. He ignored the cameraman and gave his assailant all the attention he asked for and more. The thing placed its long claws on its temples and shrieked a piercing wail.
One
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handed he picked the man up by his neck and held him at arm's length. He began to squeeze harder and blood began to trickle from the man's mouth and eyes. He threw him into the wall. The man slid down until he was sitting on the ground with his legs splayed in front of him. Amazingly, the man was still conscious.
"Kill me," the man pleaded with half a tongue and smashed front teeth. "Everything I had to live for is gone. Kill me please," he begged.
"Oh contraire, Robes Pierre," the monster said regaining its composure. "Not I, not yet, I have somebody I want you to see first."
"Daddy?" a small boy said making his way around the creature.
"Honey?" a woman with the boy said.
What happened next was fast, furious, and frenzied. The woman and the boy rushed to the man's opened arms. The woman went for his neck and the boy ducked under his arm. The woman turned her face to the camera, blood dripping from her face. The boy was biting the soft flesh under the man's arm.
The creature stared in obvious delight as the man gave up without a struggle. In fact, there was almost a look of ecstasy on his face. The sight of the blood and the feeding of the woman and child were too much of a good thing for the creature to pass up. It bent down on its haunches, grabbed the man's leg just above his ankle and right below his knee. Exerting inhuman force it snapped the man's appendage like a dry twig. He tore the top layer of skin apart as he pried with his hands. He put one end of the man's leg into his mouth and sucked on it as if it were a giant human straw. For the second time in as many minutes a look of ecstasy passed over someone's face—it was the creature's, this time.
Wayne, the cameraman, must have come to his senses as the shot suddenly lost focus, and he began to run.
The next shot was a freeze-frame of the creature with the man's leg in his mouth and super
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imposed was:
Help Reverend Swanson fight the Apocs.
Send your contributions to:
APOC
C/O Church of the Glorified God
5544 Greenwich Road
Suite 95
Virginia Beach, VA 23465
Or use your VISA or MasterCard at:
1
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800
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END
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APOC
The screen faded to black.
The opulent table in the conference room of the Glorified Church of God was carefully carved from dark cherry wood. The knot on Reverend Ira Swanson's tie was equally impressive. The tight
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tied Windsor knot was tied giving special attention that the patterns keeping them symmetrical order. The tightness of his handiwork was noteworthy, forming a perfect formed 'V'. This 'V' led into three proportionate dimples. Everything was for show; everything needed to be 'just' right’.
The stark luminance from the overhead fluorescents was a contrast to the original, costly artwork on the walls.
An outside observer would have thought the room and its inhabitants extravagant. They were, but they were also aware of the tools it took to do God's work in these trying times. Tumultuous times the world hadn't known in 2000 years, and had dreaded since time eternal.
The mood in the room was as tight and keen as the knot on Reverend Ira's tie.
"Brother Christopher, what were the receipts from this weekend's services?" Reverend Ira asked. His tone was as efficient and austere as any chief executive officer.
"We cleared $200,000 with on-site donations—excellent suggestion Kenneth of moving the services from the chapel to the Coliseum. These are the receipts from two services, roughly 20,000 people each." A round of applause went around the room, yet Reverend Ira seemed nonplussed.