Chapter 7
"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts."
The image on the cast faded from a panoramic overview of the ship that had landed in Kansas to the face of the preacher looking into the camera.
“These are the words taken from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, my namesake. I have spoken of the evils the world has succumbed to many times in the past, and now we can all see, with our own eyes, what evil and bitterness looks like,” the preacher said to his viewers.
“Jeremiah continued in Chapter 2, Verse 20, ‘For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wander’st, playing the harlot.'”, the preacher looked up from the Bible he was reading. “God had delivered his people from slavery many times in the past, but each time it seems we have turned away from him and laid ourselves out naked, with legs spread wide open in front of whatever temptation, whatever sinful desires, whatever idolatrous behaviors we sell ourselves too. And what is the result of this wanton behavior? We become slaves to sin and have the chains of damnation clamped around our neck and shackled to our hands and feet.”
Preacher Jeremiah was reaching a climactic point in his message, gestured to his left, and the image on the screen brought in the alien ship again. “See what has come to Earth to place real shackles upon us and enslave us, all because of our evil ways! We know what will become of us if we continue down this path. Amos foretold it,” Jeremiah continued as he flipped forward in the Book in his hands. “Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be measured and divided up, and you yourself will die in a pagan country. And Israel will surely go into exile, away from their native land.’”
The preacher looked back at the camera. “Is this what you want, my friends? Do you want to have your family killed, your property taken by these alien creatures or given to those who cooperate with them? The answer is no, but that can only happen if you turn from your sinful ways and join with those who will dedicate their lives to the Lord. He has said as much when he had Jeremiah again preach in Chapter 3, Verses 14 to 16:” At this, the screen faded to the text the preacher was reading.
'Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion:
And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.
And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land.'
“My friends,” Preacher Jeremiah continued, as a close-up of his face came up on the cast, “the Lord has called me to be that pastor to feed you with his knowledge and show you his understanding. Join me and we will trod the path of righteousness and we will vanquish the evil that has fallen upon us. We will be like Joshua leading the people of God when they had returned to Israel to reclaim the land God had given them generations before they had been taken into slavery by the Egyptians. God is with us and will save us from slavery again. Do not listen to the voice of Satan! Do not heed the words of the alien serpents! Do not join them as they take you into exile to a foreign land! Join me, friends, and we will keep what is rightfully ours!”
The preacher’s face was replaced with a map, highlighting “Believer’s Sanctuary” in Long Creek, South Carolina, along with a communication link to “Pastor Jeremiah Calhoun”, which remained on the screen as the cast ended.
Jeremiah liked how the cast was presented and pushed the spot on his console to broadcast the recording. Ten families had come to him in the past week, and two more had appeared at his gate this morning, after the news casters had shared what the aliens had communicated to the different governments and agencies listening for their signals. His job now was to build on this and start bringing in large numbers of ‘Believers’.
Three ships had landed since Sunday: one in Kansas, one in Ukraine, and one in Nigeria. The European Space Agency announced they had decoded the first messages from a ship while it was nearing its arrival. They didn’t confirm aliens were on board but felt it was highly likely. And, in keeping with the stereotypical overly-innocent image, they did not intend harm to humans. Within a few hours of the landing in Kansas, the U. S. Government reported they had established communication with the local ship and shared a similar message. After the third ship had landed, an announcement from the West Africa Cooperative said they had also established a reliable channel with the craft in Nigeria. At this point, however, the alien ship in Ukraine seemed to be the lead ship in charge, and most of the communication came from it through the ESA offices in southern France.
All this made Jeremiah less trusting of the situation. He felt he could believe that there were actual strange craft that had landed – at least the one in Kansas, as he had seen casts from reliable sources confirm what was there. So, whether the vessels in Ukraine and Nigeria were real, or just stories created by those governments to get attention, Jeremiah felt he could use them all to further his cause. There were so few people these days who were open to his message, or anything that hinted of religion, that he felt it was important to take any opportunity God put in front of him, even if it meant ‘adding’ to the facts available.
But there was hardly anything that needed to be added to the story, based on the messages from the alien craft. According to the ESA, the ship in Ukraine said they had arrived to take people to another planet and allow Earth to “heal”. This itself was blasphemy, Jeremiah thought. God, who created Earth, also created Man to rule over Earth. If you removed Man from Earth, you removed the rightful ruler that God had put in place.
So, if this were all some ruse created by governments wanting to control or kill the people that listened to the message broadcast from Europe, or even if these were actually creatures from another planet, either way the message needed to be counteracted and people needed to be brought to action.
“And who better to bring those people together and lead them than me,” Jeremiah had said to himself.
The purported aliens said there would be another six ships landing in the coming week, and had asked for one-thousand people to come to each ship to be transported away. Those departures would be in two weeks’ time. Jeremiah wanted to gather ten-thousand people to counter this call, to shout out the true message of human sovereignty, and ultimately lead a global movement against whatever it was that was behind the messages sent from these ships – whether human or alien.
Jeremiah knew there were those that didn’t want him to succeed. Mostly they were doubters or non-believers, including the new Oconee County Sheriff that had been elected last fall. He got a call from the Sheriff’s office yesterday, and even had one of the Deputies stop by for a visit this morning, asking him to tone down his messages and stop getting people riled up, claiming there was enough going on to get people excited at the moment. But the Sheriff was missing the point completely. There was a need to get people’s attention! Jeremiah told the Deputy that anyone that came to Believer’s Sanctuary was welcome and would be Jeremiah’s responsibility, and that the Sheriff could focus on the rest of the county. The Deputy didn’t like this response much, nor did he appreciate it when Jeremiah said the Deputy and his family were welcome to join those gathering at the Sanctuary. Jeremiah even offered him the opportunity to lead the security detail for the Sanctuary, since he expected a large number of people to be arriving and knew not all of them would instantly take to the order that Jeremiah knew needed to be instilled with his soon-to-be growing flock.
As part of each of his recent casts, Jeremiah said that people should, on their way to the Sanctuary, gather food, supplies, money and “the means to defend ourselves and our way of life.” The first few families that had arrived came so quickly that they hardly brought anything with them, leaving most of their possessions at their homes in their haste to get to the Sanctuary. But over half the remaining families brought all they could fit into their vehicles from their homes. In a message Jeremiah sent out yesterday, he suggested that people gather extra to ensure adequate supplies. In keeping with his request, both families that had arrived that morning came towing a trailer behind their vehicles. The second family that came in today had a dozen new rifles among the supplies included in the trailers, all of them still in their packaging.
At first, Jeremiah wasn’t sure about letting this family in. The man was white, the woman he claimed as his wife was black, and their children were mixed-race. But the man, Jacob Pickens, was sincere in how he spoke, had beliefs that seemed to match Jeremiah’s more closely than anyone else currently at the Sanctuary, and – putting it bluntly – had those rifles along with the ammunition that Jeremiah felt would be needed at some point. So he let them come in.
At this point, Jeremiah felt his message was starting to be heard, and he now needed to begin planning for the next phases. So while supplies were starting to arrive with the families, he had quickly run out of room in the Believer’s Sanctuary to house everyone. But this could be handled by making use of some nearby properties. Just down the road were the old Long Creek Academy buildings. The former Baptist training facility had been sold to a private company nearly one-hundred years ago, and had gone through a few businesses related to the local tourist industry since then. It was time to return it to its Christian-teaching roots. Once that was filled, which Jeremiah estimated would be less than a week, based on the rate people were arriving, then the lodges at Sumter National Forest could be occupied. He guessed many people had canceled any vacation plans they had, so there would be plenty of available space for his followers to reserve. And eventually Jeremiah felt they would need to take over the campgrounds anyway, so having his people inside would make the transition easier.
‘With God, Anything is Possible’ is one of the most frequently used phrases included from his online sermons. Privately he would tell himself that for God, anything is reasonable. Others might say that the end justifies the means, but that was too often an excuse for a man to get what he wanted. The central purpose of a man’s actions should be for the greater glory of God. And if the glory of God required some of man’s worldly desires or selfish rules to be set aside, so be it. Did not Jesus say “Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”? There would be many things to be given for God’s needs, and Jeremiah had no worries ensuring that happened.
His day-dreaming was interrupted by an alert signaling on both his console and his commblock that someone or something had passed through the perimeter of the Sanctuary grounds. He brought up the monitoring information and saw another three vehicles approaching the main gate.
“God is smiling upon me,” Jeremiah thought, “because people are finally listening to His message that I am preaching. I need to pick apostles to help me spread the word, share the burdens, and act upon the plans I’m called to put in place. Right after I let these families in, I’ll call all of the men together and select two who are worthy of this apostleship.”
And with that, Jeremiah strode to the door to leave, walking with a straight back, a clear vision, and a firm knowledge that the path he was taking was righteous and true.