Left Behind Series - The Remnant Part 58

Tsion stood. "Of course! Where are they?"

"On their way from the helipad."

As he and Chaim neared the entrance to the cave, Mac, Albie, and Abdullah were coming in. They all embraced. The elders maintained a respectful distance as the five huddled and Mac told the story.

"You should not have attended," Tsion said sadly.

"If we'd known what we were gonna see, we wouldn't have," Mac said. "But you know, sometimes us pilot types are as curious as little boys. This just mighta cured us."

"That man was not even human," Tsion said. "Surely he was a demonic apparition. Revelation says that when Satan, who will deceive the whole world, was cast down from heaven to earth, 'his angels were cast out with him.' And of course it is no surprise that these people were not even recruited for the Global Commu nity. John : says Satan wants only to steal and to kill and to destroy."

"I have a question, Dr. Ben Judah," Albie said. " Is it okay not to like this? I mean, everybody's outraged about what happened, but just when I think I have an idea what G.o.d might be up to, he lets something like this happen, and I don't understand him at all."

"Do not feel bad about that, my brother, unless your questioning of him makes you doubt hint. He is in control. His ways are not our ways, and he sees a big picture we will not even be able to fathom this side of heaven. I too am distraught. I had so wished that some of these might run back to us, pleading that we intercede for them before G.o.d, the way the wayward children of Israel did in Old Testament times. I would have loved to pray for atonement for them or to hold up an image of a bronze snake so that those bitten could look upon it and be healed.

"But G.o.d is doing his winnowing work. He is cleansing the earth of his enemies, and he is allowing the undecided to face the consequences of their procrastination. You know as well as I do that no one in his right mind should choose against the G.o.d who can protect them against weapons of ma.s.s destruction. But here were these fools, venturing out into the desert, outside of G.o.d's blanket of protection, and there they lie. As the apostle Paul put it, 'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of G.o.d! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hash known the mind of the Lord?

Or who hath been his counselor? . . . For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things to whom be glory for ever."'

Mac was up before dawn, eager to get going. But as he waited for Albie and Abdullah, he was aware of a buzz throughout Petra. An announcement was going out, through an elaborate word of mouth system, that Tsion and Chaim were calling for everyone to a.s.semble after they had eaten their morning manna.

Abdullah and Albie ate quickly and packed, joining Mac with the million others before the three of them were to lift off.

Chaim addressed the crowd first. "Tsion believes the Lord has told him that no more indecision reigns in the camp. You may confirm that by looking about you. Is there anyone in this place without the mark of the believer? Anyone anywhere? We will not pressure or condemn you. This is just for our information."

Mac made a cursory pan of the people within his vision, but mostly he watched Tsion and Chaim, who waited more than ten minutes to be sure.

Then Tsion stepped forward. "The prophet Isaiah,"he said, "predicted taht 'it shall come to pa.s.s in the day that the remant of Israel, and such as have escaped of the house of Jacob, will never again depend on him who defeated them, buyt will depend on the Lordm the Holy One of Israel, in truth. "'The remant will retur, the remnant of Jacob, to

the Mighty G.o.d. For though your people, O Israel, be as the sand of the sea, a remnant of them will return . . . .' And of the evil ruler of this world who has tormented you, Isaiah says further, 'It shall come to pa.s.s in that day that his burden will be taken away from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be destroyed.' Praise the G.o.d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

"The prophet Zechariah quoted our Lord G.o.d himself, speaking of the land of Israel, that 'two thirds of it shall be cut off and die, but one third shall be left in it. I will bring the one third through the fire, will refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name and I will answer them. I will say, "This is My people." And each one will say, "The Lord is my G.o.d."'

"My dear friends, you remnant of Israel, this is in accord with the clear teaching of Ezekiel, chapter , where our barren nation is seen in the last days to be a valley of dry bones, referred to by the Lord himself as 'the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, "Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!"'

"But then, dear ones, G.o.d said to Ezekiel, 'Therefore prophesy and say to them, "Thus says the Lord G.o.d: 'Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel .... I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it.""" It had been a long time since Rayford had done such hard physical labor. Even at Mizpe Ramon, the building of the airstrip for Operation Eagle had largely been done under his supervision but by others with heavy equipment. He was in charge of this operation too, but there was no getting around that every pair of hands was crucial.

Lionel Whalum had landed almost without incident at Gobernador Gregores. The only trouble was that the main runway had been destroyed during the war, and the Co op had rebuilt it by duplicating it a hundred feet parallel to the original. The GC were unaware of the rebuilding or of the huge encampment of underground believers who had been harvesting wheat and trading through the Co op ever since.

But when the destroyed runway was discarded, which Rayford's main contact there Luis Arturo later told him had taken weeks to haul away, what was left was a smooth, dark depression in the ground.

From the air, it looked as if the runway was still there.

Luis had spent his high school and college years in the United States and spoke fluent, though heavily accented, English. He had had enough exposure to campus ministry groups that when he returned to Argentina and suffered through the disappearances, he knew exactly what had happened. He and some friends from childhood raced to their little Catholic church, where hardly anyone was left. Their favorite priest and catechism teacher were gone too. But from literature they found in the library, they learned how to trust Christ personally. Soon they were the nucleus of the new body of believers in that area.

Luis proved to be an earnest, fast talking man, and while he took especially to Ree Woo and was friendly and cordial to everyone, his top priority was getting the plane loaded and these men on their way again. "All we hear are rumors that the GC is polluting the Chico and that they are onto us," he said. "I have many reasons to believe that is only the talk of the paranoid, but we cannot take chances. The time grows short anyway, so let's move."

He seemed to like Ree so much because, though the South Korean was the youngest and smallest member of Rayford's crew, with the exception of George Sebastian he proved to be in the best shape of everyone Americans and Argentineans combined.

Big George's reputation preceded him, and while he worked, lifting heavy sacks of wheat aboard the plane by himself, many of the South Americans tried to get him to talk about his imprisonment in Greece and his escape.

Rayford noticed that George tried to downplay it. "I overpowered a woman half my size."

"But she was armed, no? And she had killed people?"

"Well, we couldn't let her keep doing that, could we?"

Rayford worked mostly alongside Lionel, each of them able to handle one sack of wheat at a time. Ree helped too, but he was young and fast and wouldn't feel it in the morning like Ray and Lionel would. After two solid days' work, thanks to hydraulic lift loaders and six aluminum pallets that held up to thirty thousand pounds each, the wheat was nearly loaded and the plane partially full when Luis came running. "Senor Steele, to the tower with me, quick. I have field gla.s.ses."

Rayford followed the young man to a new, wooden, two story tower that had been designed to blend into the landscape. Aircraft had to watch for it, but nosy types unaware of it might not see it at all.

Rayford had to catch his breath at the top of the stairs, but when he was ready, Lufs pa.s.sed him the binocs and pointed into the distance. It took Rayford a few seconds to adjust the lenses, but what he saw made him wonder if they were already too late and their work had been wasted.

Chapter.

THOUGH IT wasn't a long flight from Petra to India, Mac was sound asleep when Albie put the cargo plane down at Babatpur. With the delay at Petra, losing a couple of hours to time zones, and the c.u.mbersome plane, it was the middle of the night when they arrived.

It took Mac a moment to get his bearings, but within seconds he and Abdullah and Albie were rushed from

the plane by the man known only as Bihari. Serious and no nonsense, he said, "Hurry, please. We remain about a hundred miles north of the Rihand Dam."

"A hundred miles? " Mac said. "How we gettin' this water back to the plane?"

"Trucks! "

"The GC asleep over here, or what?"

"The GC, my friend, enjoy the drinking water."

Bihari averaged more than seventy miles an hour in a minivan that had no business going that fast on roads that may never have seen that speed before especially in the dead of night. Ninety minutes later, in a swirling cloud of dust, he swung into a clearing near a small processing plant and showed Mac and the others towering skids of bottled water that looked as if they would fill two large trucks.

"Where's the rest of it?" Mac said. "We got us a big, big plane."

"I wondered if you would notice," Bihari said. "Did you not hear me honk at pa.s.sing traffic on the way?"

"Occasionally, I guess."

"All but two trucks are already on their way to the plane. When we heard you were in the air, we got started. The prospect of real wheat to eat has motivated all of us. With you gentlemen and forklifts, wore can load the last two trucks by dawn and be on our way."

A few minutes later, as Mac backed a forklift toward a stack of skids, he pa.s.sed Albie. "These people make me feel like a lazy old fool," he said. "Our job is cushy compared to theirs."

"They wouldn't want to worry about the missiles and bullets,"

Albie said. "They get away with this by supplying the GC with a little water?"

Bihari interrupted the last of the loading by waving his hands over his head at Mac. "Will your people be discouraged by a setback?" he said.

"Depends," Mac said. "We still gonna be able to take off and get outta here?"

"Yes, but I believe we are doomed." "That wouldn't make our day. What's the trouble?"