Mel Ebed greeted him at the entrance. Head of security, he made time whenever Jeremiah paid a visit. Gray tinged his dark brown curls. His relaxed, jovial manner replaced with an unease he carried like someone else’s burden.
Their conversation didn’t go beyond the initial pleasantries. Jeremiah’s expression bore an unusual determination, a warrior’s glower as the trumpet call to battle blares behind him. He stopped twice, once beneath the portrait of Josiah, once to use the restroom. The sound of a man getting sick preceded a running faucet. Jeremiah emerged from the restroom with his lips still wet. Their march resumed.
At the entrance to President Zedekiah’s office, Mel clasped Jeremiah on the shoulder.
“You need me to pray for you in there?” Mel asked.
Jeremiah nodded.
“For what?”
The thin man’s knees pleaded for strength. Mel caught Jeremiah before he hit the floor and lifted him back to his feet. A depth of sorrow Mel had never known reflected back into his eyes. Jeremiah braced himself against his friend. A sigh, almost a groan, escaped its corporeal prison. Mel bowed his head and spoke to his God.
“Jeremiah. What brings you here?” President Zedekiah’s deep voice boomed out. “I hope it’s good news.”
Five heads turned towards the door. Only one pair of eyes expressed delight. Ben’s smile dropped when he noticed his friend’s expression.
“Come on in,” Zedekiah said. “We’re discussing the Potomac project. I’d like to hear your thoughts on it.”
Jeremiah passed into the room. A woman shifted down the table to give him space. He remained at the head of the table and off to the side, refusing to go to his usual spot. His slow breaths belied his racing heart.
Zedekiah motioned again for Jeremiah to have a seat. “Please.”
“The word of the Lord you requested has come to me,” Jeremiah said. “He has sent me here to deliver it to you.”
Every part of the man’s face showed his annoyance. “We don’t have time for this,” he said. One hand waved at the air as if to brush aside the interruption. A single black fingernail colored his left hand.
“I’ll make time,” Zedekiah said.
“You don’t believe this superstitious garbage, do you?” Jason Modesta shook his head. “Haven’t we learned our lesson yet? Leave the religion to old women and bigots.”
“Who are you?” Jeremiah asked.
“What the hell is it to you?” Jason replied. A short string of curses spilled from his throat.
“May the Lord rebuke you,” Jeremiah said in response.
Jason scoffed at him. “Let the Lord rebuke me.” He raised his arms to the ceiling. “Oh, Lord, send your lightning upon my mortal soul. Rebuke this sinner and cast him into the lake of fire.” He waited for a few seconds. “Nothing? I guess he didn’t hear me. Or, perhaps, he doesn’t exist.” The word ‘idiot’ slipped under his breath. He turned to Zedekiah. “Are we done humoring this joker? We have some actual work we need to accomplish.”
Jeremiah walked over and grabbed Jason’s wrist, pinning his palm to the table. “You wear the mark of a satanist. This is who you decided to bring in?” The last remark pointed at the president.
“I’m an atheist, you moron. Satan is a myth, a symbol. The original rebel who freed himself from the slavery of religious imbeciles like you. The fingernail is a daily reminder to never go full idiot.”
“Calm down, Jason,” Zedekiah said. “I invited him here.”
“You invited me here, too, but with the goal of finding a solution to a real problem. Not to listen to Jeremiah, the great and powerful. I thought you had disassociated yourself from him.”
The woman, who had moved to make room for Jeremiah, bit her upper lip. While she shared Jason’s sentiment, experience had endowed her with a more measured approach. Her mouth opened for a moment but closed just as quickly. Something about Jeremiah’s presence unsettled her, iced her soul. A reminder of that day when her grandmother forced her to dress up for Easter and listen to that interminable, idiotic sermon. She felt that same chill climb through her stomach every time she saw him.
“Looks like you have something to say, Maraina,” Zedekiah said.
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to you about it later.”
“As you wish,” Zedekiah said. His look cut off Jason before he could start again. “You were saying, Jeremiah?”
Jeremiah glanced at each face in turn.
Ben, the strength God provided for him in the hyena’s den.
Jason and Maraina, Patrick and Ibrahim, arrogant, secure in their own wisdom, bound by the darkness to whom they owed their allegiance.
The fallen spirits, rulers of this world, who hold the chains and drag mankind towards the abyss, whose faces, beautiful yet hideous, appear for a moment before vanishing behind the veil which separates the seen from the unseen.
The president, the fool, seeing yet without sight.
A pillar of fire, a roaring wind holding back the waters.
“Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.” Jeremiah stared into the darkness, towards a prowling lion. “Your doom is sure. The kingdom has been removed from you and given to another. Thrones and dominions, rulers and authorities, created by him and for him. At his pleasure, you serve. At his word, you fall and are cast into the flames.”
“My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!
Oh the walls of my heart!
My heart is beating wildly;
I cannot keep silent,
for I hear the sound of the trumpet,
the alarm of war.
Crash follows hard on crash;
the whole land is laid waste.
Suddenly my tents are laid waste,
my curtains in a moment.
How long must I see the standard
and hear the sound of the trumpet?
‘For my people are foolish;
they know me not;
they are stupid children;
they have no understanding.
They are ‘wise’—in doing evil!
But how to do good they know not.’
I looked on the earth, and behold,
it was without form and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains,
and behold, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.
I looked, and behold, there was no man,
and all the birds of the air had fled.
I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins
before the Lord, before his fierce anger.”
“Do you see my servant, Josiah, how he followed me with his whole heart? Through him I blessed the nation, even though the hearts of the people were far from me.”
“I called to Jehoiakim, saying, ‘If you act as my servant Josiah did, my blessings will continue to fall, but if you turn your heart from me, I will withhold the rains.’ In his stubbornness, in his foolishness, he ran from me and after gods which are not gods. All sorts of evil were permitted and the nation suffered. I withheld the rain from the lands; the ground turned to dust just as the hearts of the people turned to dust. Yet, they did not listen. I said, ‘I will discipline the people for maybe they will learn their error, admit their sin, and follow me.’ I sent the Russians, the rod of my anger, to strike you across the hand, but you played the whore and embraced the Chinese. So I emboldened my rod and had them strike you across the face. I removed Jehoiakim to a land he did not know nor did his fathers know. There, he will spend the rest of his life.”
“I established you to represent me on earth. You saw the two examples before you. You saw the blessings the nation received when they followed me and the curses for those who turned their backs on me. And you chose to follow the path of evil. You were without excuse. For years, I waited patiently, sending my servant Jeremiah to warn you, but your ears were closed. You committed evil I did not tell you to do nor did the thought cross my mind. And you called it good. The evil of your heart became good in your mind. My people, who were good, you called evil, and like a raging bear, you struck them and tore them apart.”
“Ten times the evil, you committed. Ten times the destruction, I will bring upon you.”
“You ask, ‘What evil have I committed?’ Your arrogance prevents knowledge. Your foolishness precludes wisdom. But I will tell you so there is no doubt in your mind.”
“Does not your wife satisfy you? Let the man be with his own wife, and the woman be with her own man, just as I established. But the hearts of men burn for other men. Women lie down with women. You call it love, but it is not love. It does not satisfy you, and your heart lusts for more.”
“You deceive my children, teaching them there is no God. Training them in the way of unrighteousness. You teach them that I have not created them in my image, that they are what they are not. You have passed your own delusion onto them, cutting and burning and mutilating them to delight your own perverse mind. You carry them into your homes and make them spread their legs for you while your wife watches and wishes she were in your place.”
“Everyone is a liar. Everyone speaks the iniquity of his own heart and claims it as truth. His truth! But there is no truth apart from me. Neither is there life or a way. Yet from every mountaintop, through the antennas that rise above the land, you spread your perversion, your hate, the death that lives within you.”
“Each one of you speaks words against my people, denouncing them in court even though they have done you no harm. You have stolen their jobs, their reputations, their freedom, their families, their lives. Their blood cries out to me. How long, Lord? How long will you let the evil go unpunished? I have heard their cries, the cries of all those who have suffered for my sake. I will avenge the sins committed against them and let the retribution fall on your heads.”
“Is that all, Lord? Is that all we have done? You will punish us for that? Were they not the unrighteous ones? Did we not speak your truth when we established the laws of our own hearts?”
“Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. You compete to see who can invent the greatest evil. You destroy communities and enslave your own people. You feed them drugs and lies and fear and hate. You cast the blame on others who do not look like them, saying, ‘They are evil. Cleanse their evil from the land. We must avenge ourselves for the sins committed against us. And we will do this because of our great love for you, my people.’ But you do not do it because you love the people. Only through fear and hate do you maintain your power. Only through the donations of the deceived can you buy your mansions on the hills in the midst of the people you claim hate you. The bodies of the people I sent to show you how to love lie in the streets where you gunned them down. My children gun each other down, and your hearts delight at the sight. The more blood the better. The more death, the more your power grows, the more treasure you lay up for yourselves.”
“You kill the children, my inheritance. You have torn off their arms and legs and dropped them in a petri dish. You save their livers and their brains and their hearts to make cures for your diseases, but you can’t even cure the sickness in your heart. I will send the sword to cut off your limbs. I will send you diseases for which there is no cure, from which you will pray for relief. But I will not let it come until you are completely wasted away. Those who die from the sword and disease will be considered the lucky ones. In envy of the dead will they waste away until their bones stretch out their skin.”
“Your perversion even infected my church, my bride, so that the stench of her evil filled me with disgust. Your shepherds stood in front of the people and called this evil good. They tore out my laws and threw the pages into the fire. Therefore, I cast her aside. Shall I call her back to me? Can I ever make her clean again? She is useless, her lampstand has been removed.”
“Let the trumpets sound! Call the soldiers to battle! Let the tanks breach your walls; let the missiles fall down like the cleansing fire of Sodom and Gomorrah. I have declared the day of your destruction. Let your statues of rock and wood save you. Call upon your money and your wisdom to rescue you in the day of my wrath. But do not call on me for I will not listen. Thus says the Lord.”
Ben held his breath. Zedekiah didn’t let his expression reveal any thoughts he might have had. Only Jason had the presence to speak up.
“Well, that was interesting,” he said. “I, too, had a message from the Lord. He told me you were full of crap and that we shouldn’t listen to you.” He directed his attention to President Zedekiah. “Can we get back to business, or do we have to listen to more?”
Ben flashed Jason the same look he would give as he charged the enemy on the battlefield. His hand balled into a fist and prepared to strike. Wisdom caught his arm before he could. The words came out slow and deliberate.
“I have known this man for nearly forty years,” Ben said. “Listen to him. Please.”
Maraina cleared her throat softly and spoke the words she had stored up in her heart. “Sir, if you don’t mind.”
Zedekiah came out of his stupor. “Yes. Of course, Maraina. What is it?”
She looked first at Jason then at the president. “I had a dream last night. The same one I had the night before and the night before that.” She lowered her head so the others couldn’t see her eyes. “In it, Jeremiah came to speak to you and tell you the words he said just now. When he left, a magnificent creature entered the room. It had the face of a man and wings that covered its body. Its face blazed like the morning star. I fell on my knees in fear. It reached towards my chin, lifted my head, and told me the following. ‘Jeremiah is a liar. He wants to destroy my servant, Zedekiah. Do not listen to him.’ I … I thought it was a dream. But now I see ….” She hesitated. “I see that it wasn’t.” She paused again. “I just thought you should know.”
Zedekiah’s jaw clenched shut. Anger flooded down his face. He shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “Leave,” he said after a moment. “Now.”
Chairs scraped against the carpet as they drew back from the table. The advisors headed, one by one, towards the door. Before the last person could exit, President Zedekiah called out. “Not you, Ben. You and I have something we need to discuss.” His jaw was set. Like a raging bear before it tore into its prey.