“Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war,
With the Cross of Jesus
Going on before!”
EVAN’S MIGHTY BARITONE filled the Reverend’s Cathedral of Light in Atlanta like the voice of God. The Reverend stood before his old rugged cross at its simple unadorned altar, as the serried ranks of the Risen Lamb Angelic Choir behind him hummed the driving melody of the greatest of all Christian hymns, bearing the Reverend up like a seashell on the crest of a vast wave of sound. . . .
“I have a dream!” he cried. “A dream of lights, of trumpets, of earthquakes, of meteor showers brighter than a million suns!”
The great video rood screen behind the choir sprang to life with footage of the flashing, crashing signs and portents whereof the Reverend spoke, stars falling from the heavens, mighty shafts of lightning splitting the welkin, great winds whipping clouds across a bloody moon.
“I have a dream of all God’s children who have died through the ages being resurrected in miraculous new bodies and bursting forth from their graves!”
Now the screen showed a montage of huge urban and suburban cemeteries, with actual footage of many (but not all) the graves exploding in showers of dirt as thousands of white-clad Christians rose from them, hands held high, filling the sky with upright figures like some apocalyptic version of a Magritte painting.
“I have a dream of living Christians, floating up through the roofs of their houses and offices and cars and buses and trains and planes, miraculously unharmed!”
Another montage showed cityscapes and highways jammed with colliding out-of-control vehicles, planes plunging from the sky, trains derailing, buildings crumbling—and from them more Christians rising up through the air, even more like a Magritte this time because they were in their work clothes.
“I have a dream of the plain of Megiddo and of a mountain thereon, that which is nam-ed”—the Reverend pronounced named with two-syllables—“Har-Megiddon! Where the Mighty Lamb is to do final battle with the beast!”
The screen showed a great mountain rising from a bleak and barren desert, and from behind camera (in slow motion, so the gold UNE circle of thirteen gold stars could be seen on their fuselage) came first one, then scores, then hundreds of fighter-bombers. Normal speed resumed as the sky grew black with them. The mountain was engulfed in flame as their rockets exploded on its sacred slopes.
“In my dream I behold the Mighty Lamb, rising from HarMegiddon and smiting the Beast!”
From the mountain burst the Returned Christ, a mile tall, in full battle gear, lieutenant stripes on His muscular arm, blond locks flowing out of His marine battle helmet, assault rifle held high against a tattered Old Glory. Like King Kong on the Empire State Building, Christ batted the fighter-bombers out of the sky until not one was left and the desert was littered with their smoking, burning wreckage.
Evan and the Angels crashed back at full volume:
“Like a mighty army
Moves the Church of God,
Brothers, we are treading
Where the saints have trod!”
“I have a dream,” the Reverend repeated in a dramatic sotto voce, “the sweetest dream of all . . . of judgment!”
Lieutenant Christ fired his vast weapon at the ground, and a great fiery chasm opened up at his feet. All the wrecked planes were sucked into it in an instant! Flames shot from the chasm. Now marching from every direction came the armies of the Antichrist! They too were huge in size, though not as huge as Christ, their banners streaming in the wind. FREE TO CHOOSE! screamed one.
“Free to choose damnation!” cried Lieutenant Christ, and mowed them down. (If you weren’t too excited by all the action, you might’ve noticed that the voice of Lieutenant Christ was Evan.) The bullet-riddled blood-soaked corpses of the abortionists were sucked into the chasm also.
It was probably the most effective Risen Lamb Sabbath Hour the Reverend ever made. The Church must have spent a fortune on those ten minutes or so of “actual footage”—the computer effects alone would have cost the entire budget of the average web-buster. The hordes of Antichrist kept coming: recalcitrant Hollywood stars, drug addicts, terrorists in kaffiyehs, Tibetan monks with (incongruously) machine guns, Frenchmen in berets sneering and spitting, trying to stab the lieutenant with huge stilettos.
Shot to ribbons, every one, by the Risen Lamb’s inexhaustible supply of ammo, down, down, they all plunged into the fiery pit. And when all were defeated and damned, the Lieutenant threw away his colossal weapon and ascended rapidly into the firmament, where, at around fifteen thousand feet, he caught up with the still-rising Christians.
The choir of Angels on earth and in heaven (on screen), led by Evan’s mighty baritone (or was that Jesus?), resumed:
“At the sign of triumph
Satan’s host doth flee!
On, then, Christian soldiers,
On to vic-to-ry!”
The screen exploded in dazzling light—as Christ and the just reached heaven—and went to black. Again the Angels sank into their seraphic murmuring. The camera now zoomed in for a closeup of the Reverend leaning forward, hands outstretched, speaking in an urgent whisper.
“America, be warned! You have just seen actual footage of what to expect only weeks from this very day! The Lord has revealed to me that these truly are the end-times! From generation unto generation, false prophets have falsely predicted the Day of Judgment. But verily I say unto you, brethren and sistren, it is here!
“America, the Kingdom of Abomination is about to attack! This suppurating cesspool brazenly calls itself the United Nations of Europe! And what does the name of the Beast spell? Une! The French for one! One world, one planet, one people—the dream of Antichrist!
“I, Jim the Baptist, prophesy, not for myself but for Him whose sandal I am not worthy to unlatch! He is at hand, America! Repent! Your time is not months but weeks!
“I, Jim the Baptist, pledge that on Sabbath Day next I will reveal a further prophecy regarding the Final Days. And so it shall continue for five more Sabbaths. On the sixth Sabbath Day I will reveal the exact date of the final battle!”
Evan and the choir cracked into the last almighty chorus:
“Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus—”
But the last line was inaudible. The fully amplified cranked-to-eleven wall of choral sound was drowned out by an earsplitting roar unlike any other the Reverend had ever heard in that holy place, as the ten thousand male and female Christian soldiers, gathered in a vast half-moon around their shepherd and his rugged cross, came to their feet like a great beast awakened.