"I've got a year's worth of food--dehydrated, canned and vacuum packed being shipped to me," Lance told them.
"What? Are you trying to tell me the Mormons were right about a year's worth of food storage kept on hand? Really!" Horace couldn't believe the Mormons could be right on their many years belief on food storage..
"How much did that cost you?" Lee asked.
"About $2,000."
"Of all the ridiculousness!" Horace's face was getting flushed again. "I should flat out disinherit you for such a waste of good money. I think you've all lost your minds."
"Look at it this way, Dad, if the attack on our national power doesn't happen, I'll just eat up all the food anyway in the course of the year."
"Well, don't think you'll be coming around here to sponge good food. You can just eat up your bags of tasteless sawdust."
"Horace! Please don't." Marianne saw the wounded look on their youngest son's face. She tried to change the subject. "There's fresh blueberry pie for dessert."
But Lance wouldn't let it go. "I don't think any of you people realize that there could be rioting if there's no food. Your neighbor could be your worst enemy if he finds out you have food and he doesn't. Once we go into bunker mode in the chalet, I'll cut down trees to block the lane. You can't see the house from the road. I've got plenty of rounds of ammunition reloaded."
"Wait a minute." Jesse held up one hand. "Somehow I don't think shooting your neighbor is the Christian way to handle this. I've talked to some of the deacons in the church. We're thinking about stocking up, just like you're doing--but opening our doors to the hungry. The pastor thinks it should be the mission of the church to minister the gospel of Jesus Christ through this hardship."
Scarlett rolled her eyes. She waved a ring bedecked hand at Lee and Marianne, who were clearing the table. "Wait a minute, Lee, better save that big plate of corn cobs. Ya'll just may need them if there's no toilet paper." The thick sarcasm in her voice served to amplify the affected drawl. This time there was no laughter in response to her statement.
Jesse turned to her. "You can be just as glib as you want about this, Scar." It was his pet name for his little sister. He had given her that nickname when, at the age of thirteen, she had kicked him in the shins, leaving a permanent scar. "But you'd better wake up to where we are in God's timeclock--all of this is relevant to prophecy in the Bible." The words were clipped, but there was love in his tone.
"Oh, my gawd, just show me where it says in the Bible that 'thy microchips shall faileth thee and thou shalt go hungry'." Her thickly lashed ice-blue eyes were such a startling contrast to the shining, jet-black hair. Now they shot arrows of insolence toward her brother.
Jesse laughed, "It doesn't say that, of course, but there are only just a few prophecies left in the Bible which haven't come true yet."
"More gloom and doom...so the world's about to come to an end, huh?" Horace wondered how he'd managed to father such a religious fanatic. He noticed though that Marianne had stopped clearing. She was smiling, seemed to be urging Jesse to continue. He'd put a stop to this nonsense, "Marianne, would you bring me a Pepcid? I'm getting a bad case of indigestion from all this pessimism. Better bring some aspirin too," he added.
"Dad, the world's not coming to an end. Jesus is going to return and reign here on earth--that's what all the prophecy is about--His second coming. People get it all mixed up and say 'the end of the world'. What Jesus said was the 'end of the age.' "
"Things are going to get pretty hairy first?" Lance asked him.
"Pretty hairy. The Bible lays it all out, and we're getting pretty close, but Jesus said nobody but His Father knows the exact day, not even the angels."
That got Scarlett's attention. "That's pretty preposterous that even the angels wouldn't know. My psychic talks about angels sometimes."
"I know I could talk to you 'til I'm blue in the face about your psychic, Scarlett, I've tried, but you need to know she's tapped into fallen angels--demons."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, you sound just like mother. Ya'all are so old fashioned. I can't believe it!"
Lee set a hot piece of blueberry pie, topped with vanilla ice cream, in front of her. She shoved it aside in one of her fits of "pity pouts".
"So what's gonna' happen that's so hairy? I just figure if the power, the banks and the whole country goes down, I'll just kick back...catch up on all the issues of 'Field and Stream' I haven't read. What's supposed to happen?" Lance probed. He stopped eating pie and looked at his older brother.
Horace sighed heavily. "Do we really want to hear this?" he asked. "I think not!" But Marianne touched his arm lightly in an obvious placating gesture of caution.
Jesse took a deep breath and wiped his mouth with a napkin. "The Bible is precise--even the math in it can be proven. There is exquisite precision in prophecy which proves itself between the Old Testament and the New Testament--then, when we see its fulfillment, even if you didn't believe before that it was God's Word, that fulfillment will convince you." He looked around the table. "There are 522 prophecies in the Bible about the return of Jesus--500 of those have been fulfilled." He sensed that Lee was silently praying that the Holy Spirit would use him to reach his family. "We're getting close. We can look at Israel for a gauge of God's time clock. In fact, Jesus said to take a lesson from the fig tree--that when it puts forth leaves we are to know summer is near...that it is a sign for us to know He is coming soon."
"Boy, is that far fetched," Horace interrupted.
"Not really, the fig tree is the symbol of Israel. Prophecy foretold that the Jews would be scattered among all nations, but God had promised they would become a nation. In 1948, quite miraculously, Israel was made a nation."
"Sounds like gross favoritism to me," Scarlett held a gold compact in her hand, with the other she applied a fresh coat of melon colored lipstick.
Jesse smiled at her. "I could tell you all about that, but not right now," he said. "Now, just to show you how precise the Lord is, 'Scientific American' featured an article awhile back showing that starting in the year 1948, earthquakes began to double and triple. That's another one of the signs--and it started rising in frequency the exact same year Israel became a nation. Haven't you noticed how the weather has gotten absolutely bizarre all over the world?"
"That's from global warming," Lance suggested.
"Yes, perhaps that's true, but let's look at all this from a different perspective. This is what the Bible refers to as the 'beginning of sorrows'. There are to be 'famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places. Nation will rise against nation', and it's interesting that in the Greek that word is actually 'ethnos', which literally means 'race'. We're seeing all this, and I think there's a famine coming through an attack that takes out our infrastructure."
"Son, this is hogwash! You'd better straighten out your thinking," Horace exploded. "We've seen the blacks and the whites go at it for years--look at the Ku Klux Klan's mission in life. The Jews and the Arabs are always warring with each other. This is no end time sign."
"But it's getting worse, Dad, look at the hate crimes by Skinheads. Look at how our embassies are getting bombed...now we're included in the so-called 'Holy War'...not just Israel being targeted."
There was a silence. "AIDS is a pestilence--it's spreading into the millions all over the world. Satan's started having a real hey-day--look at the immoral filth that comes in over the TV now. When I was a kid, the programs were like 'Leave It To Beaver'--now it's 'Beavis and Butthead', where kids turn off the set and torch their homes. Kids are carrying guns to school--killing their teachers and classmates. Get your head out of the sand and look at the time clock."
"Well, I've just looked at my time clock and I have a date," Scarlett told them. "Got to run, dah'lings. Wonderful dinner, Mother." She kissed her Daddy on the forehead and was gone.
"Scarlett has left the building!" Lance mocked the famous Elvis announcement.
Marianne