Apocalypse 3 The Sun Turns Red

Leading the Sunday morning service was usually Rupert's job, but he wasn't there anymore.
Stan, Pauline and Matty stood at the front of the church tent. Matty was holding a little Bible.
"The Lord himself will come down from Heaven with the voice of the archangel and the
trumpet call of God," she read. "Well, that happened on Thursday night, didn't it? We all saw
the sign of the Son of Man, we saw that great big cloud in the sky. 'And the dead in Christ
shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together to meet the Lord
in the air.' We saw that on Thursday night. Rupert isn't here this morning. Rupert was taken
away. So were half the people in the church. Those of us who weren't, it's because we
weren't really saved." Pauline came up to the microphone.
"It isn't enough to say all the right prayers and sing all the right songs," she said. "You've got
to mean it. You've got to really be sorry for your sins. Jesus has got to be the most important
thing in your life."
"We need reality," said Matty, "and for years we haven't had it. For years we've been living a
religion of half truths. We were taught that Jesus died on the cross and that no repentance
and no obedience to church rules could possibly add to that. We thought that we didn't have
to repent, we thought that we didn't have to obey the church rules, and every night before we
went to sleep we used to listen to the preacher saying, 'You're great, you're doing fine,
God's not mad with you, he's mad about you.' "

"What about President Elias," shouted someone at the back, "is he a Christian?"
"Does he tell people to repent?" asked Stan.
"No, he tells people to sign a little card saying that there is no God but President Elias and
that they accept him as their Lord and Saviour. Then they have to give him a tenth of their
money."
"The New Testament requires you to give all, not just 10%," said Pauline.
"How can you give all?"
"All of your possessions, just do with them what God wants you to do with them," said Pauline.
 "Use them to do his work, share them with other people."
"But if you give 10% of your money to President Elias you can do anything you like. And he
gives you this little chip, I've got one in my hand." The man held up his hand. "You can hardly
see it, can you? It contains my own personal website. Everything you could ever know about
me is on this little chip on the back of my hand."

"I wouldn't want everyone to be able to read my personal information," said Stan.
"There are access codes, of course. Your doctor will use his password to see your medical
records, when you apply for a job they use their password to look at your work history. No
need to email a CV anymore. President Elias is good. He's trying to build the kingdom of
Heaven on Earth."
"God's judgement is coming on the Earth," said Stan. "It's going to be destroyed."
"Why are you always so cynical? President Elias is leading us into a golden age. He is using
our money to build a school, dig a well and open a landing strip for an aircraft in every third
world village. He'll help the western countries as well. Free medical care for everybody."
"God doesn't want your signature on a piece of paper," said Matty. "He wants you to live your
life for him. Every day should be a day of service to God, what have you done for God
today? What would you do if you broke one of God's commandments? Would you get on
your knees, would you pray for forgiveness, would you repent? You wonder why you don't
have the Holy Spirit. You wonder why you don't have the tremendous, exciting experiences
other Christians have. If you want the Holy Spirit you need to be holy. We say we are carnal
Christians. We say, I am a Christian but I can still have an abortion, I am a Christian but I can
still get drunk. We think we can ask God to forgive us and live like the devil. Well, there's an
old fashioned English word for a carnal Christian, and that's a hypocrite. God hates
hypocrites! We don't need to be hypocrites, we need to be disciples."

Stan broke the bread and poured out the wine. Matty and Pauline helped him to pass it
around. The congregation was still quite large, in spite of the events of Thursday night. There
must have been many people in the church who thought they were saved and hadn't been.
"If you feel that you are a true disciple of Christ," Stan said, "or even if you just think that you
really want to be, you've been listening to what has been said this morning and you really
want to live the Christian life, you are welcome to take the bread and the wine."
"I'm off to the pub," said the man who had been shouting about President Elias. "Anyone
coming with me?" A few people left. An old man said to Stan,
"Could I take the bread and wine? I know I haven't been a very good Christian. I thought it
was all right to sin, all right to be a Christian one day a week, all right to be someone else the
rest of the time." He was in tears. "Now I know that it isn't."
"Yes, you can take the bread and wine."

Terry was watching the television in the pub. The man who had been shouting about
President Elias arrived with the few people who had followed him out of church.
"Have you got one of these yet?" he said, holding up his hand to Terry.
"No Steven, I haven't. I've heard of it, though. It'll be on the television again in a minute."
President Elias appeared on the television screen, standing beside an aeroplane in a third
world village.
"You know how much these people's lives could be changed if they had clean water, if they
had their own school, if they had a landing strip for their aeroplane. It carries their crops to
market, it brings the doctor to them when they're sick. Give these people the tools and they
could make a better world for themselves. Join me in our fight to bring about the kingdom of
Heaven on Earth. Just call this number to find out the location of your nearest centre."
"He seems like a nice man," said Terry.
"Yes, he is," said Steven, "the only people who don't believe in him are your Pauline and the
people in that church."
"Oh," said a teenager who had come from the church with him, "don't mention the people in
that church."
"They're not content to be ordinary Christians. They think that we're all hypocrites and that
Pauline, Matty and Stan are the real Christians. They call themselves disciples."
"Disciples, disciples," said the teenager. "The twelve disciples. I think there's only twelve of
them."
"Don't take any notice of people like that," said Terry. "I'm going to call that number." He took
out his mobile phone. "That president seems like a decent bloke." A newsreader appeared
on the television screen.
"The einstein space telescope is picking up pictures of an object which is heading towards
Earth." The pictures from the space telescope appeared. "This object was first seen moving
towards the earth three days ago and seems to be moving at very high speed. We spoke to
professor of astronomy at Oxford University, David Hawking."
"The object seems to be a ball of rock and ice from somewhere on the outskirts of the solar
system," said the professor. "Its present course and speed will bring it to the inner solar
system and very close to the earth in six months time."
"Will it collide with the earth?" asked the reporter.
"It's difficult to say. We'll know better nearer the time. It's present trajectory will bring it within
10,000 miles of the earth. That's as much as we can actually say."
"Is it big?"
"Yes. If that hits Earth it's going to cause problems."
"Would we become like the dinosaurs?"
"Hopefully not, hopefully we'll be resourceful enough and brave enough to survive as a
species. But the effects of being struck by this object could be quite terrifying."

On Monday morning it was cold. It was April but it felt like January. When Matty woke up there
was frost on the window. The sun and the sky were a peculiar red colour. What had
happened? She went to see Stan in his tent. He was lying there in his sleeping bag, still
wearing his fleece, gloves and hat.
"Hello Matty. It's freezing cold today. It's like the middle of winter. What's happened?"
"Take a look at the sun," said Matty. Stan came outside the tent and gasped. Pauline and
Terry came out of the old ambulance. The ambulance radio was playing loudly.
"Have you heard the news?" Pauline asked.
"No," said Matty.
"It's America. There's been a huge volcanic eruption. Millions of people are dead."
"It's Yellowstone Park," said Terry. "It happened at 3 o'clock this morning. It was late evening
over there."
"Didn't they evacuate?" asked Stan.
"Well, they tried to, but how you can evacuate an entire country the size of the United States?"
said Terry. "It was a huge volcanic eruption. Giant hail stones came down from the sky, they
travelled hundreds of miles. Then the rock and the asphalt, ground up into a fine ash and
flowing like water, that would be all the way down the east coast of America and hundreds
of miles inland."
"I suppose people in California would've been all right," said Matty.
"No," said Pauline, "they're along the San Andreas fault. There was an earthquake worse than
the one they had two hundred years ago. The west coast of America is completely destroyed.
The only part of America that did survive was the bit in the middle. It's a big country, if you're
more than six hundred miles from Yellowstone Park and nowhere near the west coast you're
okay."
"Why was God's judgement so devastating against America?" asked Stan.
"Why do you think?" asked Matty. "The kind of religion they taught, religion that couldn't really
save people but lulled them into a false sense of security and made them think that they were
Christians when they were really going to a lost eternity. The rampant materialism and the
absolute poverty of many of the poorest people. The creation of a third world country within
the world's richest country. America was ripe for God's judgement."
"I'm really glad we don't live in America," said Stan.
"Think about it," said Pauline. "We're in the same boat. Our weather has changed. We might
survive a cool April morning, but what about the plants in the field? They could all die in
weather like this. We'll all starve."
"I hadn't thought of it like that," said Stan.
"President Elias won't let us starve," said Terry. "There's enormous amounts of relief coming
from the middle states of America where everybody was all right. They're going to grow
vegetables along the equator in massive farms with electric sprinklers. Vegetables don't take
long to grow. They'll be ready in just a few weeks, even if everything else dies. And the
conditions along the equator will be just right for potatoes, beetroot, turnips, carrots and
everything else that used to be grown in this country."

Matty arrived at work. The sun shone red on the tram, and as the one hour tram journey had
gone by the day did not seem to have got any warmer. It was freezing as she walked across
from the tram station to the Inland Revenue buildings, as cold as an icy December day with a
strong wind, except that this was April and there was no wind. When she arrived at work her
boss was standing by the entrance door.
"Have you heard the news, Matty?" he asked.
"Yes, I have." Someone else came through the door behind her.
"Have you heard the news this morning?" the boss asked again.
"No."
"You don't know about the volcano in America? It's Yellowstone Park. It erupted during the
night. It's destroyed most of the country. There was an earthquake down the west coast as
well." Matty went to the canteen and bought cocoa pops with banana milk shake.
"Have you heard about the volcano?" an older woman asked.
"Yes, everyone's talking about it."
"I hope you support the president. He gives you this little chip in the back of your hand." She
held up her hand.
"I don't have one."
"You need one. Those cocoa pops won't last forever. We all pay him a tenth of our income.
You should be making a contribution."

Matty sat down at her computer and began to work. In spite of the tragic events of the
morning it was just an ordinary working day. There wasn't much anyone could do about the
events in America, or the insecurity of the world food situation. Customers had moved house
and couldn't find the website. One man's computer wouldn't let him update his details on the
website because the name was wrong on his account. A woman had forgotten her national
insurance number. These were the immediate problems that Matty had to deal with. Matty
turned on her wipod. She looked at a list of Rupert's sermons she had downloaded from the
church website. Rupert had been working on a series of sermons on the second coming of
Christ when the Christians all disappeared. She had already listened to his sermon about the
rapture. Now she turned her attention to the sermon on the judgement of the world.
"When the first angel sounds his trumpet, hail and fire rain down on the earth. Now how could
that happen? If a volcano erupted underground. There is a type of volcano that has no crater,
and the high pressure gases in that volcano will build up and build up all the time until there is
some sort of catastrophic volcanic eruption. It will have to blow its way through several
hundred feet of rock. This makes it far more powerful. There is a volcano like this in
Yellowstone Park, and the ground above it has been bending due to the pressure building
up underneath. One day it is going to blow. When the fourth angel sounds his trumpet, the
sun, moon and stars are darkened. This would happen in a major volcanic eruption like the
one that happened in Africa in 1815. The ash and gases would block out the light of the sun.
The weather would be effected and the crops wouldn't grow properly. There would be a
famine in Europe. The second angel sounds his trumpet and a huge mountain, all ablaze,
falls into the sea. This could be a comet or an asteroid crashing into the ocean. The ships are
destroyed. This would happen if it caused a tsunami. Another star, blazing like a torch, fell on
a third of the rivers and springs of water and turned them bitter. One American astronomer
believes that this is the ice of a comet. Somehow it would be seperated from the comet and
follow a seperate path, perhaps falling as snow on the rivers, streams and reservoirs,
poisoning the water. The substance the Bible describes as Wormwood existed in those
times as a treatment for intestinal worms. The same acid is in the ice of a comet. This would
certainly cause the same result." Matty tried to concentrate on her work. It was difficult, now
that Rupert was discussing something that was so interesting. All of this had been prophesied
in the Bible, the object that was out in space somewhere about to pass very close to the
earth and the volcano at Yellowstone Park. It all made sense. This was God's punishment.