Servant and Serpent, The End Begins

Here is an excerpt from my latest e-novel, "Servant and Serpent, The End Begins,” available for only $5 HERE.  It’s the early 23rd Century. An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bomb has gone off which has fried all of the electronics on the planet as well as a communication satellite in geosynchronous orbit in space. Repairs are underway so that the last resistance to the officially atheistic United Socialist States of America (the USSA) can be eliminated. The antichrist President of the USSA is after the mysterious Spaniard named Pedro. The last remaining known Christians have been driven to the West Texas Chihuahuan Desert. Miracles, lunar missiles, strange visions, and biblical weather events all combine in this end-times fictional novel which sets the stage for satan’s final defeat.

Father Pansanto's Conversation with Lt. Solomon

“Hey there, hi there, ho there, Solomon, how’s the leg doing?” asked Charlie. 

“It still hurts like hell, but not as bad as before. I guess I owe you a huge debt of gratitude for saving my life.  Even though we’re enemies, I want you to know how grateful I am to you,” replied Jimmy.

“Hey, no problem,” said Charlie.  “I’m going to go catch some shuteye, but we will not leave you alone through the night, in case you need anything.  Let me introduce you to Agnes.  She is one of our best nurses, and she loves everyone, even members of the Atom Brigade who killed her father at Santa Fe.  Agnes, this is Lieutenant Solomon.  Lieutenant, this is Agnes Day.”

Agnes was a very quiet and beautiful looking woman. Her hair was long and starting to show streaks of gray in the brown.  Jimmy immediately took a shine to her, and her presence brought a calming feeling to him, in spite of his pain.  Her eyes were rather large in comparison to her face, and were about as blue as the Texas sky.  He somehow wondered if he could get to know her better in the future, even though he was supposed to either kill her or take her prisoner.  His mind raced with what to say for an opening line.

“Uh, thanks for volunteering to nurse me through the night,” he stammered.

“Well, is there anything you need or want?  How is the pain?” she replied.

 “Nothing I need, thank you,” he said. “The pain is intense, but isn’t as bad as it was an hour ago.” He was lost in her eyes, and he was beginning to wonder about how someone like him could come across someone so beautiful in the middle of an isolated West Texas desert. “So, tell me,” he said.  “What was your name again? I’m so bad with names, sorry.”

“You may call me Mrs. Day,” she said.  “You killed my father in Santa Fe, and my husband was killed by Matacruz three years ago in San Antonio.  Sonny loved life and was trying to stop Matacruz from taking over the city, but Matacruz gunned him down in cold blood in front of San Fernando Cathedral. So let’s not get too chummy tonight, shall we. I have to forgive you and Matacruz from the heart for your murdering ways, and I have, but that doesn’t mean we have to chit-chat through the night. If you need anything, I’ll be over there, next to the fire.  So good night, Lieutenant.”

Jimmy felt horrible that this wasn’t going well.  Everything out here in West Texas was either hot or full of thorns or poisonous, and yet here was a beautiful woman who made his heart skip a beat, and she wouldn’t talk to him about anything other than his snake bite.  He began to wonder what he could say or do to get her back over here to talk.  

“Lieutenant, how are you feeling,” asked Father Pansanto, who had come up to him from behind, startling him somewhat.  “Do you mind if we sit and talk a spell?” Father asked.

Jimmy was disappointed that he was having to talk to the hated priest instead of the beautiful woman, but decided that a little conversation with him was better than none. Besides, it might help him to get his mind off of Agnes.

“Sure, why not,” said Jimmy.  “What would you like to talk about?”

“How about life?” said Father.  “What do you think that the real meaning of life is?”

Jimmy looked at Pansanto with a blank stare. He had never even thought about such a question. “I don’t know. I guess to be successful and to acquire as much stuff as you can. You know the old saying, The One Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins!”

Father Pansanto smiled at Jimmy with a half-grin. “Well Sir, I would submit to you that you are off-base here.  The real meaning of life is to know God, to love God, and to serve God in this life, so that we can be happy with Him in the next life.”

Jimmy said, “Well, there ain’t no next life. When you’re dead, you’re dead.  No magical mystery man in the sky exists. It’s just a fairy tale to subjugate man and to keep him from enjoying life.  Everybody with a lick of sense knows that.”  

Father replied, “I’m sorry you still feel that way, Solomon. I have had too many mystical experiences in my life to believe like you do, mystical experiences that cannot be explained by science.  I didn’t ask for them, they just happened.”

“Like what?” asked Jimmy.

Father thought a minute and wondered if he should tell Jimmy what he had seen and heard over the years, and then decided that it was in his best interests to hear about some of his spiritual delights.  “I have seen a consecrated host bleed real blood. I have heard the Virgin Mary tell me “Thank You” after certain prayers.  I once had a vision of my guardian angel.”

“Balderdash,” said Jimmy.  “You were hallucinating. There ain’t no such things that ever happen like that.”

“Well, just because they don’t happen to you doesn’t mean they don’t happen to others,” said Father.  “In the Bible, true believers received spiritual signs, like St. Paul on his way to Damascus.”

“You really believe all of that stuff, don’t you?” said Jimmy.  “How can you believe all of that?  What proof do you have that all of those bible stories actually took place anyway?”

“Well,” said Father, “we Catholics walk by faith, not by sight. So we don’t have to see something to know it exists. You can’t see gravity, but you know it’s there. You can’t see love, but you know it’s there. You can’t see air, but you know it’s there.  If you were to actually pick up the New Testament and read it, you will find that all of the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, many years after they were written. For example, Psalm 22 talks about the suffering Messiah and lots being cast for his clothes, and that was written a thousand years before those things actually happened to Jesus.”  

“Nice,” said Jimmy. “But what’s true for you ain’t necessarily true for me.”

“Ahhh, moral relativism,” sighed Father, “the bane of modern society.  The false belief that there are no moral absolutes was the slippery slope that led you atheists to tear up our Declaration of Independence and Constitution and draw up your Articles of Atheism.”

“And thank Seaver we did!” said Jimmy. “The Declaration of Independence that you mentioned falsely claimed that our rights come from “Our Creator,” whatever the hell that is. And it closed with a statement about “relying on divine providence”. President Seaver rightly changed the creator thing to “President Mandy Seaver,” and the divine providence baloney to “her rational enlightened judgment.”  And that silliness in the Constitution closing with “in the year of our Lord” was eliminated to read “Common Era” as well.”

“And you think that’s a good thing?” said Father.  “Don’t you know that she is the antichrist?”

“Well, whatever that is,” said Jimmy, “it’s a good thing. But how do you know that?”

“Because I knew her as a child,” said Father.  “She and I grew up together in San Antonio, the town of St. Anthony of Padua.  We both attended school together for 12 years.  She was the most rebellious “catholic” I ever knew.  She was continually leading the boys astray with her sexy ways.  And it was revealed to me one day in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament there that she was indeed the one foretold of in First and Second John.  The game plan is called the “Wicked Deception,” as Paul refers to it in 2 Thessalonians.  It’s clear to me that what once was seen as evil and horrible has now been normalized and is seen as good by most of society.”

“There just ain’t no evil or sin,” said Jimmy. “There just is what is, and that’s all there is.”

Father replied, “Well, you just can’t see it, I guess, but you should know that, just like that law of physics that states “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” there will be a huge reaction from heaven soon.  And that reaction from God is not going to be pleasant, I can assure you.”

“What do you mean by that?” said Jimmy.  “What reaction?”

“You should know that Jesus Christ Himself said that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church,” said Father.  “And since we are the last remaining remnants of His Catholic Church, it only stands to reason that He will be intervening shortly to protect us.  Good news for you, bad news for the Atom Brigade, I guess.”

“Sounds like a lot of hocus pocus to me,” said Jimmy.

Father winced at that expression. The Freemasons had long ago made up that term as a pejorative against the Blessed Sacrament, which used the Latin phrase “Hoc EST corpus meum” during the transubstantiation (“This IS My Body).”

“Can I ask you another question, or are you too tired?” said Father.

“Go ahead,” said Jimmy.  

“What is your position on the sanctity of human life?” asked Father.

Jimmy had never ever been asked such a question before, and he wasn’t sure how to respond. “What do you mean?” asked Jimmy.  “I have never heard that terminology before.”

“It’s easy,” said Father.  “In the not too distant past, America had a Declaration of Independence that said one of the inalienable rights of man was the right to life.  In the Bible that we Catholics use, God tells us to “choose life,” in Deuteronomy 13.  America and God were on the same page, so to speak, on the subject of life.  But way back in the 20th Century, January 22, 1973, to be exact, the Supreme Court said that a baby human in his mother’s womb was not really a live human, and what should have been the safest place in the world for a baby now had become a slaughter house.  Millions of children who should have been born and who could have been great scientists, philosophers, nurses, engineers, doctors, inventors, and politicians, were never born, and thus never lived, which thwarted God’s plan for the world that those people were created to do.  They were all snuffed out in their own mother’s womb, by their own mother.  And therefore their children and grandchildren were never born either. During one of my hours before the Blessed Sacrament, God revealed to me that the great grandchild of a woman who aborted her daughter in 2012 would have saved the world from WW III had she been born. Satan has combined the mortal sin of fornication with murder in what is called “the freedom to choose.” This legal slaughter of the unborn led America down the road of self-indulgence, under the wonderful sounding name of “pro-choice.”  In reality, Jesus Christ lived in His mother’s womb for 9 months and sanctified the womb for all time as holy. Mary was a living tabernacle of God.  And that is why the devil hates the womb so much and desecrates it every chance he gets.  We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and satan so hates that image and likeness, that he destroys it even while it’s being created. Once America started loving recreational sex, money, big cars, big houses and fancy vacations over having children, the respect for human life overall rapidly deteriorated.  Now, the Army hunts down religious people and kills them like they are a pack of wolves. In reality, we are just sheep following the Good Shepherd, who are giving our lives up for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Jimmy pondered the priest’s words. He had never even thought about it before. He just assumed that abortion was a good thing, because the fewer people on the earth, the better it was for everyone else. The moral aspect of taking a human life had never even occurred to him.  “Well,” said Jimmy, “I don’t think that there’s a direct cause and effect there. As you know, the fewer people that there are on the planet, the easier it is on the planet to sustain the living.  Too many people cause too much pollution, and the resources on the earth are finite.  We know this to be true because of what we learned in science class while growing up.”

Father Pansanto shook his head in disbelief.  “How could anyone believe that,” he thought.  But he knew in his heart that Jimmy had been brainwashed, so he came back at him with the same question cleverly disguised as something else.  “Well, Sir,” said Father, “are you happy that you didn’t die today?”

Jimmy didn’t have to think long on that one.  “Yes Sir, I sure am. I guess fate had other things in store for me,” he replied.

“Fate has nothing to do with it,” said Father.  “The Good Lord in Heaven looked down on you in your misery, and took mercy on your soul.  He knew that if you died today, you would go to hell, where you would be tortured with flesh eating worms and fire forever, and he allowed us, his servants, to save you, so that you could have another shot at heaven.  And I’ll bet you all the gold in California that you believe in the sanctity of YOUR human life, now don’t you!”

“Sir, you know that I don’t believe in God.  And even if there is a God, why did he let that snake bite me in the first place?   If he really cares about me, then why did he allow me to suffer like this?” said Jimmy.

Father replied, “Son, it’s a mystery as to why God allows us to suffer, but some very smart people who have studied this phenomenon over the centuries have come to the conclusion that it’s for the greater good of us all.  How can this be?  Well, when people are comfortable and secure in their life, when their monetary needs, their shelter needs, their nutrition needs, and their retirement needs are all taken care of, most people kick back and think “Who needs God anyway?  I have everything I need, and my good looks, my cunning wits, my superior smarts, and my bank account will take care of me forever." But they don’t take into account the fact that they will die one day, and those things that they thought were their security blankets in this life do them absolutely no good in the next world.  In fact, they are most likely a hindrance to heaven, because people who put their faith in the things of this world very rarely put their faith in Jesus Christ and do his will on earth while they are alive.  And the only way to get into heaven later on is to do the will of the Father NOW, while we are still alive.  Jesus Himself told a similar parable in Luke 12, about the rich farmer who had a great harvest and was going to just kick back and enjoy life for a long time, not realizing that his very life was going to be required of him that evening.”

“But I don’t believe in an afterlife,” said Jimmy.  “What you are saying doesn’t apply to me!”

“Well,” said Father, “whether you believe in it or not doesn’t matter.  Reality is reality whether you think it to be true or not. Imagine how foolish I would be if I said that I don’t believe that there is such a thing as oxygen, because I can’t see it. Or how dumb would I be if I said I don’t believe in love, because it’s not something that I can see or touch.  Oxygen and love are real things, whether or not I believe in them.  And the same goes for heaven and hell and your final judgment.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jimmy, “but what you are saying makes no sense to me.  Nobody in their right mind would actually believe all of that. If there were a God, science would have discovered Him by now.”

“Lieutenant,” said Father, “you cannot put God under a microscope. You can’t use the scientific method to discover God, because God doesn’t exist in the same way that material things exist in our world. God is a pure spirit, and science doesn’t address spirits.  And speaking of making no sense, exactly how much sense does it make to you that your sworn enemy would rescue you from a rattlesnake bite, and then nurse you back to health?”

“Well,” said Jimmy, “not much.  I’m kinda tired now Sir, and I was wondering if I could get some shuteye now.”  Jimmy was stalling for time, because he couldn’t answer Father Pansanto’s rather pointed questions. He would have to think about it during the night…….