uncertainty about whether that had actually been the location of the first temples. Sorting that out had been part of the covenant agreements, so once the covenant was signed, they were free to go ahead and build. The temple reconstruction committee had been poised with their pre-fab temple, ready for almost instant assembly and reconstruction. The funds required to build the temple were raised in a very short time by using the Internet and worldwide community funding campaigns. This third temple was to be a place of prayer for all people.
The building took the Jews no time at all to assemble. According to their tradition, they were not allowed to have the sound of hammering and sawing anywhere near the temple grounds. But they made an exception which allowed them to dig underground parking. This also allowed them to explore certain tunnels that were there since the time of King David, that were suspected of containing the lost Ark of the Covenant. If that had been the case, it would have been a great treasure for Israel to find and would have given an extra incentive to the project.
The Beast seemed to have a special interest in the temple and presided at its dedication. As it was, just the building of the temple had caused a worldwide reaction. Hundreds of tour groups poured into the city just to see it being constructed, and then when it was done, waited in long lines to get inside. Temple-mania was sweeping through the world. An animal sacrifice was resumed, and they brought a special red heifer from America to offer as a purification sacrifice.
But there was also much public opposition and arguing for and against the temple and its activities, especially three-and-a-half years after the temple was in operation when the Guardian broke the covenant. All the promises he had made were suddenly abandoned.
He put an image of his own in the holy place, demanding that people worship it and that they stop the animal sacrifices. Some speculated that the huge crowds and interest in the temple had given him the idea.
Needless to say, this action caused no small stir among the Jews who had just gotten their temple operational and had hoped that it would bring salvation through the promised return of the Messiah. They were horrified that the sacrifice was stopped. Several Jewish and Christian extremists committed suicide outside the building in protest. But these acts only caused the Beast and his sidekick to step up their reign of terror over anyone who would not comply.
The image that he set up in the temple was tremendously offensive to the Jews. They called it the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel.15 The image was no ordinary image, for it could speak and kill anyone who came before it who had not received the mark of the Beast and who did not worship the Guardian as the true lord of the whole world.
Anyone who dared to think differently or who was caught reading or even owning a forbidden book like the Bible was to be instantly terminated. The book that was written to bring life to the world now brought death. I was reminded of the warning from the book of Amos that God would send a famine in the land not of food or water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.16 So many had turned against religion that it had become anathema to even practice any form of group worship at all other than the Beast’s sanitized and sanctioned state-approved variety. What amazed me was the number of congregations that embraced his teachings. It truly had caused a great falling away of believers. They no longer had the Bible to refer to as a standard of behavior. The reason it was banned was probably because it had very specific warnings to people about the activities of the Beast and his helpers. His entire plan of forcing a diabolic subterfuge on humanity had been laid out in a few verses in the Bible, so that everyone would know that he wasn’t God. His satanic and twisted intent of enslaving the entire population of the earth with his Machiavellian17 mark had been revealed by Scripture centuries before, to warn all to avoid his proposed economic solution and the universal worship and devotion that he so desired.18
“WHEEEEEEEEE!!”
The terrifying blast of the curfew siren always made me jump. It was just another irritating reminder that we were considered subordinate citizens who at a certain time of day had to be reminded we should be off the streets. Only the registered or reggies, as was the common term for them, could stay out and move about freely after curfew. They had to pay an extra fee for that privilege, but since they were all e-tagged with transponder chips, it was easy for the collection scanner to identify them and transfer a few credits from their labor accounts. These extra perks and privileges remained popular because the funds raised were supposed to go to good causes like cancer research and whatnot (which they did not, and instead were used to fund the oppressive system). But it made people feel good and fashionable about using their privileges to support these state-sponsored scams.
We non-reggies were always setting off identity-check alarms and zone violation buzzers, and FR scanner alerts. FR stands for “facial recognition” scanners. As I was forced to walk around a lot in order to visit all the government offices required and fill out endless forms, I spent a lot of time in front of the copcams explaining to some unseen bureaucrat in an office somewhere why I was where I was and what I was doing.
Woe to anyone who was a non-reggie if they were caught out during curfew. Things could get nasty for us very quickly. And those smart cameras were everywhere. There was no hiding from them. They could spot a newcomer or a non-reggie in an instant. And you couldn’t try to hide anything under your clothes. They could see right through clothing. But the worst devices were the MPS machines: the mind-probing scanners they had in airports and government offices and other high security places. They could literally read your thoughts and tell instantly if you were lying or not.
Life during this time of the new beginnings was far from the promised utopia we had expected after listening to the Global Guardian’s enthralling speeches. It was amazing how much our lives were controlled by money, and that whoever controlled our money controlled us. Our present government had pretty much taken control of every aspect of human life. You could be sure that anything you did or could imagine doing had a law or an ordinance governing it. Needless to say, the legal system was completely snarled up by clever fellows pulling laws out of a hat, while the confused masses kept trying to muddle their way through a maze of rules and regulations that sometimes applied and sometimes didn’t, depending on what your standing was in this new social order.
There wasn’t much real food any more since Satano Supplies, a global seed company, had captured the world food market through its diabolically clever scheme of selling its genetically modified patented seeds. Then Satano went broke, and that wiped out most of the productive farms of the world through lack of seeds.
With food supplies so short, the Ministry of Abundant Living cut the monthly food credits in half for all unregistered elderly persons during its “Food for All” campaign. The rationale for doing this, they explained, was to give people like us higher self-esteem by making a personal contribution to those less fortunate. This deprivation, however, did nothing to modify my status or mollify my presumed failure for having to live on state charity, especially since we knew that our food rations had been cut to provide for the Global Guardian’s coalition armies who were fighting for the freedom of the oppressed people of Syraq (the new region formed after the obliteration of the former countries of Syria and Iraq). Most of us elderly lived in government facilities and had to try to make our rent each month. During winter, I had depleted my tiny reserves just to keep warm; the central heating in my building had long since given up the ghost.
The whole system of government assistance appeared to be based on some kind of mathematical formula, where our expenses each month always exceeded our income. I was convinced this was done just to keep us non-reggies in a constant state of anxiety and poverty. But this cut couldn’t have come at a worse time for us, as we all had fixed bills—which usually kept us struggling.
I was walking along so distracted by the weight of my daily concerns that I failed to notice a gaping crack in the sidewalk, tripped and nearly fell—which would have been a disaster for me had I fallen and broken my arm. For non-reggies,