Famine

Epilogue

Dr. Boron’s vanity had become a blessing for Christians, Jews, and Muslims trying to practice their respective faiths in the United States.  The effect was astounding.  The holographic  images of Michelle, Jonah, and the cowering Dr. Boron had been seen worldwide . Christians came out into the streets for the first time in years demanding their religious liberties.  Other decent people, who were not Christians, joined them.  They were supporting them in protest for having been lied to for generations for the sake of control over their lives.  There were even large local gatherings around the country with non-Believers hearing about God, not the horrid deity they had been told about, for the first time.

   People were now free again to proclaim God the way they believed right.

  Just as a large population of Jews, once taken by Nebuchadnezzar’s army in 586 B.C., had again returned to Jerusalem,  Christians were back. No longer was there the fear of cryogenic freezing for their beliefs.

   Christians were still but a minority in the nation but respected.  It is ironic that toleration in America had existed in the first place because of great souls such as William Penn and Roger Williams in Rhode Island.  America’s Founders had grown up with the Bible and in the best traditions of the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment.   They thought their First Amendment would guarantee religious liberty.

   America had seen itself once as a Nation under God.  Elected officials and judges were responsible to do their duties.  For their political or lawful decisions, they were responsible to the people.  For their moral acts, they were answerable to God.

   The American Congress was supposed to keep out of religion because matters of religion belonged elsewhere.  Under the Frist Amendment as it was originally understood, States had a right to have state churches is they saw fit and did for a few years.  But state churches such as in England and Germany soon ceased to exist.  But the federal and state governments accommodated Christianity in schools and government buildings.  The Capital building in Washington, D.C., was for years used for Christian worship by congressmen on Sundays. 

   For nearly a hundred fifty years, pubic buildings and courts posted God’s Ten Commandments.  That was permitted by the law of the land.  Judges were to rule without bias according to the laws of man.  But they acknowledged their moral obligations to God.

   The irony is that the very words religious toleration were used by well-organized political opportunists to destroy Christian influence in America and bring in a new wave of persecution more sinister than during the days of Roman persecution.

   Just as the Nazis in Germany had by various laws restricted Jews, enacted laws declaring them less than human, destroyed their Synagogues, ruined their businesses, and forced them to wear armbands in the streets to make them easy marks for thugs,  so it had happened in America.

   Persecution of Christianity began at the very moment when atheists in America demanded special protection from hearing about God.  More and more judges never asked as once happened in ancient Israel, “Who is the Lord?”

   Using the weapon of tolerance, it took less time to destroy faith in the market place of ideas than it took to allow it to flourish.

   The Famine, of hearing God proclaimed,  spoken about by the Prophet Amos for his own people in 600 B.C., spread in like manner all over in America.

   Without fear of being brutalized by thugs, Christians could now meet in mass,  Jews could celebrate the Sabbath on Friday night, and modest numbers of Muslims could once again ascend to the roof tops and high towers and balconiesand call people to prayer.  In time they would rebuild their mosques with minarets.

   The work of rebuilding the churches had begun.  Michelle once again directed local churches and organized local leaders to begin to form congregations.

   They needed to train religious teachers, establish seminaries for ministers and priests.  The Irish church was most helpful to the struggling Catholic cells.  Bibles were again printed or placed in readable form.

   Not everything in America went back the way it had been.  Christians had been meeting in homes for generations and said they felt more like the original New Testament believers, who met in homes in first-century Rome, Corinth, and in Antioch.   They believed it was God’s intention.  Nobody took issue with them.

   Within months, church construction had begun cross the land.  Some met in simple store-front churches, once familiar to Jonah and Michelle.  Others brought back the gothic spires.  First Baptist Church had once again become a place of worship.

   Cheryl, who had once scorned Christians and abandoned Jonah, was one of the first brides to be married there.  She had introduced her fiancé to Jonah, Michelle, and Rene and proclaimed herself a new believer.  She brought her frozen embryos out of storage and they would become children of her new marriage.

   It was also a bit of irony that people even met for worship at the Sports Center, long infamous for being the Circuses.

   In one Kentucky town, the faithful in the past during times of growing persecution had hidden their churches steeple intact.  Once again they reclaimed their original building and in joy reset the steeple to point heavenward once more.

   Once again there were divisions of Christianity as there had been from the beginning.  But there was something different.  Never again would they succumb to petty difference that once sent them to war as in 1648.  They may not be united in doctrine, but now them proclaimed themselves Christians only instead of smugly saying they were the only Christians.

   Jonah had left Michelle to travel far and wide to work with other church leaders across the state.  She had far better organizational skills than he had.  His work was local.

   But one afternoon, Jonah was back in Rose Hill Cemetery, place of their supposed graves when Michelle called to him from behind.

   It so reminded Jonah of the time she first called out his name so many years before.  She had been gone for weeks and had not been back since that day on Bon Harbor Hill.

   They met and must have kissed for five minutes.  “Oh, Michelle, I can hardly believe you are really back.”  He held her stroking her hair.

   “Rene was behind all of this.  She believed the time was right to bring me back.  She faked my identity and had my body restored to its youth.  I was reclaimed in secret months before she brought you back.  I wanted for us to have a chance to live out the rest of our lives together.”

   “So you finally agreed cryogenic freezing just to have another chance with me?”

   “We debated making me known to you.  Very few people knew who I was.  Sonny kept my secret well.  But I told Rene that you had to find your real way back to God without me.”

   She kissed him once more.

   “I failed once.”

   “And I prayed hard for you that time.”  She smiled.  “But you didn’t fail in the end.  Even if our moments together in the Center Ring at the Circus were all we would have had together, it would have been enough.”

   “Oh, Michelle, you don’t know how much it meant to me.”

   “But now we are back together, Jonah, to live out our lives together since we could not once before.”

   They kissed again and stood embracing.

   “But there’s one thng new about me, Jonah.”

   “What?”

   “Now we can have children!”

   “Oh, yeah.”

   They kissed again.