Abaddon

The Pastor

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Isaiah 52:7

 

We continued walking. I was telling him about my vacations at the mountain over the years when we heard a voice cried to us from a fork in the path, “Behold the mountain!”

We turned in the direction of the voice and saw a man and a woman skulking toward us, their eyes wide with fear. The woman had long, wavy dark blonde hair. The man had silvery-gray hair and eyes bluer than the sky.

“Yes, sir, madam,” Michael responded. “The mountain is waking up.”

“Do you know what lurks beneath the mountain?”

Michael nodded, “Yes, sir, madam. I am Michael Baughman, a graduate student here with the University of South Dakota, working with the U.S. Geological Survey. I am one of the geologists studying the activity in the mountain.”

The woman trembled with fear, “What does your science know compared to the Lord in Heaven? The demon, Abaddon, lurks in the mountain! He is awaking from his unholy slumber! He who has destroyed once before will destroy once again! Repent! Repent now and be saved when the time of your death arrives! God will only save those who have repented when Satan awakes Abaddon once again!”

The Evangelists, I realized. The Evangelists lived on the other side of the mountain in the town they had named Jordan, for the river in Israel. They were a peaceful people, but they preferred to worship in their own words, in their own way, and in their own community. I had seldom seen them on this side of Mount Abaddon because they preferred to keep to themselves. Those I had met had always been very nice, amiable, but the Binah legends about the mountain had frightened them. They had found much in their book of Revelation in their Bible about Abaddon and were unsettled by the legends of Abaddon that had arrived before their people ever set foot on the land. They were always convinced that the demon would awake one day, and they were sent to that area to fight it when the time came. I realized the recent tremors would have seemed like the summation of all their fears and fervently hoped that the tremors weren’t the summation of all their fears.

“The earth shakes as Abaddon shakes the sleep from his eyes of fire,” the man cried in warning. “They have as king over them, the angel of the Abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek he has the name Apollyon. This mountain is named for a demon! The Binah knew then what awaited us in this age!”

“And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key of the shaft of the bottomless pit; he opened the shaft of the bottomless pit and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft,” the woman said.

“Then I stood on the sand of the sea.  And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea,” the man said.

“This is a lake,” Michael muttered.

“And you now know the thing that is holding back Abaddon,” he warned. I knew it wasn’t Revelations, but I was not sure where it was from. It was definitely New Testament, otherwise I would have known it. We weren’t taught much about the New Testament. The Christians had different beliefs than we did and that was simply the way of it. No one way was better than the other, so we lived together, or in our own communities, in peace. We prayed to the same God and the people of Jordan were good people who took care of one another in their community. That was enough for us.