CHAPTER 4

PART ONE

The Question

A world that feels wrong. A Google search. One rule.

Something Is Wrong

Jayden had been feeling it for months.

Not sick. Not depressed. Something else. A low-level unease that arrived with the morning news and did not leave when he turned it off. The world felt like it was winding up. Every conversation was an argument. Every issue a battle line. Countries turning inward. Old certainties dissolving. The kind of anger that fills a room before something breaks.

He had read the Bible for years. Not in a church — he had not been to church in a long time. Just on his own, at the kitchen table, working through it the way he worked through everything: slowly, honestly, trying to figure out what it actually said rather than what he had been told it said. He had never gone to bible school. Never sat under a pastor’s systematic theology. Just him and the text and a lot of questions that never quite got answered.

He sat down at his computer with his coffee and opened Google.

It was not a dramatic moment. It was a Saturday morning. He just typed the question that had been sitting in the back of his mind.

He knew his Bible well enough to know that the end times — the final period before the time of wrath, the tribulation

Tribulation — the final period of great trouble.

— were described as a time of unprecedented trouble. Wars and rumours of wars. Nation against nation. And he also knew the verse that had always stopped him from going further down that road.

No one knows the day or the hour. Matthew 24:36. Jesus said it himself. Nobody knows. So what is the point of even asking.

But the feeling would not leave him alone. The world felt wrong in a specific way. Not just troubled. Wrong. Like something was completing.

The AI gave an answer. A long answer. Tradition says 33 AD. Some scholars say 30 AD. The church generally accepts 33 AD. Archaeological evidence suggests. Historical records indicate. The Synoptic Gospels imply. John’s Gospel suggests.

Gospels — the first four books of the Bible’s New Testament.

Jayden read it and felt the familiar frustration rising.

J➤ Every answer points in a different direction. Tradition says this. Scholars say that. The church says something else. Nobody is reading the same book.

He put his coffee down and typed again.

The AI responded that it understood. It could work from scripture alone.

Jayden stared at the screen. That was too easy. He wanted it locked in.

The AI confirmed it. Rule 1 locked. Scripture only.

Then it gave him what it thought was the answer from the text. 33 AD. The crucifixion

Crucifixion — execution by nailing to a wooden cross.

on the 14th of Nisan

14th of Nisan — Nisan is the first month of the biblical year, like our January.

at 3pm. The Preparation Day

Preparation Day — the day before a Sabbath when all work stopped.

of the Passover.

Jayden read it over. Something snagged.

J➤ The fourteenth of Nisan. The day. What exactly is a day in the Bible?

He almost moved on. It was a small thing. But he had been doing this long enough to know that the small things were where the text surprised you.

He typed the question.