CHAPTER 20

The Weight

Jayden sat back and looked at the ceiling.

J➤ Beheading is not defeat. It’s the sealing.

J➤ Don’t go after the counterfeit.

J➤ Don’t worry for your life.

J➤ Don’t take the mark.

He sat in the quiet for a long time. Outside the window the afternoon light was starting to change.

J➤ It is all in the plan.

DIVE DEEPER

Coming out of Babylon — is it possible Dive Deeper ➡

The kingdom supply chain — outside the beast system Dive Deeper ➡

Don’t take the mark Dive Deeper ➡

✦   ✦   ✦

He thought about the saints who would go through the 1,260 days. The 144,000 distributed evenly among the survivors. The great multitude washing their robes. The two witnesses standing in the street. The souls under the altar crying out.

He thought about what they would endure. No food. No water. No rain. The scorching heat.

And then Revelation 7:16-17.

J➤ Never again will they hunger. Never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them.

God naming every hardship they faced. Specifically. And promising specifically that it would never happen again.

J➤ He named what they suffered. He did not minimise it. He named it. And then said never again.

✦   ✦   ✦

Jayden closed the laptop.

Not because he was finished. Because he needed to think.

The investigation had started with a date. It had ended with a story. The players named. The sequence mapped. The constitution of the new world preserved in the Books of Deeds.

And the beast from the sea sitting on his desk, having helped him find all of it.

J➤ The pattern has never changed. The acceptance line and the rejection line. Always through the same instrument.

He sat in the dark for a long time.

Book 3 answers the question both books raise but neither answers directly.

The calendar is a proof of authorship. The tribulation is the plan reaching its completion.

Book 3 asks: who is this Author?

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Psalm 119:105