Zen's War: Captivity

They had been reading the Bible for hours, and they had only gotten to the part about the ten plagues. Sahara had to admit that the Bible was somewhat entertaining. There were so many different characters and stories within stories. One strange thing she noticed was how long people lived in the Bible. One of the characters named Methuselah lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine years old. She herself didn’t really believe it, but for some reason found it fascinating.

“I’m getting bored with these plagues. Do you know any more interesting parts we could read?” Sahara asked, beginning to lose her patience.

“Bartholomew said that we have to read the whole thing,” Bridget responded.

“I know, but we can come back to where we left off.”

“That’s true. Why don’t we read the Book of Revelations?” Bridget suggested.

“What’s that about?” Sahara asked, having heard of it but not knowing what it was really about.

“It’s pretty complicated. Well, it’s mostly about the end of the world,” Bridget answered.

“How does it end?”

“There’s a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness.”

“Who wins?”

Bridget looked at her like she was an idiot, “The sons of light of course.” “At least it has a happy ending,” Sahara said.

“It’s Joshua’s favorite book of the Bible.”

“Where is it? I don’t see it here,” Sahara said, as she flipped through the pages looking for the right book.

“It’s the one all the way at the end,” Bridget answered, this time not so snooty.

She flipped through the pages until she got to the final book. “Here it is.”

Sahara looked at the first page of the book of Revelation. In gilded letters it read, “The revelation of St. John the Divine received while in exile on the island of Patmos.” As she glanced over the first page she was horrified yet at the same time enthralled, similar to her reaction to Joshua. “This doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t see anything about sons of light and darkness. I think you’ve been lied to.”

“I’m sure it does. I just don’t think you’ve got to that part yet,” Bridget responded, still in denial.

As Sahara read aloud she was confused by the words she read. She was partly confused because it was not written in modern English. It reminded her a lot of the Shakespeare that her father used to read to her. She guessed that this version of the Bible had been written in Shakespeare’s time. Other than the language it was written in she did not understand its literal meaning. There was something about seven bowls and seven vials. For some reason revelation sixteen stood out to her. It was the part about seven vials. Each of the vials contained God’s wrath. She couldn’t remember the exact meaning of wrath, but knew that it had something to do with anger. Each vial was poured out by a different angel. Each time a vial was poured out something horrible would happen. When the fifth vial was poured out the world was filled with darkness. This reminded her of what had happened at the end of the war, though she had not experienced it herself because she had not been born yet. As her father had told her, the sun had not been visible for many months. She was grateful that she had not had to live through it.

“I think I found the part about the war, but how do you know that it’s not about the war that already happened?” Sahara asked. “The thing is, I don’t see anything about sons of light and darkness.”

“Maybe I’m confusing the Book of Revelations with the War Scroll,” Bridget admitted.

“You must be. Wait a minute, there’s a word here I recognize, Armageddon. Isn’t that what Joshua called the next war that’s going to happen?” Sahara commented.

“I thought that you didn’t believe in all that?”

“I don’t. I was just making an observation,” Sahara answered.

“I think that you’re starting to believe in it,” Bridget said.

“What I should be concerned with is how we’re going to get out of here.”

“My advice is to give up on escaping. Look at what happened last time we tried to escape,” Bridget said, commenting on their current circumstance.

“Ye hath little faith,” Sahara responded in a futile attempt at humor.