The Remnant: A Prophetic Fable

By Linda Bowles and Hart

Linda Bowles employs caustic satire skillfully to advocate a return to the principles of common sense and human decency. The fable takes place in 2046 when political correctness has developed a chokehold on all American institutions. The Constitution-determined to be hopelessly outdated--has been banished to a museum. Fulfilling quotas of racial, gender, sexual-preference, and assorted other categories is the primordial function of every aspect of public policy. Religion is virtually outlawed. The Democrat and Republican parties have converged into one self-perpetuating organization--the Demopubs, and all that made America great is abased, ridiculed, or obliterated. So removed from rectitude has the nation become that God appears to the President with a warning to get back on the right track.

Those who seek out symbolism will find many characters named after Biblical players. The President's name is Moses Jones, the first lady is Sheba, and the vice-president who faces a few figurative giants is given the first name of David. No allegorical appellation is as humorously utilized as Judith Ischcarot who serves as a de facto atheism czar in the cabinet.

Much of this short work is risibly sapient, but late in chapter eight, it takes a major detour into stirring eloquence. When President Moses Jones addresses his cabinet and admits that he experienced a Theophany, his remarks are profound. Were this peroration a genuine speech delivered by a real president, it would take its place not too far beneath George Washington's farewell or the Gettysburg Address. The penetrating sinew is constant throughout the nearly two page soliloquy and is represented by lines like "we decided sin and guilt are burdens we don't have to carry. In effect, the rules governing our behavior can be whatever we want them to be...In an environment permissive of uninhibited expression, we did not find the inherent wisdom within our souls; we found the inherent barbarism."

Although the parable takes place 40+ years in the future, most of it is applicable today. When President Jones declaims, " we used to fight our demons...now we embrace them, " his words ring as true in 2001 as the do in the era of Demopubs. Perhaps "The Remnant" can serve as a much needed wake-up call. It is far less drastic that a visit from above conveying divine displeasure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Dec 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781456629724

Linda Bowles

Linda Bowles is a retired R.N., who graduated from The Ohio Valley General Hospital School of Nursing. She was born and raised in Steubenville, Ohio. Linda is the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of four. She now lives in Herndon, Virginia. Her love of children's books is well known to family and friends as she purchases one on every trip she takes. A photo of her and fellow travelers is placed in the book and saved for her grandchildren.

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HART

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Most Americans grew up anchored in place by certain ideas and values. They organized their lives around them. There was consensus about right and wrong, and good and bad. They knew what the rules were, and moral guideposts clearly pointed in the direction they should go.

But somewhere along the way, somehow, somebody changed the rules and tore down the guideposts.

Those institutions — marriage, family, religion, schools — which historically have preserved our social learning curves, and served as bulwarks against moral degeneration, are under broad attack, and are crumbling.

It’s relatively easy to maintain values and inculcate them in one’s children if these values are supported and buttressed by popular heroes, media icons, political leaders and educators. It is another matter to keep the faith when there are fears that the moral center is not holding, when others around you are retreating and sounding the alarm that merciless, heathen hordes have won the day and are advancing.

Many social conservatives worry that their religious walk is out of step with the prevailing culture. They are no longer admired for their faith; they are castigated for it.

It is difficult when in the middle of the din and clutter of current events and caught up in the passion of them, to know what they mean. Are we experiencing a middle-age national crisis that will soon play itself out or is this a momentous and enduring shift in the American character? Where are we headed? What is our future?

There are places to look for perspective and understanding. The best of all places that I have found is an essay entitled Isaiah’s Job, by the late scholar, Albert Jay Nock.

Nock tells the story of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. He believes there is something ...in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness be overpast.

The story takes place about 740 years before the birth of Christ. Nock uses common speech to paraphrase what happened. The Lord appears and gives instructions to Isaiah to warn the people of the wrath to come: Tell them what a worthless lot they are. Tell them what is wrong, and why, and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong, and keep on giving it to them.

Then the Lord adds, I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you...that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life. Puzzled, Isaiah asks the Lord what is the purpose of delivering a message to which no one will listen. Ah... the Lord said, you do not get the point. There is a remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can.

The Lord continues, They need to be encouraged and braced up, because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society, and meanwhile your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the remnant, so be off now and get about it.

There are many conclusions and ideas that can be drawn from these passages from Nock’s wonderful essay. Here is mine for the benefit of the remnant, whoever and wherever you are:

It requires soul-deep faith to stand strong and hold your place when raging winds are uprooting and scattering everything around you. If there is a temptation to cease the struggle and give way, keep in mind that the threatening winds may have been sent by a God who is about the business of separating the wheat from the chaff.

Linda Bowles

July 27, 1999

PROLOGUE

GOD THINKS IT OVER

God was upset — sorely upset. He had spent the day, an earthly day, namely July 27, 2046, reviewing conditions on the planet earth and, in particular, conditions in the formerly great Christian nation, The United States of America. The purpose of His review was to decide whether to withdraw Favored Nation status.

God was not pleased. He was not pleased because the Demopubs were in full control of His chosen nation and were imposing their diabolical ideas upon a hapless citizenry.

I endured the dinosaurs for over a hundred billion years, He said to Himself, but it has taken man only fifty thousand years to bring Me to the end of My patience. Nothing tries My perfect patience more than watching a Demopub think. We are tempted to execute another recall and begin all over again.

God used the singular I and the plural We interchangeably in referring to His magnificent Self. He did this because He wanted to,

and because it made talking to Himself more seemly, not that anyone was watching or judging.

At this particular moment, The Ruler of All Things felt an almighty urge to hit something. Not being ready as yet to inflict His ire on its cause, namely Homo sapiens, He dispatched an angry thought at a huge star system at the far end of the universe. The monstrous configuration of planets and suns and moons exploded in a blinding cataclysm of unleashed power and light — filling billions of miles of space with blazing debris.

One million, three hundred thousand, two hundred twelve years, six months, three weeks, four days, seven hours, nineteen minutes, and forty six seconds later, a brief shower of lights might be seen in the darkened skies of planet earth by whatever creature might happen to be looking in that direction.

God knew all that. He knew the phenomenon would occur in the night sky at that precise time. He had not yet decided whether anyone or anything would be around at that time to see the modest display.

Yea, verily, what to do with Man was the question.

What a mischievous and perverse lot they are, God mused. They challenge and doubt everything. They challenge their own existence and the existence of the magnificent universe I have brought into being out of nothingness. He sighed — an infinite and sovereign sigh.



God had an understandable measure of pride in His creation of the universe, an undertaking of some consequence even to One of unlimited powers. It was a very good job, He said, with an admitted degree of immodesty, quite excusable in that no one else existed who was qualified to appreciate what had been wrought.

God perceived little appreciation from the human race for His initiation of life and matter, not even from the peoples of the nation He blessed the most, The United States of America. Indeed, they who had gained the most from His Glorious Munificence, had come to deny God played any role at all in Creation. Some, mostly intellectual liberals, had gone so far as to suggest the universe did not even exist unless man was there to observe it.

Challenging the existence of reality was one thing; challenging the existence of God, the Creator, was another. His divine Self was not pleased to see these people, after all these generations, reach a consensus that God was created by man.

They had come to believe God had no objective reality of His own. He was a discretionary being, possessing whatever characteristics any foolish human wished to assign Him. In the philosophy of the liberal elite, The Creator of All Things was simply an idea, a construct, if He was anything at all.



They are actually beginning to believe I am a figment of their imagination, God said to Himself. He was simultaneously amused and angered at that particular thought, a concurrence of emotions such as only a Supreme Being could experience.

Something must be done, He said. These creatures have totally missed the point of their existence. They are traveling the broad way to destruction, unable and unwilling to enter the strait gate.

He contemplated what to do. He was reluctant to again intervene in human affairs. That business with the flood had been quite unpleasant. The forty-day rain was calculated to literally wash away the past and provide the species with a second chance, a new start, with the sins of the past forgiven. But alas, they had bungled it, eventually rediscovering all the old heresies and inventing ingenious new ones.

I sent them my only begotten Son, my beloved Jesus, that the world through Him might be saved, saith the Lord. "I set before them the way of life and the