Interregnum: The Final Dispensation

By Erath McKiah

Four grayed and Godly male pilgrims, who serve as itinerant church physicians, make their way through the foreboding and desolate landscape of a fallen America. They apply spiritual healing to congregations hindered and oppressed by the powers of darkness. In this perilous sojourn, they are joined by two recently returned female missionaries. Romances buried by the weathering of time are reawakened and blossom in the rich soil of spiritual maturity...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642144833

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Interregnum

The Final Dispensation

Erath McKiah

Copyright © 2018 Erath McKiah

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64214-482-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64214-483-3 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 1

Adam

Four men walked in single file down the narrow path, through the open meadow, leading to the ancient forest. Dressed in ragged clothes, with graying beards and unkempt hair, the four men could pass for downtrodden street people, except for the joyous glow in their eyes. It was February and a bone chilling wind pushed against the backs of the men propelling them further into the gray and forbidding landscape. In the instant before it set, the golden solar orb broke through the clouds releasing its final dispensation. The sun’s last rays cast a double rainbow of such intense hues across the eastern sky that the temple curtain was rent, freezing time, as the forest world was bathed in heavenly color.

At the height of the rainbow’s brilliance, the Holy Spirit brought to each man’s remembrance, Genesis 9, I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and you and all living creatures on the earth. The spectacle faded and was gone with the same speed it had arrived as they reached the edge of the towering forest. The four pilgrims were stunned yet refreshed having imbibed deeply, the living water of heaven, from the wells of salvation.

The last man in the row walked with the grace of a king. He was tall and muscular, somewhere in his sixties, and had piercing blue eyes that conveyed the gentleness of a lamb. As he walked, scenes from the past began to flood his conscious mind. In his inner eye, he began to visualize scenes from his earliest childhood. Standing in the front seat of an immense black automobile, he saw a winding cobblestone road that cut its way through the dark woods. The car stopped briefly at intimidating wrought iron gates that seemed to open miraculously on their own. The limousine proceeded to climb a very steep grade to the top of a high hill. The road dead-ended at a grand monument to privilege, his great-grandfather’s majestic estate.

The estate was massive and magnificent with its high cut stone chimneys, ornate entry, and slate roof. It was an island of refined tranquility fortified high above the darkened valley where the squalid masses eked out their lives steeped in ignorance.

Across deep oceans of memory, Adam’s mind skipped to his college days. It was a brisk autumn morning, as Adam played polo with his friends at Yale. The exhilaration of racing his well-bred pony down the finely mowed lawn, captivated by one obsession—the desire to win. That same evening at an elegant black-tie dinner given to celebrate his twenty-first birthday, his father introduced him to leaders of the Commission. These men had stunned him, granite towers, impregnable yet at the same time engaging. Each possessed vast realms of earthly power. They strode with the bearing of those that dwelt on Olympus.

The yacht regatta off Cape Cod during Adam’s thirtieth summer came to mind as if it were the present. The sea spray lashed his face as his boat rounded the last buoy a full five seconds ahead of the rest of the pack. In all things, he sought not just to win but to conquer with such devastating certainty that there could be no question of his inborn right to rule.

During that winter, his aging father passed over his well-intentioned yet vacillating older brother, Lot, and began the process of transferring control of the family empire to Adam. He spent the next year closeted in teak-paneled rooms, learning from the most brilliant and cunning men on earth. They passed down to Adam the cumulative knowledge of centuries of generations at the helm. Their task was to teach Adam the secrets to the manipulation of each global market and each national government. He emerged at the end of that year, knowing that the world was within his grasp.

In the next ten years, Adam made his bones, becoming a force to be reckoned with in the global markets. If some entity opposed the blueprint he had devised for expansion of his family’s holdings he stealthily undermined, then destroy that entity. If the opposition was too powerful to destroy, he would forge an alliance with his foes, allowing him to move into new areas of growth. Now in control of immense and ever increasing wealth, he somehow sensed that something was missing. Whatever the victory that was absent in his life, he knew it was the crucial element needed to realize complete fulfillment.

In his fortieth year, the commission tapped Adam to head-up the World Trade Committee. This prestigious body was given the herculean task of computerizing all commerce on a global basis. This would require that each person on the planet have access to a computerized entry portal to a global commercial network.

When Adam began his massive undertaking, cell phones were jut becoming the main source of telephone service for most adults and the Internet was restricted to desktop computers through landline access. Then technology made a monumental leap and the smartphone became the national obsession. Suddenly the average individual could connect to the Internet any place at any time. This provided the connection Adam needed to realize his goal. Adam set about hiring the most brilliant technological minds from all over the globe. After a year of diligent research, a plan was devised.

The goal was to create a massive umbrella of miniaturized satellites that would surround the earth and provide Internet access on a uniform basis to every quadrant of the globe. A massive central mainframe computer with layers of redundancy would broadcast the data to the satellites from earth. The individual would receive the satellite signal and broadcast back to the satellite with a small wearable piece of jewelry such as a watch. The watch would in turn connect by Bluetooth to a surgically implanted biochip. This biochip would give the individual 24-7 access to the Internet in their mind.

Next, utilizing the best minds in advertising and hundreds of focus groups, a name was concocted and a multilayered advertising campaign devised. The Singularity was ushered in as the latest and most trendy of fads, complete with its own cutting-edge music, clothing, and philosophy that bordered on religion. With absolute control of all print, broadcast, and Internet media, Adam saturated global markets from every commercial angle with incentives to entice the world’s populace into plugging into the Singularity.

The masses rushed to have the biochip implanted in such great numbers that wait times became as long as a year. To connect to this new technological marvel allowed the user an assurance of not being left out of the mainstream. To be cut off from the Singularity guaranteed the curse of poverty.

Those not connected to the Singularity began calling the biochip implant the Mark of the beast. The name The Mark soon caught on and became the hip cool societal name for the Biochip implant. The Unmarked became the derogatory term for the holdouts. As The Unmarked became an ever-diminishing minority, they began to be pushed out of society, in the same manner as the Jews in prewar Nazi Germany were slowly isolated from German society.

When global compliance reached the ninety-five-percentile threshold, it became illegal to conduct any form of commerce without The Mark. As beguiling and seductive as the introductive years were, the final phase was equally as brutal and repressive. When global compliance reached the ninety-seven percentile Adam ordered an all-out assault on the remaining holdouts. These holdouts consisted mainly of various sects of biblical Christians, who were castigated as impediments to total world harmony.

Many of the leaders of these outlaw fanatic sects were ordered hunted down and killed. Millions of these narrow-minded zealots were rounded up and placed in forced labor reeducation camps. However, the remnant could not be extinguished. The more they arrested, even more converted to their cause. These zealots persisted and became an ugly blemish on Adam’s otherwise perfect masterpiece.

Adam had now had achieved true global stature. No longer did Adam walk in his father’s shadow. Equally feared as revered, he had become a living legend. He had now attained the missing component in his life—Infamy.

In his fiftieth year, Adam put aside the now matronly wife of his youth and married a statuesque model of startling beauty as a trophy wife. The couple became the absolute zenith of the social elite and were treated as royalty on every continent.

During a routine medical check-up in his fifty-fifth year, Adam was diagnosed as having advanced prostate cancer. After a year of intense medical treatments from the finest oncologist in the world, the cancer had continued to advance and had metastasized to his liver and kidneys. Then came the devastating news from his doctors; they saw his survival in terms of months rather than years. With great reluctance, Adam began to turn over control of the family empire to his sons, as he prepared for the inevitable.

After the transfer of his vast empire was fully implemented, Adam soon began to realize that he had become an unwanted nuisance in the lives of those that he loved the most. His sons, who had been unswerving in their loyalty and devotion before, were now too busy fighting over the spoils to be bothered with the trivial details of their father’s life. His wife, who had suddenly resumed her modeling career, became little more than a sympathetic voice on a phone. His oldest and dearest friends seemed to be looking past him whenever their eyes met his.

Feeling betrayed and alone, he decided to take control of his own destiny and commit suicide. He had his secretary send a short email to all on his email list that he had passed away, his body had been cremated, and there would be no memorial service. Adam, a man with a lifelong fear of firearms, found himself outside a gun shop window, staring blankly inside and trembling with fear. It was on that gun shop sidewalk that he met a scar-faced man dressed in tattered clothes with the eyes of an angel. This gentleman, through the power of the Holy Spirit, brought healing to Adam’s ravaged body. In the month that followed Adam came to know Jesus Christ as his personal savior and made Him Lord of his life. Adam never turned to look back on his former existence and from that moment on he was captivated by one vision, winning lost souls for the Kingdom of God.

Chapter 2

Aaron

The third person in the file was a man with a terribly scared face by the name of Aaron. Aaron’s first remembrance