Samuel decided to start the next round of research with the site David recommended. Judith was out with Sophia, and David met up with some friends. He was alone, making it the perfect time to look at the forbidden sites. He thought of David’s comment about The Word’s constant warnings about the Internet only stirring up interest. Pornography didn’t tempt him, but after the last Gathering, he knew he had to look up sites critical of The Word. He wanted to see what was so dangerous.
He typed in “The Word’s Words” and considered the result. The home page stated the site presented documentation of the past and present teachings of the Word of God Foundation. It noted, “The Foundation has changed teachings many times since 1933. This site provides direct, footnoted quotes from the religion’s many publications, proving the changing nature of its doctrines and prophecies. This should serve as proof the Foundation does not have divine guidance.
“Quotes are arranged by topic, and chronologically within topics, for easy comparison.”
The edge of the page contained a long list of topics, starting with prophetic statements by year. The body contained general commentary and many links to other websites.
“Whew, that’s a lot.”
Where to start? He began by looking over the list of topics, one in particular jumped out at him. He clicked on “vaccination.”
A new page opened. It contained quotes, mostly from The Word of God magazine, the Foundation’s primary public mouthpiece. It showed about a dozen quotes, running back to the 1930’s. The articles quoted condemned the practice as contrary to the law of God and described it as “injecting animal parts into the human bloodstream.” Another quote flatly stated that Christians needed to keep free of the “detestable practice which has no medical value.”
This was all how he remembered the conversations around the Gathering House. One of the last quotes surprised him. Written in 1965, it declared vaccination a personal matter, no longer subject to Review. It did warn that a Christian still needed to consider the matter carefully before deciding.
The site then quoted what it described as a “brief” article published in 1999 as saying that recent research in the United Kingdom linked vaccination to many medical problems including autism. It noted that in earlier times The Word of God magazine had cautioned its readers about the dangers of vaccines and the need to carefully weigh the decision in light of Godly principles.
An issue published a year later carried similar information. Then between 2002 and 2006 The Word published several statements declaring that recent studies proved that vaccination was dangerous, vindicating the position that vaccination was contrary to God’s laws. After that, all published information ended.
He and Judith did not vaccinate their children, believing The Lord disapproved of the practice. But the last quote disturbed him most. In a secret 2007 letter, New Jerusalem ordered all Servant bodies to stop reviewing Disciples who choosing to get vaccinations for themselves or their children.
Samuel stared and reread the letter. This information was available to the Servants the year before Charlene died! Would they have made a different decision? He didn’t know, but they should have had the opportunity. He’d never seen it, the Senior Servant no doubt kept it locked in the archives. Since New Jerusalem no longer discussed the matter, most Disciples simply forgot about it.
How would Judith react? He had no idea. As she liked to point out, when the subject came up, she always insisted they did what was right in their eyes, not because somebody told them what to do. He thought she was constitutionally incapable of seeing it any other way. But cold fury filled him. Why had The Word concealed the change in doctrine? Didn’t they know the lives of people, children, were at stake?
He opened a new window, leaving the quote site up. He wanted to find the answers to those questions. It did not take him long to find what he wanted. Fear of lawsuits prompted the apostles to change procedure, and keep the change out of sight. Several academics who studied The Word noted that it often simply stopped talking about a subject to avoid drawing attention to changes. In this case, the Apostles actively hid the change because The Foundation might be liable for the deaths of ones who chose against vaccination based on published statements. So they swept it all under the rug and hoped nobody would notice.
He decided to stop reading for the night, it brought up too many emotions. He knew one thing, he could not continue as Servant. He might find a way to continue to attend Gatherings for the sake of his family. He could go out in Disciple-making sometimes, he wasn’t sure how preaching something he no longer believed would feel. But there was no way he could enforce life-or-death decisions when the rules might change and no one would even know. It simply wasn’t right.
Following David’s advice, he cleared the recent browsing history from the machine. Until David mentioned it, he didn’t even know that he could do that. Probably David was the only person likely to know how to look up his history on the computer, but he didn’t want to take the chance.
He shut the computer down and went to the living room to watch TV. He felt worn out.
**
The next morning, after sleeping on the thought, he decided to delay talking to Luke and Caleb about resigning. He had to ease into it. If he walked in and said he wanted to resign, they would immediately form a review committee to find out what he’d done. In the current atmosphere, with all the problems in South Hill, they would assume he did something wrong.
He thought he knew how soldiers felt marching into a minefield. He still held out hope that he could save his marriage. He loved Judith and couldn’t imagine life without her. If he played his cards right he might salvage their marriage. Charging around like a bull in a China shop wouldn’t be right.
Everyone was on edge. Two days earlier one of the TV stations carried a brief story about Ricky’s arrest. Because the New Jerusalem headquarters was in Seattle, anything about Disciples made the news in Washington State, although nobody else noticed. The story named Ricky and mentioned that his father was a “Senior Pastor in the church’s South Hill congregation, and his Uncle is one of the religion’s twelve Apostles.”
This lead Sophia to complain that they didn’t get anything right. They didn’t know Norm Halbert’s title, or what to call a Gathering. Samuel conceded the point on that one, clearly the media people didn’t know much of anything about Disciples.
The men from the New Jerusalem legal department kept a tight lid on the story. But rumors circulated anyway. Several disgruntled Servants from South Hill complained of mistreatment at the hands of the lawyers. They claimed that they didn’t know anything about any problems with Ricky Halbert, several complained about unfounded rumors sweeping through the Disciple community in Spokane. They were not receiving fair or unbiased treatment.
Mostly the rumor mill passed on juicy tidbits about the arrest: the girl was naked, they were both drunk, he tried to fight the police, there was even one story of a gun in the car. Usually Disciples discounted any negative news about New Jerusalem as Forsaker lies. But this did not stop internal rumors. Stories that Norm knew about his son’s problems, and that Apostle Halbert pulled strings to prevent discipline circulated rapidly. Some said the Servants covered up all of it.
Samuel dreaded the day he received a call asking him to serve on a committee examining one the South Hill Servants. Different Gatherings always handled reviews of Servants to prevent conflicts of interest. He didn’t think he could participate in such a committee. He just wanted to slip away quietly and get on with his life, hopefully with both Judith and David with him. But the current mess was going to cause trouble for a lot of people.
Armageddon’s Slaves © Jeffrey Thomas All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All events and characters are
products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living
or dead is purely coincidental
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