Zen's War: Captivity

Judah remembered when he had made the decision to follow Joshua. He remembered when they had met in high school so many years before. In their sophomore year the World Trade Center had been destroyed, and part of the Pentagon. Judah had been so blinded by hatred and anger towards the enemy, as Joshua had referred to the international terrorist network of Mohammed’s Martyrs that he followed him unquestioningly. They had been best friends, and almost like brothers. When World War III had started when they were both in college, Joshua’s rage reached its boiling point, as had Judah’s. Feeling powerless, Judah found strength in Joshua.

When the American government had collapsed, Joshua and Judah abandoned their families and their lives in favor of ascetic lifestyles. They would use the Bible as a guide for living. Joshua preached about living a life like the Israelites had in the Book of Leviticus. This meant that they would have to perform every ritual, exactly as it was described. According to Joshua, America had elicited God’s wrath by becoming greedy and corrupt. He began to refer to America as The Whore of Babylon, as described in the Book of Revelations. Some considered The Book of Revelations to be merely allegorical like the Faerie Queene by Sir Edmund Spencer, but Joshua took it literally. For Joshua the Whore of Babylon was literally the American Empire, while Roman Catholic Church was the beast. Chapter seventeen, verse three of the Book of Revelations describes the Whore of Babylon seated on the back of the beast. And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. In Joshua’s opinion the fall of America had been prophesied in chapter eighteen of the Book of Revelations. The prophecies were simply starting to come to fruition. Joshua believed that other than the Whore of Babylon, the reference to city of Babylon was also a reference to America. It had been written that Babylon would be destroyed by God’s wrath. Many scholars believed the reference to Babylon had in actuality been a reference to the Roman Empire of the first century A.D., the time that St. John the Divine had supposedly received his revelations while on the island of Patmos. It made sense to Judah, Rome being the main persecutor of Christians at that time. However Joshua’s interpretation made sense also.

During the first six months of the aftermath of World War III, when much of the western hemisphere had been cloaked by nuclear winter, Judah followed Joshua blindly. During that time they were forced to depend on each other to survive. Joshua had been the strong one with the tenacity and the will to survive. They were scavengers, finding food in abandoned supermarkets. Occasionally food could be obtained from the remainder of the Red Cross and other humanitarian aid organizations, while water could be obtained in the same manner. As the American government began to fall further and further into disarray, food and water became less and less available. As people became more and more desperate, people became more willing to commit atrocities towards each other. Joshua preached against killing and stealing from others. Joshua and Judah would start a utopian community founded on the principles of Christianity. There had been many communities founded on the precepts of religion throughout history, some becoming full-fledged empires. One of the communities were no as the Shakers. The Shakers believed in celibacy at all costs. Their community didn’t last however, due to the fact that they couldn’t reproduce. Another group of fundamentalists that didn’t last were called the Millerites. Their leader William Miller of New York predicted that the second advent of Christ would occur during or before 1844. He predicted Christ would return at this time using biblical prophecy, but apparently he had been mistaken. Joshua had been raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, an offshoot of the Millerites. Since Christ never returned, the Seventh-day Adventists believed that after 1844 Christ had entered the heavenly sanctuary to give people the chance to redeem themselves before the end times.

Joshua and Judah together tried to come up with a place to start their new community. They tried to find a remote location, far removed from the refugee camps and anarchy of remaining population centers. In their wanderings they had come across many abandoned buildings. Eventually between Bisbee and Benson they came across an old ranch house at the foot of the Dragoon Mountains. The ranch house included a working well, a barn, and a greenhouse. It seemed like a suitable place to start over. It was then that Joshua said it was time to recruit others to join their community. Joshua told Judah to wait for him at the ranch house, and that he would return with 12 men of God. Judah told him not to go, but he went anyway. Three days later Joshua returned with 12 men. To Judah it was a miracle.

At that point, Joshua had not yet claimed that he was the Messiah. At that point he was simply a leader. Joshua had the ability to convince people, and to get them to trust him. The twelve men he had recruited had lost everything in the war, and had nothing to live for. Joshua gave them a purpose. He began to preach to them about why the war happened. The war had been the result of divine judgment. It had been prophesied in the War Scroll―which was a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls―that a war would occur between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. Joshua claimed that he, Judah and the twelve others were the Sons of Light. Everyone that had died in the war had been on the side of the Sons of Darkness. They had survived because they had been chosen for a higher purpose.

Together they built a community. The ranch house itself was not in the best shape. There were many repairs that would have to be done. They all combined energy and strength to rebuild their lives. Joshua galvanized Judah and the other men, by inspiring them with Bible verses. While in college Joshua had considered entering the seminary to become a priest. He had studied the Bible from cover to cover. In school he had been able to recite entire passages of the Bible from memory. He used this ability to memorize the majority of the King James Version of the Bible. Joshua had also memorized an English translation of much of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Joshua strived to have their community live as the ancient Israelites had, when Moses led them out of bondage in Egypt. The book of Exodus describes Moses leading the Israelites through the desert for 40 years to the promised land of Canaan. Moses had made a covenant with God on behalf of the Israelites. The covenant was an agreement between the Israelites and their God Yahweh. There were innumerable aspects of the covenant. The most obvious were the Ten Commandments, but there were many more aspects as well. The Book of Leviticus was basically the rulebook that enumerated every law that God included in the covenant. Joshua stressed the importance of following every law in the Book of Leviticus, including animal sacrifice.

A typical day would consist of three prayer services, including the evening, morning, and afternoon service. The morning and evening prayer services included the sacrifice of a goat or lamb, in the courtyard of the tabernacle they had constructed behind the ranch house. During each service Joshua would deliver a certain. Judah and the rest of the disciples were held spellbound by the words of their leader. His mannerisms and the gleam in his eyes were almost mesmerizing. At first there was selflessness in his words. He preached about helping your fellow man, and the importance of loving your enemy. Joshua’s rhetoric about peace and love did not last. Slowly his altruistic intentions were replaced by pride and arrogance. It was then that he insisted he was the high priest.

Deep within his mind, Judah knew that Joshua was descending further into madness. That was after Judah had already sacrificed everything for Joshua. Referring to himself as the high priest was one thing, but when Joshua began to refer to himself as the son of God Judah had reached his limit. The rest of the men were convinced, but Judah could not bring himself to accept that Joshua was what he claimed to be, abandoning his role as one of Joshua’s disciples.