Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1)
Read Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) Online
Authors: M.K. Gilroy
THE RISE OF THE BEAST
The Patmos Conspiracy – Book 1
Copyright © 2016 Mark Gilroy Creative LLC
Published by Sydney Lane Press, a Division of Gray Point Media LLC.
2000 Mallory Lane, Suite 130-229
Franklin, Tennessee 37067
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Version: SLP.006.2016.01
EDITIONS
Paperback: 9780975866221
E-Book: 9780975866238
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937545
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, businesses, celebrities, or locales are used only for a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons is entirely coincidental.
International English Language Version
Dedicated to my lovely and loving wife, Amy
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to early manuscript reviewers who provided invaluable feedback on bringing the beast to life! My heartfelt thank you to Allen Deaver, Bob DeMoss, Sid Frost, Brian Henson, Lanny Hester, Julie Jayne, Danny McGuffey, Kim Russell, David Sams, and Jeane Wynn!
Contents
11:
Devil’s Den Hiking Trail, Ozark National Forest
15:
Devil’s Den Hiking Trail, Ozark National Forest
18:
Devil’s Den Hiking Trail, Ozark National Forest
M.K. Gilroy Novels
The Kristen Conner Mystery Series
Cold As Ice
Cuts Like a Knife
Every Breath You Take
Under Pressure – Coming August 2016
The Patmos Conspiracy
The Rise of the Beast—Book 1
Voice of the Dragon – Book 2 – Coming Fall 2016
Mark of the Beast – Book 3 – to be announced
The Blood Red Horse – Book 4 – to be announced
The Final Battle – Book 5 – to be announced
Just Before Midnight: A Christmas Eve Novella
I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet.
Revelation 1:9-10, NLT
Patmos is a small, lightly populated Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Christian tradition identifies it as the place where the Apostle John was banished by the Roman government, and the place where he received the Revelation of Christ. The Cave of the Apocalypse is a popular destination for Christian pilgrims.
Book 1
Rise of the Beast
Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name.
Revelation 13:1, NLT
Prologue
From the Journal of Jonathan Alexander
Some things are true but can’t be said out loud.
I learned that lesson the first time I told my dad he was a drunken bum. My dad wasn’t so bad. He wasn’t a mean drunk. I simply shouldn’t have spoken the truth of his miserable existence when he was sober. That’s when he got mean.
Western Civilization is dying. That means the death of invention, productivity, learning, beauty, and peace—at least an acceptable level of peace. Total peace is not in the best interests of progress.
The death of Western Civilization means no more rule of law. I have not always followed the law, but I respect the law.
What will the world be like when the only quarter of humanity that brings value to human existence gives way to the savages?
The direction the world is traveling must be stopped, no matter what it takes or what the cost.
See, I told you some things are true but can’t be said out loud. I can see your revulsion to what I write. I can picture the uncomfortable flicker of your eyes. You want to turn away from me.
But be honest. Confess what you know to be true in your heart. Deep down, you feel a glimmer of recognition… maybe even a twinge excitement, don’t you? Somewhere beneath the veneer of political correctness and feigned compassion, you can almost feel and believe that which is authentic in my words. Can the world continue as it is and be home to a thriving civilization?
You know the answer. The world cannot continue on its present demographic course. The exponential aggregate of population growth alone is unsustainable. I feel a twinge of sadness that some must die for no other reason than the profligacy of their forebears. I feel no sadness for the necessary deaths of others. If not eradicated, the global death throes created by brutal peoples and cultures that offer nothing of beauty, will be horrific.
You are looking away. I make you uncomfortable. I don’t blame you for not approving my words. You would be labeled a bigot, selfish, arrogant, barbaric, and even ignorant. All the while, barbarians create and perpetuate a world of brutality within the sphere of their ugly self-destructive existence.
I am not the only one who believes the death of the West means a plunge into unfettered barbarism for the world. Many see the same truth and know that something must be done, but shrink back from the required confrontation in thought and deed. I’m sure some believe that benevolence and education will transform cultures of misery into enlightened beacons of hope in dark lands. I don’t criticize that sentiment. The world needs kindness, however naïve, misguided, and inefficacious it might be.
But those who recognize the inescapability of what is happening and yet choose to do nothing, bear guilt. They are cowards who
have no taste for the necessary steps to save what is good in the world in order to give hope to the future. Their only comfort will be that their mortal existence—their only existence—will pass away before the full measure of impending calamity has materialized. But what of their children and grandchildren?
I’ve lived a reasonably long life. There is nothing more for me to attain. So why do I choose to undertake what is nearly impossible now? Well, someone must. The Creator God, if he exists, certainly doesn’t seem interested in the world condition at the moment, nor for quite some time.
You will, of course, accuse me of insanity and evil. I say the same of you. You have fallen under the spell of the Sophists, those clever thinkers and influencers who parse minutiae while blind to seismic events and realities right before their eyes. You can no longer recognize what is good and evil. You could never understand that it is hope and truth that drives me. Am I wrong to believe that perhaps Alaric has not yet crossed the Tiber with his savages and breached the wide-open gates of Rome? Perhaps there is more time to save civilization.
With the moral dissipation of the West, that time is short.
I see your eyes. You look at me as if I am a madman. You somehow believe that everything will work out despite the present course. Do the math. Compare the existence of those having babies with those not having babies. Do you not see that the numbers of the savage and deficient are swelling to flood and subdue the lands of prosperity and progress?
You may wish to cling to your belief that no one has the right to affirm cultural superiority and judge peoples that offer nothing but pain and suffering. But who is the madman?
Who will speak the words that must be spoken? Who will perform the deeds? In the same manner as the Greek and Roman Empires of my heritage, the Western Civilization we know now has been robbed of its faith and courage. Just as the Sophists were the bedfellows of death, decay, and ruin for my forefathers in Athens, so the Sophists of today play with fanciful and irrelevant notions of progress while the world burns around them. Even now the swirling smoke from the flames blinds them and the lemmings who follow them obediently over the cliff and into the abyss of the new and final dark ages.
Western Civilization is all that has really mattered in world history. Let the sheep of academia bleat of an enlightened fragment of a parchment or a single mathematical discovery or a shard of painted ceramic or an etching on a stone from other societies. I’m happy to recognize and give credit to the achievements and wonders of other world cultures. But deep down everyone knows Western Civilization has spawned the only world history that matters for a simple reason. No other culture, no other ethos, no other philosophy has created the pathway for the poor to create a middle class and for a burgeoning middle class to become rich—and for all to live with some modicum of decency.
Think of that truth before judging me for what I am about to do. Test my words against all you know. Art, learning, and prosperity for the masses is unique to the ideals founded in Athens. Hate me if you will, but were I to shrink from the voice inside of me, you would learn soon enough there is no such thing as a noble savage.
In the past one hundred years the West’s engine of upward mobility has done its work so well that even its own poor feel
they are deserving of more than they are able to attain by their own sweat and guile while they already have much more than all but the wealthiest of the other world cultures, simply because of where they live and the men of courage and willfulness who built it. I want to look in their eyes and laugh when the teats of largesse and abundance dry up.
When Socrates raised the bitter cup of hemlock to his lips, the city elders of Athens watched but did not understand what was really happening. They were not witnessing the death of a wise man but of wisdom. As they killed truth, they ordained their own death.
The world is dying before our eyes and the ones who can do something to save what is decent and beautiful in humanity refuse to act. They know not that they drink deeply from Socrates cup. They dance with the devil in his many forms and forget that he will exact his due.
The world needs an intercessor, whether with God or Lucifer or the sum of man’s belief in something divine.
On the Island of Patmos, the place of my father’s birth, St. John the Apostle had a vision of a beast rising from the sea.
What is needed today is a beast. So I have prayed to the Creator God, whether he lives or listens or exists only as a projection of human wishing. I have told him that I will do what all others fear to do. Perhaps if he exists, he will be pleased that one man has stood up to fight. The God of the Bible did flood the Earth and drown the wicked after all. He has not always sat idly by while the world falls into ruins, though I suspect he has always lacked the power or the will to do what is necessary for his children to enjoy and master the dangerous world in which he placed them.
I will seek his favor. If he denies me his blessing, I will do what others before me have done. I will bend his will to my will.
I have not lost my courage… I have not lost my will to rule… I will rise from the sea. I will ride the blood red horse of the Apocalypse. I will be the Beast who destroys the world in order to save it.
