The Last Judgment
Authors: Craig Parshall
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
All Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright ©1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover by Left Coast Design, Portland, Oregon
Cover photo © by Peter Steuart/The Image Bank/Getty Images
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
THE LAST JUDGMENT
The Chambers of Justice series
Copyright © 2005 by Craig Parshall
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parshall, Craig, 1950-
The last judgment / Craig Parshall.
p. cm. â (Chambers of justice ; bk. 5)
ISBN 978-0-7369-1292-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-6042-7 (eBook)
1. Chambers, Will (Fictitious character)âFiction. 2. Christian converts from IslamâFiction. 3. Petroleum industry and tradeâFiction. 4. MuslimsâCrimes againstâFiction. 5. Attorney and clientâFiction. 6. BillionairesâFiction. 7. TerrorismâFiction. 8. JerusalemâFiction. 9. CultsâFiction. I. Title.
PS3616.A77L37 2005
813'.54âdc22
2004015416
All rights reserved.
No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author's and publisher's rights is strictly prohibited.
To Bob Kaminsky, former Director of New Tribes Bible Institute and lifelong missionary to South America, who imparted the gospel of Jesus Christ to me and introduced me to the hope of things to come.
Contents
The Chambers of Justice Series
As the last in the Chambers of Justice series, this novel has brought me full circle in a sense. Geographically, it begins in the pastoral landscape of Virginiaâas did
The Resurrection File,
the first installment in the seriesâbut ends, as did that first novel also, in the turbulent, evocative, inscrutable city of Jerusalem. Between those two distant points there were many milesâ¦and many people who helped create this story along the way.
My thanks go to Rabbi Berel Wein in Jerusalem, noted Jewish historian and founder of The Destiny Foundation (and also a fellow lawyer). He took the time to share an intriguing insight about the Golden Gate in the Old City. Because the reader is not only taken on a side trip to Cairo, but also on a mini-exploration of a slice of Egyptian history, I appreciated the expertise I received from Dr. Walid el Batouty, Egyptologist and Cairo resident. Paul Gossard, once again, did a great job as my editor.
Michael Friedson (another lawyer!) and his wife, Felice, of TheMediaLine.org, Americans transplanted to Jerusalem, have been a constant source of accurate Israeli information, Middle Eastern current events, geopolitical savvy, and wonderful friendship.
Amnon (“Nony”) Shpak, in my humble estimation the best Israel tour guide of all, is owed so many thanksâof course for his personal excursions with my wife, Janet, and meâbut also for the laughter we share when the three of us are together, as well as his generosity of heart. Eitan Sasson, of Unitours, has always been a first-rate friend and consummate travel connection between where our feet are and where our hearts always yearn to be.
But because this is also a story about how a trial lawyer and his wife navigate their way through an obstacle course of life's events, it couldn't have been told without my wife, Janet. She will recognize our travelsâfrom the hazy mountain vistas of Virginia to driving the streets of Cairo, walking amid the ancient stones of Jerusalem, and even avoiding sniper fire in Gaza. But more than that, may she see that even a “legal thriller” is no match for the thrill of our life of love together.
In the Near Future
T
HE POLICE WERE RESTRAINING
the tightly packed, screaming mass of people. There was a palpable feeling that something was about to give way. Like a flood tide stressing cement and steel, the undulating human wave was pressing against the police barricades. Nervous state and federal agents had their hands poised over their sidearms and nightsticks. Gas masks dangled from their belts. Behind them, a riot squad, armed with tear gas guns, stood rigid.
The small army of sheriff's deputies, state police, and federal agents had formed a protective ring around the angry, surging mob. But their line was being strained by hundreds of protestors. Many of them were screaming, red-faced, against “the bloody Butcher”â“the Sheikh of slaughter.” Several of the women wore buttons bearing pictures of victims of the World Trade Center attack, as well as of the Wall Street bombing and the port and mall bombings that had followed in the years later.
The police had separated these protestors from the other groupâthe one with signs demanding “Tolerance for All Religions,” and even-handedness and free speech for ArabâAmericans, and calling for an investigation into “American War Crimes Against Muslims” and denouncing “U.S. and Israeli Atrocities.”
The two separate knots of protestors and their law-enforcement restrainers were on the perimeter of the sprawling compound of the Islamic Center for Cultural Change, situated
in northern Virginia about twenty miles off the Washington beltway. The shoving and pushing and the screaming of profanities and threats were going on at the fringe of the property, out near the highway.
Amid the confusion and anger, some of the deputies were still trying to figure it all out.
“I thought they weren't going to invite this sheikh bozo to come and speak⦔ one sheriff's deputy at the protest line shouted out to a fellow deputy.
“They weren't. They supposedly uninvited him.”
“What happened?”
“He showed up anyway.”
“How does a guy like thatâsomebody who says that Osama bin Laden was a hero, get into this country anyway? Why didn't INS stop that scumbucket at the border?”
But before his partner could respond, a protestor broke through the line and began running, an American flag flying behind, toward the Islamic Center buildings.
The two deputies lit out after him. He dodged. They chased. After a moment or two of head fakes, turns, and twists, and while one of the groups cheered him raucously, the man was tackled.
“Don't let the flag touch the ground!” someone in the protest group cried out.
The deputies held the man down and rapidly zipped his wrists together behind his back with heavy-duty nylon ties.