Facing the Future by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins Page A

like me, and I joined the kingdom.”
    With their stories—which Bruce sometimes referred to as “testimonies”—out of the way, they got down to the reason for their meeting. Beth Murray told Judd that Bruce had brought her up-to-date on Talia Grey’s case. “I have studied her file, and it doesn’t look good for her at this point. She was much more deeply involved than you might have assumed in many of the crimes committed by her brother and his friend. The best thing we have going for us is that court dockets are jammed and only getting worse. I have a few ideas, but Bruce tells me you have one too.”
    “If you don’t mind,” Judd said.
    “Let’s hear it,” she said.
    Judd told her of the idea that had come to him in the middle of the night. “I don’t claim to know much about the law, and I guess I thought of this because of the things I’ve seen on TV. But I was just wondering whether she might be able to help herself by agreeing to testify against LeRoy and Cornelius.”
    “That’s an excellent idea, Judd,” she said. “I had been thinking of something along those lines as well. If she is willing and brave enough to withstand the threats of LeRoy’s and her brother’s associates, she just may be able to do herself lot of good. Good thinking.”
    “Actually,” Judd said, “now that I have met you and think about it a little, I see one more big advantage to having you working with Talia.”
    “And what’s that?” Ms. Murray said.
    “You’ll have to interview Sergeant Tom Fogarty, won’t you?”
    “Yes. In fact, I already have.”
    “And did you meet his wife?”
    “Just briefly. It was long enough, however, for me to sense that there’s some tension there.”
    Judd and Bruce filled her in, and the three of them agreed to be praying for just the right opening for Beth to support Mrs. Fogarty in her new faith and to perhaps reach Tom for Christ.

    Judd drove home that day feeling better than he had in a long time. He was glad he had met Beth Murray, and he was optimistic about the futures of his new acquaintances. He knew there were no guarantees. He knew that in real life, not everyone made decisions or took the actions one might want them to.
    He enjoyed being able to tell Vicki that he had not only kept her confidence but that she would also get her wish to meet Cameron Williams and hear of his experiences with Nicolae Carpathia. That meeting came one momentous afternoon the following week, when Mr. Williams was able to get away from the Chicago bureau office of Global Weekly magazine and join the Kids Tribulation Force and Bruce for a highly secret meeting.

    To Vicki, the ruggedly handsome thirtyish Buck Williams seemed like a man more comfortable with adults than with teenagers. He greeted them warmly enough, but he was a bit formal and quiet, something she knew he couldn’t be normally with a job like his. He joined them in their prayer time, but then he sat behind the kids.
    Bruce began the meeting by finishing his promised lesson on the time chart of the seven-year tribulation. “It looks to me,” he said, “and to many of the experts who came before us, like this period of history we’re in right now will last for the first twenty-one months of the Tribulation. They encompass what the Bible calls the seven Seal Judgments, or the judgments of the seven-sealed scroll. Then comes another twenty-one-month period in which we will see the seven Trumpet Judgments. In the last forty-two months of the seven years, if we have survived, we will endure the most severe test, the seven Vial Judgments. The last half of the seven years is called the Great Tribulation, and if we are alive at the end of it, we will be rewarded by seeing the glorious appearing of Christ.
    “These judgments get progressively worse, and they will be harder and harder to survive. If we die, we will be in heaven with Christ and our loved ones. But we may suffer horrible deaths. If we somehow make it through the