“So now you understand,” Charley continued, “why I’m convinced the Four Horsemen have already come and gone. It was as if some kind of madness was let loose on the whole world during the twen-tieth century. We had the most deadly weapons of all times, and whether they were placed in the hands of Fascists or Communists or Islamic terrorists or brutal dictators of some kind, the savagery was unimaginable. At one point in the 1970s there were as many as a hundred wars taking place simultaneously.”

“The thing that disturbs me, Charley,” Lori said, “is the idea that God personally engineered all of this. How could He do something like that? Why would He want to make this a terrible century of slaughter and bloodshed all over the world?”

“On the contrary, Lori,” Charley answered. “God didn’t engineer it at all. Rather, He allowed the natural instincts of sinful men to have free rein, to reap the penalty of their own behavior to the fullest extent possible. Instead of doing good, men used their God-given freedoms to destroy their fellowmen. Of course, God knew that this would eventually happen, but He also knew that this was the very thing that would help bring our troubled world to the end of the age.”

“So,” Lori continued, “from now on there won’t be any more wars or revolutions anywhere in the whole world?”

Charley paused and thought for a long moment. “Okay. I’m going to take the easy way this time, Lori. My answer is ‘yes and no.’ I believe that at least this part of the prophecy in Revelation had its culmination in the twentieth century. There’s still one big war left to go, but it’s very different from the others.

“We’ll talk about the next war later. I don’t want to confuse you guys right now.”

“Confuse us?” Carl snorted. “Are you kidding? I’ve been in information overload all day!”

The laughter that filled the room seemed to clear the air and bring everybody back to the reality of the moment. But before they could change the subject, Carl quickly picked up his train of thought. “Charley,” he said, “before we move on, I want to go back to what I asked you earlier. Are Christians going to be spared or not?”

“Forgive me, Carl,” Charley said and chuckled, “but once again, I have to say ‘yes and no.’ I know that’s not much help, but since you’re so determined to keep this dialogue going, why don’t we take a look at Revelation again. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Carl said. “Good idea.”

“In the ninth verse of chapter six,” Charley picked up, “John says, ‘I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.’ Then look at verse eleven where it says that the souls of the dead were told to rest a little longer ‘until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.’”