“I see it,” Carl spoke up. “An angel keeps any harm from coming to the earth. It looks like John is saying that there’s to be a sort of supernatural protection over us until the angels have sealed the servants of God on their foreheads.”

“But do you know what sealing means? And why foreheads?”

John asked.

Carl hesitated. “Got me, Jack. Unless a seal is like a sign of ownership.”

Lori said, “Could it be that the forehead—symbolizes the mind or the will?”

“Excellent, Lori. You two are very quick.”

“Well,” Lori explained, “that’s what my aunt Josephine told me. God would not send destruction on the earth until He’d placed His seal of ownership on people all over the world.”

“There’s just one problem,” Carl said. “We’ve already had the meteor. So when did the sealing take place?”

John Edwards was amazed at the insight and intelligence of his new guests. He was beginning to understand that Carl and Lori were not just a couple of lucky travelers who had dropped in out of nowhere. They seemed to have some special calling on their lives.

“When did the sealing begin?” Jack mused. “Now, that’s a good question.”

IN HIS MIND’S EYE, he was standing on a huge platform on the Mall in Washington, D.C., between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. He was fifty years old, in the height of his ministry. Before him were assembled five hundred thousand evangelicals and Roman Catholics from all over America. It was the largest Christian gathering in the history of America. The people had been called together by a committee organized by a Puerto Rican pastor who had once been jailed as a heroin addict.

“Now, join your hands together all over this great assembly,” he was saying. “Then, let’s pray. Father, we have sinned. Our nation has sinned. We repent before You. We humbly ask Your forgiveness. Come, O Father, heal our land. Hear our prayer, Father, and let righteousness flow like a river over the great land. . . .” Then the cheers, the shouts of joy, the applause, the tears of joy— God had heard their prayer.

JOHN EDWARDS SNAPPED out of his reverie. He looked at Lori and said, “I believe, and it’s strictly my opinion, that the sealing in preparation for the end times started on April 29, 1980, at a great meeting of a half-million Christians in Washington, D.C. This was the anniversary of the prayer meeting of the Jamestown settlers, when they landed on the Atlantic shore in Virginia on April 29, 1607, and claimed America for the Lord.”