Jacob's Trouble 666 is a novel by Terry, which was published a number of years ago. It tells the story of Jacob Zen, a young, lower echelon U.S. government official, who is forced to take on staggering responsibilities, when millions of people vanish, and his world begins coming apart. Terry wanted to share with you this fictionalized account of the Rapture and of the first part of the Tribulation era in serialized form. Although it is fiction, it is a story that could take on startling reality with your very next breath, because Christ's shout: "Come up hither" (Rev 4:1) could happen at any moment!

Prologue

The seeds were there all along for parenting the fruits that would sweeten the mouth but quickly grow bitter in the belly. The inevitable came like a flood following the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Powerful money brokers' fanatic zeal for ever-widening margins of profit, coupled with consumers' appetites for increasingly opulent lifestyles, exploded in an orgy of uncontrolled credit spending by individuals and governments.

A super computer innovation networked the entire planet in a geometric progression when internationalist powers that-be determined to solve feared technological problems. This resulted in a radically changed worldwide monetary system of electronic-funds- transfer.

Magnified by these advances, disparity between the haves and have-nots ripped civilization apart. Unprecedented terrorism and civil anarchy ensued, making cooperative police controls necessary on a global scale.

New, incurable, untreatable diseases brought on by human excesses ravaged the earth. Droughts, floods, earthquakes and other phenomena struck more frequently and with greater devastation. Still, mankind, through exponential growth in knowledge, and quantum leaps in science, seemed to maintain control.

That same technology, however, ignited man's basest lusts — enslaving millions within the cyber-space realm of virtual reality by creating addictions rivaling even those caused by the mind-searing drugs that saturated every culture on earth. Western Judaeo-Christian precepts were all but absorbed by Eastern metaphysical theosophies, based on spirit guidance, reincarnation and inner-self search for knowledge, truth and power. Despite all the talk of peace, wars flared, then died to live again in other places. Israel and its neighboring Arabic nations agreed to a cessation of hostilities, and there was prosperity for a season.

Then came the truly cataclysmic events: The Russian coalition war machine totally destroyed in a single day; the inexplicable disappearance of millions of people in a fraction of a second; and the demise of America as a superpower.

Unified Europe, already a powerful entity within the New World Order, rushed to fill the vacuum, promising resolution to chaos created by the catastrophes. This became a promise kept, but better left unfulfilled.

Each generation, while those people live their given increments of history, compares its circumstance to circumstances of those before, and speculates about those who will come after. Jesus assessed the lot of a future generation when He said:

"For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."

Jacob Zen, deeply engrossed in the old book, and contemplating the torrential calamitous events that had engulfed his miserable existence, judged that this must surely be that time. His lips moved as he read the words inaudibly.

"And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea..."

"... And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him..."

"... no man might buy or sell, except he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name..."

"... and his number is six hundred, threescore and six." Revelation 13

"Alas! For that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble..." Jeremiah 30:7

Jacob closed the thick volume while moving, almost without thinking, to the other side of the room. He lay stretched full-length on the hard plastic sofa and shut his eyes, gently massaging his aching temples with his fingertips, anticipating the only pleasure Interface had not taken from him, his memories.

His memories of the past — a time when he could envision only right and justice, and a future "lied with promise at the side of the young woman who made it possible.

While his thoughts probed into the past, the ever-present foul smells in the room gave way — fading slowly — then more quickly — becoming the calm, crisp autumn scents of a Massachusetts countryside, during that earlier time......