Chris Well WRITES!

I might as well just tell you right now, I killed Reverend Daniel
Glory. Back there at the church, in his study.

But this is my story. Don’t let anyone tell you different. My dad
always said we all write our own story. Of course, I guess
that’s why it worked out so well for him.

Why did I kill Reverend Daniel Glory? Sure, it was an accident.
More or less. At least, I think it was.

I don’t know, we were arguing about the Rapture and it kind of
got out of hand and then I just --

Wait. Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up.
This all started about three months ago, when Reverend
Daniel Glory told us we needed to do our Tribulation House
earlier than --

Oh. Wait.

Okay, I guess this actually started last year when Marvin
Dobbs left the church. Our church. The Last Church of God’s
Imminent Will.

A year ago last summer, Marvin left with some of the other
families to start a new church, and he took his Armageddon
House” multimedia show with him.

You do know about Armageddon House, right? Every
Halloween for the past three or four years, Marvin and our
team put together a special multimedia presentation
explaining the Great Tribulation, which ends with the Battle of
Armageddon.

Wait -- you don’t know about the Great Tribulation? It’s that
seven-year period between the Rapture and the Triumphant
Return of Jesus Christ, as described in the prophecies of
Daniel and Ezekiel and the Apostles Paul and John. After the
Lord Jesus takes His Bride home, there are going to be
seven years of horrible judgment inflicted on those who are
left b --

What? The murder of Reverend Glory? I’m getting to that.
Well, anyway, when Marvin left to form his little offshoot
splinter group, we discovered he had actually trademarked
the name “Armageddon House.” Imagine that.

When the board at church met to discuss the matter, we
considered doing Armageddon House anyway without him.
Just reconstruct it from memory and copy or use materials
from previous years. Use the same name, business as
usual. Just ignore the cease-and-desist letter, let God and
His angels work that out.

But we decided we didn’t want to be associated with
Armageddon House anymore. I mean, if Marvin and his new
“fellowship” planned to stage their own Armageddon House,
the risk of confusion in the marketplace was enough to
rebuild ours as a brand-new event.

Which is how we ended up with Tribulation House. It was an
opportunity for a new beginning. We went through a whole list
of potential names -- I came up with Kingdom Come, but was
voted down -- before we settled on Tribulation House.
We sat down and worked through the whole grid. Instead of
imagining how to simply explain or show a picture of each
bowl of wrath and each trumpet of judgment, we created an
entire theatrical event.

Yeah, we could have set up the charts and graphs and the
overhead projector. But today’s audience, this last generation,
they’re kind of jaded about flannel graph presentations, know
what I mean?

These kids today, with their Spongebob Squarepants and
their American Bandstand and their Buffy The Vampire
Slayer, they need the bells and whistles and the like.

The kids don’t need a lot of explanation. They need a
demonstration.

You see, that was the challenge, wasn’t it? It’s one thing to
say “the moon was blackened” or “the waters turned to blood”
or “men were stung by enormous flying scorpions” -- but how
do you make it happen right here, right before their eyes?

In the end, we created Tribulation House: A full-sensory
immersive interactive dramatic theatrical evangelistic event
that simulates what it will actually be like to live through the
events of the Great Tribulation. An entire full-service prophetic
experience.

You’d be surprised how much of it we accomplished with
sound and light. We developed the various rooms throughout
the church basement. Some college kids created
soundscapes for each event. We wrote up a full script for the
actors; they played everything from people caught up in the
events, to the world armies fighting the Most Holy, to the father
of lies himself, bound and thrown into the pit for a millennium.
The murder of Reverend Daniel Glory? I’m getting to that.

So we were working out the blueprints for creating Tribulation
House as a major theatrical evangelistic full-sensory ministry
outreach. We had debated the merits of various slogans for
the event -- the leading contenders were WE’LL SCARE THE
HELL OUT OF YOU; GET RIGHT OR GET LEFT; and THE
TIME IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK. While the first slogan
was a favorite of several board members, for its bracing,
truthful stance, in the end we worried that the neighbors
would misunderstand. So we went with the second slogan,
for its simple, instructional message.

And I remember that our chief carpenter, Bill Broadstreet, was
giving us his estimate for the physical construction to be done
on the project. Suddenly, Reverend Daniel Glory burst in with
some news.

“Friends!” There was a glow on the Reverend’s face unlike we
had seen before. The man stood there in the doorway to the
church basement, leaning against the doorframe, wheezing
to catch his breath. “Jesus is coming back!”

The room was silent. We all stared. At first, we wondered why
he was saying this right then. After all, he preached on this
topic every week. But then he dropped this bomb: “And I know
when!”

Okay, that was a new one. Collectively, everyone in the room
gasped. One of us, I don’t even remember who it was, asked,
“When, Reverend?”

“October 17.”

Five months.

“5:51 a.m.” Reverend Daniel Glory waved the papers clutched
in his hand. Later, I would wonder what he was waving at us.
His Bible study? His calculations? All I know is he grinned ear
to ear and said, “The Rapture is going to happen at 5:51 a.m.
on October 17.”

Everyone around the meeting table reacted differently. Some
were stunned into silence, others screamed with joy. One
noisy woman loudly sobbed and clapped.

Reverend Daniel Glory came into room, face aglow with thrill
and exhaustion, and dragged a chair from the wall over to our
table. He sat, waiting until everyone was silent again. “I now
have incontrovertible proof that the Rapture takes place this
coming October.”

I’m sure I grinned bigger than anyone in the room. “What
reason do you have to say that?”

Reverend Daniel Glory looked at me and winked. “Why stop
with one reason, boy? I got one hundred and seven of ’em!”

Of course, you know what this meant. We were going to have
to step up the production of Tribulation House.

(I still can't believe it's not Kingdom Come.)