James Patterson’s Journal—The Story of Congregation of Andria Church During Dark Time (Patterson’s Tale #4)
JAMES PATTERSON MARRIES LEAH LEE, AND DISCOVERS THAT HER FATHER, COL. RACHARD LEE, WAS A POWERFUL LEADER IN A MILITIA GROUP.
“I did marry Leah the following year, praise God! I eventually learned that her father was a powerful clan leader who had been betrayed by some of his own followers in Fillyelfia who were bribed by a group of the local Overmasters to say that Rachard Lee was plotting a rebellion against them and against the 2 local Council members. Lee had been totally loyal to them, but he had made many enemies over the years as he resisted the demands of the Overmasters to support them in everything they wanted to do to further enslave the people of that district, and this he became unwilling to do. He and his followers resisted the overt power grab by the paid henchmen of the Council members, and for almost 10 years there was a standoff between Rachard Lee and his people and the forces of the Overmasters, who were willing puppets of their Council rulers.
“The large village of Fillyelfia became a hornets’ nest of resistance against the Council and their local Overmasters, until three of Lee’s close friends and trusted advisers betrayed him to the Council for a large sum of money. He was arrested, accused of fomenting a rebellion against the Council, and his family driven out of the village. Before he could be executed he escaped from his confinement with the help of a group of friends who were determined to resist the Council. Lee was reunited with his family and they were smuggled out of that District, being advised to relocate to our far-away Andria District. Of course it was several weeks after his arrival before a few trusted members of the Jesus Sect were told of these matters by Lee, who also had been a Colonel in the Fillyelfia Militia, a group controlled by the local Overmasters. We soon discovered that he also had his own copy of God’s Bible and was very knowledgeable about God’s Word and His Will for His people. Lee was a natural leader whose experience and knowledge would be very helpful to us in the future.
PASTOR TORASH IS AMBUSHED AND KILLED, ALONG WITH OTHER MEMBERS OF THE JESUS SECT, BY A GROUP OF ENFORCERS
“My cousin Torash Patterson was the Pastor of the Andria JS church from the time my uncle Jorgan went to be with God, around 2364, until he was arrested in the JS year of 2378, during a time of increasingly harsh treatment and persecution of all of the local members of the Jesus Sect. Besides our Old White Church in Andria, I knew of at least 14 or 15 other small groups of believers scattered up and down the river, only two of which had their own church building. This was the beginning of the truly bad times for all of us—the time when the real testing of our faith began.
“Pastor Torash was taken into custody, along with about 20 other JS members from our church and from those who lived in and around Andria but who had not yet joined with us. Torash was holding a small meeting with people who lived around the village and who had previously indicated a serious interest in learning more about the teachings of our Savior. I was sick that day, so Leah stayed home with me and our two young daughters to care for me. I remember she baked some wonderful thistle berry bread and made a pot of her wonderful pigeon noodle soup to help me feel better (I had a bad head clog and was feeling miserable). The soup really helped.
“Towards the end of the day, Pastor Torash had just baptized two new believers in the river when suddenly a force of at least 50 Enforcers burst upon them from out of the brush and trees around what they had been confident was a secret and secluded spot. The Enforcers, we later learned, had been accompanied by 10 or 12 of the anti-JS pagans from the village who had somehow learned of our church’s meeting by the river, and who reported this to the local Enforcer station. Other members of Andria church later were informed by witnesses to this atrocity that Raka Billsun, father of the previously executed teen, Rogell, was with them and was probably the one who actually guided the Enforcers to the spot where my cousin Torash was holding a teaching service and a baptism.
“With the river behind them and the Enforcers surrounding them, some of the people at the service tried to evade those beasts and escape into the forest, but they were shot down as they tried to save themselves. Up to this point in time we had experienced only sporadic persecution of the Jesus Sect, with some arrests and beatings, and then the people were usually released after the payment of fines, most of which were confiscated by the evil Enforcers instead of being turned over to the Overmaster administrators. (By this time the Enforcers were becoming almost a law unto themselves, and appeared to the people to not only enforce the laws but also to make them.) For most of my life we never knew just exactly who made the laws of our district. We always assumed that the Council made the laws and the Overmasters and Enforcers made sure the people obeyed them. But in recent years the people have been convinced that the Enforcers were the real lawmakers and law enforcers.
“Pastor Torash was captured along with 8 or 10 of the members of Andria church. He was wounded in his upper body, I was later told, as were a few of the others that were captured during this unexpected raid. Leah’s father, Rachard Lee, was there with three of his loyal followers who had come to Andria with him, and armed only with long knives they managed to kill several Enforcers before they escaped into the forest. He later told me that at least 10 of our JS members were killed by the Enforcers, who dumped their bodies into the river, and the current swept them away. This event marked the beginning of a relentless persecution of all of the JS community up and down the Tomak river that culminated, at least for me and most of the members of Andria church, with the killing in 2410 of the majority of our members by the military, including to my great grief, my Leah, my two daughters, and their husbands, and most or all of my grandchildren. If I wasn’t convinced in my heart that I would see all of them again in God’s Heaven, I would be the most wretched of men and would surely have renounced my faith in the One who loved all of us so much that He gave himself for us, so long ago.
ENFORCER BRUTALITY COMES TO ANDRIA VILLAGE
“The next day a large number of Enforcers came to Andria village and began to search for Rachard Lee and his followers, kicking many of our JS members and beating them with their clubs, demanding that they tell the names of other members and the whereabouts of Lee and his armed followers who had killed their friends. The Enforcers came to my house and smashed open my gate and my front door. Ten of them terrorized my Leah and my daughters, demanding that we tell them where Lee was. One of those beasts pushed one of my girls hard against a wall, injuring her. This so infuriated me that I immediately attacked him and threw him to the floor. I grabbed his club from his hands and was just about to begin hitting him with it when two of them struck me with their clubs, knocking me senseless for an hour or so. When I regained consciousness I saw my Leah sitting on the floor next to me, comforting our daughter, Janda, who had been bruised by the Enforcers. My other daughter, Karra, was sitting on the lap of her grandfather, Rachard Lee, and was wrapped in his big, strong arms. One of Lee’s men was sewing up my head and wiping away the blood. He helped me into a chair, but my head hurt worse than it ever had before, and I was dizzy as I sat down.
“I remember Lee’s first words: ‘The time of trouble has begun in and around Andria, Jamie, the same as it did years ago around Fillyelfia’. He looked at me and Leah, who was only scratched up a bit. He assured me that what we had experienced was just the beginning of the campaign begun by the Overmasters to eliminate all members of the Jesus Sect from this district. Lee told me much the same thing that my cousin Torash had often said—that our rulers hated followers of Jesus the Messiah because they look to Him as their authority—as their real Guide and Master—and not to those who wielded power over our lives with force and firearms. He said that the Overmasters and their Enforcers were the same everywhere he had been—that they refused to be a force for good and instead chose the dark path of sin, preferring to follow the Evil One who hated our Creator and the members of the JS. As my dizziness began to go away, Lee told us that we shouldn’t expect to see Pastor Torash or the others alive again, for in all probability they were already killed. This saddened me and Leah, but her father was correct—we never saw Torash or the others again, and their families never knew what had become of them.
“The Enforcers lingered around our village for almost 2 weeks, doing their best to intimidate all of us, questioning many of the villagers multiple times about who were or were not members of the Jesus Sect. Surprisingly, even most of our pagan neighbors refused to cooperate with those evil beasts. They at least had enough honor to know who their real enemies were, and only a few of them reported any JS members they knew to the Enforcers. Eventually our governmental persecutors left Andria village and returned to their various fortified stations up and down the river. There was a small Enforcer station near Andria village but most of the time they feared to venture too far from it unless they came forth in sufficient numbers to intimidate the people.
“The Enforcers did post several guards at our old church building for about a month, and during that time we did not try to meet there. They used our church as their temporary base, and when they left it was full of their trash and dirt. Thankfully they did no major damage to our building nor did they disfigure the old flag on the hallway wall. The remaining members of the JS around Andria resumed meeting in Rober Tely’s old home about a month after the Enforcers left us. We cleaned it as best we could and began to meet cautiously in it each Sabbath day for a short morning service and a longer eve’s service, for our members and whatever new visitors we could attract seemed to feel safer in the dusk or darkness.
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NEXT TIME: Rachard Lee becomes Pastor of The Old White Church of Andria. He shows the members his very old Bible that had been printed in ‘Atlanta, Georgia’ in 2142. He teaches the Jesus Sect that persecution by the followers of the evil one was to be expected, and had happened even in the ancient days. The JS adopts the “fish” symbol as one way of identifying followers, and learns from Pastor Lee about the meaning of the old Saint Andrews flag. Andria Church grows slowly, despite the persecution of the JS, but then begins to decrease as the persecution grows worse.
