Delusions, Part 2

It was rather comical, if you think about it.  There it was 6:00 am on the day of my midterms, and I was bleary eyed and feeling fuzzy for having not slept.  It is exhausting to be awake all night waiting for the spirit of your grandfather to appear in the corner of your room to take you to heaven.  Panic filling my chest, I punched in the numbers to my family's home two hours south.   

Upon hearing the quiet "hello" of my father, I asked, "Dad, what happened?"

"Well, Jason, the Lord is testing us to see if we remain faithful."

"Oh.  Well...when do you think it will happen?" I pressed.

"I don't know.  The Lord will reveal it to me when He sees fit.  Until then, remain faithful and watchful and continue about your life."

---

 Satan himself had risen to the highest position of God's only true church on the face of the Earth, and he was now calling the shots from his plush apartment across the street from Temple Square.  Somehow, the prophet of the Church, Ezra Taft Benson, had used his powers of evil and deception to make everyone believe that he was truly the Lord's mouthpiece, when in reality, as it was revealed to my dad, he was Lucifer.  Only, my dad was not fooled. 

His first priority after continuing to pull the wool over the entire population of the Church and the world outside, was to eliminate my father.  The Lord revealed to him that Satan had taken hold of the freeways and road systems, and that it was terribly unsafe for Dad to travel.  He should only travel locally, preferably just to church and Norton's (the grocery store.)   President Benson also had control of fire and he was sending lightning bolts from the sky to the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, starting various brush fires directly in my father's line of vision.  These were sent as threats, as warnings to him that he had better stay away and allow him to continue doing his wicked work in Salt Lake City.

Dad continued his classification of the world's inhabitants in his green spiral bound notebook, which he shared with me nightly as my mom and I, and sometimes my sister, would sit with him in the living room.  It was a relief to see that I was included among the Lord's Elect, as was my mother, sister, and youngest brother.   Two of my other brothers were classified as Telestial, meaning that due to their simple ways, they were neither Elect nor Wicked...they were something in between and it remained to be seen if they would rise to the level of the elect or be pulled down into the realm of the wicked.   And my other brother, due to his contentious nature, was on the Wicked list.

It was around this same time that it was revealed to Dad that he should begin retranslating the scriptures.  Some of the prophets of old who had translated the scriptures in the first place were actually Wicked, so those translations were not to be trusted.  

So for the next year, Dad would sit with his large print Bible and Book of Mormon, and write his inspired interpretation of the Word of God in his journal.