THE SEX REBEL OF JESUSLAND, chapter 106

106. THE MARKING OF THE PENIS.

The man sliced the tip of Adam’s penis twice, creating a scar on the tip in the sign of the cross. They bandaged his penis and wrapped it in plastic. He felt very tired. He fell asleep. He didn’t know how long he had slept. Then he was awake. Three females washed him and bathed him in perfume. The Blesseds took off their masks and welcomed him into their ranks with a reading from Revelations.

“A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his head. His tail swept a third of the stars out the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to her son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

“And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. The great dragon was hurled down – the ancient serpent called the devil or Satan.

“When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she could be taken care of for a time, times and a half of time, out of the serpent’s reach.

“Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.”

One of the men rubbed ash on Adam’s forehead. He was one of the 144,000 now, a Blessed.

They continued the reading from Revelations.

“One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hands, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. This title was written on her forehead.

MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH

“I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.”

The doctor had some of Adam’s blood in a cup. He rubbed this on Adam’s forehead, now covered in ash and blood. The reading concluded with a poem from Revelations.

“’Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a home for demons
And a haunt for every evil spirit
A haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.
For all the nations have drunk
The maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her
And the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.
“Then I heard another voice say:
‘Come out of her, my people,
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.
Give back to her as she has given;
Pay her back double for what she has done.
Mix her a double portion from her own cup.
Give her as much torture and grief
As the glory and luxury she gave herself.
In her heart she boasts,
‘I sit as a queen; I am not a widow,
And I will never mourn.’
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
Death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
For mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”

The words from Revelations rang in Adam’s head, but they had quite the opposite effect on him of what they were intended to have. He saw the poem as an unnecessary condemnation of women. Just like Eve was being condemned by the prosecution at her trial. Did women not have minds of their own, lives of their own, honor and dignity independent of men’s wishes, even if, in relationship to men, they were handmaidens? This circle of top Blesseds distrusted women. They misjudged the very thing he liked to do with women, especially with Eve: sex. By the reading of the poem they proclaimed that women were whores created to tempt men. How inordinate a calumny of the nature of sexuality! Sexuality was part of creation, a vital engine of Creationism, and one of the more intelligent aspects of Intelligent Design. Pleasure had been built into the design to ensure propagation -- that’s how sublimely intelligent it was. How could the Men of the Gospel think of any woman as a whore, when every woman was as Christian an example of Intelligent Design as they were? They were feeding into the guilt that women felt who enjoyed sex, the guilt he tried to expiate by instilling it, by forcing women to deal with it, to go beyond it, although no woman had, except Eve, who was different because she gloried in getting an orgasm, and said it made her independent and equal. He had never agreed with her about equality, but maybe he saw her point now that his distaste for the opposite view had landed.

The last lines of the poem nailed it for him. “She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.” They wanted to burn Eve at the stake. That’s what Proctor, a Blessed himself, had said. Burn Eve when he wanted her back so he could bend her to his will and make her his handmaiden so they could love each other finally like a proper Jesusland couple.

Adam decided to keep his own counsel from now on. He preferred the devilish Ezra’s sexual view to this Blessed anti-sex and anti-women attitude. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how Satan vile this attitude of the Blesseds was. The ceremony had ended up initiating him into a contrarian silent rebellion against its policies about women and sex.

He duly repeated a pledge intoned by one of the Blesseds. “It is my duty to take care of the Beloveds, over whom I have been placed by this ceremony. Beloveds must do my bidding, yet I bear a responsibility towards them. I must guide them in the ways of the Lord. I must honor my fellow Blesseds, and be at one with them in ministering to the needs of the Beloveds. I will exercise compassion and justice, and serve, when called, on a Patriot Board with diligence. I will punish with severity. Beloveds are weak, and they benefit by the scourge of the mighty.”

The bit about compassion and justice surprised him, since he had not experienced any compassion or justice from any Blessed when he was a Beloved. At least not until Joshua Grant had offered him the opportunity to be a TV host, and set him on the path that ended in his graduation to Blessed.