Infringement Read Online Free PDF Page A

watching his dad die he’d lost whatever faith he’d had. Initially, Declan hated God for taking his dad from him. He couldn’t fathom how a loving God could take a good man like his dad off the earth so early in life. Over time, his hate had subsided into a general antipathy toward God and religion.
    However, for whatever reason, his mom’s words that night hadn’t just passed through his ears, but had hung on somewhere in between, occupying his thoughts in an annoyingly consistent manner. As much as he hated to acknowledge it, Declan did see her point about people’s rights and privacy being degraded. He’d seen it at the Bureau and with the new Homeland regulations. He didn’t necessarily believe that would inevitably lead to the types of things she and Evan purported, but, for the first time ever, for whatever the reason, his mom had gotten a small part of his attention, if for no other reason than a childish desire to prove her wrong.
    When he finally made it home, Declan looked through his boxed books and found the Bible his parents had given him for Christmas one year, which he hadn’t looked at or touched in years.
    “Let’s see where it actually says everyone in the world will follow one guy,” he said to himself.
    Declan flipped through the onion skin pages quickly scanning the words and came to Revelation 13.
    “ 1 And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. 4 Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, ‘Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?”
    Declan read the passage again, admittedly bewildered by many of the words, but then he read it a third time, focusing on the sentence, “The whole world was astonished and followed the beast.”
    “The whole world will follow the beast,” he said to himself somewhat astounded. “The whole world will follow him.”
    Declan read further:
    “ 5 The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. 6 He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7 He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast – all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. 9 He who has an ear, let him hear.”
    The words burned into Declan’s mind as he read them again and again. “And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation… He who has an ear, let him hear. He who has an ear, let him hear.”

Chapter 7
    December 20 th
    With each passing day, David Stanton grew more excited about his imminent entry into world history. The path chosen for him was, admittedly, nothing new or novel. People had been shedding the blood of others since the beginning of time. Certainly, others had come before him, and his relentless research had made him as intimately familiar with his various predecessors as possible. However, while Abaddon wouldn’t be the first, he would be the only one to invite the whole world to witness the fulfillment of his destiny, judgment and wrath, live on the web and through social media.
    Stanton had always viewed his endeavor as having four essential stages. The first stage, setting up the technical mechanisms to broadcast what was