During the first couple of years, the three also worked on bringing awareness to the anger, frustration, and fear people were feeling. It was a global issue, and through AI, they tried to bring reason and understanding to what caused the fear. Everyone one felt the fear. Their confusion was opening the door to nationalistic perspectives. This is where the resistance stepped in to offer a counter idea to what was going on and a message of working together to overcome common problems. The underlying theme was, ‘We are all in this together’.

The Resistance itself was a fairly substantial and growing counterbalance to what was going on in the world. Although, there was growing disparity, the Resistance was well established, diversified and functioning as an active force in society. In the Western World, it functioned openly. It was like a number of social welfare channels that eventually became connected as a single channel. It came out of the environmental movement, and it was built by kids with a legitimate cause. The channel could be found on Reddit, and was known simply as greta.

Everything they did in the West, was in the open for anyone to see or participate in. It had become the first recognized representation of ‘The Crowd’. The collective voice moving intentionally towards the common good. It was huge in it’s undertaking and increasingly organized because of it’s intention and pragmatic approach. Lobbyist groups came out of it, as did law teams to challenge court decisions and unjust laws. It wasn’t complete though. It didn’t contain the amount of people to create meaningful change. It faced a number of roadblocks. Cultural beliefs and preconceived notions, prevented many people from joining. On top of that, the people had their livelihoods to worry about. Depending on where they lived, some were experiencing desperate times. Still, there was a common mood among the people. Everyone, everywhere, knew something was wrong with the system. They all knew they were only a few missteps away from a world they could not get back once they lost it.

Annually, the environment was costing billions and billions of dollars in lost production and income. The climate crisis alone caused human displacement never before imagined. People had nowhere to live where life was sustainable. Globally, they were on the move and getting more and more aggressive with their arrival to new promised lands. People were not just trekking by land and sea. They began flying in, and demanding an immigration status enveloped by the refugee status. They wanted special recognition, and if they didn’t get it, they took it to the courts and argued to redefine the definitions of the law. They were presenting the very real legal possibility they did indeed deserve special recognition.

The economy was just as bad, as the environment and displacement. Central banks were stuck in a horrible limbo where they had to maintain a high interest rate if they were to provide even a modicum of stability to the consumer economy. If they went too high with the interest rate, they not only risked, but provoked a bank run, which in addition to banks, included unregulated Non Banking Financial Institutions. Half the world’s assets were tied up in financial services which lacked overview. By definition, they were a lot riskier and fragile than the banks. It was a constant tight rope walk for the central banks. One misstep and even the experts didn’t know how they could fix things. It would be Armageddon. Extreme poverty would descend upon the world overnight.

Then there was the physical war the world had to worry about. The lines had been drawn long ago, and if China made a single move from this point on, the world would explode into a global war the likes of which no-one had seen before. Every day it came closer. Bigger threats and greater participation in the proxy war. Daily challenges in the air and on the sea. Disruptive trade wars became common place, and the rhetoric grew daily.

Everyone knew, something was about to happen. Things were so fucked up; the last straw could fall from anywhere. It was getting to a point where people were just fighting to remain sane in spite of all the insanity around them. It was out of this place, a single unifying voice came to be heard. Reverend Al was part of the channel, and talking to whoever would listen.

‘And so, my brother’s and sisters, I am here to tell you, darkness is all around us, and you and I need to bring light to this world’.

‘Can I get an Amen?’

‘Thank you brother’s and sister’s, for I swear, the devil walks among us, and it’s time for us to rise and stomp that devil and send him running.

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‘Can I get an Amen?’

‘Oh bless you. Bless each and every one of you. Right now, just imagine yourself in the comfort of God’s arms. Just feel yourself knowing that everything is going to be taken care of. Feel God’s comfort, for just this moment, and gather your strength, before you, the children of God go out to do battle’.

‘Can I get an Amen to that?’

‘Now listen to me children. We don’t like the way things are. This is not what was intended for God’s children. Scraping and scratching through life. No Sir! We are here to live in the majesty of the Lord. Tell me one thing that’s going on in our lives where we’re moving towards greater glory? Just one. You can’t think of one can you? Not a one.’

‘Unh. Unh Uh. We’re in a pickle, that’s for sure, and now that God’s majesty is not coming to us, we need to go out and find it for ourselves. Each and every one of us, and we’re going to do it by taking a look at where all our problems are coming from. I’m sure we’ll find a devil in there somewhere.

‘Now tell me children, in a world that’s barrelling past tipping points with our environment, tell me why, they’re still in the process of phasing out fossil fuels? Tell me who’s responsible for this idea? Who thinks this is good idea? Tell me who, so I can take a closer look at that man or woman and start asking some questions. Maybe we’ll all go there and start asking questions. We’ll all go there together, and put them under the spotlight, and when we find the devil, we’ll throw him out there in the spotlight for all to see, and we’ll stomp out another lie.

‘Can I get an Amen?’

‘And what about this war we’re about to jump into. Heck, we might be in it already. Now surely the devil dwells in these lands. Innocent young men and women losing their lives for something where diplomacy should be the resolution. Think about the poor children getting forced into the front lines, knowing they’re about to die for something they often don’t even believe in, or something they’re being forced into. Think about how you would feel if that were you. Standing there on the front line. An open target. Do you have the compassion to know what they feel. It’s horrific.

‘Unh. Unh. Uh. The Devil surely dwells in war.

‘And now, it’s even closer to home. Prices going up everyday. Mother’s and father’s unable to feed their children. Think of the pain they must feel. I tell you this. Think of it, because it’s at your doorstep, and you can be next. And there isn’t a damn thing you can do to about it because the devil is deciding your life now. Think about that. Think about how the devil can blindside you and take everything.

‘Now listen children. ‘Are we going to make it through these terrible times? The answer is we will. We’re going to find the devil wherever he dwells and we’re going to stomp him out, and I can tell you right now, we know where he lives. He wears the mark. Just look for the one that puts self over all others. Find him and point him out. God’s children will come to defend you. That’s what we have to do.

‘Now, I want to tell you a story from the bible. It’s my favorite story. It tells us how we’re going to get ourselves out of this mess. It’s the story of Adam and Eve.

‘Why sometimes I like to imagine myself, back there in the garden of Eden, frolicking around with Eve. Mostly I do this at night. What a time we would have. That’s all they did back then. They frolicked and enjoyed life. Sometimes they’d be eating some tasty fruit. Sometimes they’d be rutting just like a couple of barnyard animals, and beyond that, all they did was laze around in the garden and scratch themselves. Oh, what a wonderful time it must have been.

‘Then one day, a serpent comes along and starts talking to Eve. This serpent tells Eve, ‘Go eat that fruit over there’.

‘Well she tells him she can’t do that because God told them they couldn’t eat from that tree, and God was the one who had set them up with this pretty little garden. In fact God told Adam they’d die if they ate from fruit from that tree.

‘Well, the serpent says, ‘That simply is not true. It’s because God doesn’t want you to become just like him, knowing Good and Evil. He likes to hold that over on you, but wouldn’t you like to be just like God?’

Now Eve thought she would, and eats some of the fruit and gives some to Adam too, and then bam!, all of a sudden they see they’re naked. Now they worried about their naughty bits flopping all over the place, and start sewing together some fig leaves to cover themselves. Well the fig leaves still don’t leave a lot to the imagination, but the point is something here had changed. They weren’t dead, but they were different and part of them had got left behind. Something had changed. They were aware. They understood things beyond their animal nature. In their thinking, they had become as God.

‘Well, Adam and Eve didn’t figure all that out at the time, but they had become self-conscious on a whole new level. That’s about as far in their thinking when God comes wandering back into the garden to check on his children.

‘What the heck is with these fig leaves,’ he asked.

Being God, he figured it out pretty fast and then he goes to lamenting. ‘Oh, you ate of the fruit and now you are as one of us, knowing Good and evil. Even after I told you not to. And now I see you looking over there and noticing the Tree of Life, where if you eat from that you’ll live forever too. Well I say no to that. I’m going to banish you from Eden, so you can’t eat from the Tree of Life. So then he gives them some togs and sends them on their way.

‘Now you see children what’s happening in this story. Well this is the story of when we became human. Cognitive and rational beings. Praise the Lord for giving us this gift Then he sent us out to discover what this gift means to know Good and Evil.. He sent us out. The life we knew was gone forever, and we did die in our own special way, but we were reborn as something even greater, and we’re out in the dessert looking for Good over Evil. When we stop trying to hide our naughty bits, we’ll find it. We’ll find ourselves as a people, making our way back to Eden. Our own way. That’s the rule. God set up some cherubs and dangling swords to keep us from getting back in the old way. We can never become an animal again.

‘We’re out here in the dessert my children. We’re afraid because we don’t know what we gained, and we’re looking to what we lost. I say to you, turn away from the beast. it’s time to see yourself as one of God’s children and get to work at finding the ‘Tree of Life’. If we come together under the goodness of God, we will find it.

‘Can I get an Amen’.