The most. I could possibly do would be to urge her to seek salvation. But I would have to do it most carefully. One does not persuade a butterfly to light on one's hand by brandishing a sword. Margrethe was not a heathen ignorant of Christ and needing only to be instructed. No, she had been born into Christianity and had rejected it, eyes open. She could cite Scripture as readily as I could at some time she had studied the Book most diligently, far more than most laymen. When and why I never asked, but I think it must have been at the time when she began to contemplate leaving the Christian faith. Margrethe was so serious and so good that I felt certain that she would never take such a drastic step without long, hard study.

How urgent was the problem of Margrethe? Did I have thirty years or ser to learn her mind and feel out the best approach? Or was Armageddon so close upon us that even a day's delay could doom her for eternity?

The pagan Ragnarok and the Christian Armageddon have this in common: The final battle will be preceded by great signs and portents. Were we experiencing such omens? Margrethe thought so. Myself, I found the idea that this world changing presaged Armageddon more attractive than the alternative, i.e., paranoia on my part. Could a ship be wrecked and a world changed just to keep me from checking a thumbprint? I had thought so at the time but - oh, come now, Alex, you are not that important.

(Or was I?)

I have never been a Millenarianist. I am aware how often the number one thousand appears in the Bible, especially in prophecy - but I have never believed that the Almighty was constrained to work in even millennia - or any other numbering patterns - just to please numerologists.

On the other hand I know that many thousands of sensible and devout people place enormous importance on the forthcoming end of the Second Millennium, with Judgment Day and Armageddon and all that must follow - expected at that time. They find their proofs in the Bible and claim confirmation in the lines in the Great Pyramid and in a variety of Apocrypha.

But they differ among themselves as to the end of the millennium. 2000 AD? Or 2001 AD? Or is the correct dating 3 pm Jerusalem local time April 7, 2030 AD? If indeed scholars have the time and date of the Crucifixion - and the earthquake at the moment of His death - correctly figured against mundane time reckoning. Or should it be Good Friday 2030 AD as calculated by the lunar calendar? This is no trivial matter in view of what we are attempting to date.

But, if we take the birth of Christ rather than the date of the Crucifixion as the starting point from which to count, the millennia, it is evident at once that neither the naive date of 2000 AD nor the slightly less naive date of 2001 can be the bimillenarian date because Jesus was born in Bethlehem on Christmas Day year 5 BC.

Every educated person knows this and almost no one ever thinks about it.

How could the greatest event in all history, the birth of our Lord Incarnate, have been misdated by five years? Incredible!

Very easily. A sixth-century monk made a mistake in arithmetic. Our present dating ('Anno Domini) was not used until centuries after Christ was born. Anyone who has ever tried to decipher on a cornerstone a date written in Roman numerals can sympathize with the error of Brother Dionysius Exiguus. In the sixth century there were so few who could read at all that the error went undetected for many years - and by then it was too late to change all the records. So we have the ludicrous situation that Christ was born five years before Christ was born - an Irishism that can be resolved only by noting that one clause refers to fact and the other clause refers to a false-to-fact calendar.

For two thousand years the good monk's error was of little importance. But now it becomes of supreme importance. If the Millenarianists are correct, the end of the world can be expected Christmas Day this year.

Please note that I did not say 'December 25th'. The day and month of Christ's birth are unknown. Matthew notes that Herod was king; Luke states that Augustus was Caesar and that Cyrenius was governor of Syria, and we all know that Joseph and Mary had traveled from Nazareth - to Bethlehem to be counted and taxed.

There are no other data, neither of Holy Writ nor of Roman civil records.

So there you have it. By Millenarianist theory, the Final Judgment can be expected about thirty-five years from now... or later this afternoon!

Were it not for Margrethe this uncertainty would not keep me awake nights. But how can I sleep if my beloved is in immediate danger of being cast down into the Bottomless Pit, there to suffer throughout eternity?

What would you do?

Envision me standing barefooted on a greasy floor', washing dishes to pay off my indenture, while thinking deep thoughts of last and first things. A laughable sight! But dishwashing does not occupy all the mind; I was better off with hard bread for the mind to chew on.

Sometimes I contrasted my sorry state with what I had so recently been, while wondering if I would ever find my way back through the maze into the place I had built for myself.

Would I want to go back? Abigail was there - and, while polygamy was acceptable in the Old Testament, it was not accepted in the forty-six states. That had been settled once and for all when the Union Army's artillery had destroyed the temple of the antichrist in Salt Lake City and the Army had supervised the breaking up and diaspora of those immoral 'families'.

Giving up Margrethe for Abigail would be far too high a price to pay to resume the position of power and importance I had until recently held. Yet I had enjoyed my work and the deep satisfaction over worthwhile accomplishment that went with it. We had achieved our best year since the foundation was formed - I refer to the non-profit corporation, Churches United for Decency. 'Non-profit' does not mean that such an organization cannot pay appropriate salaries and even bonuses, and I had been taking a well-earned vacation after the best fund-raising year of our history - primarily my accomplishment because, as deputy director, my first duty was to see that our coffers were kept filled.

But I took even greater satisfaction in our labors in the vineyards, as fund raising means nothing if our programs of spiritual welfare do not meet their goals.

The past 'year' had seen the following positive accomplishments:

a) A federal law making abortion a capital offense;

b) A federal law making the manufacture, sale, possession, importation, transportation, and/or use of any contraceptive drug or device a felony carrying a mandatory prison sentence of not less than a year and a day but not more than twenty years for each offense - and eliminating the hypocritical subterfuge of 'For Prevention of Disease Only';

c) A federal law that, while it did not abolish gambling, did make the control and licensing of it a federal jurisdiction. One step at a time - having built. this foundation we could tackle those twin pits, Nevada and New Jersey, piece by piece. Divide and conquer!

d) A Supreme Court decision in which we had appeared as amicus curiae under which community standards of the typical or median-population community applied to all cities of each state (Tomkins v. Allied News Distributors);

e) Real progress in our drive to get tobacco defined as a prescription drug through the tactical device of separating snuff and chewing tobacco from the problem by inaugurating the definition 'substances intended for burning and inhaling';

f) Progress at our annual national prayer meeting on several subjects in which I was interested. One was the matter of how to remove the tax-free status of any private school not affiliated with a Christian sect. Policy on this was not yet complete because of the thorny matter of Roman Catholic schools. Should our umbrella cover them? Or was it time to strike? Whether the Catholics were allies or enemies was always a deep problem to those of us out on the firing line.