The Great Thirst Boxed Set Read online

  The Great Thirst

  Boxed Set

  Part One: Prepared

  Part Two: Purified

  Part Three: Pursued

  Part Four: Persecuted

  Part Five: Persevering

  Part Six: Protected

  Part Seven: Prevailing

  The Complete Serial Archaeological Mystery in One Volume

  by

  Mary C. Findley

  copyright Mary C. Findley 2016

  Findley Family Video Publications

  The Great Thirst Boxed Set – All Seven Parts of Serial Archaeological Mystery

  by Mary C. Findley

  copyright 2016 Findley Family Video

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission of the publisher. Exception is made for short excerpts used in reviews.

  “Speaking the truth in love.”

  Scripture references are as follows: The Bible: The King James Version, public domain. The New American Standard Version: Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible Registered, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. Holy Bible: International Standard Version® Release 2.0. Copyright © 1996-2013 by ISV Foundation. Used by permission of Davidson Press, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY.

  In Association with The Edge Books

  What is THE EDGE?

  THE EDGE is a conviction. It’s where we stand to save the lost. It’s stepping away from our comfortable pews to bring God to the world. It’s following Jesus’ example to minister to the outcasts, the overlooked, the forgotten.

  THE EDGE is about relationship, not religion. It’s God’s power being stronger and God’s love running deeper than anything people face. It’s being fearless in the face of adversity and willing to look the devil in the eye and say, “You can’t have him or her anymore.”

  We are authors, Christians, people walking by faith. We are THE EDGE.

  www.TheEdgeBooks.blogspot.com

  Acknowledgments

  Cover credits: Book One: Professional man and woman images (Keith Bradley and Natalia Ramin) from iStock

  “Couple-waiting” (teens in “have faith” shirts) image from Kozzi.com uploaded by Wright Artistry www.wrightartistry.com

  Book Two: Images from Canstock, Scuba image from pixabay.com by user tpsdave

  Book Three: Images from Canstock, Cabin/lodge image from pixabay.com by user markusspiske

  Book Four: Images from Canstock, Depositphoto, and Pixabay

  Book Five: Images from Depositphoto and Pixabay

  Book Six: Images from Depostiphotos and Pixabay

  Book Seven: Images from Canstock, Wikimedia Commons (Ball Court at Monte Alban by Andrew McMillan public Domain), and Depositphoto

  Background texture from pixabay.com, by user Zeana

  Artifact image from http://www.fouman.com/ Iranian Historical Photo Gallery source for Darius I Persepolis Gold Plates

  These plates were found by archeologists in 1938, in Persepolis, near modern day Shiraz, Iran. There were two gold plates and two silver plates in a stone box, written on in cuneiform script. The plates date to 518 – 515 BC.

  Tesla Roadster (chapter header image) 13 April 2010 Author Thomas Doerfer Wikimedia Commons

  Fingers with dust (section divider image) from pixabay.com user Unsplash

  Keith’s “story” on the bus in Book Seven, Chapter One Hundred and Two – “Layers of Truth,” refers first to a quote by Richard Dawkins, a popular modern science author. “We have proved that there exists a trajectory of stepwise change connecting beetle to deer and, by implication, a similar trajectory from any modern animal to any other modern animal.” It comes from his book The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene. London: Oxford University Press, 1982, 1999.

  The second part, a possible flood scenario, is adapted and severely abridged from The Conflict of the Ages Part Three: They Deliberately Forgot: The Flood and the Ice Age by Michael J. Findley, based on multiple sources including Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, and Creation Ministries International, among others, documented in that work. Copyright 2013, Findley Family Video Publications.

  The “History of Chocolate Exhibit” described in Part Seven Chapter One Hundred and Three – “Coming to a Head” referring to San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán is fictional. The site does have a nearby museum and includes statuary like the giant stone heads and “baby jaguar” sculptures but no attempt is made to exactly describe these features in the book.

  “Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord God, When I will send a famine on the land, Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, But rather for hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea And from the north even to the east; They will go to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, But they will not find it.”

  Amos 8: 11-12, NASB

  The Great Thirst

  Chapter One – “Mr. Safety”

  “Hey!” Keith Bradley shouted. “No cars in the bus lot, and what kind of car is that, anyway?”

  Keith waved off an incredibly red and shiny thing that didn’t seem to make any noise at all as it tried to slide past him into the bus lot at Bradley Central School on Tuesday morning, the first day of the new school year.

  “Oh, no! The bus lot? I feel like such a doofus.” The driver pulled over to the curb and rolled down her passenger window. “It's a Tesla.”

  She was even more incredible than the car. Her highlighted brown hair framed a face that looked about sixteen and she pulled off some designer sunglasses that didn’t look like knockoffs.

  “A whatsla?” An eighth-grader, Jermaine Tufo, gawked around Keith’s shoulder.

  “A Tesla?” Keith repeated. “You’re kidding me, right? As in, the most awesome electric car ever made? Are you a new student?”

  “Student? Are you hitting on me, kid? I’m the new English Lit teacher. Ms. Ramin to you.”

  “You? A teacher?” Jermaine asked.

  Keith pushed him toward the building and pointed him in the direction of the side doors. “Cafeteria, Jermaine, until 07:50. You know the rules.”

  Jermaine ambled off.

  “I’m a teacher, too,” Keith said. “Keith Bradley, science. The car parking is up at the other end of the building.”

  “Oh, I'm so sorry. Thanks.” Ms. Ramin pulled a tight U-turn right in front of the last arriving bus. The car buzzed away.

  Yeah, buzzed, Keith repeated to himself for emphasis. A Tesla? That’s like a $100,000 car, minimum!

  Keith had somehow been pegged as “Mr. Safety” since junior high, when he’d made the mistake of thinking it was a big honor to be appointed to the “Junior Safety Patrol.” Twelve years later he was the science teacher at Bradley Central. The building had been renamed in honor of his late principal grandfather. Keith still stood out in the parking lot, breathing diesel, shouting at kids to get on the right bus or get out of the way of –

  “Who was that crazy woman and what was that crazy car?” Veronica James, the driver of the bus the Tesla had almost pasted itself to, hollered out to Keith.

  “New teacher, Mrs. James.” Keith spread his hands out helplessly. “Ms. Ramin, English lit. The car is called a Tesla.”

  “Some new Japanese thing, huh? Anyway, she ain’t settin’ a very good example for the children, drivin’ like that. And you’re the Safety Director. I hope you’re going to speak to her.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Keith saluted and Mrs. James pulled her bus into the offload circle, much to Keit
h’s relief. Yeah, like I’m ever going to talk to … to … that! He glanced toward the student entrance to make sure all the kids got into the building as the warning bell rang.

  A squeal of tires sent Keith sprinting back toward the street. Up at the car parking lot entrance he saw a tall black van with dark windows narrowly miss the Tesla as it turned in at the upper lot. The Sprinter spurted past the school, ignoring the reduced speed limit.

  What just happened? Keith stared at the vanishing tail of the Tesla. That Ramin woman might be kind of a crazy driver, but Keith could have sworn the Sprinter was trying to hit her, not avoid her. He shook his head and headed inside.

  Fourth period, Keith led his ninth grade earth science class into the auditorium for the annual “Welcome to Bradley” assembly. He cringed when he saw Ms. Ramin and her class already seated in the section where his bunch was supposed to sit.

  “Mr. Bradley, tenth grade is in our seats!” hissed Sonja Gray.

  “I see. I see. Hush, Sonja.” Keith counted rapidly. “Just go in here.” He waved them down another row of seats, the ones the tenth grade should have taken. A dozen students felt compelled to make comments about these being the wrong rows, as hard as he tried to hush them up.

  “The sign’s right there by her elbow,” grumbled Tim deLuca. “Man, I thought English teachers could read.”

  He said this as he plopped down beside Keith, right in front of Ms. Ramin. She appeared to come out of a trance and looked over at the sign next to her that said, “grade nine.”

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, jumping up and windmilling her arms. “Class! Everybody! We’re in the wrong seats. Get up! Get up! We need to move to – ” Her eyes flicked over to the “grade ten” sign at Keith’s elbow. “Up there. Come on!”

  “Ms. Ramin, it’s okay,” Keith said. “It’s fine. Look.” He reached out with his long legs, hooked the signs with his ankles, and shuffled them until the “grade nine” one stood next to him. “Sit back down. It’s fine.”

  She collapsed back into her chair, red-faced. “I lost a contact,” she confessed. “I have no idea where – ”

  Keith risked a look into that little almond-shaped, almond-colored face and found some big brown eyes staring back at him from under her soft gold and chestnut bangs.

  “Oh, I see it,” Keith almost shouted, forcing himself back out of the depths of those eyes and taking a breath. “It’s the right one, right? It’s back up in the top corner there.”

  “Really? I can’t feel it!” She whipped out a lighted, magnifying compact and peeled back her eyelid.

  Keith heard and felt rather than saw the reaction of the tenth graders. He gave them the Eyeball, a look perfected and passed down through three generations of Bradley educators, and they subsided into relative silence and motionlessness.

  “Yeah, no, it’s right there – You got it!” Keith crowed. Ms. Ramin nipped the contact out of her eye, pasted it to her tongue, and popped it back in.

  Every kid for six rows said, in unison, “Eeewww!” But not very loudly, and shut up instantly with the application of another “Eyeball” treatment.

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Brady,” she said. “I have been trying all morning to find it. All my classes tried to help, didn’t you?”

  How can that many kids all roll their eyes at the same time? Keith somehow managed to keep his expression bland.

  “It’s Bradley!” muttered someone.

  “What was that?” Ms. Ramin asked.

  “It’s not Mr. Brady, it’s Mr. Bradley. The school is – y’know – like, named after him or somethin’,” a voice supplied.

  “Oh, you’re Mr. Bradley? Everybody said at the in-service that you’re the go-to guy if anybody needs help, and they were so right!” Ms. Ramin stuck out a hand, rattling metallic bangles and displaying multiple rings –

  Keith stopped looking at her arm, her fingers, her perfect little hand, and shook it. He turned back around as a voice boomed over the feedback shriek that always signaled an assembly getting underway.

  “Welcome to Bradley Central!” Keith’s father, the principal, called out. “Returning students and teachers, no falling asleep. Don’t care how many times you’ve heard me give you ‘Bradley’s Best’. You still might miss something, especially this year, because we have something brand new and very special for our high school students. If you miss that very special announcement, you will miss out on an opportunity to make history.”

  Make history? How’s Bradley Central ever gonna make history? Keith couldn’t help it. This tiny town, and this tiny school, would never matter to anybody. But as he looked around the auditorium, he sat up a little straighter.

  A stranger prowled along the side wall. It was a blonde in a fedora, tinted glasses, and one of those “business-sexy” outfits he never expected to see in real life.

  Who is she? An extra microphone had been attached to his father’s podium and a cameraman flanked her. The blonde looked bored but perked up whenever the camera angled her way.

  A reporter? For the first day of school at Bradley Central? Keith realized he had better try to pay special attention to a speech he had been hearing since Kindergarten, because between Ms. Ramin and this “making history” stuff, something was definitely up.

  Chapter Two – The Bible as Literature Class

  “I swear, I am not lyin’.” Keith heard the whisper and started to hunt for the new target of The Eyeball, but the next words froze him in disbelief. “She flies into the room like a for real nutcase, throws down a pile a’ books –Bam! – throws down a bunch a’ keys – crash! An’ then, like, when she’s all the way up there at her desk, she, like, pries open her eyelids, and says ‘Can anybody see my contact? I know it’s in there!’

  The floor shook with the stifled giggles. Keith casually dropped a hand behind his chair and extended one finger.

  “It’s one! Shut up!” hissed a different voice.

  Principal Bradley moved along down his list. The blonde reporter got fidgety and checked her watch repeatedly.

  “This year we are offering ‘The Bible as Literature’ as an English elective to our upper-level students,” his dad said.

  Keith about fell off his chair. He heard clinking and risked a glance at Ms. Ramin, who was in the middle of a fist-pump and seemed to be showing off all her perfect teeth between her perfect –

  Eyes front. Keith swiveled his head forward. The reporter had come to life. She crouched like a panther ready to spring. She made savage motions to the cameraman and stabbed at the stage. He switched from panning the crowd to a tight focus on the platform. The blonde swiped hard and sharp on a tablet she clutched in her hands.

  His dad continued speaking. “Just when we were sure the Bible was never coming back into the schools, we find out God just won’t let the secularists have their way. Our new English literature teacher, Ms. Ramin, will be handling this course, and if you still need an elective in your schedule, I encourage you to sign up. She has a very impressive course plan worked out, including a trip overseas during spring break to study a part of Bible history I’ll bet most of you had no idea existed. I know it was news to me. Greece will be the jumping-off point, and she told me about parts of Turkey …”

  “Greece!” The whispered rippled up and down the rows of chairs.

  “Turkey?” Even the teachers exchanged longing looks.

  Keith foresaw lots of volunteers signing up to chaperone. Good, because I'm not going to be in Greece or Turkey come spring break. The course he had finished yesterday was just the beginning of getting back on track with his master's. The convention during spring break was going to be critical to keeping him within the window to complete his degree.

  “Ms. Ramin, please come up and briefly tell us what this course will include,” Keith’s dad invited.

  Ms Ramin popped out of her seat and clicked her way up to the platform.

  Keith saw designer boots with four-inch heels, and one of those skirts – what did his sister call the
m? Gypsy, maybe? It had so many folds and different lengths and cool colors and embroidery and it swished around her.

  “I am so privileged to be here at Brady Central – ”

  “Bradley!” muttered a legion of whisperers. Even Keith’s dad cringed and mouthed it. She went on, oblivious.

  Keith tried to make himself ignore all that because the reporter was having some kind of fit. She swiped her tablet and motioned to the cameraman. What is this all about?

  “I am so excited about this course!” Ms. Ramin said. “As you go out the door, you can pick up a T-shirt – ” She held up a black shirt with gold bands across the chest and the words Have Faith splashed around in a graphic layout. “I got all sizes, and everybody can take one, even if you aren’t taking the class. We will not just be explaining how ancient literature compares to the Bible. We are going to learn how to be discerning about ancient writings – how to tell truth from error in what's being taught by historians, archaeologists. This course will prepare you to know truth when you see it. If you’ve got room in your schedule, you should sign up.”

  “Mr. Bradley, are you gonna sign up?” Keith froze and flushed. Snickers broke out and he dropped his hand with two fingers. Silence prevailed.

  “And I’m so happy to have the help of somebody I hear is this school’s best teacher. I’ll be team-teaching the class with –” She bobbed her head, checking some notes – “Mr. Keith Bradley, your science teacher. Thanks so much for volunteering, Mr. Bradley.”

  Nothing could squelch the tittering now. Keith’s eyes flew to meet his father’s, who gave him nothing but a little non-committal shoulder-wiggle. The reporter was making clawing and stabbing motions again and the camera bobbed as the guy tried to get a fix on who was being introduced. On me?

  “Mr. Bradley, could you stand, please, and let everybody see you?”

  Keith rose and applause broke out. What is this about team-teaching “The Bible as Literature”? When was Dad supposed to tell me that?