The Four Horsemen (The End Time Prophecy Series Book 2), page 1
THE FOUR HORSEMEN
END TIMES PROPHECY
BOOK 2
TOBY NEIGHBORS
The Four Horsemen: End Times Prophecy Series Book 2
Copyright © 2023 by Toby Neighbors
ISBN: 978-1-952260-54-4 eBook
978-1-952260-55-1 Print
Mythic Adventure Publishing, LLC
Idaho, USA
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Jesus,
I have, and always will, lean completely on the promises you made.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Author’s Note
Also by Toby Neighbors
CHAPTER 1
Do you really believe that aliens are responsible for the Vanishing? It may have seemed plausible at the time, but a lot has happened since then. Keep reading, and maybe you’ll change your mind.
When millions of people suddenly go missing it’s a pretty big deal. If you’re anything like me, you were surprised at how quickly the world adapted. My head was still spinning when the news hit, and my former girlfriend tried to kill me. But that’s a different story. You may have read that one, or maybe you just picked this book up wondering what the Horsemen of the Apocalypse are. I mean, people have long been fascinated with the end of the world.
No, I don’t believe we’re living in the last days of human history, just a major transition point, but we’ll get to all of that in time. For now, let’s focus on the millions of people who suddenly disappeared, including nearly all the children. The official explanation is that the Visitors took them. That’s what we’re calling the extraterrestrials who showed up right after the vanishings. The Visitors claim to be our forebears, a superior race that seeded life on this planet millions of years ago. I was always a skeptic I suppose, but there are legitimate problems with the idea of the earth as we know it being that old. What I can’t wrap my head around is the concept that life just sprang up all on its own. Microbiology was the final nail in that coffin. Living cells, even in the most primitive forms of life, are just too complex to have arisen spontaneously. Everyone knew that, even though the old guard scientists refused to admit it. But now the Visitors have given the world a more plausible explanation—they seeded life here on earth, and people are buying it.
The truth is, with the big shake-up of millions of people vanishing into thin air, people are pretty desperate for anyone with answers. And the Visitors showed up at the perfect time to fill that void. They also claim to have taken the people that suddenly disappeared. The official reason is the removal of those who weren’t ready to accept reality, or live in the new, harmonious unity provided by the Visitors. But it’s just another front, a deception that many people are eager to accept. But not you. No, you wouldn’t be reading this book if you really believed that our space cousins took millions of people in an act of cosmic kindness. And it’s not just that the answers to our questions are vague. No, some of you know the truth because people you know and trusted told you what would happen before the Vanishing took place. And when the single most significant event in the last two millennia happened, you knew the truth instantly. The only question now is: what are you going to do about it?
My name is Henry Downes, but most people call me Hank. My introduction to the supernatural came well before the vanishings took place. Luckily, I found a mentor who walked me back from the darkness that threatened to engulf my life. Some of you may remember Lorenzo Maltza, podcaster, filmmaker, and expert on the supernatural. He was my friend, and I am so thankful for him. He’s gone now, vanished like so many others. But I know he wasn’t taken away by the Visitors. He wasn’t removed for his safety or taken for retraining on some other, as yet unnamed planet. No, he was taken by his God to be spared from the difficulties that we are currently limping through. Oh yeah, I’m one of those old-time religious nuts, the kind that aren’t welcome anymore. Which is why I’m writing this from a secret location. It’s for my safety, because I know what really happened. And I also know what’s coming. You probably want to know too, so I’ll fill you in as we go.
Of course this story isn’t for the faint of heart. If you’d rather just go along to get along, then you might want to skip this book. If you’re one of those people who believe that the Visitors are who they say they are, you won’t like what I’m about to reveal. But if you’re anything like me, and you care about the truth, then buckle up because this story is going to be a real shock to the system.
CHAPTER 2
Let’s start with me. You probably want to know how I supposedly have all the answers. Well, first of all, I don’t have all the answers. I just know there are some bad days in our future. The Visitors are promising peace and safety, but that’s just a front. The reliable source of information comes from the Bible. That old book? Are you kidding me, Hank? No, I’m not kidding. The Bible not only predicted the Vanishing–it predicted a lot of other stuff as well, and a bunch has already come true.
Your first question is probably something like: if you know so much Hank, and all this Christian stuff is true, why are you still here? That’s an excellent question, and my answer is probably a lot like many of yours. Yes, I heard the truth, but didn’t act on it. I heard about God’s love, about Jesus dying on the cross for my sins, but I thought it was all just a story. Even when I was with Lorenzo, who was a true believer, and who shared the truth with me multiple times, I felt uneasy with the whole subject. So I put it off–sound familiar? I delayed making a decision about what I really believed, and so I missed out. You see, the people who Vanished didn’t die. They didn’t get moved to a re-education center in the cosmos–they were taken home. I’ll explain that more later. At the time, I didn’t fully understand it, but after studying and going through Lorenzo’s old presentations I’m getting the picture.
While it’s taken me a while to get my bearings, I did know pretty early on that I had a unique and important opportunity. I was in possession of thousands of hours of video that Lorenzo Maltza had made over the years. So I made it my mission to put as much of it out into the world as I could. That’s why I’m in a secret location. The authorities haven’t found me yet. I put a video online, and it usually gets in the neighborhood of a couple hundred downloads before the AI systems remove it. Obviously, I can’t stay in one place. You’ve probably heard of the secret raids being carried out. Thugs in strange, all-black uniforms, with guns are arresting people like me. There is lots of conjecture about what’s really going on, but no official explanation because the people being arrested aren’t given due process. They’re just silenced, one way or another. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me fill you in on who I am and how this all started.
Like I said, my name’s Hank. I’m officially an orphan. My parents were killed when I was just eight years old. Car crash, although the facts are pretty fuzzy. I remember being in the car with them when it happened. How I survived is pretty miraculous. I was thrown from the vehicle when our car hit something. No one knows who or what they hit. I have an idea about all that now, but officially it was just written off as an automobile accident on a dark rainy night. I would have been killed too, except that my mother crashed through the window before I did. How does that happen, you ask? Well, it shouldn’t. The airbags in our car didn’t deploy. The seatbelts didn’t work. And there was no trace of what crashed into our car. So, like I said, a real mystery.
My father was working for a government military contractor. I’ve since come to learn that he was involved with some very sensitive materials. As in, stuff not of this world. Whether or not that had anything to do with his death and my mother’s, I can’t honestly say. But I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t just a random accident.
So, at eight years old I entered the foster care system. I was one of the lucky kids that got adopted pretty early on. My adoptive parents were Asian Americans, Peter and Nora Soto. As soon as I graduated high school I joined the Air Force. I was near the end of my enlistment period when I stumbled upon the remains of a giant.
Some of you can’t keep reading past that last sentence. But let’s be frank–there are flying saucers hovering over the nations’ capitals, so we’re living in a world where the supernatural can no longer be denied.
The giant was dead, b ut it was real. That sent me down a strange road, and by a stroke of good fortune when I was looking for work after leaving the Air Force, I was hired by Lorenzo Maltza. My job was organizing his copious amount of work. But I was unprepared for the supernatural forces arrayed against my employer. Lorenzo was more than just a boss; he was a mentor and father figure to me. In the course of working for him I was able to rub elbows with some of the biggest names in the field of ufology. I even spent a weekend with Arthur Doll at his cabin in northern California. Yes, the same Arthur Doll who is now the direct liaison between humanity and the Visitors. But like I said, I wasn’t prepared to deal with the forces at work around Lorenzo, namely the dark spiritual forces. It was during that time that I started seeing things and hearing voices. A demon tried to take control of my life and very nearly caused me to commit murder. It’s all in my book, They Walk In Darkness. If you find a copy you should read it. Of course anything that offers a different perspective on the Visitors than the widely promoted official version being put out by every government on the planet gets censored. So, if you haven’t read it or can’t find it, that’s understandable. You don’t need to read that to understand this book.
Shortly after being attacked and possessed by a demon, the vanishings took place. Lorenzo was among those who disappeared without a trace. I know, because I was living in his home at the time. I searched high and low. The man had been in a car accident not long before the vanishings, and just getting back and forth to the bathroom was difficult for him. So, I know he didn’t just up and leave home on a whim. One minute he was there, and the next he was gone. I’ve seen enough of his interviews and videos from his conference appearances to know that he was taken in what Christians called the Rapture. That’s when things got real for me. I made a decision right then, in Lorenzo’s home, to believe in Jesus. I accepted that he was who he said he was: the son of God. I put my trust in his death to pay for my sins, and I believed that God really raised him from the dead. And that changed everything for me.
The next day I saw Arthur Doll on television promoting the idea that the Vanishing was the work of a race of peaceful extraterrestrials, which may have seemed plausible to you, but I remembered sitting at his dining room table when he told Lorenzo and a few other experts in the field that a group of wealthy power brokers were offering them money to say that an event such as that would take place. How they knew it was coming could only be the work of supernatural forces, and why they would want to hide it was simple. They don’t want you to believe the truth.
CHAPTER 3
I made plans with my former girlfriend to take her back down south. I was living in Lorenzo’s home in Spokane, Washington at that time. Her family was in Tennessee, and she wanted to get back to them shortly after the Vanishing. Of course there were roving bands of people looting stores and mugging people. So, after reaching out to her, wanting to help her understand what was going on, I offered to take her back toward her family. But by the time I went to pick her up she was fully on board with the alien theory. In fact, she and some of her coworkers at the Ruby River Hotel threatened me. That’s when I knew how serious things were.
So I gathered as much of Lorenzo’s materials as possible, loaded up the cargo van he used when attending UFO conferences, and got away from the city. I really had no idea where I was going, but I needed time to think and study. I spent over a week parked in the middle of nowhere. I spent every waking hour studying about the disappearances. Not everyone in the religious community believed in the Rapture, and in fact there were still plenty of priests, ministers, and pastors around. They claimed their presence was proof that the Vanishing wasn’t an act of God. As you can guess that was pretty confusing for a new believer like myself. But, I had Lorenzo’s materials–not just the videos, but his own Bible–and several of the books which I had organized for him that talked about the event. They also talked about what was to come, and that’s where things get really, really interesting.
One of Lorenzo’s friends was a former businessman who became a Bible teacher. He called the Bible an integrated message system whose origins are outside of space and time. Sounds a bit strange, but the idea was at the core of what I was after–authenticity. How could God write us a message that we would believe, especially knowing that his enemy would attack said message? The short answer is that he could tell us things in advance, so that when they happened we would know it was a real message from God himself.
I was fascinated right from the start. There were of course historical examples. The nation of Israel was what many Bible scholars called the super-sign. How does a nation survive for nineteen hundred years with no land to call its own, and under near constant attack by outsiders? No other nation, or group of people has ever done anything like that. But the Jewish people did, and in 1948 they pulled off the biggest miracle ever—the resurrection of their nation in the very heart of enemy territory. It’s no secret that the Muslims hate the Jews. It doesn’t make sense that the nation of Israel would come back to life in the very land where it had originated. And of course it was attacked several times. Against all odds, not the least of which were the overwhelming numbers of the forces arrayed against them, Israel survived. In fact, the nation thrived. It became rich, technologically and militarily advanced. Even more interesting was the fact that a tiny nation like Israel could become the center of geopolitics. But who can deny it? The Bible says, “On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it.“
If that weren’t enough, the Vanishing was the second super-sign. Initial reports after millions of people around the world suddenly disappeared were varied. Some places reported that entire compounds of anti-government, ultra-conservative groups vanished. Convicted felons in maximum security prisons, prostitutes, politicians, and ordinary people were suddenly missing, but there were plenty of priests, rabbis, monks, and imams still here. It was a time of complete chaos for a while, even after the Visitors showed up on the scene. So what do we make of it? Once again, the Bible predicted it: “After that we who are still alive at that time will be gathered up with those who have died. We will be taken up in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air. And we will be with the Lord forever.”
I know that some of you think this is just wishful thinking on my part, that the Bible is too vague and we’re stretching to make it fit the situation. I admit, there were times when I feared that myself. But as you know, after the Vanishing, things got pretty crazy. And like I said, it was all in the Bible, predicted thousands of years in advance. Say what you like, but that’s pretty strong evidence if you’re asking me.
After my week alone, holed up in the old van, sleeping on an air mattress, using a solar generator that I had found in Lorenzo’s garage to keep the electronics charged, I needed a shower and to restock my supplies. So I headed into the nearest town. That’s where I met Flip and Lisa, and it’s also where this story starts getting weird.
CHAPTER 4
There’s a small Walmart right off I-90 in the mountains of North Idaho. Officially, it’s in a little community called Kellogg. By that time the government had frozen prices, but the store was still struggling to get the supply chain and transit systems back on a regular schedule. When I arrived the Walmart was open, but all they had were generic sodas, boxes of macaroni, and cans of soup no one wanted, like cream of mushroom.
