Lenny Belardo stands alone beneath the frescoes, his voice low, precise, almost bored by apocalypse.
“You see, they no longer need swords. Swords are honest. Swords admit violence.
What they prefer now is cleanliness. Sterility. A disease with a press release.”
He smiles thinly.
“Monkey pox. Small words. Small lesions. Small excuses. And yet Revelation has always loved the small things — the sores, the boils, the quiet punishments that bloom on the skin when humanity believes it has finally escaped judgment.”
He taps the Bible with one finger.
“Revelation 16:2.
‘Ugly and painful sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast.’
Not fire. Not thunder. Skin. Visibility. Shame. A judgment you cannot hide behind a suit.”
Lenny looks up, eyes cold.
“The Illuminati — a vulgar name for a very boring truth — do not worship Satan. They worship inevitability. They read Revelation not as prophecy, but as a to-do list.
If people believe judgment is coming, all you have to do is stage-manage the symptoms.”
He walks slowly now.
“And then there is Revelation 18:8.
‘Plagues will overtake her in a single day — death, mourning, and famine.’
Babylon never falls by bombs. Babylon collapses by paperwork, quarantines, shortages, fear dressed as compassion.”
A pause.
“They want fulfillment without repentance. Apocalypse without God. A theater of collapse where no one asks why, only who is allowed to move.”
Lenny exhales, almost a laugh.
“But they misunderstand something crucial.
Revelation is not a manual for tyrants. It is a mirror.
The sores appear not because God is cruel — but because corruption eventually becomes visible.”
He closes the Bible.
“You cannot fake salvation.
You cannot manufacture the Kingdom.
And you cannot weaponize plagues without eventually infecting yourselves.”
A final glance toward the altar.
“Babylon always believes it is immune.
That is why it falls in one day.”