Plato's Cave

By Joseph Jenkins

Joseph Paul is an accountant at his Mega Church but despite its grand success; Joe and his family face financial difficulties which is tearing his family apart. Joe has a passion for expressing morality and wise judgment especially to the youths of his church where he sees them falling into immorality. However, His Churches main interest seems to be collecting tithes and offerings. Trying to get away from the problems in his life Joe takes a mission trip to the Middle East where he is kidnapped. Joe wakes up inside a small city inside a Cave that seems “perfect.” The mysterious city is governed without our society’s materialistic and capitalistic ideals so they don’t have the problems like divorce, unemployment, greed, debt, stress, etc. The leaders of the city base this perfect utopia on the ideas of Plato’s Republic along with having strange unique powers which prevents Joe from leaving the Cave. Joe starts to enjoy his life inside the Cave; he is given a new breathtakingly beautiful wife, a new job, a new paid off house, and all his problems of the world you and I know of are gone! Over time Joe forgets about his old reality from the outside world and assimilates into the Cave’s reality. Joe even starts to believe he was born and raised in the Cave like the other residences. When he comes to realize that his Cave reality is false he must find a way out of the Cave and return to his family before the leaders discover this and try and stop him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Jenkins
• Release date: Sep 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311218391

Joseph Jenkins

Jenkins' three titles include: The Humanure Handbook; The Slate Roof Bible; and The Balance Point. The Humanure Handbook and the Slate Roof Bible have been presented with multiple international, national, and regional awards, as has Jenkins himself, personally, for his work in the slate roofing trade as well as his international work in composting.

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Plato’s Cave

Joseph Jenkins

~~~

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 by Joseph Jenkins

All right reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any matter whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotation in a book review.

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First Printing, 2014

Print ISBN-13: 978-1-500-55110-0

Print ISBN-10: 1-500-55110-4

For more updates on other books check http://www.jjpaul.com/ for more information.

Table of Contents

Chapter1

Chapter2

Chapter3

Chapter4

Chapter5

Chapter6

Chapter7

Chapter8

Chapter9

Chapter10

Chapter11

Chapter12

Chapter13

Chapter14

Chapter15

Chapter16

Chapter17

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Not Final Cover. . .

In memory of Mama (Mary H. Jenkins) who showed everyone she came in contact with the results of living a life of true righteousness and integrity. {Dec 8. 1914—Mar 27 2012}

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

—PLATO

1

"Darkness is a gift; without Darkness we could never understand truth."

If only darkness could lead us to the truth. Darkness keeps us in our lies. Or our lies keep us in darkness. Darkness keeps us asleep shrouding the truth. Darkness is our enemy.

Oh yes maybe Mr. Paul. Maybe—but try not to move. These wounds need sewing.

As Jabez sewed my arm, I couldn’t help but glance around—I was actually in a cave. A green light blazed down on me except it would flash for awhile and then turn off and then flash again. My mind was concentrated on the flashing lights.

They were really pressed to get another alien again. I didn’t answer Jabez’s remark.

As Jabez wiped and patched my arm I lifted up my head. I couldn’t believe it, I was in a cave. But I knew something was different. There were stalactites on the roof of the cave, the ground was covered in dirt and water but the room had furniture like a school nurse’s office. In fact, I was laying on a bench with paper attached to it. Whenever I moved, the paper would make a crunching sound. There was a desk one side of the room with various supplies like cloths, cotton swabs, the machine that checks your ears and, even worse, needles. I gulped very hard when I saw the amount of needles on the table.

Mr. Paul, this is going to hurt. A lot. I screamed loudly as Jabez did something to my arm.

Wake up now, said Jabez as he patted me on the face.

How long was I out? I asked.

Well you screamed for ten minutes straight before we had to knock you out, Jabez retorted.

Anesthesia? I questioned, rubbing my head.

Rock, Jabez chucked.

It looked like I had been moved from my nursery because I was now in a different room. This room was damp and cold with a terrible wind blowing that made me shiver. I was lying on what appeared to be an old mattress. Jabez crouched down next to me.

Here are some extra blankets.

Thank you, I said gratefully taking the blankets from him.

The pain will take a minute before it goes away, but tell me, what or how did you come to our heaven?

I had a hard time breathing in the cave so my breaths were heavy and long. I felt a sharp pain come from my arm. I held it and grunted.

Oh good, the medicine as finally kicked in. Talking will also make the pain go away, said Jabez.

I looked at him; Jabez glared at me with a curious awe much like a child wanting affection from his parent. Jabez brought the lamp closer to his face. I could see him clearer than when he was bandaging me up. His beard was long and he appeared to be around my age in his face. His voice though was very peaceful and calm. His facial features were very chiseled as if he was designed by a Greek sculptor. I felt like he sincerely cared for me. I felt as though Jabez had a charisma and serenity that I too would one day want to have assimilated into my own personality.

Jabez’s face still requested a story. Okay, if you mean how I got here, I might as well tell you. I had to wait until my body fully recovered before I could find a way out of this hell-hole.

Let’s just say working with the church is harder than beginning in the church.

2

Joe, Joe, look how much money we made this service. About forty thousand just today.

Great. Gabriel, look, I’m not feeling well. I think I’m going to go home before next service.

Are you crazy man? We need you here. You can sleep in on Monday, man, plus not enough money has come in to pay us. You know we’re always the last to be paid.

Gabriel and I were the church treasurers, except he was more passionate and enthusiastic than me about collecting other people’s money. This was maybe because we were only making pocket change. Our church’s main source of income came from generous tithes and offerings, which I am ok with, but the way the leaders extort the church for money is what I am nauseated by as well as selling our oh so popular Miracle Spring Water. One drop, with faith, removes debt, fixes marriages, and removes bad addictions. We are some of the founding members of our large mega church along with Gabriel’ wife, Daniel, Big Jerry, Michael and, of course, our pastor Bennie.

Bennie has been our charismatic leader who is always telling us how rich and prosperous our future is going to be. He would often say, "the only swear words in our vocabulary are poor and sick." Bennie used to inspire and encourage me but, as our twenty years of ministry expanded, Bennie’s actions and sermons have come to disgust and appall me.

Joey, lighten up, said Gabriel as we walked to the main chapel. We stopped at our deposit room and put the bag of money into the safe. Gabriel dialed the combination with anticipation. He acted like this was his first time putting money into the safe. This large safe was built into the wall, hidden behind the painting of Mary and baby Jesus. The picture wasn’t very good; Bennie thought it would help motivate our lack of greed. It didn’t make sense to me but I did as I was told. I always did as I was told, never thinking against the norm, never reading things for myself.

We walked down our long hallway to reach the chapel. Our main leaders and elders were sitting in the front seats listening to a lecture from Bennie. Our main chapel contained three large flat screen televisions that hung on our center, left, and right of the stage wall. Speakers were built into the stage floors so the whole audience could hear Bennie’s Sunday prophetic word. I always wondered why God spoke to pastors the most and especially before Sunday morning. Our main chapel was huge, costing over twenty million dollars to build. If you stood on stage, you could see all three levels of rows of the building.

As we took our