Guillotine

The guillotine was a device used by the Global Community to enforce the law instituted by Nicolae Carpathia during the last 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation for people to either take the "mark of loyalty" or lose their lives through beheading. It was also the sole method of execution for capital crimes in general during the later years of the Global Community.

Guillotines utilized by the Global Community were officially known as "loyalty enforcement facilitators" -- a term which Chloe Williams in the Dramatic Audio presentation of The Mark mockingly calls "the new symbol of peace and tolerance". In Viv Ivins' presentation of the loyalty mark and the enforcement measures to the Global Community directors, she disingenuously said she did not want to call them "guillotines" because she does not want to use language that would bespeak violence or images of beheading (while implementing a policy that uses an actual object that can be used to behead people). She said that she sincerely believes that they will rarely if ever be used and only serves as a tangible symbol of the seriousness of the exercise of receiving the mark of loyalty. She said that only the most incorrigible would suffer the full enforcement measures and that those events would be newsworthy only due to their uniqueness. It was officially called a "visual deterrent" that would be present at a mark application site.

The Global Community personnel barely seemed able to believe their own propaganda. In The Mark of the Beast, a memo was sent to all Global Community personnel in the United North American States:

All jails, prisons, and reeducation centers will receive shipment of the first loyalty enforcement facilitators within seven to ten days. The biochip injectors will ship separately directly from New Babylon. All Global Community personnel should refer to the machines with the exact terminology used above. The loyalty enforcement facilitators should not be called guillotines, and their use will not be referred to as a beheading. We will not use language that causes the public to think of violence or causes followers to think we are forcing people against their will.

The guillotines were designed to be easy to manufacture such that even amateur craftsmen could make them if they had the materials and schematics. The Global Community both used these crowdsourced loyalty enforcement facilitators and ones manufactured in factories. One of these factories is in Istanbul and their guillotines were driven to Greece in open trucks to intimidate dissenters.

It was first used on prisoners and then eventually used with the general public. Christians, who were sealed by God during this time, would by the grace of God reject the mark and accept martyrdom when pressed to make the decision in the Left Behind series. In the later years of the Tribulation, those who received the "mark of loyalty" too late would be executed immediately afterward by guillotine.

At Chloe Williams' execution at Stateville Penitentiary, she was executed with the guillotine with 35 other individuals, ten of whom who had not received the mark of loyalty, while the others committed murder or miscellaneous crimes against the Global Community. (Some of the alleged murderers may have been bounty hunters who inadvertently killed a loyal citizen bearing Carpathia's mark or others who had been implicated in a killing of a citizen. The Remnant states that someone charged with killing a loyal Carpathianist and could not produce an alibi would be dead within 24 hours.) Jock Ashmore, who presided over the executions, said that the blades are now not cleaned after their use, since they did not wash or scrape the blood off or use rust inhibitors. He also that that the grooves are no longer lubricated so that it is more likely that a single drop would fail to kill someone, and in those cases, the blade would be hoisted up again and dropped. The grooves used to be lubricated when they were "more humane". Unlike the earlier pretense of the GC of abhorring violence, they often broadcasted the executions, with the viewers loving slow-motion replays of the most gruesome deaths where the blade did not slice through the victim's neck and left them screaming mortally wounded.

During the execution event, a man was guillotined where the blade flipped at an angle as it was about to descend on his neck, resulting in the blade slicing halfway towards his neck. He was placed in the guillotine again and the blade was dropped again. Next, the ten who refused the mark of loyalty were to be executed next. Seven of the ten became believers due to Chloe's evangelism and the appearance of Caleb imploring the unmarked to receive God's forgiveness, while the other three scrambled towards the mark application station. When the seven were executed simultaneously, Caleb illuminated the courtyard with a harsh light, preventing the spectators from seeing the deaths of the new believers and effectively censoring the broadcast. That obviated Chang Wong from having to switch the feed since Chang had the ability to hack into Global Community broadcasts. After the believers were executed, Caleb left, so subsequent executions were not concealed by the bright light. The other three were still executed nevertheless as receiving the mark of loyalty only granted them a reprieve from death for only a few minutes.

Chloe was the last person to be executed. As she was about to be executed, Caleb returned and transfixed Jock Ashmore when he reneged on his promise to Chloe to let her say some last words to the public before her execution. During her speech, Chloe said that her fleshly nature does not look forward to a death of the likes that the spectators already witnessed thirty-five times today, indicating that the three who received the mark were not exceptions to the late Tribulation policy of the Global Community to execute those who received the mark too late. After her speech, Chloe was executed while Caleb's body glowed to prevent anyone from seeing Chloe's death but Caleb did not conceal the sound of the pull of the cord, the drop of the blade, and maybe the thud of Chloe's head falling into the basket.

In Armageddon and Glorious Appearing, the term "loyalty enforcement facilitator" is never mentioned and therefore rarely used as a euphemism by the Global Community in the final year of the Tribulation. However, in The Perils of Love, there is news coverage of the Angola Prison in Louisiana which called the guillotines in the courtyard "loyalty enforcement facilitators". This coverage is an attempt to conceal the location of Chloe Steele Williams, who was instead sent to Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois.

Known Victims

• Gustaf Zuckermandel, Sr.
• Anton Rudja
• Natalie Bishop
• Mrs. Miklos
• Mrs. Demeter
• Demetrius Demeter
• Mr. Papadopoulos
• Mrs. Papadopoulos
• Pete Davidson
• Solomon Zimmerman
• Steve Plank
• Perryn Madeleine
• Cyrus Spivey
• Mr. Wong
• Eustice Honaker
• Kelly Bradshaw
• Chad Harris
• Chloe Irene Williams
• Steve
• Mark Eisman

Trivia

• Cyrus Spivey is the only named unbeliever in the entire Left Behind franchise to be executed by the guillotine.
• In Desecration, Nicolae Carpathia says that it takes one-seventieth of a second for the blade to reach the bottom of the shaft from being dropped 15 feet. Assuming that the blade is merely dropped (i.e. no forces accelerating the blade aside from gravity and no initial velocity), one-seventieth of a second does not allow enough time. The distance traveled by an object undergoing constant acceleration over a given time is given by this formula: d = (0.5)at², where a is 9.8 meters per second squared and t is 0.0142 seconds. The blade would have then traveled 0.0010 meters.