It wasn’t as if they were trying to get out of it, Buck thought. But many of these were young people, excited, flushed with renewed enthusiasm for their work. They had seen the manifestations of power. They had seen the potentate himself. They knew that Nicolae’s making the temple of Jerusalem his own was tantamount to setting up residence in the mosque of the Dome of the Rock or moving into what had once been St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This would establish him once and for all the true god over all. And if the pathetic, weakened resistance had breath left, if they truly believed there was a higher being than His Excellency the potentate, where were they? Did they dare reveal their true loyalties in the face of such overwhelming evidence?
And now the revelers were still again. Those with the bullhorns clicked them off. Activities in the line ceased. Carpathia himself appeared in his white robe and gold sandals and shiny rope belt, smiling, standing one step above his own image, arms outstretched. The silence gave way to a deafening roar. Would he speak? Would he touch the worshipers? Some must have wondered the same, for they slowly rose from their knees on the steps and moved as if to advance upon him. He stopped them with a gesture and nodded toward the center mark application line.
There came his top military brass in all their finery, dress uniforms with white gloves, broad epaulets, buttons with sheens as reflective as their patent-leather shoes, capturing and emitting every staggered ray from the sun. Two dozen men and women, heads high, bearings regal, marched to the front of the line, upon command stood at ease, and removed their uniform caps.
One by one they proudly submitted to the application of the mark of loyalty, each receiving it on the forehead, several asking for the largest, darkest tattoo so their homeland designations would be obvious from far away.
As the last of these were processed, the effusive crowd bubbled over again as the dozen members of the Supreme Cabinet marshaled themselves into the staging area. The last three in this contingent were Suhail Akbar, Walter Moon, and Viv Ivins. While the military brass knelt on the temple steps, worshiping Carpathia and his image, the cabinet waited until all were processed and then moved as one to the worship area.
All the while, Carpathia stood benevolently above and beside the gold statue, gesturing toward these humble shows of loyalty. The assembled masses cheered as Mr. Akbar turned to display the giant black 42 that dominated his olive forehead. Then Mr. Moon displayed his -6. Finally Viv Ivins chose to kneel on the pavement as she received the application, then slowly stood and turned. Buck could not make out her number, but he knew her native Romania was part of the United Carpathian States and that her discreet tattoo would read 216.
The cabinet solemnly filed to the temple steps as the military brass moved away. One by one they ascended the steps on their knees, finishing by wrapping their arms around the statue’s feet, their shoulders heaving with emotion. Carpathia watched each one and dismissed them by placing his open palm upon their heads.
Finally only Viv Ivins remained at the base of the steps. The crowd seemed to wait breathlessly as she delicately removed her shoes, tugged up the hem of her suit’s smart skirt, and began the slow, awkward climb on her knees. Her hose ran with the first brush against the marble, but people seemed to moan in sympathy and in awe of her willingness to publicly humble herself.
When finally she reached the third step from the top, she only briefly embraced the statue, then detoured slightly and went up one more stair, where she prostrated herself and kissed Nicolae’s feet. He raised his face to the sky as if he could imagine no greater tribute. After several minutes, he bent and reached for her, but instead of letting him help her up, she enveloped his hands and kissed them. Then she reached into a pocket and pulled out a vial—Buck assumed perfume—and poured it over Nicolae’s shoes.
Again Carpathia feigned a humbly honored look and shrugged to the crowd. Finally, as he pulled Ms. Ivins to her feet, leaving her a step below him, he turned her to face the crowd and rested his hands upon her shoulders.
When the cheering died, Nicolae announced, “I personally will be watching from a secure vantage point, all night if need be, until the last devoted citizen of Jerusalem receives the mark of loyalty and worships my image. And tomorrow at noon, I will ascend to my throne in my new house. I shall initiate new ceremonies, and you will see again the ‘friend’ who accompanied me for as long as she could on the journey today. And you shall be led in worship by the Most High Reverend Father of Carpathianism.”
Nicolae waved farewell to every side, and the application lines began moving again.
“I’m tired,” Buck said. “Shall we head back to the hotel to rest and pray and prepare for tomorrow?”
Chaim shook his head. “You go, my friend. I feel the Lord would have me stay.”
“Here?”
Chaim nodded.
“I’ll stay with you,” Buck said.
“No, you need your rest.”
“How long will you be?”
“I will be here until the confrontation.”
Buck shook his head and leaned close. “Will that be before or after the desecration?”
“God has not told me yet.”
“Chaim, I cannot leave you. What if something happens?”
The old man waved him off.
“I can’t, Chaim! Leave you here overnight? I would never forgive myself.”
“If what?”
“If anything! You sit here until the last mark has been applied, and it will be obvious you have not taken it. I have reason to think Carpathia is watching, as he said. He doesn’t sleep anymore, Chaim. He’ll know.”
“He will know soon enough anyway, Cameron. Now you go. I insist.”
“I need to check with the others. This is lunacy.”
“Excuse me? Cameron, you believe God has chosen me for this?”
“Of course, but—”
“He is leading me to stay and prepare. Alone.”
Buck pulled out his phone. “Just let me—”
“I will take full responsibility for the consequences. I have my inspiration in my pocket. The young woman who modeled the ultimate obedience once personally encouraged me, though she was newer even than I to the things of God. You are to go back to the hotel to rest and pray for me.”
“God told you that too?”
Chaim smiled sadly. “Not in so many words, but I am telling you that.”
Buck was at a loss. Should he pretend to go but watch from somewhere? He’d done that before. It was near this very spot where he had seen the two witnesses resurrected and raised to heaven.
“I see your mind turning,” Chaim said. “You do what I say. If it is true that I have been assigned this task, it must come with some leadership responsibility.”
“Only for a million people.”
“But not for you?”
“I am not a Messianic Jew, sir. I am not part of the remnant of Israel.”
“But surely you must obey one who is to answer for so many.”
“I don’t follow your logic.”
“Ah, Cameron! If this had to do with logic, what would I be doing here? Look at me! An old man, a scientist. I should be in an easy chair somewhere. But here I am, a stranger in my own mirror, trying to tell God he has made a mistake. But he will not listen. He is more stubborn than I. He uses the simple to confound the wise. His ways are not ours. The sheer illogic of his choice of me forces me to the reluctant acceptance that it must be true. Am I ready? No. Am I willing? Perhaps. After tonight, I must go forward, willing or not. Do I believe he will go before me? I must.”
It seemed as if he and Chaim were alone in a sea of people. Buck pawed at the pavement with his foot. “Chaim, I—”
“Cameron, I would ask that you call me Micah.”
“Micah?”
Chaim nodded.
“I don’t get it.”
“I am not foolhardy enough to call myself Moses, and I shall not reveal my real name to Nicolae unless God wills it.”
??
?So you’ll tell him you’re Micah? Why not Tobias Rogoff? Zeke has provided identification for that and—”
“Think about it and you will understand.”
“Should I bring my fake ID? You don’t have a new name for me, do you?”
“You will not need a name.”
“You know this for sure.”
“As sure as I know anything.”
“So I bring no ID.”
“Your papers show you as Jack Jensen. Should that be checked, you would be traced to the ranks of the Peacekeeping forces. How would you explain a GC corporal assisting the leader of the opposition?”
“So I’ll come without papers, and if they demand to know who I am, I’ll be deemed a vagrant.”
“I will identify you as my assistant, and that will satisfy them.”
Buck looked away. “I liked you more when you were less sure of yourself.”
“And Cameron,” Chaim said, “you are a vagrant. We all are. We are aliens in this world, homeless if anyone is.”
Buck thrust his hands deep into his pockets. He couldn’t believe it. The old man had persuaded him. He was going to leave his old friend alone overnight with the enemy. What was the matter with him? “Micah?” was all he could say.
“You go,” Chaim said. “Check in with our comrades and your family. And think about my new name. It will come to you.”
CHAPTER 6
The late-afternoon sun made beautifully interesting shadows on the stunning architecture at Petra. David found a sweater and pulled it over his shoulders as he descended from the pagan high place to one of the most remarkable cities ever built.
The various buildings, tombs, shrines, and meeting places had literally been carved out of the striking red sandstone millennia before, and though its early history was largely speculative, the place had become a tourist attraction in the 1800s. David wondered how the new inhabitants of such a surreal place would make comfortable quarters out of solid rock. Tsion taught that God had promised food from heaven and that clothes would not wear out, but what would substitute for insulation, inner walls, and anything resembling modern conveniences?
The place was spread out, many of its famous edifices—the treasury of the pharaoh, the five-thousand-seat amphitheater, the various tombs—connected by a system of gorges and channels dammed and rerouted by the various civilizations that had inhabited the area.
Because David had arrived by helicopter, he had to hike down to the main level to find the sole passageway leading in. With rock walls over three hundred feet high in places and a trail at points fewer than seven feet across, it was no wonder most visitors rode in on camel, donkey, or horseback. Operation Eagle would fly in the majority of the newcomers, because a million fleeing Israelis would be slaughtered if they had to traverse the roughly mile-long, narrow pass on foot.
David could see why the city had been a perfect defensive location thousands of years before. Tsion taught that the Edomites, who inhabited it at the time of Moses, had refused to let the Israelites pass through. But in this world of high-tech travel, only a miracle could protect unarmed innocents from aerial attack. Rather than a place of refuge, David decided, without the hand of God this place could just as easily be ideal for an ambush.
David’s life was no longer about creature comforts. And he had forgotten what leisure time was. Until the Glorious Appearing, this would be where the action was, where miracles would be the order of every day. David’s people would inhabit this city, and they would be preserved from illness and death, insulated against their enemies until Messiah liberated them. If witnessing that meant making his bed on a slab of stone, it was a small price to pay.
David made sure his laptop had stored enough solar energy to remain charged throughout his night in a cave. In the loneliness at the top of the only world he knew anymore, reading Tsion’s post of what he believed Antichrist was up to, monitoring the Carpathian-fashioned news, and communicating with his confreres would serve as David’s only links to humanity.
He expected, within twenty-four hours, the first of more company than he would know what to do with. How a million of them could be contained even in the vast area surrounding the great rock city was a problem only God could solve. David had learned not to wonder and question, but to watch and see.
After checking in with everybody and doing his best to explain how he could leave Dr. Rosenzweig unattended, Buck spent that evening at the King David Hotel, watching television with Chaim’s Bible before him. He read through Micah, seeing parallels between the Jerusalem of then and now, and he noticed the reference to Moses. Clearly the book was a dire promise of God’s judgment, but Buck was not enough of a theologian to decipher its significance to Chaim. The prophecies seemed to deal more with the first coming of Christ than with the Rapture or the Glorious Appearing, but perhaps Chaim planned to use some of the words and phrases when dealing with Carpathia.
The TV news carried mostly rehashes of the day’s events, but at least Hattie’s death was not glossed over as it had been during the live coverage. While she was not identified—the death of a woman they thought dead previously would have been a puzzler to the GC anyway—it was clear she had died for her courage to speak against the ruler of this earth. The GC did not spin it that way, of course, but boasted of the event, using it as an example of the veracity of Carpathia’s claims of deity and confirmation of Fortunato’s role as his designate of spiritual power and wonders.
Buck was exhausted, nearly too much so to sleep. But as he stared at the ceiling in the darkness, eager to get back to the Temple Mount at first light, he rehearsed Dr. Rosenzweig’s insistence on being called Micah rather than Chaim. The names floated before his mind’s eye. And he slept.
In the middle of the afternoon in Chicago, Dr. Tsion Ben-Judah printed out the message he planned to post on the most popular Web site in history. He asked Ming and Chloe to review it for him. They sat together and read.
TO MY DEAR TRIBULATION SAINTS, BELIEVERS IN JESUS THE CHRIST, THE MESSIAH AND OUR LORD AND SAVIOR, AND TO THE CURIOUS, THE UNDECIDED, AND THE ENEMIES OF OUR FAITH:
It has now become clear that Nicolae Carpathia, the one who calls himself the ruler of this world and whom I have identified (with the authority of the Holy Scriptures) as Antichrist, along with his False Prophet Leon Fortunato (upon whom has been bestowed the audacious title of the Most High Reverend Father of Carpathianism), has scheduled what the Bible calls the desecration of the temple.
As with every other connivance and scheme Antichrist believes is the product of his own creative mind, this event too has been prophesied in the infallible Word of God. The Old Testament prophet Daniel wrote that during this time in history “the king shall do according to his own will: he shall exalt and magnify himself above every god” and “shall speak blasphemies against the God of gods.”
The prophet also predicted that “many countries shall be overthrown,” but one of those that “shall escape from his hand” is Edom. That, friends, is where Petra lies. Sadly, Egypt will not escape his hand. He will have “power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; also the Libyans and Ethiopians shall follow at his heels.”
Antichrist has already begun fulfilling the prophecy that “he shall go out with great fury to destroy and annihilate many.” Fortunately, someday “he shall come to his end, and no one will help him.”
It is also prophesied that the great archangel, Michael, shall “at that time” stand up. He is referred to as “the great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people,” referring to the remnant of Israel, those Jews like myself who have come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Praise God, Daniel also foretells that “at that time your people shall be delivered, every one who is found written in the book.”
You know from my previous teachings that the book referred to is the Lamb’s Book of Life, in which are recorded those who have trusted in Christ for their salvation. While I cannot be more specific now, due t
o the divine experience of a beloved colleague just within the last few days, I believe that Michael the archangel is standing watch and that deliverance is nigh.
Jesus himself referred to the prophecies of Daniel when he warned of “the ‘abomination of desolation’ . . . standing in the holy place.” I believe he was speaking of the very desecration planned by Antichrist.
Many were confused before the rapture of the church and believed that the apostle Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians referred to that event when he spoke of “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him.” We may rejoice, because it is now clear that Paul was speaking of the Glorious Appearing. Paul writes, “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”
Our hope is in the promise that “the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.”
We often wonder, when the truth is now so clear, why not everyone comes to Christ. It is because of that very deception! People did not, as Paul says above, “receive the love of the truth.” He says it is “for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Can you imagine it? There are people who know the truth, know their futures are doomed, and yet still they take pleasure in sin! A warning, if you are one of those: Due to your rebellion, God may have already hardened your heart so that you could not change your mind if you wanted to.