“I believe you know the city. . . . It’s called Boston.”
“Boston? The city on the hill?”
“Yes. Boston was the first embodiment of Winthrop’s vision, the center of the new commonwealth, the city on the hill that would become America.”
“Boston?”
“The city on the hill is one of its names. Boston would become the capital city of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the home of John Winthrop. He would live there, govern there, and be buried there. Boston was founded by John Winthrop.”
He didn’t say anything after that.
“Why are you quiet?” I asked.
“You don’t yet see it,” said the prophet, “do you?”
“See what? I see the city.”
“America was founded for the purposes and glory of God, to be a light to the world, the city on the hill. It all began here. It all came from these shores. And this was the first embodiment of that calling and vision. But America turned away from its calling, away from God’s purposes, and then turned against them. And then it all began, the shaking, the beginning of signs, the harbingers. And where did it all begin? Where did 9/11 originate?”
And that’s when it hit me.
“It all began here . . .”
“Yes,” said the prophet, “9/11 originated from the city on the hill. The first planes took flight . . .”
“From Boston. So the shaking of America came from the city on the hill.”
“Remember the principle: in the days of judgment, the nation is brought back to its foundations. So on 9/11, America was brought back to the foundations of its powers, to Lower Manhattan on the day of its discovery, to the Pentagon on the day of its groundbreaking, and to Ground Zero, where it was dedicated to God on its first day. But the mystery goes back and beyond even that, beyond Ground Zero and beyond that first day, to the very beginning, to the foundation of the foundation, to here, to the city on the hill. America had fallen away from its foundations and, on a single day, was brought back to them.”
“It was all about return,” I said, “the call to return.”
“And what was it that Winthrop’s vision prophesied?”
“That if America followed the ways of God, the blessings of Israel would come upon it, peace, safety, prosperity, power, and preeminence. But if it turned against the ways of God, then the judgments of Israel would then come upon it.”
“And what was 9/11 and the harbingers that came from it? What was it all replaying?”
“The judgments of Israel . . . So 9/11 is joined to the city on the hill.”
“And the mystery,” said the prophet, “is that it actually was. The mystery is that 9/11 itself began in the city on the hill. The planes that brought destruction took off from the city on the hill. It was from the city on the hill that the calamity came upon America.”
“So the calamity that came to America began in the city of the man who had given America the warning of calamity.”
“And the warning he had given America came from the warning Moses had given to Israel beginning in Deuteronomy 28.
“And what was the scripture appointed to be spoken in the days leading up to 9/11?”
“Deuteronomy 28.”
“And what did it warn of?”
“The enemy coming from a faraway land as a swooping eagle to bring destruction.”
“Thus it was one of the judgments of Israel of which Winthrop warned. And it would all begin on the day the enemy took off as an eagle flying from Boston, the city on the hill.”
“Everything comes together.”
“And yet there’s more to the mystery.”
“I don’t know if I can take more.”
“Winthrop had a special place he called his own. It was an island.”
“Not this island?”
“No, but just about as small as this one. And it was on that island that Winthrop planted a garden, a vineyard, and an orchard. It was said that the first apple and pear trees in New England were planted on that island by John Winthrop. The island sat close to the mainland. So Winthrop could gaze out at his city on the hill to contemplate its calling and pray for its future. It would be called Governor’s Island.”
“Why?”
“It was named after Winthrop. He was the governor. It was another way of saying it was Winthrop’s island.”
It was just then that a particularly loud and low-flying plane passed over the waters in front of us. I had noticed many planes taking off and landing at the nearby airport throughout the day, but this one was impossible to miss.
“Do you know where all the planes are going to and coming from?” he asked.
“To that airport.”
“And do you know what that airport is?”
“I didn’t think about it.”
“That, Nouriel, is the place where it all began. It wasn’t just that 9/11 began in Boston. It was there, in that place, that everything started.”
“That’s the airport that . . . ”
“That’s Logan Airport. It was from that ground that the terrorists took off to begin their mission. That’s where 9/11 began.”
“Before the plane flew by, you were telling me about Winthrop’s island. Why?”
“Do you know what happened to Winthrop’s island, Nouriel?”
“No.”
He paused for a moment.
“It became an airport.”
“No!”
“Yes. The island of John Winthrop became Logan Airport . . . the place from which 9/11 began.”
“Logan Airport!”
“The shaking, the signs, the harbingers . . . it all began on the island of John Winthrop.”
“No . . . ”
“The man who laid the foundation and gave the warning of what would happen if America ever turned away from God. And the calamity came . . . and came specifically from his land, from his island, where he dwelt and prayed.”
“It’s beyond . . . ”
“It’s the mystery behind the mystery,” said the prophet. “On 9/11 the calamity struck Ground Zero, where America was consecrated to God on its first day—but it all began here, where America was consecrated to God before its first day . . . the mystery ground beyond the mystery ground.
“And speaking of grounds, look over there,” he said, pointing just right of the airport. “It was a peninsula so close to Logan Airport that it almost seemed to be touching it. It’s a town. Do you know what it’s called?”
“No.”
“Winthrop. . . it’s the Town of Winthrop.”
“All the pieces of the mystery . . . together.”
“Yes,” said the prophet, “they all came together. On that September morning, three days after the scrolls were opened to the word that prophesied the enemy coming on the land as an eagle, the terrorists took flight from the land of John Winthrop in the city on the hill. On that same morning, in New York City and around the nation, the ancient prayers of the selichote were lifted up and spoke of the enemy attacking land and leaving destruction in his wake. And on that same morning, a ship named the Half Moon readied to journey up the Hudson River in a re-creation of the voyage that represented the beginning of that city hundreds of years earlier on September 11.
“And on that same September morning, in bedrooms and studies and on kitchen tables throughout New York City, the East Coast, and the nation, believers opened their Bibles to the word appointed for that day—Isaiah 9:10—the prophecy that spoke of an enemy strike on the land, the collapse of its buildings, and the falling of the sycamore tree—all of which it identified as the beginning of a nation’s judgment, and all of which would be set in motion on the morning they read it. And on that same morning, on America’s east coast and throughout New York City, the sound of the watchman, the ancient alarm appointed to warn the city of impending calamity, began sounding. It was that morning that what John Winthrop had prophesied came upon America from the ground of John Winthrop.”
“And so now we’ve retu
rned,” I said, “to the beginning of the beginning.”
“It had to begin from the beginning,” he replied, “because it all comes back to the return.”
“It was the call to return. . . . It was the wake-up call.”
“A severe call,” said the prophet, “as severe as an alarm for a deafened people. But the purpose of the alarm is not to bring judgment but to awaken the sleeping and save them from judgment.”
“So all the returns to all the foundation grounds and all the foundation days . . . it was all about return; the call of a nation to return to the foundation from which it had departed.”
“Yes, but the foundation isn’t a place or a set of principles or moral precepts. The foundation is Him. The foundation is God, Himself.”
“Did Winthrop give any indication of what the end would be for America, the blessing or the judgment?”
“He ended his vision of the city on the hill by alluding once more to the words of Moses. He said this:
‘Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,’ in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways. . . . Therefore let us choose life.”1
“So which one will it be,” I said, “life or death?”
“The answer to that,” he said, “lies with us. For there is set before us judgment and redemption, life and death. It is His will that we find life.
And it is only in return that we can find it. If the end is to be blessing and redemption, then it will have been the will of God. But if the end is to be judgment, then it will have been our own. So the voice of God is calling, ‘Return to Me, and I will return to you.’2 In other words . . .” “In other words . . .” “Choose life.”
We stood there for a time in silence, watching toward the city on the hill as a warm wind swept over us. And then I broke the silence.
“So,” I said, “we’ve come full circle. When I first saw you on the island of the two towers, you told me about the city on the hill. We began with that. And now we’ve returned to it. So is this our last meeting?”
“I believe,” said the prophet, “that there’s one more thing I need to show you.”
“I thought this was the last mystery.”
“What I have to show you . . . I would call it something else.”
“What?” I asked. “What would you call it?”
“A secret.”
Chapter 34
The Lamb
A SECRET?” SAID Ana.
“Something known only by a few, something that took place away from the eyes of the world.”
“And known by the prophet.”
“Yes, of course,” said Nouriel, “one of the few.”
“So what happened?”
“I took out the seal and began examining it. And there was the image, clockwise from the image that had led me to the island.”
“You didn’t know it was there before that?”
“I had noticed it before as I had the other minute images in the ring that circled the city on the hill. But I didn’t think that they were all there for my sake. And I was so convinced that my encounter with the prophet on that island was going to be our last that I didn’t see the need to decipher every detail on the seal. But that changed when he told me he had one more thing to reveal.”
“So what was the image?” she asked.
“A gate, an ancient gate.”
“That’s how it all began,” she said. “The first mystery was that of the gate.”
“Yes, and it all began with a dream in which I saw a gate covered with engravings, the sun, the torch, the body of water, and the land of hills. It was the same image that I now saw on the seal, only it was a miniaturized version.”
“So what did you take it to mean?”
“The same thing it meant in the dream. It was a representation of the nation’s gate, New York City, and, more specifically, the passageway into the Hudson River, with the island of Manhattan on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other.”
“And where did it lead you?”
“I decided to get as close as I could to that gate, to where the New York Bay and the Hudson River come together. I went to the southern end of Manhattan, to Battery Park.”
“And you were trusting that you were led to go there just when you did and the prophet would do likewise?”
“Something like that.”
“So what happened?”
“When I got to Battery Park, it was deserted, except for one person, one who was impossible to miss. In more normal times, it’s not uncommon to find people in the park dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, posing with tourists and making a living out of it. And that’s what I saw: a woman dressed up as the Statue of Liberty. She was wearing a robe of aqua blue, with her face covered in aqua-blue face paint, and holding in her outstretched right hand an aqua-blue torch. And over her aqua-blue face was a white medical mask—the Statue of Liberty wearing a face mask. It was a disconcerting sight. I wondered what she was doing there when there was virtually no one else in the park that day. She stood there frozen except she seemed to be following me with her eyes as I wandered through the park in hope of finding the prophet.
“And then, just as I was about to give up my search, she lowered her torch until it was pointing toward the waterfront. I didn’t try to figure out what was happening, who she was or why she was doing it. But having, once again, nothing else to go on, I decided to take it as a lead and go with it. So I made my way down to the harbor. That’s when I saw him, the prophet in a rowboat anchored to the dock, waiting for me to join him.”
“Come, Nouriel!” he said. “We have a journey to make. You don’t want to miss the boat. There won’t be another one for some time.”
So I went down to the dock and joined him in the boat. It was the second time I had found myself in a rowboat with the prophet. The first was in the lake at Central Park during our first encounters. But this time he would be the one doing the rowing.
“The lady who pointed me here,” I said, “is she an employee of yours?”
“No,” he replied.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll have to see.”
“You promised me a secret.”
“And it will be revealed . . . and a mystery of two holy days.”
We launched out from Battery Park, southward into the New York Bay. He didn’t say anything at first. He was focused on navigating the boat away from the harbor. Only after achieving that, he spoke.
“Unprecedented days,” he said. “For the first time in history, the world is brought to a standstill with billions of people hidden inside their homes, waiting until a plague passes through the land. Unprecedented . . . except once.”
“When?”
“In ancient times when a people were told to go inside their homes and stay there because a plague was passing through the land. The command was given to them by their leaders. Those who failed to stay inside their houses during the appointed time were risking being struck down by the plague.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this happening before.”
“I think you have,” he replied. “It was called Passover.”
“Passover!”
“The land was Egypt. The nation was Israel. And a plague was passing through the land. The Israelites were to go inside their houses. They had been instructed to do so by Moses. None of them were to go out of his house until morning. They were all to stay inside until the plague had passed through the land.”
“So it was the first national lockdown,” I said.
“And there had never been another like it—until now. In the year 2020, for the first time in over three thousand years, the people of Israel were told to go inside their houses and not come out. As in ancient times, it was a command given to them by their leaders. And as in Egypt, it was because a plague was passing through the land. And it was not only the fact that the ancient elements were again coming tog
ether—it was when they were converging together.”
“When?”
“On Passover. It all came together on Passover. It was the spring of 2020. The Israeli prime minister issued the order that starting on the eve of Passover at 6 p.m., there would be a total national lockdown. Everyone was to stay inside their houses with their immediate family. The lockdown was to last until 7 a.m. the following day. And no one was to ‘go out of his house until morning.’
“So the people of Israel stayed inside their homes because a plague was passing through the land—on the very night that commemorated the very night that the people of Israel stayed inside their homes because a plague was passing through the land. The ancient mystery replayed itself on the very night of its commemoration.”
“But it didn’t only happen in Israel.”
“Yes,” said the prophet, “that’s the point. The mystery was manifesting all over the world. People throughout the earth were now being told by their leaders to stay inside their houses and apartments, their mansions, and palaces, and huts . . . the rich and the poor, the weak and the powerful . . . because a plague was passing through their land, a plague was passing through the earth. The entire world was brought into the mystery of Passover; the Communist world, the Christian world, the Muslim world, the Hindu world, the secular world, the whole planet was immersed into the mystery of Passover in the early spring, the season of Passover.”
“A Passover of judgment,” I said.
“You could say that.”
“And what does it all mean?”
“What was the center of Passover?” he asked. “The lamb, the Passover lamb. In the first Passover, the people of Israel were told to sacrifice a lamb and mark their doorposts with its blood. When the plague or judgment came upon their house, if that house was marked with the lamb’s blood, the plague passed over them and they were saved. The lamb was, in a sense, absorbing the plague, dying in their place so that those who took refuge in it would be saved from the judgment. It all centered on the lamb.”
He was quiet for a few moments, continuing to row and giving me time to absorb his words.
“What does the Bible call Jesus?” asked the prophet.
The Harbinger II Page 27
