by Brian Godawa
Tiberius concluded, “I suggest you show mercy. Like a god. Pardon the men and you may find them more zealous on your behalf when the time comes.”
Titus thought it through. Tiberius was right. He turned back to the centurion. “Tell your soldiers that I will withhold their execution out of my grace and mercy. But you will take over latrine duty until I say so.”
The centurion relaxed with relief, but then stiffened and saluted. “Hail, Caesar! Just and merciful. We are your most loyal soldiers.”
He turned around to announce to the men their new duties, and Titus returned to his war tent for a meeting with his generals.
• • • • •
Apollyon stood in his war chariot on the ridge overlooking the Roman camp with Jerusalem beyond. He had returned with Marduk and the five other gods from Pella. The four war horses snorted smoke and stomped the ground restlessly. The remainder of the Watchers arrived and joined them on the ridge.
Marduk said, “The ramp and the catapults are almost completed. Soon, the battle begins.”
“Yes,” said Apollyon. “The end is near.”
Zeus stepped near to the chariot. “My lord, where are the gods of Canaan? Are they coming?”
“No,” snapped Apollyon. “But the problem is taken care of. Now we set our sights on Jerusalem.”
The truth was that Pella had been a colossal failure for the Angel of the Abyss. He had lost four powerful deities there, and he could not afford to lose any more. But he had the other sixty-five gods assembled for war. His locust demons filled the land, the legions, and the city with chaos and uncleanness. And the archangels would not be there to defend the city. He had to focus.
“Gods of the nations, take your positions and prepare to unleash hell upon Jerusalem. When we have won, we will inhabit Yahweh’s temple as our own!”
The gods cheered. But Apollyon thought, And then I will destroy it. I will not leave one stone upon another.
• • • • •
Titus unrolled a map of Jerusalem out on a table in his war room at the center of the Roman camp. Agrippa and Josephus had crafted it from their intimate knowledge of the structures and layout of the city.
Agrippa stepped up beside Titus and Tiberius. “The key to the city is below. There is a network of underground tunnels with exits out beyond the walls.” One tunnel was sketched out as a light line on the drawing to illustrate its rough location beneath the structures and streets. Agrippa pointed to the western wall. “Your best insertion point for troops would be here—the tunnel north of Herod’s palace. I will show you the hidden entrance.”
Titus saw that the tunnel Agrippa referred to would angle back into the New City close to where they were building the ramp. He said, “But surely the tunnel will be guarded.”
Agrippa said with a smirk, “Select few are privy to all secrets of the aristocracy.”
Titus looked to Josephus for approval. He nodded in agreement and said, “Your only concern will be navigation through the city. Unfortunately, the streets are a labyrinth and difficult to know unless you have lived there.”
“Solved,” said Titus.
Agrippa and Josephus looked at each other with curiosity. Agrippa asked, “Do you have a mole?”
Titus smirked and said, “Select few are privy to all secrets of Caesar.”
CHAPTER 30
Jacob climbed the stairs to the top of the tower at the southern pinnacle of the temple. He arrived at the top with a rapid heartbeat in his chest and labored breathing from the flight of stairs that led four hundred feet above the Kidron Valley.
He walked out onto the parapet. No one was here. Good. It was his favorite place to come to refresh himself or think through problems and issues. As he looked out over the city of David, the city of God, he felt that he could think more clearly. Like he was above it all, looking down from God’s own heights.
This was the southwest corner of the temple complex. To his left was the rocky Kidron valley outside the walls. To his right, the Upper City where Herod’s elaborate palace stood. The people far below on the pavement outside the temple looked like little animals scurrying every which way.
This was his beloved holy city. But now it was a city under siege. He could see the Roman encampment on the Mount of Olives just above the Kidron Valley. The main camp on Mount Scopus was a mile from the other side of Jerusalem. They were surrounded.
He needed to breathe the fresh air up here. Down below in the foul stench of the city, he had felt he was suffocating. The population was overflowing with several hundred thousand people now trapped inside the walls because of the legions surrounding them. Many were living in the streets because all the residences and inns were filled. Garbage was piling up everywhere. Even public defecation was a problem. It both literally and metaphorically reeked to high heaven in the nostrils of Jacob—and no doubt of God as well.
From his vantage point, Jacob saw the charred remains of food stores in the city that had been burned down over a year ago. In the intervening time, the last of the city’s resources had finally been consumed and starvation had set in. Fights were breaking out in the streets over food. They would not be lasting much longer.
Jacob’s thoughts returned to his earlier years when he had been naively fooled into the Nazarene’s false teachings. But he had eventually returned to the Hebrew roots of his faith. He had come to the conclusion that the Way of the Nazarene was a lie. Jacob had become a staunch enemy of the Christians, fighting their pernicious heresies against Torah, temple, and Land. He had fought for circumcision, sabbaths, and dietary restrictions, the marks of covenantal membership.
Jacob looked across the city streets to the hippodrome, the source of his survival and the pain of his unhappiness. The doctor Alexander and his shrew of a wife had created the hospital there and had become a thorn in his flesh. He had done everything he could to rid the city of their vile influence. But their medical services had been too important to the populace—and to his own survival. It bothered him deeply that they had nursed him back to health when he had caught the plague. They’d said it was a miracle healing of Jesus, which only served to anger him.
What kind of a God would allow such suffering anyway? If these Christians were his children, then why had he almost wiped them out with a great tribulation? Which also begged the question of why Yahweh allowed his people the Jews to suffer so greatly beneath the foot of Rome. Is he chastising us for our disobedience? Cassandra had made this argument to him on this very spot not long ago.
Jacob could not deny that he was strangely attracted to Cassandra. He hated what she was, but he craved her with a kind of perverse desire. Maybe it was to subjugate her beliefs to his own. Or maybe it was to defile her self-righteous holiness. Put her in her place, make himself feel better. He had tried to take her by force, but once again, he’d been stopped by unfortunate circumstances. It seemed that everything he tried to do to stop Cassandra and Alexander backfired on him. He couldn’t get them to leave the city with the others. He couldn’t keep the Christians working in the mines. He couldn’t catch Cassandra when she escaped to Pella.
The worst example of this frustration was the Two Witnesses. Those scourges of the people were closely connected to Alexander and Cassandra, and no one could touch them. What Jacob had witnessed earlier had burned into his soul with fear and dread: two entire century units of soldiers destroyed by fire from heaven. A hundred and sixty warriors. He had seen it with his own eyes, and he could not get it out of his mind.
The ramifications haunted him. If God himself was truly protecting the Witnesses, if he was behind their message of destruction of city and temple, if they were right that this generation was guilty of crucifying the Messiah, then the blood of all the prophets ever shed in the Land was indeed upon their heads. There was no way out.
If the Witnesses were truly God’s prophets, then God was divorcing Israel after the flesh to marry a new bride, Israel after the Spirit. But that would make everything Jacob ha
d believed into a lie. A lie that he had stolen, lied, and even killed for.
Worse, Jacob would be the most cursed of all, unable to be restored, because he had crucified the Messiah all over again by returning to an obsolete covenant.120 By not treating the Christians with acceptance and mercy, he would be guilty of not treating Messiah with acceptance and mercy. The parable of the sheep and goats came to his mind.
“Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”121
“But I helped Alexander,” Jacob complained to the air. “I fed his people. I got him out of prison with the help of the Witnesses. I took his Christians out of the mines and brought them back to the hippodrome.”
Except that everything Jacob had done from the hippodrome to the food and financial support was only a calculated strategy to benefit himself. His own words rang hollow in his ears. He had never done anything in this life for God or anyone else other than himself. He had lived a lie under the color of religious duty. Even his love of country and city and temple was a love for what it had given him: prestige, privilege, power.
His religious obligation was a burden of weight upon him he could no longer bear. He had struggled to be a good Israelite, one who kept the Torah and made sure others did as well. But he knew his heart was not circumcised. He knew the works of the law could not save him from his own vile unclean heart.
For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?122
“I am accursed,” he said. “Anathema.”
He climbed up on the ledge of the tower wall and cast himself down into the rocky bottom of the Kidron valley four hundred feet below.
CHAPTER 31
Pella
Uriel had dropped Cassandra back at Pella and returned to his squad of Kharabu on their way to Jerusalem.
Her heart racing, Cassandra hurried straight to her house. All she wanted was to see her children. She felt a longing for them like never before.
She burst through the front door to find her maidservant Magdalena feeding Samuel. “Mistress, you’ve returned!”
“Yes. Yes, I have.”
“Mother!” Rushing into the front room of their small home, Noah and Rachel ran into Cassandra’s arms. She hugged and kissed them as though she’d come back from the dead.
She rustled Noah’s untidy hair. “My little warrior.” She held Rachel away from her to look lovingly into her daughter’s teary eyes. “My responsible young woman.”
Rachel hugged her back fiercely. “I thought we’d never see you again!”
“My dear, dear children. I am here to stay. With you. I will never leave you. I love you all so dearly.” Cassandra moved over to receive Samuel from Magdalena. Holding him tight, she looked into his cooing face and kissed him. In his eyes she saw the future. A future of hope growing out of despair. A seed blossoming into a beautiful tree of bountiful fruit.
She looked back at Noah and Rachel. “I guess I never wanted you to grow up.”
They both sighed and rolled their eyes. Noah complained, “We know.”
“But yesterday, I realized that you are growing up. And you know what? I decided that I’m going to let you.”
Both of their eyes brightened.
Rachel wasted no time with her response. “Does this mean you’ve changed your mind about Jonathan?”
Cassandra sighed. “Somewhat.”
Rachel squealed with delight and hugged Cassandra again. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Cassandra couldn’t help but laugh.
And then a tiny pain pricked her heart. Her own pain of unfulfilled longing for her beloved husband and friend with whom she might never spend time again.
There was a knock at the door. Noah hurried over to open it. “Thelonius!” he yelped at the sight of the Roman. “Am I late for my guard duties?”
“No, I just came to see if there was anything you all needed with your mother gone.” Looking past the young boy, Thelonius exclaimed, “Cassandra! You’re back. Thank God. What happened?”
She smiled. “I had to learn what I should have known all along. My calling is here to raise my family for God’s kingdom.”
“But what about Father?” Noah’s eyes turned sad.
Cassandra touched him reassuringly. “We must pray for him. Pray that God protects him and returns him to us. But more importantly, that God’s will be done. It’s what your father wants.”
Noah was not satisfied. “Will we see him again?”
Cassandra smiled painfully. “Yes, Noah. We will see him again.” She decided not to finish her sentence with “in glory.” After all, there was still hope that Alexander might survive and find his way back to them. A very small hope. But if the smallest of faith could move a mountain, then such hope was enough for her.
She hugged Noah and Rachel again along with little Samuel in her arms. “Oh, I missed you all so much.”
As she released them, she took note of Thelonius’s troubled expression. He asked, “Cassandra, can I speak to you alone?”
Handing Samuel back to Magdalena, Cassandra followed Thelonius up onto the house roof.
As she looked out upon the city, Cassandra saw even this aspect of her life in a fresh new way. The city was no longer a refuge. It was her home. No longer did she see the Remnant of believers as the last of the faithful on the verge of annihilation, but as the first-fruits of an everlasting dominion of God’s kingdom. No doubt it would take untold years and much suffering of growing pains through history. But Jesus Christ was seated at the right hand of God ruling over all the earth. The war that was upon them would remove the old covenant forever and vindicate his reign that the apostle John had written would last a thousand years. An obvious symbol of a vast amount of time. His spiritual kingdom would grow from this smallest of seeds in the garden to the largest of trees in whose branches all the birds would make nests. The Gates of Hades would not prevail over the Church of Jesus Christ, his holy congregation.123
Thelonius broke her out of her thoughts. “Cassandra, I am not who you think I am.”
She searched his face for understanding. “What do you mean?”
Thelonius looked away in guilt. “I have not told you everything about my fiancé or why I was here in Judea.” He swallowed hard before adding, “I lied to you. I betrayed you.”
“What?”
He looked away again in guilt. “I told you that she wasn’t a Christian. Which is true. But neither was I.”
Cassandra was not sure she’d heard correctly what he had said. “You’re saying you are not a Christian?” It didn’t make sense to her. Like a person speaking a foreign tongue.
“I was not a Christian. And the reason why I was here in Judea was because Titus was holding Livia hostage.”
“Oh, Thelonius. Why?”
He appeared to be fighting to say every word. “He kept her in arrested custody until I brought him the answers my father was commissioned by Nero to find.”
Cassandra felt her stomach drop. Her mind became dizzy. She knew what Severus had been looking for when he was alive. She had been his servant years ago when he was on a journey to find the Apocalypse and its author and to kill him. But there was a third thing Severus was commissioned to do that he’d never done for the emperor.
Thelonius now said it. “I had to tell Titus where the Christians were hiding.”
Stunned, Cassandra took a step away from him.
“I pretended to be a Christian in order to find you and gain your confidence.”
She trembled with shock. She had left her children in this man’s hands. She had trusted him.
Her voice shook. “Pretended? So it was all a lie?”
“At first it was. But what else could I do? He threatened to kill my fiancé, Cassandra. Titus threatened to kill Livia if I didn’t bring him intelligence on the Christians.”
Cassandra thought hard about it. Thelonius was now looking into her eyes with total honesty and vulne
rability. He pleaded with her. “It was an impossible choice. What else could I do?”
Cassandra’s thoughts swirled in her head. Would she have done the same to save Alexander? Was it really impossible to compare one life to the lives of many? A dozen of their men had died in the battle with the Roman legion. They had paid the price of Thelonius’s treachery.
But her feelings of betrayal were countered by her knowledge of God’s faithfulness. His will could not be thwarted. Like Joseph’s brothers throwing him in the pit, God had used even this betrayal to accomplish his purpose of protecting his people. Joseph had said, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to save the lives of many.”124
Thelonius’s words brought her back. “But Cassandra. Something happened to me when I returned to Pella to warn you of the Roman attack. God’s spirit broke me. I became a believer.”
“You became a believer?”
“Yes. I repented of my sin, and I am a follower of Jesus. That is why I stayed to fight for Pella. I have been redeemed by the blood of Christ.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then?” she asked.
“I wanted to. But the attack occurred, and there wasn’t time.”
She stared at him.
How could she believe him now after all his lies?
Did his actions prove a true change of heart?
They had to.
The fact that Thelonius had stayed to fight for Pella and risk his life with those men who’d died indicated true repentance, behavior that showed a changed heart. He had repented of his betrayal. He had warned the Pellan Christians, and he had accepted death on behalf of those he had once deceived.
She believed him now.
It was painful to say, but she said it. “I forgive you, Thelonius.”
He looked at her as if he couldn’t believe what she had just said.
Then he broke down weeping. He fell to his knees, clinging to the edge of her robe like the Prodigal Son at his father’s feet.
