by Brian Godawa
The Apocalypse had foretold this day. But it still burned with pain in Michael’s heart, in the hearts of them all. The prophets of every age were special to Yahweh, along with the martyrs. Most of the prophets, like Elihu and Moshe, had been martyred.
These two would be the last of that great line before the Day of the Lord was finished.
In the human realm, the Jewish soldiers went quiet. Everyone looked at one another in shock as if to question whether they had all just seen the same event.
They had.
Jumping up, Simon and Aaron ran to the two prophets, who were lying on the ground a few feet apart.
Simon looked down upon them both. The catapult stones that had struck the prophets were about the size of pumpkins, large enough to kill on impact, but not crush their victims to mush. He couldn’t believe it. These two had spoken in the name of Yahweh. As the heckler had shouted, for three and a half years they had stopped soldiers dead, called down fire from heaven. And now a freak occurrence had killed them both instantaneously as if they were just like anybody else?
Did that mean the Two Witnesses’ words were empty? Their deeds mere sorcery? Or did it mean their work was done?186
Was it really a freak occurrence?
“Are they dead?” a soldier yelled out.
Simon said, “Yes.”
“Thank you, Jesus!” yelled a heckler.
Dozens laughed. Many stood and applauded, mocking the two prophets’ demise.
Another heckler yelled out, “So the Romans are good for something after all!”
More laughs. Soldiers began getting up and coming over to see the bodies.
Simon ignored their gaiety, overwhelmed with a memory as he studied the still face of the older prophet. Years ago when Simon was captain of the temple guard, this man’s name had been Joshua ben Ananus. He had changed his name later to Moshe as a symbolic reference to Israel’s lawgiver. Simon remembered scourging Joshua with such brutality that his back had been opened, exposing the bone. He had broken the preacher’s jaw for spewing his vile calumnies upon the city and temple.
And now here they were, about to have city and temple destroyed just as this poor dead fool had said. Or was he a prophet, killed like all prophets of Israel?
Soldiers had now surrounded the two bodies. Simon tried to push them back from the corpses, but they were becoming a mob. He had lost control of them.
Someone removed the stones from the bodies. Their chests were crushed but still intact. Was that sorcery too?
One of the mob yelled, “This deserves a celebration!”
The soldiers cheered.
He yelled again, “A triumphal procession! In honor of Caesar!”
Laughs were accompanied by even more cheering and rowdiness.
Four men knelt down to pick up the bodies by their arms and legs. They were going to drag the dead men through the streets.
But without warning, the four who had touched the fallen prophets dropped the bodies and screamed. It was enough to stop the crowd.
Soldiers backed away from the four men, who were holding up their hands in horror.
They each had blackened, puss-filled skin on both hands and arms. It looked like gangrene had infected them instantaneously.
But that isn’t possible, thought Simon.
Someone yelled, “Plague! They have the plague!”
The soldiers backed away in fear.
The four men stumbled in pain and fell to their knees.
Then they dropped to the ground on their faces, all four of them. Dead within a minute of touching the Two Witnesses’ bodies.
The rising mob of violence had suddenly become a scattered crowd of fear.
Simon and Aaron alone still stood over the bodies. Simcha joined them but stayed at a distance.
Simon thought about the last words one of the Witnesses had said. “The second woe is passed. The third is coming.” What did he mean by three woes? Simon looked back up at the top of the wall as if some monster was about to appear there. He shook his head to release the crazy thought.
He looked over at Aaron. The Essene monk returned his glance with affirmation. No, you are not crazy.
Simon said, “We leave them where they lie.”
Aaron nodded fearfully in agreement.
And when the Witnesses have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the Abyss will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.
Apocalypse 11:7–8
CHAPTER 48
Alexander had heard of the death of the Two Witnesses, but with the numbers of wounded and starving Jews that were filling up the hippodrome, he could not get away to see it for himself for several days. The gossip was that the Jewish defenders had left the corpses in the street because some soldiers had died of plague trying to pick them up.
That was three and a half days ago.
But now he’d finally found some time to get away, and he headed to the gates of the Upper City.
Upon his arrival, Alexander found the square full of citizens dancing and celebrating. He felt sick to his stomach. They should have been mourning for their souls and for the destruction that was coming upon them. Instead, they were giving each other gifts and partying over the death of God’s prophets.
Pushing his way through the crowd, Alexander found the dead bodies still lying in the street. He fell to his knees between them and wept.
Then he noticed something. The corpses did not smell. He looked at their faces. After all this time, their flesh had still not decayed.
The crowd around him kept their distance for fear of catching the plague. But Alexander didn’t care anymore. He didn’t even consider burying the bodies because he knew what was going to happen. He had read the Apocalypse.
Someone yelled out, “Hey, doctor, can you fix them?” People laughed.
Another shouted, “Don’t touch the bodies! You’ll be sorry!”
More laughter rang out. Ignoring the mirth, Alexander stood back from the two fallen prophets.
Someone heckled him, “So Jesus won’t protect you either, eh?”
But the crowd’s laughter was cut short as the ground beneath them began to rumble.
A cloud passed in front of the sun, casting the entire area in a shadow of darkness.
Then a ray of light burst through the cloud and fell upon the Two Witnesses.
Before the eyes of all the celebrants, the two corpses suddenly filled with breath and stood up on their feet, their broken chests now healed.
The crowd went silent save for a few shrieks from women who fainted in fear.
Someone shouted, “They’re alive!”
The Two Witnesses did nothing. They merely looked up to heaven.
Another yelled out, “Are they going to kill us?”
Alexander heard a loud voice from heaven say, “Come up here!”
As the people looked on, the Two Witnesses ascended to heaven in a cloud. More women screamed and fainted.
A stampede began as the terrorized crowd tried to get away from this frightening wonder. Then the soft rumbling in the ground gave way to a full-blown earthquake. Alexander felt the shock go through him. He stayed down in the dirt. The ground seemed to ripple like a rug being shaken in the wind.
Those running away fell to their hands and knees. Alexander could see buildings around them collapsing. With an earthquake this devastating, thousands would be killed. He only hoped the Romans were experiencing an equal amount of damage.
When the ground settled down again, Alexander heard the cries of pain and regret as people ran back to their homes to see if their loved ones were alive and okay. But he knew seven thousand of them would not survive—one tenth of the city’s population. The Apocalypse had foretold it.187
He got up, brushed the dirt off himself, and returned to the hippodrome, thinking over the spiritual meaning of everythin
g he had just witnessed.
Years ago on the isle of Patmos, the apostle John had told Alexander and Cassandra that the Two Witnesses were symbolic of the martyrs in Christ for whom much of the Apocalypse was a vindication. As Jesus had prophesied in his Olivet discourse, this generation of Jewish religious leaders as representatives of Israel would have the blood of all the martyred prophets upon them because they would kill their Messiah. The “great city” Jerusalem was now spiritually Babylon and would suffer destruction for that bloodguilt. Those martyrs would be vindicated.
I saw Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of the Land’s abominations.” … And in the great city was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on the Land… Therefore, Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against the great city!
Apocalypse 17:6; 18:24, 20
The Greek word martyr meant “witness.” John had explained to them that the Two Witnesses would represent Moses and Elijah. The Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) of the old covenant had borne witness to the coming Messiah. So these two were the witnesses in the heavenly court that had convicted Israel of her spiritual unfaithfulness to Yahweh.
Their ministry of 42 months, or 1,260 days, aligned with the trampling of the holy land and temple by the Roman Beast.188 That time had come to an end. The first prophetic “woe” had been the release of the locust demons from the Abyss. The second woe was this resurrection of the Witnesses.189 The seventh trumpet was about to sound, the third and final woe.
The death and resurrection of the Witnesses was a symbolic picture of the first resurrection of all the martyrs that John had written of in the Apocalypse, a spiritual resurrection that would come out of the death of the body of Israel. The prophet Daniel had written of this resurrection as well.190
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Daniel 12:2
In the same way that Ezekiel’s valley of resurrected dry bones was a prophetic vision of Israel’s return from exile at the hands of Babylon, so the resurrection of the Witnesses was a prophetic vision of the body of Christ overcoming their martyrdom and near extinction at the hands of the Jews, the new Babylon. This generation of Jewish apostates would die in shame and contempt. The Remnant, or body of Jesus Christ, would arise out of tribulation to spread the Gospel upon all the earth.191
Alexander’s stomach hurt with hunger pains. As he arrived back at the hippodrome, he prepared for the final trumpet, the last woe.
CHAPTER 49
August, AD 70
I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!”192
Apocalypse 6:5–6
A month had passed since Titus first built a wall around Jerusalem to ward off escapes and imposed his strategy of starving the inhabitants. Each passing day made the burden on Berenice’s heart only heavier. She felt so guilty for her part in the suffering that she found it difficult to eat her own meals. She was losing weight and looking sickly because of it.
She had helped to process hundreds of Jewish deserters, most of them innocent men, women, and children willing to risk enslavement to the Romans rather than face the famine that was raging within the city walls. With every story she heard, Berenice fell into a deeper depression.
She currently sat with a small, impoverished family consisting of a husband, a wife, and their daughter who’d been recently captured outside the walls trying to escape Jerusalem. They were now in the internment camp near the New City gate that housed several thousand of the deserters. Berenice was interviewing them after giving them some bread and water. The poor little girl was so malnourished that she looked like a sleepy skeleton. Flies buzzed around her as though her own flesh were dying. It was all Berenice could do to keep from breaking out in weeping at the sight of the poor little one. She was determined to be strong, to hold in her emotions. Weeping would be of no help to these suffering innocents.
The parents were in little better condition. The husband, emaciated with hollow eye sockets, explained what they had experienced and seen behind the walls. “We gave all the money we had left for one measure of wheat. We had closed our doors and windows to bake a small loaf and consume the last morsels of our food before dying. We didn’t want anyone to smell it and find us. But they did. Robbers came in and took everything. They picked the food right out of my daughter’s mouth as she was trying to swallow. They pulled my wife’s hair out.” He started to choke up.
The wife held her hand out to stop him from saying more. She had a bald spot on the left side of her head and a black eye, probably from being raped. But even now she was too dignified to let such indignity be known in front of their dying child.
Berenice asked, “How did you survive after that?”
The husband said, “We did what many others were doing. We ate wisps of hay and grass that we could find and then ate our leather sandals and girdles that we owned.”193
Berenice looked down at their bare feet. They were bruised and bloody from running over rocks and rough ground outside the wall.
“We fared better than others.”
“How so?”
“My next-door neighbor was impaled to force him to confess where he had hidden a handful of barley.”
Berenice took a deep breath to calm down.
Then the man looked around to make sure no one could hear them. “The rich who are escaping the city have had it much harder than us, though.”
Berenice couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Could it get much worse? The rich never had it harder than the poor when it came to difficult times. They always paid their way out of things that the poor could not.
She listened with horror as he explained.
“The Arab soldiers outside the walls learned that rich Jews were swallowing gold coins before escaping. The Jews would then pick them out of their own excrement in order to have some means of bribery to help themselves. When the Arabs found out, they started to cut open the bellies of those who wore wealthy apparel in order to get their gold.”
Berenice found herself audibly gasping at the horror. “They kill them and cut them open?”
“No. They cut them open while still alive and fish through their intestines.”
Berenice immediately got up and walked over to a Roman guard that Titus had given her. “Get the imperator, immediately. This is an emergency. Tell him to bring a full century of soldiers.”
The guard left her.
• • • • •
Titus met Berenice at the edge of the internment camp with legionaries. He was annoyed.
“I’m trusting you, Berenice. This had better be important.”
“Thank you, Caesar. I am confident you will find it more than important.”
She told him what the starved man had told her and where the diabolical deeds had been taking place—outside the internment camp in an empty field on the far eastern abandoned part of the New City.
Berenice followed Titus and his century to where a contingent of a thousand Arab auxiliaries were camping out. As the Roman general led the way into the midst of their tents, the Arab auxiliaries jumped to attention and saluted Caesar.
He said nothing but walked on past them with his guard and over to the empty field. The legionaries carried torches, but they couldn’t see what was out there until they were upon it.
Berenice gasped. It was a pile of hundreds of dead Jews, perhaps even thousands, with their bellies cut open and their intestines hanging out.
The starved Jew had spoken the truth. Berenice vomited on the ground.
She looked up at Titus, who boiled with anger.
She said to him, “The punishment for insu
bordination is execution.”
She wanted to see them all die. Arabs had a peculiar hatred for Jews. Arabs were the sons of Ishmael, the rejected ones. Yahweh had chosen Isaac over Ishmael, so the Ishmaelite Arabs had always carried an animosity toward the sons of Isaac, the true heirs of Abraham.
Titus whispered to her, “You are right. They deserve it. But if I kill them, there will be more dead Arabs than Jews, and that will not go over well with the rest of my legions.”
He turned and led her over to the Arab commanders. There were several thousand Arabs in this auxiliary unit. She felt intimidated by their presence. They stared at her hungrily. She stayed close to Titus, who stood firm and announced to the officers, “This barbarism is unacceptable to Caesar. You will cease it immediately and report to me any soldier who continues to engage in this behavior. Anyone who is caught from now on cutting out the bowels of Jews will be executed. Am I understood?”194
The handful of Arab leaders saluted and said, “Hail, Caesar!”
Titus turned and led Berenice and his century out of the area back to his headquarters.
She whispered to him as they marched along, “You admit it was barbaric. But you refused to execute justice.”
Titus shrugged. “Arabs are wild donkeys. Uncontrollable. I must tread carefully.”
“But is Caesar not a god?”
“Not even a god can stand before the mutiny of a mob.”
That was just the inspiration Berenice needed. If these Arab sons of perdition could disobey Caesar, then so would she.
CHAPTER 50
Simon led Aaron and a guard of a hundred soldiers to the hippodrome. He passed through streets filled with garbage, rubble, and emaciated corpses. Some neighborhoods were darkly quiet, others punctuated with screams of pain and suffering. The past month of silence from Titus had worked its psychological effect upon him, upon everyone inside Jerusalem. The imperator had stopped the catapults, built a wall around the entire city, and waited for them to starve to death. The warring Jewish factions inside had burnt their food storages months ago, and their rations had run out. The fact that they were now unified did not help them produce more food. They were all dying.
