by Brian Godawa
Before he knew it, Eleazar dropped his shield. He was on his knees. The Nazarene was now eye-level with him. Eleazar could easily reach out his hand and crush the vulnerable human’s skull. But he could not move his arms. He could only stare into the face of the rabbi.
Jesus whispered to the giant, “You were brought here for a reason.”
Eleazar thought, Brought? I came here of my own accord to kill.
Jesus looked up at Demas with scolding eyes.
He doesn’t want my help? thought Demas. He is under attack and he doesn’t want my help? Fine. I won’t risk my life for such a fool. Let him fight his own fights.
Demas turned and left the cave.
Jesus placed his hand on Eleazar’s bad eye. The giant jerked back. But Jesus would not let go.
Eleazar felt a strange numbness spread out from his wounded eye socket over his entire head. The pain faded.
Jesus pulled back his hand, and Eleazar could see through both eyes again. He had both his eyes!
His hands reached up and felt his face. He had been healed by this god-man. And he suddenly knew why he was brought here.
He fell to the ground at his feet in worship.
During this entire exchange, the gods had continued their battle by the edge of the Abyss. Raguel and Saraqael ran after a fleeing Pan, while Raphael and Gabriel fought a desperate Ba’al, battling for his eternity.
Ba’al forced the angels up against the wall. His back was turned toward Mikael, who saw his opportunity. The archangel grabbed some Cherubim hair from his arm band, ran and leapt onto Ba’al’s back, choking him with the indestructible binding.
Ba’al spun around, trying to grab his assailant, as the other two angels backed off.
Ba’al got a handful of Mikael’s cloak and flipped him around onto the ground. They were at the very rim of the precipice. He picked up Mikael by his throat with a sickly grin, and moved to drop him into the Abyss.
Mikael latched onto Ba’al’s arms. He would not be so easily disposed of. But Ba’al was the most formidable deity the archangels had faced. And since their previous encounter he had grown even stronger. These three were not going to take this deity down. They needed an edge, something to tip the scales in their favor.
That edge came in the form of a speeding ten foot-tall battering ram named Eleazar, a giant unafraid of brawling with the gods, and about the only one with enough mass to throw the god off balance. He hit Ba’al from behind. The three of them launched out into darkness.
The mortal giant would not survive the fall. He was after all, half human. As they fell down the impossibly deep crevice, Eleazar had time to consider the providential purpose of his presence here at the Gates of Hades. He had fought with gods and men in distant lands, killed hundreds of enemies, escaped captivity in pursuit of revenge, only to be supernaturally redeemed by the god he had hated. And all of it was so that Yahweh could use him in a single important event to capture an enemy of God. Of all the glory and fame that Eleazar had sought for in his life, it was all a pile of steaming excrement compared to the surpassing value of meeting Jesus and being used for this solitary event of spiritual significance. He considered it an honor to sacrifice himself on behalf of such a worthy cause.
Mikael maneuvered to gain advantage over the god as they fell. The last time the angels had taken down the deity, was in his Mount Sapan palace. In that case, the other angels had tackled Ba’al in a similar way, by knocking him off a cliff into a river of fiery magma in the earth.
This time he would land in the waters of the Abyss as opposed to the molten flames of lava. But this time, it would be permanent, because the waters of the Abyss led to Hades and Tartarus, where Mikael would leave the Watcher god bound until judgment.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of falling through the darkness, the three warriors hit the black waters of the Abyss, killing the giant.
Mikael already had Ba’al bound with the Cherubim hair as they sank into the depths.
Back up at the cliff ledge, the violence had ceased. A silence now filled the cavern.
The Ob opened her eyes with shock. She sat up, pulled her robe to cover herself more, as if she was a modest woman. She was herself again.
The woman looked into Jesus’s eyes and she knew everything. She knew that he knew everything about her. She knew he was her savior, and that he had cast out seven demons from her.
She began to cry and crawled over to him to kiss his feet. His hands stopped her and pulled her face up to his level.
“What is your name, woman?”
“Mary,” she said.
“Where are you originally from?”
“I grew up in Magdala.”
“Well, Mary Magdalene,” he said, “I have need for someone of your gratitude in our little community. My disciples seem to think they are entitled to everything.”
He smiled. She smiled back at him, and hugged him again.
The angels came up to Jesus carrying Gabriel and Uriel.
Raphael said, “Mikael is on his way to Tartarus with Ba’al.”
Saraqael and Raguel approached from out of the black. Saraqael said, “Pan got away. He is a slippery scoundrel, that one.”
Mary smiled broadly. “I know where he went.”
They looked to her for more.
She said, “He went to Gaia, the Mother Earth Goddess.”
Gabriel said, “Well, isn’t that convenient. That old gnarly tree was next on our list. We can kill two gods with one battle axe.” He still had his wit through his wounds.
Uriel croaked through his migraine headache. “Wrong, Gabriel. Three gods.”
They all remembered that the Earth Goddess carried within her tangled roots of evil another demoness long worthy of punishment.
Gabriel gave a lighthearted laugh, “Well, Uriel, I do defer. You have bested me verbally while suffering a worse handicap.”
They both looked to Jesus for approval and they got it in the form of a very subtle smirk of acceptance.
Uriel was not done. “Jesus, would you say that ‘little buddy’ remark from Gabriel constituted a putdown?”
“That was a term of affection,” complained Gabriel.
Jesus broke into a broad smile. “Do not start again, or I won’t bring you to find Gaia.”
The two angels groaned simultaneously through their pains.
Uriel said, “Our tongues will heal as quick as our wounds.”
Jesus smiled.
Mary said to Jesus, “I know where she hides.”
Chapter 17
Gestas awoke to sounds outside his tent. He peeked out into the night to see Demas taking down his tent.
“Brother,” whispered Gestas, “it is still the night watch. What are you doing?”
“Pack your gear. We’re returning to Galilee.”
Demas got out of his tent into the freezing cold night. “What do you mean returning? We haven’t finished our reconnaissance.”
Demas stopped and glared at Gestas. “Gestas, we have enough intelligence on these people. They think they are following Messiah, but they are uneducated farmers, fishermen and women. They are too small in size, they have no army, and they have no will to fight. They are no threat to Barabbas.”
“But what about Jesus?”
“He is involved with black magic of some very dangerous kind that I do not want to have anything to do with. He is a leader, a powerful sorcerer even, but no warrior king. He speaks in veiled language and other nonsense of a heavenly kingdom. He is more of a madman than a prophet.”
Gestas turned somber and whispered lower, “What about our orders?”
Demas looked at Simon’s sleeping form by the coals. “I’m not going to kill Simon. He has already castrated himself with his theological delusions. And I sure as Hades am not able to kill Jesus. His bodyguards are mighty warriors like I have never seen. They are gibborim.” Gibborim was an ancient word that was used first of the giants and then of human warriors who fought with the
skill and achievement of giants.
Gestas looked quizzically at him. “But they left the other day.” He looked over to Jesus’s tent area then back to Demas. “Have you seen them return?”
Demas sighed. “Yes. But I do not believe Jesus wants us to fight. He is no threat to Barabbas. And he is doomed.”
Gestas glanced back again at Jesus’s area, then to Panias beyond. He narrowed his eyes at Demas. “Did you go to Panias this evening when I was asleep?”
Demas ignored the question. “I am done here. I’m leaving with or without you.” He turned back and finished his packing.
Demas was not a good bluffer. Gestas knew Demas must have gone to the sacred grotto and seen something that was causing him to make haste in leaving. The grotto had an eerie morning haze moving in from the sacred pool. The sun was just beginning to rise on the horizon. He could see no movement in the temple district.
What did Demas see that would cause such an extreme reaction?
“Wait up, Demas. You’re not leaving me behind, brother.”
• • • • •
Mary led Jesus and the six angels through a secret tunnel that led out into a small forested area. A short hike through the woods brought them to a new ravine some distance away from Panias. The terrain didn’t look familiar in the morning light. They turned into a side ravine, walked some way into it, and felt as if they were in another world. The canyon opened up and they stopped at the sight before them.
“Gaia,” said Jesus.
A huge tree stood in the middle of the valley, hundreds of feet in diameter and stretching into the sky high above them.
The ground around it was dry, cracked, and without life. Everything was dead. The tree appeared to be drawing the very life out of the soil, transforming it into the desert of death like the encroaching desert in the east.
Mary knew that Pan was hiding somewhere in the tangled knot of roots along with a very dangerous demoness, one she knew all too well. Mary had visited the goddess Gaia many times. She had secret passageways in the folds of her bark that led down into her bowels below the soil.
Mary watched the six archangels, minus Mikael, disappear into those folds in pursuit of the gods and their demonic helpers.
She felt the dirt below her feet move as if something was tunneling its way toward the tree and the angels. Something very big. Another devilish beast she was all too familiar with.
“Jesus,” she said. “do not let them go. They are walking into a trap.”
“It is all right, Mary. They know what they are doing.”
The archangels were well acquainted with the Mother Earth Goddess and her protective parasites. Her evil was ancient. Before the Flood, she had resided in the land now called Arabia. It had been a vast fertile continent in antediluvian days. But Gaia sucked the soul out of the environment and turned it into a lifeless desert. She had the ability to manifest herself between heaven and earth, unseen by mortal eyes from a distance behind a veil of illusion. The area around her was like being in a world between worlds. It was there, but not there. Before the Flood, Enoch and his band of giant killers had encountered her within a Shaitan, a supernatural sandstorm.
After the Flood, the great King Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu had cut down the great tree with their mighty axes. But Gaia’s seed always finds new earth and she had planted herself in these foothills of the sacred mountain of Baal-Hermon. Protected in the shadow of the assembly of gods, by the cult of Pan and the idol worship of the tribe of Dan nearby, Gaia flourished.
A deep sorrow came over Mary for all the child sacrifices she presided over at the base of this monstrosity. The deaths of the innocent gave Gaia life and sustenance, and enslaved women to the illusion of empowerment. The goddess feasted on the flesh and blood of the offering of their wombs. They believed that somehow they were helping their community and saving Mother Earth in giving up their offspring. And every human offered up was absorbed into the tree. When she was up close to it, Mary could see in the grain of the wood the twisted agonized forms of the sacrificial victims melded into the bark so as to become one with it. She had formerly believed that this tree of death was the Tree of Life.
But this was not the only false narrative that had held her in its grip of deceit for so many years.
Lilith, the guardian mistress of Mother Earth, had enchanted all her followers with the story that she was the original wife of Adam, spurned by her abusive, controlling husband because of her independence, forced to flee his oppressive domination to protect her two hellions, Lili and Lilitu. That patriarchal dictator Adam then took a second wife, Eve, who was deluded into accepting her subordinate position as barefoot slave and breeder.
Freed from her demons, Mary now knew it was all a malicious lie, an inversion of the truth. She had worshipped a self-serving idol, deluded by her own willing lust for power. She thought she had been pursuing equality with man, to be just like them. But she now realized she had merely been defying her Creator. She broke down into tears and fell to her knees in the dirt.
Jesus knelt down beside her and comforted her.
She cried, “What have I done? What have I become? I am a monster.”
“Mary,” whispered Jesus, “you are forgiven.”
A wave of peace came over her like nothing she had ever felt before. In the cave, she had experienced release. But now she felt the tendrils of healing gently digging deeper into her, like a new tree planting its roots into her heart, the true Tree of Life.
But there was so much darkness in her. It was as if her soul was stuck in deep sludge.
She looked up at him and thought, How could this be? How could I be cleansed from so vile a heart and life?
As if he heard her thoughts, he said, “Let us go. It is time you were baptized, so you can finally believe what is already true of you.”
“But what about Gaia? What about the angels?”
Jesus looked over at the colossal tree, a good hundred feet away from them.
He said to her, “I have two baptisms I perform. Water and fire.” He looked up into the heavens.
Mary saw a column of fire pour out from the sky onto the mighty tree and engulf it in flames. She heard the crackling sounds of burning timber, felt the wave of hot air blow over her. As it burned, she thought she heard the spiritual piercing shrieks with wailing and gnashing of teeth. It felt more inside her head than from the tree, which she knew was the source of the pain. She understood at that moment that the baptism of water was salvation and the baptism of fire was judgment.
Jesus led her out of the canyon, back to the camp.
Mary said, “I definitely want the water.”
Jesus smiled. “The water you will have.” He paused, then added, “Just don’t tell James and John about the fire from heaven. They’ll be envious.”
“What will become of the gods?” she asked.
“The roots and tunnels of Gaia lead down to Hades. The angels will drag them down to Tartarus and bind them with the others.”
She blurted out what she had just realized. “You are dispossessing the gods from the land.”
He looked at her as they walked through the forest. She was smarter than the disciples. He had plans for this special one.
“Yes. But don’t be too hasty to discount Gaia. She is a weed. She will be back in latter days to spread her cancerous roots throughout the earth, not merely in Israel.”
“How many more gods are there to dispossess?”
“Not many. But these bindings of principalities are not my sole purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“First, I must defeat the powers, then I purchase redemption. But you will be the first to figure it out, I can tell you that much.”
The sun was now in the mid-morning sky as they broke out of the forest on the way to their camp.
Chapter 18
Uriel’s head still ached from the battering he took in the cave. But he was healing, as were Gabriel and the others. They would not
be at their full strength by the time they found their adversaries in this labyrinth of tangled roots. He prayed for their speedy recovery.
They had found an entrance in the massive folds of bark on the gnarly base of the gargantuan Gaia. They now made their way downward through constricting tunnels, surrounded on all sides by the twisted roots. They were following the path that Enoch and his fellow giant-killers had taken in antediluvian days, when they were almost enchanted by the black wood magic of Lilith. She had kidnapped Methuselah’s pregnant wife Edna to perform a ritual sacrifice on an altar in the deep below.
That very sanctuary was the archangels’ destination. They figured they would find the demonic beings hiding there absorbing strength. They were strongest in their temples of abomination.
Enoch and Methuselah had rescued Edna, but they lost the child through miscarriage. They were forever haunted by their error of judgment. They were rescued from the soul-eating tree by the Thamudi people of the desert.
This time, the angels needed no rescue. They were not going to leave the way they came. They were going to keep going downward and drag these devils, kicking and screaming, into the very depths of Tartarus.
It would not be easy. The entire organism was enchanted with evil.
Uriel stopped to see the images of the tortured souls embedded within the very grain of the tree roots. He noticed that they moved ever so slightly in their grimaces and pain, like a silent slow moving sculpture of agony. They were souls of the damned captured in a living prison.
He moved to catch back up with the others making their way through the maze of cursed wood that reminded Uriel of the coils of intertwined serpents.
He said with a sing song voice, “Lilith and Paaaaan. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Gabriel stopped to look at him. “Must you?”
“What?”
“A time like this is no place for jesting.”
“Would you rather I carry a sourpuss like you?”
