by Ray Bentley
“So we like to think of Hechler as the spiritual father of our work. We invite Christian pastors from around the world to come and stay with us—to see Israel as it really is—successes and failures, history, and modern needs—and then to carry this message home to their congregations.”
“And where do they come from? Besides Lev here, I mean.”
“You’re right that more than half come from America,” Amir agreed. “But you might be surprised at the rest. Right now in Hechler House we have pastors from Nigeria, the Philippines, Korea, and Argentina. Next month a group from Sweden is coming, as is one pastor whose country cannot be named because he would almost certainly be martyred back home if his time here were known.”
“Surprising,” Jack admitted. “Much more diverse than I expected. So tell me, Amir. You bring a unique perspective to any discussion about Israel. What’s the greatest threat to peace in the region? Temple? Settlements? Gaza?”
Without hesitation Amir responded, “Damascus.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Syria,” Amir elaborated. “The situation in Syria is a crisis the West does not comprehend. Five million refugees have fled the country. Another six million internally displaced. More than half the pre-civil war population is affected. Refugee camps are breeding grounds for radicalization. And as we know, Bashar al-Assad does not hesitate to use poison gas against his own people. What if he decides to attack Israel? Also, Syria is being fought as a proxy war between Sunni Islam and its radical branch, ISIS, and Shia Islam, backed by Iran. None of them have any love for Israel. However this plays out, it’s dangerous. Very dangerous.”
“Surely Assad has enough trouble without provoking Israel into a military response?” Jack wondered aloud.
“You’d think so, but recall that Assad has the backing of Russia. Now what? And there’s this; remember the Arab Spring?”
“Sure,” Jack agreed. “Popular uprisings in 2011 and 2012 that tossed out the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.”
“Yes, and do you know about the Law of Unintended Consequences? When Qaddafi in Libya fell, his weapons were not destroyed. They were sold to the highest bidder: surface-to-air shoulder-fired rockets were purchased by Hamas. Same Hamas whose rockets fall on Sderot. What happens when they start shooting at planes? Or what happens when ISIS gets some of Assad’s poison gas?”
This eventuality was so grim to contemplate they rode in silence for a time.
Lev pointed to an exit and remarked, “Ein Kerem. Some say it was the birthplace of John the Baptist; where Baby John leapt in his mother’s womb to greet the Messiah in Mary’s womb.”
The pleasantry fell flat.
“Maybe now I should ask for your story,” Jack said to Amir.
“Of course. I was born here. I felt the plight of Palestinian longing for a homeland. I saw their despair and I felt Hamas was right to struggle against Israeli oppression.”
This was more what Jack expected to hear from an Arab viewpoint.
“Go on,” he urged.
Amir rubbed his stubbly beard. “I was a journalist. I discovered the Palestinian leaders kept money, food, and medical supplies for themselves or to use as leverage to remain in power. I learned of millions of dollars of foreign aid intended for building Palestinian hospitals and affordable housing diverted to terror training camps. And still I thought the Palestinians had no choice.”
“And how did that change?” Jack asked quietly. “Your views, I mean.” He noticed Bette was listening intently.
“I saw a Hamas group launch a Qassam rocket from a schoolyard in Gaza. Later I saw where it landed: on a playground in Sderot. They are criminals,” he said passionately. “They use children as human shields while they launch attacks designed to kill children!”
“And then?” Jack asked.
“I decided to kill myself,” Amir revealed. “I was ready to die, I thought. The very night I intended to take my life a friend invited me to hear a Messianic Jew speak. This one,” he said, leaning forward to pat Lev’s shoulder. “It was the ultimate irony, I thought. I will die just after hearing a turncoat Jew speak on behalf of a gentile God. But that night—something changed in me forever. I heard of a Jewish Messiah who loved all people. He didn’t say, ‘Kill others to free some.’ No! He said, ‘Be willing to lay down your life for a friend.’ I have been trying to follow Him ever since.”
On the drive north Amir suggested they head up to the Golan Heights. “It would help put things in perspective,” he said, “if you visited the Golan first.”
Jack agreed.
Jack, Lev, and Bette stood in a row below a ten-foot-high earthen bank. Amir was a dozen feet in advance of them, on the edge of a precipitous cliff. “Do you know what that is over there?” Amir asked Jack, beckoning Jack to step up for a better view. “Right there? Those hills?”
Jack nodded but didn’t approach. “This is Golan. We’re looking east, so that must be Syria.”
“Correct,” Bette confirmed. “Behind us is Israel, which is why we cannot give up this high ground to enemies with missiles and artillery. They are just three miles over that way.”
“Much closer than that,” Amir corrected, pushing his sunglasses back up on his nose. “A mile and a half, I think. And not Syrian troops. No, no. ISIS fighters.”
Involuntarily Jack took a step back. His heel collided with a stone of the dirt rampart.
“We’re perfectly safe,” Amir said. “The hand of God is over His land and His people and this place.”
“Your God, maybe,” Jack said. “He and I aren’t on speaking terms right now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Amir said. “So okay, at least let me tell you why we’re here. Over there Syrians are fighting Syrians. Like we talked about, yes? They can’t attack Israel right now. We don’t know about chemical weapons or, God forbid, Iran with a nuclear bomb, but also Israel has peace with Jordan and Egypt, who used to be great enemies. This is a time of relative peace and prosperity for Israel. You know Psalm 83?”
“Remind me,” Jack said.
Lev picked up the opportunity to offer his paraphrase. “It records the enemies of Israel saying, ‘Come, let us destroy them as a nation, so Israel’s name is remembered no more.’ In 1948 that’s what Jordan and Egypt and Syria and Iraq all said. But you see, not right now.”
There was a distant crump, like the sound of an automobile collision heard from a distance. That was followed moments later by a hollow booming sound.
“Artillery,” Bette confirmed. “Syrians shelling ISIS positions.”
“My point,” Amir agreed. “You know about the ISIS terror attack on the Coptic Christians? It got sadly very little attention in the European and American press. So Egypt sent warplanes to bomb ISIS positions. Too little, too late, I’m afraid, but the right response.”
Another whomping noise as another artillery shell landed was followed by a staccato burst of machine gun fire. “You don’t mind summarizing, do you?” Jack requested.
“Here it is,” Amir said. “The Palestinians extort Israel: ‘Give in to our demands or your Arab neighbors will never recognize you,’ eh? But each demand is not followed by peace but by more demands.”
“These are classic Israeli hardline talking points,” Jack argued.
“But things have changed. Now the Saudis and others also feel the threat from Islamic radicals. Now it’s Israel’s turn to say to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and the others: ‘First recognize us and then we will solve the Palestinian issue.’ And the new American president will back them up in that. He told the Arabs so himself, didn’t he? He called it Islamic terrorism and laid it on their doorstep. Do you see? Then there can be peace—for a time.”
“What do you mean, ‘for a time?’ Isn’t that what this whole discussion is about?”
Amir shook his head. “There will be a time of peace but only until the war of Ezekiel.”
“The War of Gog and Magog,” Lev added.
“Th
e—what?” Jack asked, wondering if his expression betrayed how startled he was to hear that phrase used again here after having it called to mind in the Guildhall in London. Could the two things actually be linked? Did a vision of terror attacks in London foreshadow something prophesied more than 2,000 years ago? Remembering the carved wooden statues, Jack dismissed the notion as silliness.
“Ezekiel, chapter 38,” Amir quoted. “ ‘This is what will happen in that day; when Gog attacks the land of Israel, my hot anger will be aroused, declares the Sovereign Lord.’ It is coming. There will be no true peace until Messiah comes.”
“Please don’t preach at me,” Jack said sternly. “I appreciate your opinion and your analysis and even your fervor—but I’m not one of your flock, pastor, so leave the preaching out of it!”
“This is the land where prophecy is fulfilled,” Lev said. “Where the temporary and the eternal meet. Can’t understand the things of today without studying the words of yesterday.”
“Yeah, okay, thanks. We should go now.”
“Agreed,” Amir said. “Now you must see Nazareth.”
It was just an hour’s drive back to Nazareth. Despite the abundance of churches, synagogues, museums, ruins, caves, wells, and even a winery, it was to a steep, barren hillside Amir suggested they go.
On the hike up to the terraced area above a precipice they passed a file of Dutch pilgrims streaming back to their tour bus. Half the party was dressed in khaki trousers and Birkenstocks and the other half in denim jeans and hiking boots. When the quartet of Jack, Lev, Amir, and Bette arrived at the summit it was deserted.
Amir let Lev take the lead in describing the scene. “This is called Mount Precipice,” Lev explained. “In antiquity it was a quarry site, but its claim to fame is this is where Jesus’ neighbors tried to throw him off a cliff.”
Jack knew the story but Bette did not. “Why?” she asked. “What had he done?”
To prove he was not totally ignorant when it came to Scripture, Jack offered, “The people of Nazareth didn’t believe Jesus could be a prophet or a miracle worker because they had known him since he was a child. That’s when he said, ‘A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country.’ Anyway, it says it made them furious so they rushed him up here, intending to throw him off.”
“But what happened?” Bette asked.
Lev made a gesture by pressing his palms together and then pulling them apart.
Jack said, “He walked right through them and went on his way. It wasn’t his time and this wasn’t his place—if you believe that sort of thing.”
“And not like the sign says,” Amir offered, summoning them over to a bronze plaque. He read it aloud to them. “It says he jumped from here but was unhurt. Somehow that’s easier to believe than the other?”
“But I’m guessing you didn’t bring me up here to debate interpretations of Bible verses,” Jack said. “What am I supposed to see?”
“Ah,” Amir said, taking over the lesson. “Scripture alone is not the only key to this place. It is the vantage point of thousands of years of history. You see this valley?” Removing his sunglasses Amir swept them from left to right over the haze-obscured landscape. “The Canaanites fought the Egyptians here. Joshua fought here. Deborah rightly got the credit for the battle Barak fought here. Gideon’s three hundred put an end to Midianite rule at a battle near here.”
“Genghis Khan was stopped on his invasion just before reaching here,” Lev contributed. “Napoleon Bonaparte said this was the most perfect field of battle he ever saw.”
“Ah,” Bette said eagerly. “I’ve heard that quote before. Then this must also be where the English General Allenby—the one the Arabs called ‘al-Nabithe Conqueror’—was when he defeated the Turks in 1917.”
“Israel fought battles against Arab armies here in the War of Independence,” Amir added. “And more recently still, Katyusha rockets landed there because of the Israeli Air Force F-16 base.”
“Okay, so a lot of blood’s been shed for a small, kind of unimpressive bit of real estate. Why’s it so important?” Jack probed.
“Because that small peak over there is Har Megiddo,” Amir pointed out. “And this is the Valley of Armageddon. The staging place for the last great battle between Good and Evil.”
“You mean, where the last great battle is supposed to happen,” Jack corrected.
“That’s what most everyone thinks,” Amir said. “People even talk about the Battle of Armageddon, but that’s wrong. Revelation 16:16 says, they ‘gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.’ ”
“If not here, then where?”
“Jerusalem,” Lev said. “It’s always been the focus. It always will be.”
“So—what’s the point of showing me this, then?” Jack demanded.
Lev looked at Amir, who nodded. Lev continued, “Jack, you concede that all the battles we have mentioned have been real, verifiable historical realities?”
“Yeah, sure. So?”
“So—the gathering of forces here in the Valley of Har Megiddo will be just as real. It will happen—and Amir and I believe the four of us will, God willing, live to see it.”
Jack started to object, then thought about how close the front lines were on the Golan Heights. He studied the valley sprawled at his feet and thought what a natural gap it was for armies to utilize. “And how about Gog and Magog?”
“Some teach,” Lev explained, “that Armageddon and the War of Gog and Magog are the same thing. Others, that they are two different events. The point is the same as what I told you about the Temple: war is coming to this place. The best we can achieve is a temporary peace—and whatever peace we seek must guarantee Israel’s safety in the meantime.”
“If it’s all gonna turn out okay,” Jack joked, “why bother?”
More seriously than expected Lev replied, “Because of what God promised Abraham: ‘I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.’ That’s not an equation you ever want to be on the wrong side of.”
The steep, winding, cobblestone pavement snaking past the entry to the al-Sabah bed-and-breakfast was technically a street. Jack wondered what happened when two cars happened to meet, since it was barely big enough for one. A lot of Old City Nazareth was like that.
The hostelry, whose name meant “The Morning,” was run by a Christian Arab family; part of the one third of Nazareth’s non-Muslim population. The only entry was an arched wooden door opening directly from the cobblestones. Parking was about a quarter mile away.
The lobby was up one flight of stairs. A balcony off the white-washed and blue-trimmed chamber gave panoramic views over the city.
While Bette went to her room, and Amir and Lev went to call on a pastor friend, Jack decided to remain seated on the terrace and think.
What had he learned? Everything in Israel was close together; impossibly so, sometimes. Take the Golan: Syrian forces able to call on poison gas weapons were literally a stone’s throw from ISIS butchers, and both were within an arrow’s flight of Israel. How did people live with twenty-first century weapons in a place where the world was no broader than it was in 1900 AD or 1000 AD or the year 1? Jack knew if the UN’s boundaries of Israel remained as originally proposed there would be a place where the Jewish state was eight miles wide. Eight miles. From Jack’s home in Little Venice to the East End of London was about eight miles. Jack could do that by bicycle in less than an hour.
The other aspect of life in Israel which most struck him was the side-by-side relationship of ancient past and modern present. Nazareth was home to shrines commemorating the boyhood of Jesus and the carpentry workshop of St. Joseph. Tour buses pulled up outside the synagogue where Jesus preached and from where his angry neighbors nearly tossed him over the cliff.
The view from the al-Sabah terrace included the Church of the Annunciation, which celebrated the visit by the Angel Gabriel to a teenage virgin named Mary. He had a message for her: if she was wi
lling, she would give birth to the Son of God.
Jack massaged his forehead with his fingertips. What did all of this have to do with his assignment to research and report on the prospects for peace? For that matter, what did any of this have to do with him? And yet, as soon as he raised that objection, Jack knew there was much he was still trying to comprehend; that it was important.
Closing his eyes to concentrate, Jack wondered if he was about to have another vision. What better place for a supernatural occurrence than Nazareth, with so many connections to the life of Jesus? Besides, Nazareth had a ringside seat in the venue of so many wars of eons past and future wars still to be fought. He idly brushed a fly away from his right ear.
“Shalom?” asked a voice from the terrace doorway. “I’m sorry. Were you asleep?”
It was a young girl—thirteen or fourteen, Jack guessed. She wore a blue headscarf and a long-sleeved blue dress.
Somehow Jack was not at all surprised. “No, no. Just thinking. And your name is Mary?”
The girl smiled and laughed. “What made you say that? My name is Rebekah.”
Jack pulled the slouch out of his spine and sat up. Rebekah held a can of Coca Cola. Not a vision then after all.
“Sorry,” Jack apologized. “My name’s Jack. Do you live here?”
“No,” Rebekah said. “I’m looking for someone. I heard he had come. Pastor Lev Seixas?”
“He’s staying here,” Jack agreed, “but he’s out right now. I came with him. Can I give him a message for you?”
Rebekah frowned with disappointment. “I can’t miss my bus. I have to get back home,” she said. Then she brightened. “But since you’re his friend I guess I can tell you. Tell him I had another dream about Jesus.”
There was a pause while Jack struggled to process what she said. “I beg your pardon?” Jack felt as if Israel was bent on turning his every expectation inside-out.
“I live in Tobga,” Rebekah said. “Over by Capernaum. I’m Jewish, you see. I always hear Christians talking about Jesus and singing about Jesus—I like it when they sing.
