by Tim LaHaye
The protesting holy men watching the monitors outside shouted and pumped their fists, bringing others crowding up the steps. Many of these, Buck noticed, had no marks of loyalty either, and their number was growing. He peeked at the small monitor beneath his camera. GCNN was broadcasting Chaim, though through his headset he could hear chatter about technical difficulties. Chang broke in again, assuring Buck, “I’ve got the New Babylon people muted off the air, but they’re trying to get a bead on your camera. I’ll switch back to Carpathia and let them wonder awhile.”
“Hold till Chaim finishes this thought,” Buck said.
“As Carpathia continues,” Chaim said, “you should be able to see the laver where the priests wash their hands before they approach the main altar. The temple was creatively placed over a series of underground waterways where gravity allows constant water pressure for the various cleansings. Of course, he has no business in this place, and even a ceremonial washing of his hands will not exonerate him for defiling it.”
“Switching,” Chang said, and the monitor showed Carpathia signaling to his cameraman to follow.
“We were idle there for a moment,” the man said.
“What did you miss?”
“I don’t think we picked up the, you know . . .”
“My touching the blood?”
“No, Excellency. Shall we go back?”
“No!” Carpathia said, disgust in his voice. He held his black-red hands before the lens. “My faithful get the message.” He raised his voice till it echoed and was distorted. “Any who dares interrupt my pilgrimage will find his blood on my fingers!”
Pounding footsteps made the cameraman whirl, and the screen filled with robed priests, charging Carpathia.
“See where this blood comes from!” Carpathia shouted, and the camera went to the faces of the priests, who stopped and paled.
Looking to where the body lay, they moaned and cried out, “Does your evil know no bounds?”
“Are you the god-haters,” Nicolae raged, “who do not know me as a god, a god acknowledged by all others, but not named by you?”
One spoke up. “It should not surprise you that we showed our loyalty by offering daily sacrifices on your behalf.”
“You have made offerings,” Carpathia said, “but to another, even if it was for me. What good is it then, for you have not sacrificed to me? No sacrifice shall ever again be made in this temple except to me. Not for me, to me. Now leave or face the same fate as this unlucky one who was foolish enough not to believe that I have been allotted the nature of god!”
“God will judge you, evil one!”
“Give me your gun again, Supreme Commander!”
“We retreat not in fear but rather because you have turned the house of God into a killing field!”
“Just go! I shall have my way in my home, and should you be found without proof of loyalty to me by week’s end, you shall offer your heads as ransom.”
The priests left with shouts and threats, and Buck saw their colleagues outside greet them with sympathy and encouragement. “Lovers of God, unite!” one shouted, and onlookers picked up the chant.
Buck’s camera light went on, and Chaim began again. “The inner court inside the pillars has stairs that face east and lead to the main altar. Priests who revere God march around the Court of Priests and the Holy Place with their left hands closest to the altar. This one who would trample holy ground has already begun the opposite way, so his right hand will be closest to the altar. The Scriptures foretold that he would have no regard for the one true God. What plans he has for the beast with which he ridiculed the Via Dolorosa will be revealed only as he invades deeper into God’s own territory.
“What a shameful contrast this is to the Shekinah glory of God, which has thrice appeared, the last time at this very temple. God appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai when the Ten Commandments were handed down. He appeared again when Moses dedicated the Tent of God. And finally he showed himself at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple on this very site. Should God choose, he could reveal himself even today and crush under his foot this evil enemy. But he has an eternal plan, and Antichrist is merely a bit player. Though Antichrist has been granted power to work his horror throughout the world for a time, he shall come to a bitter end that has already been decided.”
“We were off the air again, Excellency,” the cameraman reported when they came back on.
“What are you doing wrong?”
“Nothing, Potentate! My red light merely goes off, and no matter what I do, it returns when it returns.”
“Show that! Show the beauty of the construction that was for my benefit, even though the architect and the craftsmen did not know it at the time.” The camera panned to the cypress, the cedar, the gold inlays and coverings, the silver and the brass. “No expense was spared in my house!” Nicolae exulted.
Leon Fortunato, apparently feeling left out, said something not picked up by the microphone. “Speak up, my friend!” Carpathia said, removing his lapel mike and holding it to Fortunato’s mouth.
“You, my lord,” Fortunato rasped, obviously weak and wasted, “are the good spirit of the world and source of all good things.”
David Hassid sat high above Petra, with the solar panel of his laptop facing the sun and the screen shadowed. Chang was amazing. But the drama being played out on international television and over the Internet made David wonder how Chaim was going to gain the ability to free the believing Jews. He wished he could somehow communicate with Chaim that the time was now to put out a call for everyone to flee before Carpathia finished the desecration and returned to retaliate.
But scheming was not his place, David knew. God had had this worked out since the beginning of time, and he alone could prompt Chaim.
The crowds outside the temple looked dangerous. Carpathia supporters tried to shout down the Orthodox Jews, but those who had received the mark and worshiped the image could barely stand. The growing opposition to Carpathia seemed to gain confidence with its numbers, especially considering that the potentate’s inner circle and military personnel were so clearly incapacitated.
Still, David knew, Nicolae was a mortal incendiary, flaunting his temporary power. He instructed his ersatz camera bearer to set up behind him as he waited outside the veil hiding the Holy of Holies. David could only imagine the God of heaven watching with the rest of the world as, with a flourish, Nicolae removed a long knife from his belt and sliced the veil from as high as he could reach all the way to the floor, then pushed back each side. Over Carpathia’s shoulder—already waiting near the brass altar—David could see Carpathia’s own gaudy throne and the gigantic pig from the day before, now without a saddle and clearly no longer tranquilized. It fought two ropes around its neck, held by more Carpathia loyalists who had not yet received his mark. Fortunato and Moon shuffled into position behind the pig, as if only to be sure to be in the picture.
Suddenly the feed switched to the camera outside, and David knew Chang had to have tipped off Buck. He had turned his lens on the opposition watching the monitors. Many fell to their knees and tore their robes.
The scene switched back inside, where the pig squealed and strained and Carpathia laughed, approaching with the knife. He lunged at the animal and it dodged, making him slip. “Want to play?” Nicolae roared and leaped aboard, knocking the pig to its knees. It quickly righted itself, and the potentate nearly slid off. He caught himself on one of the ropes, pulled himself back up, and reached with the knife, slashing the animal’s throat.
The pig went wild and dumped Carpathia to the floor. The animal thrashed as Carpathia struggled to his feet, his clothes covered in blood. The handlers held on, and the pig soon slowed and lost its footing.
Nicolae, abandoning any semblance of ritual, resheathed his knife and cupped both hands under the blood pouring from the dying pig’s neck. Before he was even upright again, he flung blood toward the altar and splattered the pig handlers, who ducked and howled in hysterics. Fort
unato and Moon were caught in the melee and appeared to force smiles, though they also looked as if they were about to collapse.
David sat with his mouth open, wondering how anyone could take seriously a man who not only thumbed his nose at God, but who also acted like a drunken reveler at a frat party.
When the pig finally stopped moving, Nicolae attempted to butcher it with the knife and found neither himself nor the blade equal to the task. “Pity!” he cried, to the laughter of his people, and plopped himself down in his throne. “I wanted roast pork!”
Carpathia seemed to quickly tire of the silliness. “Get the pig out of here,” he said, “and bring in my image.” He stood and hurried to a spigot of rushing water. The camera stayed on his face, but it was clear he disrobed under the spray. “Cold!” he shouted, finally reaching for a towel provided by yet another lackey. Someone handed him the robe, sash, and sandals from the day before, and he looked directly into the lens. “Now, once my image is in place,” he said, “we are out to Solomon’s scaffold.”
Chang patched in Chaim. “Is this not the most vile man who ever lived?” Rosenzweig said. “Is he not the antithesis of whom he claims to be? I call on all who have resisted or delayed in accepting his mark and plead with you to refuse it. Avoid the sentence of grievous sores and certain death.”
David shifted and stretched his legs, eager to interact with someone about what everyone had seen. The most logical person he could think of was Hannah.
Buck feared his appropriated TV camera would be revealed when the small contingent of Orthodox Jews who had unintentionally worked together to shield it from Carpathia and his minions suddenly bolted away. The Temple Mount had become a roiling stew of angry citizens, and not just those without the mark of the beast. Loyalists had apparently come to the end of their patience with the loathsome sores all over their bodies. And the fiasco Carpathia had just perpetrated in the temple could not have amused more than his basest, most rabid supporters.
Messianic believers, new Christ-followers, the Orthodox Jews, and seemingly even thousands of undecided among the general populace had seen the new Carpathia. It was as if he had abandoned any attempt to persuade or convince anyone. He was to be revered and worshiped and followed because he was god, and anyone who didn’t agree would suffer. But those who agreed most wholeheartedly were suffering the most.
But to have murdered a man in cold blood on international television, to literally drench his hands with the man’s blood, to have announced the end of ceremonial sacrifices—except to himself—and then to not just claim the temple as his own house but to also defile it in such a graphic, disgusting way was more than the natural mind could comprehend.
Men in flowing beards cried out, “He would sacrifice a pig in the Holy of Holies and cavort in its blood?” They fell to their knees, weeping and moaning. But even more people crowded the pillars at the top of the steps, calling for Carpathia’s own blood.
It became clear to Buck when Carpathia finally irrevocably tipped the scale against himself. The holy men shushed the crowd when Nicolae’s small contingent of healthy men fetched the golden statue. A low rumble of dissent grew as thousands seemed unable to control themselves, while trying to hear what dastardly thing he would do next.
“Why worship at an altar of brass?” he said, his sneer filling the monitors. “If this is indeed the holiest of holy places, every supplicant should enjoy the privilege of bowing to my image, which our Most High Reverend Father has imbued with the power to speak when I am not present!”
Carpathia waited inside the temple for delivery of his statue, but when the assignees appeared to carefully tip it horizontally and bear it inside, they were surrounded by the mob. “Even GC personnel are fighting this, Chaim,” Buck said, and the old man nodded. Buck shot him a double take. Chaim seemed more than solemn. He appeared distracted, probably running over in his mind his next step. This situation had turned uglier than anyone in the Tribulation Force had expected, from what Buck remembered of all their discussions and planning sessions. Something had to give—and soon.
When the protestors rushed the men carrying the statue, other loyalists from inside rushed out, brandishing weapons. A few fired into the air and the crowd backed off, waving their fists and cursing. When the monitors showed the men transporting the life-size image to the west end of the temple and up the steps to the Holy of Holies, the crowd had had enough and began rioting. If a person wore a GC uniform and was not part of the melee, he or she was a target of it.
Most uniformed personnel were too weak even to fire their weapons, but when some did and a few fell under their bullets, the throng erupted and attacked. The medical tents toppled, benches and chairs were upended, the guillotine was knocked over and stomped into pieces. Morale Monitors and Peacekeepers were trampled, their weapons yanked from their hands, and soon the TV monitors came crashing down. All over the Temple Mount people raged, screeching, “Down with Carpathia! Death to the monster! May he die and stay dead!”
Buck pulled Chaim to a safe spot and tried to shield the contraband camera. His monitor showed that the cacophony had reached Carpathia, and he appeared pale and shaken. “I am coming out to calm my people,” he said into the lens. “They need only be reminded that I am their risen lord and god.”
Few heard that over the din, but those who did must have spread the word quickly, because as Buck followed Carpathia’s march back to the entrance of the temple, he looked up to see the Orthodox Jews leading the way to the fake Solomon’s scaffold, which was quickly reduced to splinters.
A band of zealots spotted Buck’s camera, and before he could convince them he was on their side, they grabbed it and smashed it to the ground. Desperate to see what would happen in front of the temple, Buck scampered up a tree and saw Viv Ivins meet Carpathia near the entrance. Something kept the rioters outside, and Buck guessed it could be only their reluctance to assassinate a man in the temple, despite what he had done there.
Nicolae looked petrified while trying to appear otherwise and kept looking back to find the rest of his entourage. They finally caught up, but simply remaining upright seemed to take the last vestiges of strength from Fortunato and Moon and many others. Carpathia pointed and shouted, and someone found him a microphone that was connected to loudspeakers in the outer court.
Like a madman choosing the wholly wrong approach to winning back the crowd, Carpathia held the mike in one hand and raised his other for attention, crying out, “You have breached the covenant! My pledge of seven years of peace for Israel is rescinded! Now you must allow me and my—”
But the rest was drowned out by the mutinous multitude. While they would not cross the threshold of the temple, they pressed right up to it, creating a human barrier between Carpathia and his freedom to step out. Suddenly they quieted and began to chuckle, then laugh, then roar with pleasure at what they had accomplished. It was as if they had cornered a helpless pest and now didn’t know what to do with him.
“My brothers and sisters of the Global Community,” Carpathia began again, “I will see that you are healed of your sores, and you will again see that it is I who love you and bring you peace!”
“You’ll not leave here alive, pretender!” someone shouted, and others took up the cause.
Then, crystal clear in the early afternoon air, came the piercing voice of the little man in the brown robe, and all eyes and ears turned toward him. “It is not the due time for the man of sin to face judgment, though it is clear he has been revealed!”
The crowd murmured, not wanting to be dissuaded from killing Carpathia.
Chaim strode slowly toward the bulk of the group, and they respectfully, silently parted. “As was foretold centuries ago,” Chaim continued as he angled toward the temple steps, “God has chosen to allow this evil for a time, and impotent as this enemy of your souls may be today, much more evil will be perpetrated upon you under his hand. When he once again gains advantage, he will retaliate against this presumption on his auth
ority, and you would do well to not be here when his anger is poured out.”
“That is right!” Carpathia hollered, his voice sounding tinny compared to Chaim’s authoritative tone. “You will rue the day when you dared—”
“You!” Chaim roared, pointing at Nicolae. “You shall let God’s chosen ones depart before his curse is lifted, lest you face a worse plague in its place.”
Buck, still wedged in the tree, phoned Chang. “Camera’s trashed,” he said.
“So I gathered.”
“You getting this?”
“The GC’s trying to talk over it. It’s as if they can’t decide whether Carpathia would want it on the air. Heads are going to roll.”
“What’d Carpathia just say?” Buck said. “I missed it.”
“Something about his being at the Knesset, available to negotiate or to answer honest inquiries from his subjects.”
“They’ll never let him get out of the—”
But they did. The crowd backed away for Nicolae and his people as they had for Chaim.
“Any chance of tapping into the Knesset?” Buck said.
“Not that I know of,” Chang said. “Are you going?”
“If Chaim goes, I go.”
“Leave your phone open. I’ll patch it to everybody else.”
But before Buck could get down from the tree, Chaim raised his arms and gained the attention of the angry mob. “Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes.”
“Why should we flee?” someone yelled. “We have exposed the potentate as an impotent pretender!”
“Because God has spoken!”
“Now we’re to believe you are God?”
“The great I Am has told me. Whatsoever he even thinks comes to pass, and as he purposes, so shall it stand.”
