“Yes, in his long, dark coat, standing to my left and gazing with me across the waters.”
“Another appointed moment.”
“So what have you been able to make of the mystery?” he asked.
“It has something to do with the tower and parchments or a parchment.”
“When Jerusalem was destroyed by the armies of Babylon, the prophetic word came forth from the ruins. It became the Book of Lamentations. After the calamity of 9/11, the eyes of America were drawn to the ruins of Ground Zero. Could there have been a prophetic word waiting there, hidden in the ruins?”
“In the ruins of Ground Zero?” I replied. “If there was, I never heard of it.”
“There was,” he said. “There was a word in the ruins.”
“A word on what?”
“On paper.”
“The parchments in my dream and on the seal.”
“It was unlikely that such a fragile object would survive the destruction of 9/11 intact and the days of burning at Ground Zero. There were some other papers around it but mostly burned, charred, obscured, or pulverized. But one remained intact, visible, with charring, but legible. It was hidden there for many days, waiting in the ruins to be uncovered.”
“By whom?”
“A photographer who was chronicling the mission of the rescue workers there. It was night. He was standing in the ruins by a steep incline and a cement barrier. He noticed some charred papers at the barrier’s edge. He asked the one overseeing the operations for permission to find out what was there and to record it. Permission was granted, but he was told to make it as fast as possible since the area was dangerous. . . . And then he saw it.”1
“What was it?”
“It was a page from the Scriptures. The Bible was gone, but the page remained. As he readied to record it, he was called to come out. He quickly recorded a few images, then exited the site, leaving the scripture behind.”
“Did he see what it said?”
“No, he didn’t have time. But later that night, with the aid of a magnifying glass, he began examining the proof shots of what he recorded that day. When he read the words of the scripture, he was left in shock. He broke down and wept.”2
“What was it?” I asked.
“It was a scripture that spoke of a tower.”
“What tower?”
“A tower that was built for the pride of man.”
“The Tower of Babel?”
“Yes.”
“So in the ruins of the fallen towers was a word about the Tower of Babel?”
“Yes.”
“The ziggurat in my dream.”
“The tower that embodied the coming together of the world.”
“As did the World Trade Center.”
“The word in the ruins spoke of those who set out to build it and the reason why:
They said, ‘Now let’s build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves.’3
“So too those who set out to build the Twin Towers did so to erect the tallest buildings on earth, towers that would reach the sky, or, as other versions render it, whose tops would be ‘in the heavens.’ The word from Ground Zero also spoke of the materials by which the tower would be built:
They said to one another, ‘Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them hard.’ So they had bricks to build with.4
“They used bricks. Does that sound familiar?”
“‘The bricks have fallen,’ the words of Isaiah 9:10, the words of the vow.”
“And behind the English, the same Hebrew word used for the building of the Tower of Babel is used of the fallen buildings in the vow of Isaiah 9:10—‘the bricks have fallen.’”
“And that word,” I said, “was found in the actual ruins of the fallen buildings . . . and in those ruins were actual fallen bricks.”
“So in the ruins of the World Trade Center was a scripture that spoke of a tower built to reach the heavens, a tower that embodied the coming together of the world, and a tower that embodied the pride and arrogance of man.”
“And all those things could be said of the Twin Towers.”
“And the words on that page spoke of something else.”
“What do you mean?”
“They spoke of judgment,” said the prophet, “the judgment that came against the tower.”
“Something I don’t understand: the parchment on the seal didn’t have any writing on it, just two symbols. What did they represent?”
“What did you think they were?”
“Two I’s or two 1s.”
“Not exactly.”
“The two towers?”
“The two towers were built in the same shape, but no. It was the number 11.”
“An 11 as in September 11?”
“Yes.”
“And flight 11, the plane that struck the first tower.”
“Yes,” he replied, “it was a day of elevens. But the reason it appeared on the parchment of the seal was because of Babel.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Tower of Babel appears in the Book of Genesis. Do you know where?”
“No.”
“In the eleventh chapter. It appears in the eleventh chapter of that book and the eleventh chapter of Scripture itself.”
“So September 11, the day of elevens, was linked to the eleventh chapter of the Bible . . . and lying in its ruins was the eleventh chapter of the Bible—the account of a tower that embodied the pride of man and led to judgment.”
“Yes, but the scripture wasn’t only about that which had been,” said the prophet, “but that which was yet to come.”
“How?”
“The scripture of Ground Zero spoke in the future tense: ‘Now let’s build a city with a tower.’5 It was a call to embark on a construction project, the call to build a tower. So the words were prophetic. America would again set out to build itself a tower. And unlike the fallen World Trade Center, that which would rise up in its place would take the form of just one tower, as in the scripture of the ruins.
“And as in the ancient scripture, the tower that rose up from Ground Zero was begun with the intention of constructing the tallest building in the world. The account begins with these words:
The people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words.6
“What did we say was the connection between the tower and the world?”
“The tower embodied the world coming together as one.”
“Notice the words that appear in that opening verse—the word world appears once, and the word one appears twice, just as it does in the original Hebrew. So the scripture in the ruins of Ground Zero spoke of a tower linked to the words one and world. And thus the name of the tower would be . . . One World Trade Center.”
“Why did they name it that?”
“The name was formed from its address. But the result was a tower intended to be the tallest building in the world and marked with the words one and world. . . as in the Tower of Babel.”
“And both towers,” I said, “were built in the spirit of defiance.”
“And there was another mystery in the word of the ruins.”
“Tell me.”
“The call of defiance that led to the Tower of Babel and was preserved on that piece of paper was this:
Now let’s build a city with a tower.”7
“And?”
“When, in ancient times, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, in a translation called the Septuagint, when the translators came to Isaiah 9:10, to the vow of defiance, they did a strange thing. They rendered it:
The bricks are fallen down, but come. . . let us build for ourselves a tower.”8
“You had told me of that translation in our first encounters.”
“The ancient translation connects the words of Israel’s vow of defiance in Isaiah 9:10 with the words spoken in Genesis to build the Tower of Babel. And those same words were hidden there in the wreckage of the fallen t
ower.”
“How many times do those words appear in the Bible?” I asked.
“Only twice,” he answered, “in the call to build the Tower of Babel in Genesis and in the vow to rebuild the ruins of Israel in Isaiah 9:10.”
“So, ‘Come let us build for ourselves . . . a tower’ is a translation of Genesis 11 and of Isaiah 9:10. And the words all there in the ruins of Ground Zero . . . the words of Babel and the words used to translate Isaiah 9:10, the vow from which the harbingers come. It was all there.”
“Yes,” said the prophet, “from the very beginning, from the moment the towers fell, from the moment the bricks were fallen, it was all there. As it was written in ancient times, the ‘bricks are fallen down, but come . . . let us build for ourselves a tower.’9
“And the words were prophetic. They would build for themselves a tower at Ground Zero. And they would do so in the spirit of Babel. For the same spirit that possessed the people of Babel and, then, the people of Israel now possessed America.
“And what happened to the page?” asked Ana.
“No one knows. The photographer regretted that he didn’t attempt to take it with him as he rushed off the site. Undoubtedly it was lost in the ruins. But it was preserved in the photograph.”
“How did those who heard of the picture react?”
“Some took the fact that it had to do with the building of a tower as a good sign, an encouragement to rebuild, not realizing how far removed this was from its actual meaning. But others realized right away that for a scripture to appear in those ruins, telling of the Tower of Babel, was nothing other than ominous.”
“And what happened next?”
“The prophet asked me for the seal, which, of course, I gave him. He slipped it into his coat pocket, took out another, and placed it in my hand.”
“What was it?”
“Something so simple that I didn’t know how to interpret it or if there was anything to interpret at all. And yet it would lead me to a sign, a transformation taking place in the midst of New York City overlooked by the thousands who passed it by . . . and yet a warning of judgment from the time of the prophets.”
Chapter 19
The Withered
AND SO WHAT was it?”
“A branch,” he replied. “I didn’t know what to make of it. I tried searching the internet to see if I could identify the tree it was from. But there were too many branches too similar in appearance to the branch on the seal. And then I had a dream.
“I was walking inside a very large covered garden.”
“Covered with . . .”
“With vines and branches. But not just covered . . . surrounded. The vines and branches were all around me, forming the garden’s walls and curving into the roof. Nothing was straight. Everything was curved.
And everything was withered, the leaves, the plants, the fruits, the vines—everything.
“As I continued walking, I spotted a little girl at the other end. She was holding a pitcher of water and crying. I approached her and asked why she was crying. She replied, ‘Because my garden won’t grow. I did everything right. I planted it in good soil. I watered it every day. I cared for it. But no matter what I did, it withered away. No matter what I do, still it withers away.’
“I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn’t be consoled. So I continued walking through the garden until I saw an opening, an exit in its walls, which I took. I then found myself in the middle of the city, standing on a sidewalk, with multitudes passing by. I turned back to look at the covered garden. It was only then that I saw what it was. It was all shaped into the form of an eagle—a colossal eagle of vines and branches. And the dream ended.”
“So what did you do?”
“Both the dream and the seal had to do with plants or trees. So I decided to make a trip to a place that might give me something to go on—the New York Botanical Garden.”
“You had been there before in your first encounters with the prophet, when you were trying to figure out the meaning behind one of the seals he had given you.”
“Yes.”
“And from what I remember, it was a dead end.”
“Yes. But now it was the only thing I could think of. So I went there and inquired if there was anyone there who could help identify the branch on the seal. They referred me to one of their experts. He examined the image. But there wasn’t enough detail for him to make any identification.”
“Another dead end,” said Ana.
“Not exactly. The other reason I went there was because it was filled with covered gardens, glass-covered gardens, but still covered, and many of them curved, as in the dream.”
“So what did you find?”
“A lot of beautiful plants and flowers and trees.”
“No little girl with a watering pitcher?”
“No, and nothing to go on. Finally, I decided to go outside and walk the grounds. I found myself in a forest, a unique forest . . . fifty acres of forest, streams, pools, Indian trails, and trees, many of which went back centuries. I was on one of the walking trails deep into the woods when I saw him, standing there waiting for me.”
“The prophet . . . in the woods?”
“Yes.”
“A nice place for a walk,” he said.
“I didn’t know you went for walks.”
“I came to walk with you, Nouriel. Come,” he said. So I walked with him down the trail, deeper into the heart of the forest.
“This,” he said, “is what New York City looked like before there was a New York City.”
“It’s a bit different,” I said, “certainly more peaceful.”
“Tell me what you’ve found.”
So I told him of the dream and my failed attempt to find a match for the branch on the seal.
“You came here the last time seeking the meaning of the fallen sycamore.”
“Of Isaiah 9:10, yes.”
“And so the mystery has brought us again to a place of trees. In the Scriptures, trees are of great significance. They represent life and blessings, but also people, nations, and kingdoms. And they can signify more than that. They can also stand as warnings and signs of judgment.”
“How?”
“Show me the seal.”
So I pulled it out of my coat pocket and gave it to him. He held it up as we walked, so I was able to look at it as he spoke.
“You were seeking to find out what kind of branch it was. But that wasn’t the key. It wasn’t so much the type of branch that mattered, but its state. Look at it. Did you notice it had no fruit . . . or leaves? And your dream, it wasn’t so much about what was in the garden, but the state of a garden itself.”
“It was withered,” I replied. “And the branch on the seal was a withered branch?”
“And do you know what withering represents in the Bible?”
“No.”
“A sign of judgment. The withering of trees and plants stands for the withering of people or nations, the judgment of kingdoms. So it is written in the psalms of those who commit evil:
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.1
“So the withering of the green plant stands for the judgment that comes on those who commit evil. So, in Isaiah, the Lord warns of the judgment to come on an evil culture:
For you will be like a tree whose leaves wither, like an orchard that is unwatered.2
“And so in the Book of Jeremiah, God warns the entire nation of the coming calamity:
At the time of their punishment they shall be brought down . . . There will be no grapes on the vine and no figs on the fig tree, and the leaf will wither.3
“The same prophetic symbolism appears in the New Testament with the withering away of the fig tree, an event taken to signify coming judgment.”
“And what does it have to do with now?”
“In Isaiah 9:10, in the wake of the attack on the land, the people of Israel vowed to replace the fallen sycamores with a stronger tree.”
“The Hebrew erez tree.”
“And in America, in the wake of 9/11, the people of New York City replaced the fallen sycamore with a stronger tree, the erez tree. And the erez tree was made into a symbol of resurgence, just as it was in the ancient vow.”
“And they planted it in the exact spot in which the fallen sycamore had been struck down.”
“They did exactly as Israel did in its last days before judgment. And as in ancient times, it was an act of defiance. The erez tree was a symbol that the nation would rise up stronger and greater than before. Do you remember when the erez tree was planted at Ground Zero?”
“It was in November of 2003.”
“And since then, Nouriel, the mystery hasn’t stopped and the harbingers have not ceased to speak.”
“What do you mean?”
“The erez tree was planted on ground where other trees had prospered and in the exact spot where another had blossomed. It should have prospered.
“But something else happened instead, something as biblically significant as the tree itself. The ancient phenomenon began to manifest.”
“The withering?”
“Yes, the ancient sign of judgment began manifesting at the corner of Ground Zero. The erez tree, the symbol of America’s resurgence, began to wither away.”
“Why?”
“No one knew why. It was a mystery. The keepers of the grounds tried everything they could to make it prosper. But no matter what they did, no matter what solution or treatment they applied, it just kept withering away. It took on an increasingly sickly appearance, and yet no sickness could be identified.
“Every year, it became that much more barren. And what green was left on its branches began transforming to a deathly brown.
“The keepers of the grounds planted shrubs in a line starting near the fence that enclosed the property and ending by the tree, just a few feet from its roots. The shrubs farthest away from the tree were strong, green, and healthy. The shrubs closest to the tree began to likewise wither away, turning brown, dry, sickly, and deathly. It was as if there was a curse on that tree and on whatever came near it.”
The Harbinger II Page 13