“Like what?”
“It is written of the day of judgment, ‘the moon shall not give her light’ and will become ‘as blood.’14 The darkening of the moon and the turning of the moon blood red are two signs connected to and reserved for the day of judgment. They are yet to manifest in their fullness on that day, but in part they appear already.”
“When?”
“During a lunar eclipse. It is then that the moon is darkened and turns to blood red to become that which is known as a blood moon.”
“But that would take place whenever the moon and earth are in their set positions, at the set time. We can predict it.”
“Yes, but even such set times are of Him who set them and who appoints all things to converge when and where they do and who can use anything as a sign, even that which is a sign already.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“The erez tree fell to the ground on the eve of Passover. On that same night, the moon was darkened. The harbinger fell to the earth, and the moon was darkened . . . and turned blood red.”
“So then there were three signs,” I said, “three signs of judgment all on the same day.”
“And yet another sign appears in the sky, another sign of judgment, different from the first but joined to it. So it is written:
The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood.15
“The darkening of the sun,” said the prophet, “another sign connected to and reserved for the day of judgment. And yet this too has in part already appeared.”
“A solar eclipse. But a solar eclipse can’t take place at the same time as a lunar eclipse.”
“No, it happens on another day. So we have two signs of judgment . . . two lights . . . two darkenings . . . two days. And how many harbingers of defiance remained?”
“The erez tree and the tower, two.”
“The tower’s ascent was completed on the day that the spire was placed on its top and it reached its full height of 1,776 feet. It was May 10, 2013. It was on that same day that the sun was darkened. So the tower touched the heavens on the same day the sun was darkened.”
“Two signs of judgment, one for each harbinger. The one sign appeared as the one harbinger touched the sky—and the other sign as the other harbinger touched the earth.”
“Yes.”
“The seal,” I said, “the circle around the tree—it stood for the moon.”
“Yes.”
“And in my dream, everything happened by the light of the moon . . . a changing moon, the moon of an eclipse. And the tree fell at the full moon.
“As the moon is full on Passover,” he said.
“And the tree that fell in my dream was in the form of the Statue of Liberty because the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of hope, as is the Tree of Hope . . . and the erez tree was the ancient symbol of a nation’s defiant hope.”
“Yes,” said the prophet. “So then what would the fall of the erez tree mean?”
“The fall of hope . . . the end of a nation’s defiant hope and its plans to come back stronger without God.”
“But the Statue of Liberty,” he said, “is not just a symbol of hope—it’s a symbol of America itself. So too the erez tree is a symbol of the nation itself in its defiance of God.”
“So then does the fall of the erez tree prophesy the fall of America?”
“What happened to ancient Israel in its defiance of God? How did it all end?”
“With the nation’s fall.”
He was silent.
“I have a question,” I said.
“Ask.”
“The fall of the sycamore is also a sign of judgment. But does the fall of the erez tree speak of something bigger? A greater judgment, a greater calamity?”
“Yes,” said the prophet, “and why do you think that is?”
“The sycamore is weaker. So it’s easier to uproot. But the erez tree is stronger. So it would take a greater force to strike it down. So the judgment foreshadowed by the fall of the erez tree would be greater than that of the sycamore.”
“Yes. When the Assyrians invaded Israel in 732 BC and struck down the sycamores, the invasion was a national calamity, but of shaking, of warning. So Israel vowed to plant the erez tree in place of the sycamore. But there would come another calamity. And this one would not only shake the nation—it would destroy it. So the fall of the erez tree speaks of something much greater than the fall of the sycamore.”
“Then the fall of the sycamore is to 9/11 . . . as the fall of the erez tree is . . . to a greater calamity to come?”
“The destruction of the erez tree warns of the fall of a great nation. It warns of the day when, as it is written . . .
Its branches have fallen on the mountains and in all the valleys; its boughs lie broken by all the rivers of the land; and all the peoples of the earth have gone from under its shadow and left it.”16
“And all the peoples of the earth have gone from under its shadow,” I repeated, “. . . and left it . . .”
“After receiving back the seal, he handed me the next.”
“And what would it lead to?”
“An ancient valley, a prophet, a clay jar, a house of faces, a nation’s darkening, and the harbinger that marked them all.”
Chapter 25
Tophet
SO WHAT WAS on the seal?”
“Letters,” said Nouriel, “as in the seal before it—but just three letters that I took to make up one word. And that’s what it turned out to be. Around the letters were curved markings.”
“And what did you make of it?”
“I made of it, as I often made of it, that I had no idea what to make of it. But since I was sure that it was a word, and since the script looked, again, like Paleo-Hebrew, I decided to bring it to an Orthodox Jewish scholar who could tell me what it meant.”
“Wait,” said Ana, “the man from Brooklyn, the man who owned the bookstore. You went to him years ago to interpret one of the seals the prophet gave you.”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t give you the right interpretation back then. So what made you think . . .”
“His interpretation was off, but he knew how to read the script, and he was a Hebrew scholar. This time it was just one word, so I didn’t think he could go off track.”
“So you went to Brooklyn.”
“And to the bookstore. He welcomed me in, locked up his shop, and led me to the back room, where we sat down at the same bare wooden table as last time. Nothing in that room had changed, at least nothing I noticed. I handed him the seal. He put on his reading glasses and began examining the letters. He looked up at me, then back down at the letters, up again, and back down. He looked troubled.”
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
He had never asked me that when I came to him the first time.
“Someone gave it to me,” I answered.
“Do you have any idea what this is?”
“No, or I wouldn’t have come here.”
“It is a dark thing,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“A dark word.”
“What word?”
“Tophet.”
“Tophet?”
He looked at me as if I had said something wrong, even though I was just repeating what he had just said.
“What does it mean?”
“It comes from a root that has to do with striking . . . as in striking a drum.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“You must have nothing to do with it.”
“With the seal?”
“With that of which it speaks.”
“Quite a strong reaction,” said Ana. “So what did you do?”
“He wouldn’t tell me anything more. I went back home, collapsed on my bed, and fell asleep . . . and had a dream.
“I saw a bearded man, dressed in a robe and carrying a large clay jar or pitcher. He was walking toward a strange-looking building, sort
of a cross between a house from a horror movie and a building from the Kremlin. I followed him inside.
“Its interior was dark, lit up by scattered lamps. We came to a large wall that appeared to be made of sandstone. Within the wall were faces.”
“Faces?”
“As if they had been sculpted out of the stone . . . a multitude of faces. The man with the clay jar came to a stop maybe twenty feet away from the wall and began to speak as if addressing his words to the faces in the wall . . . not as if . . . he was addressing them.”
“And so this is where it happened,” said the man. “This is where it began . . . where the door was opened to the dark.”
At that, the faces began to move and then speak.
“We did,” they said, “what we believed we had to do, what we saw as right.”
“But woe,” said the man, “to those who call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness. You opened the door to darkness.”
Then he looked upward toward the ceiling, but I knew he was looking beyond it, as if to heaven. He then let out a loud shout of agony.
“Tophet!” he cried out. Then he lifted the clay jar up over his head and smashed it down against the stone floor, where it shattered into what seemed to be hundreds of little pieces. Then he collapsed to the floor and there, on his knees, began to weep. And the dream ended.”
“So what did you make of it?”
“The word he cried out was the word from the seal . . . and it didn’t seem to be a good thing . . . just as the man in the bookstore had warned. But I was determined to find out what it meant. I had a Bible, in the back of which was a concordance.”
“A concordance?”
“It tells you where specific words appear in the Bible. So I looked up the word Tophet. It led me to the Book of Jeremiah. With one exception, it’s the only place in the Bible that the word appears.”
“Jeremiah—was he the man with the clay jar?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you find?”
“Tophet was a place just outside the city of Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom, a place of great significance. And the Lord would speak of it through the prophet Jeremiah:
‘For the children of Judah have done evil in My sight,’ says the LORD. ‘They have . . . built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire.’”1
“To burn their sons and their daughters!”
“That’s why God condemned it. Tophet was the place where they killed their own children.”
“Why would they do such a horrific thing?”
“It was required in the worship of their new gods to which they turned when they turned away from God. They offered up their children as sacrifices, believing that by doing so they would obtain favor, increase, and gain.”
“But why was it on the seal that the prophet gave you?”
“I had no idea. Later that day I went for a walk in Central Park. I sat under the shade of an oak tree. In front of me were children playing in the grass. It turned my thoughts all the more to the children of Israel and Tophet. I was lost in those thoughts until I noticed a silhouette, the figure of a man standing in front of me, blocking out the sun—the prophet.”
“So, Nouriel, have you decoded the seal?” he asked.
“I believe I have,” I replied. “Tophet.” He sat down beside me.
“Tophet,” he said, “represented the depth of Israel’s fall from God. It was all part of the progression. What did we say takes place when a nation turns away from God, from absolute truth, and its people worship the gods of their choosing and the idols of their hands?”
“It cuts itself off from its foundation. It loses its purpose and meaning.”
“Yes. And so as Israel fell away from God, it fell away from its purpose and meaning. And when life loses its purposes and meaning, then you can do with it what you will. Then it can be abused, sacrificed, and disposed of. So when a civilization turns away from God, it can then blot out those created in His image. And so it did. The people of Israel began sacrificing their own children. And for the blood of its most innocent, the nation would stand in judgment.”
“But why was it on the seal?”
“If America has followed the template of Israel’s fall, then would it not follow in this as well?”
“Child sacrifice?” I replied. “That was part of the ancient world; it’s not part of today.”
“Or is it?” he asked. “As America followed in the footsteps of Israel’s fall, as it turned away from God, the same dynamics were set in motion. It lost its purpose and values. And so life lost its sanctity. And so life became disposable.
“And so the ancient sin was replayed on American soil. The nation gave its blessing and sanction to the sacrificing of its most innocent. It legalized the killing of its unborn children and celebrated the act. Those who should have been its most protected, its most defenseless, were put to death. It all followed the ancient progression. The same years that saw the progressive driving out of God from the nation’s public squares also saw the return of the ancient sin. Israel killed thousands of its children—but America has killed millions.”
“I see the parallel, but I don’t understand how it relates to what I saw in my dream, the house of faces.”
“Then there must be more for you to find.”
And with that, he stood up.
“But I have faith that you will,” said the prophet. Then he began walking into the field of grass, passing the children at play and gradually disappearing into the distance.
“So the unexplained mystery,” said Ana, “was the house of faces.”
“Yes,” said Nouriel. “I believe I understood the rest of it. The man with the clay jar was Jeremiah. I even found the place in the Book of Jeremiah where he brought a clay vessel to the elders of Israel and confronted them over the sacrifice of the children.2 He was to smash the jar in their presence—just as in my dream. I got all that, but the house of faces remained a mystery. I went on for weeks without having any idea what it meant. And then the breakthrough came.”
“In a supermarket?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “But if you must know, it happened in a convenience store.”
“What is it about these breakthroughs?”
“I was on the road, starving. So I stopped in at a convenience store to pick up a snack. I was at the door, about to leave, when I glanced over to my left at the newspaper stand. That’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“A photograph on the front page—the building in my dream.”
“The one that looked like something out of a horror movie and the Kremlin?”
“Yes. It was a real building. And I knew I had to go there. So the next day, I went on a road trip. It took about two and a half hours to get there. And by the time I did, the sun had set, the sky was darkening . . . and the building now had a distinctly ominous appearance.”
“So what was it?”
“It was the capitol of New York, the house of its legislature. I was in Albany. It was the New York State Capitol building.”
As I stood there in front of it, I heard a voice from behind me.
“Is this how it looked in your dream?”
I turned around. And there he was.
“How did you know it was this building in my dream?”
“I had a hunch,” said the prophet. “Come, Nouriel, let’s go inside.”
So he led me to the building and over to one of its side doors. He opened it up, went inside, and motioned for me to follow.
“Are you sure this is all right?” I asked. “We’re not trespassing, are we?”
“I’m sure.”
The building’s interior was dark, lit up with scattered light fixtures similar to what I had seen in my dream. He led me over to a massive stone staircase. . . . It was filled with faces, carved faces everywhere, in the stone framing the sta
irway, in the vaulted ceilings, peeking out of the stone ornamentations, faces everywhere.”
“So this is the house of faces,” I said. “But why did I dream of it?”
“Because,” said the prophet, “this is where it all began.”
“Where what all began?”
“The darkness,” he replied, “the ancient sin, the horrific act . . .”
“The killing of the unborn.”
“It began here in the house of faces. It was from here that it spread across the land.”
“That’s what the man said to the faces in the dream . . . that it was there that the door was opened to the darkness. But wasn’t abortion legalized in the Supreme Court?”
“Yes, in 1973. It was that decision that made it the law of the land. But it didn’t begin there. It began three years earlier, here, in the house of faces. It was here in these chambers, in 1970, that the first law to sanction the killing of unborn children, abortion on demand, to anyone who requested it was begun.”
“It began in New York?”
“1970, a handful of states began moving in the direction of legalizing abortion. But it was New York that led the way passing a law that would turn the state into America’s abortion mecca. So it was from here that the darkness began spreading, ultimately to the entire nation. In the year after the New York law was passed, the American Bar Association drafted the Uniform Abortion Act for the purpose of legalizing abortion throughout the nation and, the following year, voted to approve it.
The Uniform Abortion Act was based on what was sanctioned in this house.
The following year, the Supreme Court voted to legalize abortion across America. Writing on behalf of that ruling, Justice Blackmun cited the Uniform Abortion Act, which was seen as a precursor of the Supreme Court decision. And regarding that act, Blackmun wrote:
‘This Act is based largely upon the New York abortion act.’
“Soon after New York legalized the killing of unborn children, it began drawing women from across the country into its borders to take part in the act. Thus it rapidly emerged as the nation’s undisputed epicenter of abortion. And so years before it was legalized throughout the land, New York served as the dark wellspring through which abortion spread to the rest of the nation. More abortions would be performed in New York than in any other place in America. And of all the abortions that took place in New York, the overwhelming majority were performed in New York City.3 And thus when it comes to the killing of children, New York is America’s capital city.”
The Harbinger II Page 19