by Brian Godawa
The ram’s impact was deadened. But it kept pounding at the cushions.
CHAPTER 58
Simon snuffed out his torch as he approached the secret entrance into the inner temple from the tunnels below. He came out in one of the chambers of the Court of Priests that surrounded the Holy Place. Because of the political turmoil over the past three years, only a handful of priests were still serving in the temple. At this moment, their living quarters were empty.
They must have been called for service, thought Simon. But Gischala has stopped the daily sacrifices, so what purpose could it be?
Slipping out of the colonnade, Simon entered the Holy Place through the priest’s entrance in the rear. He moved through the side chambers where priestly vestments were stored in lockers for changing.
Once inside the Holy Place, Simon hid behind one of the side curtains behind the columns looking into the room. What he was doing would have been unthinkable during normal times. Only priests were allowed to enter the Holy Place to perform their duties. The presence of anyone else would be considered a profanity of sacred space. But these were not normal times. War had changed everything. And John of Gischala himself had already profaned the temple with the presence of his soldiers and the blood of battle.
But what Simon was watching now was an abomination.
From his hiding place, he saw Gischala with a group of priests and a hundred loyal soldiers watching from the sides. Gischala was wearing the garments of the high priest! Gischala was not a priest, and he was not a Levite. But he had become so deluded by his fanatical beliefs that he thought he was Messiah, both priest and king.
Gischala had exchanged his royal crown and costume for a priestly one. The blue robe with little bells at the bottom jingled with Gischala’s every move. He wore the holy ephod, an apron embroidered with blue, purple, scarlet, and gold. The breastplate of judgment was embedded with twelve gems that represented the twelve tribes of Israel. But the most disgusting profanity of all was the holy miter on his head: a turban that had a golden plate on his forehead engraved with the words, “Holy unto Yahweh.”
It should say, “Harlot of Babylon,” since the entire priesthood had become corrupted and used in service of an abomination. That had been the accusation of the Two Witnesses, and now Simon understood why.
Gischala passed by the golden lampstand and table of shewbread to light the golden altar of incense on fire. Its smoke filled the room with holy vapors.
Simon had thought that the priests would have removed the holy instruments and treasures of the temple in order to protect them. But Gischala had evidently kept them in order to engage in this ritual of corruption, this liturgy of abomination.
Simon decided that he would try to save as many of the holy instruments as he could. He would hide them in the tunnels before the Romans arrived. But how could he get them with all these soldiers and priests in the way?
• • • • •
The Jews had been successful using the sacks full of chaff to soften the blows of Victor against the walls of the Antonia. But the sacks were starting to fall apart beneath the repeated pummeling.
The Romans now brought long poles with blades attached to their ends. They extended the poles from within the housing of the ram and used them to cut the ropes that held the cushions in place. The sacks fell to the ground, leaving the wall exposed for Victor to return to his unrelenting barrage.205
Boom. Boom. Boom.
They were halfway through the wall now. With each strike, the stone edifice shuddered and chunks of rock fell to the ground.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
• • • • •
In the Holy Place, Simon saw a messenger arrive and speak to Gischala. “My lord, the Romans have almost penetrated the Antonia. When they break through, it will not be long before they breach the temple mount.”
“Excellent,” said Gischala. “We don’t want to make it too difficult for them.”
• • • • •
Flames filled the tunnels beneath the Antonia like a furnace of fire.
The flames had eaten up the wooden beams and trestles as fuel. Finally, the timber could no longer hold the weight of rock above. The beams collapsed into charred embers that started a rolling cave-in of the ceiling.
Simon’s plan of arson had taken its toll.
• • • • •
Up above those tunnels, Victor battered away at the Antonia. But before it could break through the wall, the ground beneath it began to crumble. The Romans could not sense the earth’s movements because their battering ram created its own tremors.
So they didn’t know what hit them when the ground beneath them collapsed. The ram sunk into the earth like quicksand, completely disabling it. Black smoke billowed out of the ground, suffocating the Romans. The fires below now consumed the ram’s wooden structure within its angry flames.206
Jews on the walls cheered. God had delivered them once again.
Or so they thought until the collapsing tunnels continued their cascading effect on the ground all around them. One of those tunnels caved in beneath the very wall that had been attacked, finishing the destruction that Victor had begun.
The entire weakened barrier of stone fell to the ground in a pile of rubble. Jewish soldiers on top fell to their deaths, crushed by the debris.
When the smoke and dust cleared, the Romans could see their access into the fortress.
And they took it.
In the unseen realm, Apollyon shouted a war cry from his chariot, and the gods pushed their way in. Their next to last obstacle was the outer temple gate. They were so close he could almost taste the blood.
He looked up above to see the heavens swirling again. Yes, he was so close. It was time to call in the reinforcements.
He lifted his war horn and blew.
CHAPTER 59
Alexander had fallen asleep from exhaustion in the hippodrome hospital. He had performed so many surgeries, he had seen so much pain, so much blood, that he had lost the capacity to even feel anymore. It had brought to his mind the imagery in the Apocalypse of blood moons, blood rivers, and blood seas. Everywhere, blood.
And once again, he was dreaming of that imagery that haunted his spirit. Or was this a vision? It seemed as real to him as it must have been to the apostle John when he received the revelation on Patmos. Alexander could only conclude that God was allowing him another glimpse into the heavenly realm that Cassandra had been able to see as a sensitive in the earthly realm.
Alexander stood beside a massive winepress outside Jerusalem. It looked as large as the Roman camp on Mount Scopus. He saw the angel use a sickle to gather the clusters of the vine, a common symbol of Israel. He saw the grapes thrown into the winepress of the wrath of God to be trodden. He saw the wine pouring out of the channel onto the dirt.
Then he noticed it was not wine, but rather blood—the blood of those who lived upon the Land.207
And then the walls of the winepress exploded outward, and blood poured out like a tide across the landscape.
It caught Alexander and carried him in a wave as high as a horse’s bridle. The blood spread out over the entire length of the land of Israel, 1600 stadia long, two hundred miles. It was the harvest of judgment that had begun with Vespasian’s invasion and was now ending with Titus’s siege.208
Suddenly, Alexander found himself back in Jerusalem at the empty tomb of Joseph of Arimathea—and the blood was gone.
He looked up into the sky and saw the clouds of heaven swirling like the beginning of a tornado in a wind storm. The wind whipped his face, but it felt cool and refreshing.
He heard the voice of a great multitude. It sounded like the roar of many waters, like peals of thunder that resounded through his body.
“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride
has made herself ready.
Apocalypse 19:6–8
Alexander filled with hope and joy at the beauty of the ekklesia, the Bride of Christ, marrying her beloved and receiving the kingdom. The marriage feast was upon them, a feast that apostate Israel had rejected.
Then he filled with dread and horror because the messianic marriage had long been described in connection with war. It was a mysterious, glorious event that was also linked to the horror of the destruction of the king’s enemies. The parousia of Jesus would involve both deliverance and destruction. Deliverance of his Remnant and destruction of apostates. The marriage of the new virgin bride was preceded by the execution of the harlot wife.209
Then the heavens opened, and Alexander saw the glorious vision that up until now he had only read about in the Apocalypse. He felt his entire body paralyzed with awe. He could not utter a word or even blink his eyes; the holiness was too overwhelming.
In the unseen realm, Jesus Christ came riding on a white horse in the clouds of heaven, crowned as king and leading an army of his saints behind him. They were dressed in fine linen, white and pure, his Tribulation martyrs.210 But they did not battle for their Lord would do so on their behalf.
He had eyes like a flame of fire, and his robe was dipped in the blood of his enemies.211 The word of judgment against Israel that Jesus had pronounced on the Mount of Olives during his ministry was like a sword of judgment coming from his mouth in this vision.212 Jesus was the one who was treading the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty, and on his thigh was written the name King of kings and Lord of lords.213
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds.”
Jude 14–15
As the apostle had told him, this parousia was not a singular moment in time but rather a symbolic picture of Christ’s historical judgment upon the Land, upon Jerusalem, and upon Israel after the flesh.214 Messiah had been treading this winepress upon the Jews for the last three and a half years, and the marriage supper was about to commence.
In the Scriptures, the establishment of the old covenant under Moses had been depicted symbolically as a feast on the flesh of Leviathan in the wilderness of Sinai. Chaos had been overcome with covenant.
You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
Psalm 74:13–14
In a similar way, the Apocalypse depicted the establishment of the new covenant under Christ with birds feasting on the flesh of his enemies of chaos, their dead bodies unburied and accursed.
“Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.. and all the birds were gorged on their flesh.”
Revelation 19:17-18
Alexander awoke in his tent with the image on his mind of Jewish corpses piled outside the walls of the city and a sense of urgency upon his soul. The harvest was at an end. The great supper of God was at hand. Jesus was finishing his judgment upon Jerusalem. The Romans would soon take the temple and from there invade the Lower City—where the hippodrome resided.
I have to move the hospital behind the walls of the Upper City. I have to get everyone to the theater for safety.
There were just over a thousand sick or wounded who were still alive. And Alexander only had a hundred and fifty volunteers. Moving them all would take multiple trips across the valley. And they would hardly fit into the theater’s area. It was about a third the size of the hippodrome.
It would also only delay the inevitable. The Romans would eventually take the Upper City as well.
But he couldn’t leave his patients when there was still a place to run. He had to move everyone now.
CHAPTER 60
The Jews were not prepared when the Romans breached the wall of the Antonia. They froze with indecision until the first legionaries became visible, climbing the rubble to invade the fortress, then bolted for the temple.
By the time the Jews had retreated to the gate of the temple, the Romans were already at their heels. The defenders could not successfully lock the gate, so they found themselves in a match of human strength as hundreds of them joined together to push the door closed while hundreds of Romans joined their comrades to push the door open.
Other Romans brought ladders to climb the attached wall of the temple. Jews lit the portico roof on fire to repel their attackers. Legionaries scrambled back down their ladders to safety, waiting for the flames to burn out.
Down by the gate, the massive Simcha made his way through the mass of fellow soldiers to the front, placing his hands on the very wood of the gates. The opening between the gates was the width of a man’s shoulders. Roman and Jew yelled and cursed each other through that gap, but the gates did not give one way or the other.
In the unseen realm, dozens of heavenly creatures began to arrive at the city of Jerusalem from the four winds of the earth. This was the final army of throne guardians that Apollyon had called for at Hermon.
The first to arrive were the Assyrian lamassu, giant hybrid creatures with the winged bodies of bulls and lions but the humanoid heads of kingly men. These creatures were among the most ancient, going back to Sumer, and the largest as they often guarded city gates and palace entrances. They were at least fifteen feet tall, and their roar could be heard throughout the spiritual realm.
Next came the mushussu from Mesopotamia, infamous for guarding the gates of Babylon. These mutant dragon monstrosities were frightening with their long necks and reptilian heads, birdlike talons for hind legs, and lion forelegs. If their teeth, talons, or claws did not rip their enemy apart, their tails with the head of a venomous snake could kill them with lethal poison. Though they did not roar like the lamassu, mushussu were just as terrifying and ruthless.
Third came the sphinxes from Egypt, also chimeric creatures with powerful lionlike bodies and the heads of Pharaoh-like humans. Some had wings, but all were known for guarding entrances to tombs and temples with occult magic and cunning intelligence.
The last to arrive had come the farthest—the griffins of Greece. Known for protecting royal treasures, these divine guardians were considered the kings of creatures. They had bodies of lions and wings, talons, and heads of eagles. Together, this army of hundreds of abominable throne guardians could wipe out legions of heavenly host. Apollyon was not taking any chances to achieve complete and total desolation.
As they all descended upon the city, Apollyon met them at the gate of the Antonia with Marduk, Azazel, Semyaza, Ares, and Zeus. The time had arrived to storm the temple.
In the earthly realm, Romans and Jews continued to fight for control of the temple gate as the portico burned overhead, ready to engulf them all in an avalanche of burning fury.
Simcha had one hand on each door with a hundred men behind him pushing forward against the legionaries on the other side. The gate began to close. Simcha was barely holding on, giving every ounce of strength in his Samson-like body to keep the Romans from breaking through.
Titus and Tiberius entered the newly opened Antonia gate on horseback, leading a cohort of cavalry. Tiberius saw the contest of brawn between the two forces. He saw the gap closing. It was now only as wide as Simcha’s head.
Pulling out a javelin, Tiberius launched it at the mighty warrior. It struck Simcha in the chest, and like Samson betrayed, his strength left his body. The men behind him fell back as the door burst open to the legionaries.
The outer temple had been breached.
Titus raised his sword and screamed to his men to push through.
The Romans flooded in, their swords, battle axes, and arrows clashing with the Jewish defenders.
The once mighty Simcha was crushed beneath the feet of the warrior mob.
On the other side of the outer Court of Gentiles, thousands of civilians and hundreds of soldiers panicked and stampeded for the Huldah Gates to escape the temple mount. Older and weaker people in the crowd were trampled to death in the swarming masses.
In the unseen realm, Apollyon’s throne guardians bounded through the gates with the Romans in attack formation. They were ready to face the worst. Apollyon had expected Yahweh’s throne guardians to meet them head on.
But the court was empty of heavenly host.
No seraphim, cherubim, or ophanim. That struck him with surprise. The army of Yahweh’s guardians was too big to fit in the inner temple, so they would have to be in the outer court protecting the inner temple building.
But they weren’t.
Then again, the Witnesses were dead. So what was left to protect? The temple was his by covenantal right.
Apollyon wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. He snapped the reins of his hellions and charged for the inner temple with Marduk on board the chariot.
Azazel and the others followed on foot through the gauntlet created by the throne guardians.
Apollyon slid Storm Demon to a stop in front of the temple. He and Marduk bounded up the stairs with Azazel and Semyaza close behind. They had already violated the outer temple’s sacred space. The final spiritual rape would be easy.