Jesus Triumphant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 8) (32 page)

Inside Mount Hermon, Belial looked over the bodies of the gods sprawled all over the cavern, all sixty plus divinities. Many of them were drunk out of their skulls, others were hallucinating with drugs of sorcery. Bodies of bloody, dismembered, dead humans lay all around, the victims of sexual debauchery and other unspeakable atrocities.

Disgusting
, thought Belial sitting on the throne, looking out over it all.
Indulgent juveniles and morons. We have a world to rule and they are only now coming out of their stupor.
It had been a week-long celebration over the death of Messiah.
Yes, it was a victory. Yes, there is a time to celebrate. But these fools do everything to excess. They have no sense of discipline, moderation, restraint
.

A semi-sober Zeus stumbled up to him. “Belial, you really need to loosen up and enjoy our victory a bit. I did not see you rape or mutilate a single virgin, let alone the cult prostitutes and boy loves we brought in.”

Belial narrowed his eyes at the teetering divinity. Was that “loosen up” remark a subtle reference to Belial’s supernatural binding that had grown like a fungus over his body? If it was, there would be Gehenna to pay.

Zeus belched.

Belial turned his head at the putrid stench. “Keep your mouth shut, you stupid boar. This is not Olympus and your childish Greek parties. Pick up this mess. I want all the human body parts out of here and the blood scrubbed off those rocks. Have you no sense of the sacred?”

“So-rry, your majesty” said Zeus in a sing-song voice with a sarcastic salute. He pulled a poor young male from his impaling on a stalagmite and tossed the corpse into the black flaming waters of the Abyss. He clapped his hands loudly. “You heard the Prince of Rome. Let us clean up this mess!”

Some were already moving about. Others pulled themselves up off the vomit-filled floor. Anubis slipped on a pile of excrement and blood and fell on his rear end. He started laughing and cackling like a jackal. Others around him, joined in.

Suddenly the sound of pounding echoed throughout the hall.

Belial looked over at the large gate into their cavern. It hadn’t been used in centuries.

More pounding again.

Anubis stopped howling. Everyone else stopped what they were doing.

More pounding.

But it wasn’t someone pounding on the door. It sounded like someone was pounding
around
the door.

Watchers picked themselves up off the floor, looking for their weapons. Many of the gods had misplaced them in the celebration.

More pounding. Belial knew what it was now. Someone was hammering the hinges of the gate.

“Watcher gods, prepare yourself for battle!”

Lift up your heads, O gates!
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,

that the King of glory may come in.

Now someone pounded
on
the gate. It shook with defiance.

Belial stood in confusion, his mind racing with the possibilities of who it could be. Of
what
it could be.

The gates broke open with a crash.

Who is this King of glory?
Yahweh, strong and mighty,
Yahweh, mighty in battle!

Belial’s eagle eyes could see a human, and a giant each take a door off its hinges and lift them up with superhuman strength. He recognized the human. But it couldn’t be. He was dead.

“Samson?”

Marduk recognized the giant with the other door, and exclaimed, “Eleazar?”

The two muscleman threw the doors inward, crushing several gods that had tried to meet the visitors with weapons.

Lift up your heads, O gates!
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

Belial’s throat dropped to his stomach. Behind the strongmen was an army of warriors, led by someone wielding the infamous Rahab whip sword. Someone he recognized from any distance because he had come to know him intimately.

“Jesus Christ,” he croaked.

Who is this King of glory?
Yahweh of hosts,
he is the King of glory!

The army of God poured into the breach and spread out, seeking their enemies with bow and arrow, battle ax, sword and javelin. It was almost too easy. Drunk and confused deities stumbled over themselves, others hid in fear, searching for their weapons.

Not all were completely overtaken.

Horus was the first to face Jesus sober. He stepped in front of the Nazarene. The falcon-headed sky deity yelled, “Son of God! You darkened Ra! But you will not bind the sky!” He was referring to the judgment of Yahweh on Egypt’s deities in the days of Moses. The ninth plague was the darkening of the sun. Yahweh had punched out Ra’s lights, and Horus had taken his status of power in the pantheon. But Horus was also the god of hunting and master with a spear.

Before he could engage with Jesus, Demas jumped in with his own shield and spear. Benaiah of Kabzeel joined him. In the days of King David, Benaiah had killed an infamous Egyptian Rephaim named Runihura with the giant’s own staff. Horus was not going to get through this one unbound.

Jesus moved on, his eyes set on Belial and his throne across the burning black lake.

Belial sat anxiously considering his options. He was not much of a fighter. He was more of a legal attacker as the Accuser of Yahweh’s heavenly court.

Jesus’ path was blocked. He became surrounded by a trio of supreme Hindu deities, Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti. Shiva the Destroyer had a third eye on his forehead, a snake wrapped around his neck and he wielded a trident-like weapon. Vishnu was blue with four arms, and he carried a mace in his left hand and a discus in his right that contained serrated edges. Shakti, the mother goddess of power, had talons on her fingers that were as dangerous as ten daggers.

Jesus said, “I have had enough of this false trinity,” and unfurled Rahab. He swung his blade in a circle to keep them at bay. But he was surrounded, and it was all he could do to keep the trident, mace and claws from piercing, crushing or cutting him.

Rahab snapped back and lashed out in defense. But Jesus finally got some room to breathe when arrows began to prick each of the three enemy gods. It was Jonathan the Hawk and his trusty aim from a rocky ledge above. Arrows would not stop the gods, but they would slow them down.

Methuselah and Edna faced down Odin, the bearded Norse god, with his mighty spear Gungnir. Too bad for Odin, Methuselah’s specialty was the javelin.

Caleb and Joshua found themselves against the Toltec feathered serpentine god, Quetzalcoatl.

David took up combat with the Great Spirit of distant western lands, Gitchi Manitou, with Ittai at his back battling Zeus’ lightning bolts with his double bladed battle ax.

Lamech and Noah fought the Persian deity Ahura Mazda, who had large wings and held a wheel blade between both hands. But the two humans moved aside and Ahura Mazda saw the giant Eleazar step up with shield and battle axe. Eleazar said, “You shouldn’t have held me captive in Parthia, fool. A resurrected saint is not so easy to defeat.” The god was thrown off by the surprise. It allowed his opponents, led by Eleazar, the advantage they needed to overcome him in short order.

What the invader’s strategy had achieved was to focus the gods’ attention on the attack from the gate. That way, they would not be ready for what happened next.

Behind the gods, seven beings exploded from the black waters of the Abyss. The archangels led by Mikael. Had they come with the humans, their supernatural presence would have been detected by the gods, and their surprise ruined. But because they traveled the secret depths of the Abyss from Panias all the way to Hermon, they had gone undetected.

They attacked the gods from behind, binding the easy prey of the drunk and the wounded while the human gibborim wore down the other Watchers.

Jesus dodged the trident of Shiva, but saw in the corner of his eye, Vishnu rearing back to throw his bladed discus. Jesus spun just as the discus flew where his head had been. It lodged in the rock behind him. He whipped Rahab around Shiva’s trident, just as an arrow from Jonathan hit Shiva’s third eye. Jesus yanked the weapon from Shiva’s hand and snapped it behind him, to catch the claws of Shakti about to rip him open. The bite of Rahab was much mightier than her talons. The blade cut her hand clean off. She shrieked, holding her bloody stump.

Shiva tried pulling the arrow out of his blinded eye.

Jesus saw his moment and whipped Rahab around above his head. It drove like a windmill blade around him, and connected with all three of the gods’ necks one after the other. Their severed heads fell to the ground in silent agony. Though the Watchers could not die, they could be incapacitated until their body parts could be reconnected for regeneration.

The archangels had them all bound before they could do so.

Belial stood from his throne as Jesus approached the other end of the black, viscous lake. He smirked, knowing that Jesus would have to run around the large body of darkness or swim through it to get to him.

Jesus did neither. He merely rolled up his sword, stepped out onto the lake and walked over the flaming black liquid without sinking or being singed.

“That’s not fair,” muttered Belial.

He stepped backward fearfully, and stumbled, falling back into the chair.

Jesus crossed the lake and made his way up to the throne. He stepped up to Belial with a stoic look and said nothing.

Belial wondered why Jesus did nothing. Then he realized it. “I have diplomatic immunity. I cannot touch you, but you cannot touch me.” He grinned malevolently.

But then his eyes burned with a blinding brightness. He went dizzy.

• • • • •

When Belial opened his eyes, he saw that he and Jesus were no longer in the assembly of Mount Hermon. They were in the court of Yahweh’s divine council in the heavenlies.

But something was very different. For all the millennia, the Accuser had pranced and bellowed from before the bar, as he prosecuted his enemies in the dock. Once, he had even put God in the dock, in an attempt to prosecute the Creator for covenantal unfaithfulness to Adam and Eve.

That was ballsy
, he thought to himself.

But now, for the first time ever, the Accuser was in the dock, and Jesus stood before him at the bar. Belial panicked.

The sound of voices like many waters shook him out of his stupor.

“Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh Elohim Almighty. Who was and is and is to come!”

The trisagion of praise had come from the seraphim above the chariot throne of Yahweh Elohim, before which the Accuser now sat.

Their humanoid yet serpentine bodies had six wings. With two they flew, two covered their feet in holiness, and two covered their faces. Belial knew these beings well because he had once been one. A long time ago.

The Cherubim below the judgment seat were sphinx-like, with four faces and four wings, sparkling of burnished bronze. The faces were those of human, lion, ox and eagle. And beside each one was a wheel within a wheel of gleaming beryl that moved with the living creatures.

Around the throne were ten thousand times ten thousands of his holy ones, the Sons of God, who shone with the brightness of burnished bronze and flashes of lightning.

Silence enveloped the entire throne room. Normally, in a covenantal lawsuit, the Accuser would bring his prosecution before the court of the Most High. A defense would be offered, and Yahweh Elohim would render judgment of justification for one side or the other. Members of the divine council would then carry out any orders of the court.

But Belial knew in his soul that would not be happening this day. There would be no trial for him. This entire episode of crucifying Messiah was his trial, and he had failed to see it. This would be a summary judgment by the Judge of all the earth.

He heard a voice from nowhere and yet from everywhere call out, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the Accuser of our brethren will be thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.”

Belial’s fear turned to slow burning rage.
How dare he appoint me as prosecutor for all these ages, and now turn around and punish me for it.

The voice continued, “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

That was it
, thought Belial.
What I thought of as a groveling defeat of Messiah’s death had been a crowning act of atonement. His resurrection became his justification of kingship. He tricked me, that heavenly coward. He didn’t have the guts to battle me directly.