Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama Of Those Left Behind (31 page)

Buck told her.

“Are you sure it’s wise?”

“Chloe, it’s the chance of a lifetime! No one has spoken to them individually.”

“Where does the rabbi stand?”

“He’s Orthodox, but he knows the New Testament, too, at least intellectually. Be sure you and Bruce watch tomorrow afternoon—well, it would be six hours earlier for you, of course. Tell everybody in the church to watch. It should be interesting. If you want to watch the covenant signing first, you’re going to have to be up early.”

“Buck, I miss you.”

“I miss you too. More than you know.”

Rayford returned to his hotel to find an envelope from Hattie Durham. The note inside read:

Captain Steele, this is no practical joke. The secretary-general wanted you to have the enclosed ticket to the festivities tomorrow morning and to express to you how impressed he was with the service on _Global Community One. _ While he may not be able to speak with you personally until tomorrow afternoon on the way to Baghdad, he thanks you for your service. And so do I. Hattie D.

Rayford slid the ticket into his passport wallet and threw the note in the trash.

Buck, still out of kilter with the time change and the trauma of the morning, tried to get a few hours sleep before dinner. He dined alone, eating lightly and wondering if there had ever been such a thing as protocol for meeting with two men sent from God. Were they human? Were they spirits? Were they, as Bruce believed, Elijah and Moses? They called each other Eli and Moishe. Could they be thousands of years old? Buck was more anxious about talking with them than he had ever been about interviewing a head of state or even Nicolae Carpathia.

The evening would be chilly. Buck put on a wool sport coat with a heavy lining and pockets big enough that he wouldn’t need a bag. He took only pen and pad and tape recorder and reminded himself to check with Jim Borland and others at the [_Weekly _]to be sure photographers were at least getting long shots of the two when they preached.

At 9:45 Rayford sat straight up in his bed. He had dozed in his clothes with the television droning, but something had caught his attention. He’d heard the word [_Chicago, _]maybe [_Chicago Tribune, _]and it roused him. He began changing to his pajamas as he listened. The newscaster was summarizing a major story out of the United States.

“The secretary-general is out of the country this weekend and unavailable for comment, but media moguls from around the world are corroborating this report. The surprising legislation allows a nonelected official and an international nonprofit organization unrestricted ownership of all forms of media and opens the door to the United Nations, soon to be known as Global Community, to purchase and control newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cable, and satellite communications outlets.

“The only limit will be the amount of capital available to Global Community, but the following media are among many rumored to be under consideration by a buyout team from Global Community: _New York Times, Long Island News Day,
USA
Today, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Houston … _”

Rayford sat on the edge of the bed and listened in disbelief. Nicolae Carpathia had done it—put himself in a position to control the news and thus control the minds of most of the people within his sphere of influence.

The newscaster droned on with the list: Turner Network News, the Cable News Network, the Entertainment and Sports Network, the Columbia Broadcast System, the American Broadcasting Corporation, the Fox Television Network, the National Broadcasting Corporation, the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Family Radio Network, Trinity Broadcasting Network, Time-Warner, Disney, [_U.S. News and World Report, Global Weekly, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, _]and a host of other news and feature syndicates and magazine groups.

“Most shocking is the initial reaction from current owners, most of whom seem to welcome the new capital and say they take Global Community leader Nicolae Carpathia at his word when he pledges no interference.”

Rayford thought about calling Buck. But surely he had heard the news before it had come over television. Someone from the [_Global Weekly _]staff would have had to have informed him, or at least he would have heard it from one of the hundreds of other media employees in Israel for the signing. But maybe everybody thought everybody else was calling Buck. Rayford didn’t want him to be the last to find out.

He reached for the phone. But there was no answer in Buck’s room.

A tentative crowd milled about in the darkness, some fifty yards from the Wailing Wall. Remains of the would-be assassin had been removed, and the local military commander told the news media that he and his charges were unable to take action “against two people who have no weapons, have touched no one, and who have themselves been attacked.”

No one from the crowd seemed willing to move any closer, though the two preachers could be seen in the faint light, standing near one end of the Wall. They neither advanced nor spoke.

As Rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah’s driver pulled into a nearly empty parking area, Buck was tempted to ask if the rabbi believed in prayer. Buck knew the rabbi would say he did, but Buck wanted to pray aloud for the protection of Christ, and that was simply something one would not ask an Orthodox rabbi to pray for. Buck prayed silently.

He and Tsion left the car and walked slowly and carefully, far around the small crowd. The rabbi walked with his hands clasped in front of him, and Buck couldn’t help doing a double take when he noticed. It seemed an unusually pious and almost showy gesture—particularly because Ben-Judah had seemed disarmingly humble for one holding such a lofty position in religious academia.

“I am walking in a traditional position of deference and conciliation,” the rabbi explained. “I want no mistakes, no misunderstanding. It is important to our safety that these men know we come in humility and curiosity. We mean them no harm.”

Buck looked into the rabbi’s eyes. “The truth is we are scared to death and don’t want to give them any reason to kill us.”

Buck thought he saw a smile. “You have a way of knifing to the truth,” Ben-Judah said. “I am praying that we will both be healthy on the way back as well and able to discuss our shared experience here.”

Me too
, Buck thought, but he said nothing.

Three Israeli soldiers stepped in front of Buck and the rabbi, and one spoke sharply in Hebrew. Buck began to reach for his press pass, then realized it carried no weight here. Tsion Ben-Judah moved forward and spoke earnestly and quietly to the leader, again in Hebrew. The soldier asked a few questions, sounding less hostile and more curious than at first. Finally he nodded, and they were able to pass.

Buck glanced back. The soldiers had not moved. “What was that all about?” he asked.

“They said only the Orthodox are allowed past a certain point. I assured them you were with me. I am always amused when the secular military tries to enforce religious laws. He warned me of what had happened earlier, but I told him we had an appointment and were willing to take the risk.”

“Are we?” Buck asked lightly.

The rabbi shrugged. “Perhaps not. But we are going to proceed anyway, are we not? Because we said we would, and neither of us would miss this opportunity.”

As they continued, the two witnesses stared at them from the end of the Wailing Wall, some fifty or so feet away. “We are headed for the fence over there,” Ben-Judah said, pointing to the other side of the small building. “If they are still willing to meet us, they will come there, and we will have the fence between us.”

“After what happened to the assassin today, that wouldn’t be much help.”

“We are not armed.”

“How do they know?”

“They don’t.”

When Buck and Ben-Judah were within about fifteen feet of the fence, one of the witnesses held up a hand, and they stopped. He spoke, not at the top of his voice as Buck had always heard him before, but still in a sonorous tone. “We will approach and introduce ourselves,” he said. The two men walked slowly and stood just inside the iron bars. “Call me Eli,” he said. “And this is Moishe.”

“English?” Buck whispered.

“Hebrew,” Ben-Judah responded.

“Silence!” Eli said in a hoarse whisper.

Buck jumped. He recalled one of the two shouting at a rabbi to be silent earlier that day. A few minutes later another man lay dead and charred.

Eli motioned that Buck and Tsion could approach. They advanced to within a couple feet of the fence. Buck was struck by their ragged robes. The scent of ashes, as from a recent fire, hung about them. In the dim light from a distant lamp their long, sinewy arms seemed muscled and leathery. They had large, bony hands and were barefoot.

Eli said, “We will answer no questions as to our identities or our origin. God will reveal this to the world in his own time.”

Tsion Ben-Judah nodded and bowed slightly from the waist. Buck reached into his pocket and turned on the tape recorder. Suddenly Moishe stepped close and put his bearded face between the bars. He stared at the rabbi with hooded eyes and a sweat-streaked face.

He spoke very quietly and in a low, deep voice, but every word was distinct to Buck. He couldn’t wait to ask Tsion whether he had heard Moishe in English or Hebrew.

Moishe spoke as if he had just thought of something very interesting, but the words were familiar to Buck.

“Many years ago, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. Like you, this man came to Jesus by night.”

Rabbi Ben-Judah whispered, “Eli and Moishe, we know that you come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

Eli spoke. “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Rabbi Ben-Judah said, and Buck realized he was quoting New Testament Scripture. “Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

Moishe answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”

Eli spoke up again: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Right on cue, the rabbi said, “How can these things be?”

Moishe lifted his head. “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness. If we have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if we tell you heavenly things?”

Eli nodded. “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Buck was light-headed with excitement. He felt as if he had been dropped back into ancient history and was a spectator at one of the most famous nighttime conversations ever. Not for an instant did he forget that his companion was not Nicodemus of old, or that the other two men were not Jesus. He was new to this truth, new to this Scripture, but he knew what was coming as Moishe concluded, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

Suddenly the rabbi became animated. He gestured broadly, raising his hands and spreading them wide. As if in some play or recital, he set the witnesses up for their next response. “And what,” he said, “is the condemnation?”

The two answered in unison, “That the Light has already come into the world.”

“And how did men miss it?”

“Men loved darkness rather than light.”

“Why?”

“Because their deeds were evil.”

“God forgive us,” the rabbi said.

And the two witnesses said, “God forgive you. Thus ends our message.”

“Will you speak with us no more?” Ben-Judah asked.

“No more,” Eli said, but Buck did not see his mouth move. He thought he had been mistaken, that perhaps Moishe had said it. But Eli continued, speaking clearly but not aloud. “Moishe and I will not speak again until dawn when we will continue to testify to the coming of the Lord.”

“But I have so many questions,” Buck said.

“No more,” they said in unison, neither opening his mouth. “We wish you God’s blessing, the peace of Jesus Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Buck’s knees went weak as the men backed away. As he and the rabbi stared, Eli and Moishe merely moved against the building and sat, leaning back against the wall. “Goodbye and thank you,” Buck said, feeling foolish.

Rabbi Ben-Judah sang a beautiful chant, a blessing of some sort that Buck did not understand. Eli and Moishe appeared to be praying, and then it seemed they slept where they sat.

Buck was speechless. He followed as Ben-Judah turned and walked toward a low chain fence. He stepped over it and moved away from the Temple Mount and across the road to a small grove of trees. Buck wondered if perhaps the rabbi wished to be alone, but his body language indicated he wanted Buck to stay with him.

When they reached the edge of the trees, the rabbi simply stood gazing into the sky. He covered his face with his hands and wept, his crying becoming great sobs.

Buck, too, was overcome and could not stop the tears. They had been on holy ground, he knew. What he did not know was how the rabbi interpreted all this. Could he have missed the message of the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus when he had read it from the Scriptures, and again now when he had been part of its re-creation?