The Harbinger II Read online

  “Don’t worry,” said the prophet, “it can’t hurt you. We’re only watching.” As the onslaught continued, the gate weakened and then, with the final crashing of the battering rams, gave way. The two colossal golden doors fell to the ground. The army entered in. It was all over. The city was lost.

  I stood with the prophet, gazing down at what had once been the great gate of the ancient city but was now nothing more than wreckage and smoking ruins.

  “What do you think it all means, Nouriel?”

  “It has to do with judgment. When judgment came to the nation of Israel, it would most often involve the attack of an enemy. And it would begin with the enemy coming to the gate.”

  “Yes. For the enemy to appear at the gate meant that the judgment was beginning. And so Moses warned the nation of what would happen if it turned away from God:

  They shall besiege you at all your gates. . . 1

  “The days of judgment would begin when the enemy came to the gate.

  . . . your enemy shall distress you at all your gates.2

  “So in the days of judgment, the enemy would cause distress at the nation’s gate. Through the prophet Ezekiel, the Lord said this:

  I have set the point of the sword against all their gates. . . 3

  “And so the gate would become the focal point of the sword, of violence. And after the judgment had fallen on the city of Jerusalem, it would be written:

  All her gates are desolate. . . . Her gates have sunk into the ground.4

  “So the destruction at the gate will embody the nation’s judgment. Judgment begins at the gate. . . . A nation’s judgment begins at the nation’s gate.”

  “You have to be showing me this because it has something to do with America. But America doesn’t have a wall or gate.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But it does.”

  The moment he said those words, everything changed. I found myself standing on top of a ledge on a building, high above ground level, looking out at a vast city, around which was a body of water, a river, and a bay. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize it immediately.

  “You’re wrong about America,” he said. “It may not have walled cities, but it certainly has a gate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This,” he replied, pointing to the landscape that surrounded us. “This is the gate.”

  “I don’t see any gate.”

  “You were looking for a walled city. They don’t build them anymore. But gates still exist. This, Nouriel, is the gate of America.”

  “I still don’t see it.”

  “This city, this river, this bay, this passageway.”

  “I’m not getting it.”

  “The island of Manhattan, the Hudson River, the New York Harbor . . . New York City . . . is the gate of America . . . the portal of American civilization. Do you see the land on the other side?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what it’s called? It’s called the Gateway. As the gate was to the ancient city, so New York City is to America. What was it that took place at the ancient gate?”

  “People went in and out.”

  “And so it is that through this gate, more than any other, the multitudes have come to America. Look over there,” he said, pointing to his left. “That’s Ellis Island, the gate through which millions of immigrants passed to enter this land. It was even known as the Gate of America. What happened at the ancient gate?”

  “Trade,” I answered. “Merchandise and commodities, buying and selling, the marketplace.”

  “And so this gate has been the center of American trade. And within it has resided the central markets, the focal point of the nation’s buying and selling. And what else was the ancient gate?”

  “The embodiment of power, wealth, and greatness.”

  “And so too does this gate, New York City, stand as the embodiment of the power, wealth, and greatness of American civilization.”

  “The image on the golden doors—it was this.”

  “Yes, the land of hills—that was Manhattan. That’s what it originally was—an island of hills. And the water was the Hudson River.”

  “And the sun and the torch on the other side of the water?”

  “Look over there, Nouriel, to the left of Ellis Island. What do you see?”

  “The Statue of Liberty! The torch, of course! And the sun with the radiating spikes—the crown.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and the statue was patterned after the ancient Colossus of Rhodes, Helios, the Greek sun god.”

  “The words of the poem on the statue’s pedestal, ‘I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”5

  “Yes, the doorway, the gate to America.”

  “So the golden doors in the gate of the ancient city—it was all pointing to this.”

  “And to the mystery,” said the prophet.

  “The mystery . . . ”

  “Of judgment. Judgment begins at the gate. Therefore, it had to be this way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The judgment had to begin at the gate. What does that mean?”

  And it was then that it hit me.

  “9/11,” I said. “It began here. It had to begin in New York City.”

  “And what did the beginning of Israel’s judgment involve?”

  “The appearance of its enemies at the gate.”

  “So the days of judgment begin when the enemy appears at the gate. And what happened on 9/11?”

  “The nation’s enemy appeared at America’s gate.”

  “The terrorists came from across the world, from the Middle East, to manifest themselves in New York City—the enemy at the gate—the sign of judgment. And they did more than appear. Remember the scripture:

  They shall besiege you at all your gates.6

  “So on 9/11 they struck the gate of America.

  Your enemy shall distress you at all your gates.7

  “And so on 9/11, distress came upon America from the calamity that began at its gate. And it was not only that they struck America in New York City—but where specifically did the strike take place?”

  “In lower Manhattan,” I replied.

  “Which is the part of the city that most exactly constitutes the nation’s gate. And more exactly where? At the edge of lower Manhattan, the edge that overlooks the river, the gateway. The attack began as the first plane crossed the river, the gateway, to its target. The second plane then flew up the New York Harbor, the gateway itself. So the calamity not only took place at the nation’s gate but at the very specific entrance of that gate, at the gate of the gate of the nation.”

  “I remember seeing pictures of the Statue of Liberty on that day overlooking the cloud of destruction at Ground Zero.”

  “Yes,” said the prophet, “at the golden door, the gate of the gate.

  Her gates shall lament and mourn.8

  “And so as in the days of Israel’s judgment, the gates became a place of mourning and lamentation. So what is the warning of the gate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The gate is the entrance point, the portal through which judgment begins. Remember the biblical pattern: first comes the strike, the warning, and then a window of time. What happens at the gate represents the beginning. What happened on September 11, 2001, was the beginning, the entrance point of judgment. If the nation doesn’t turn back . . . then what began that day moves inexorably to its conclusion.”

  It was as he said those words that the dream came to an end.

  “It’s a lot to take in,” said Ana.

  “Yes, and it was only the beginning.”

  “So when was the next revelation?”

  “They came on their own timing,” he replied. “The next one came a week later. It would take up where this one had left off . . . and would be even more specific.”

  “How did it begin?”

  “With an image from my childhood.”

  Chapter 5r />
  The Towers

  I WAS A LITTLE child in the dream as it began, sitting in a classroom, with other little children. On the table was an assortment of papers—white papers, colored papers, newspapers, magazines—scissors, paste, and glue.”

  “Arts and crafts.”

  “Something like that. I found a sheet of paper that had the color and appearance of stone. I cut it up into little pieces, then pasted pieces onto another sheet of paper to create an image.”

  “Of what?”

  “A tower. It was then that I realized what I was seeing. It was from a real moment in my life, when I was a little boy. For some reason I had never forgotten it. But what followed was not from my life. When I finished the picture, I took the sheet and was propping it up on the table to make it appear as if the tower was standing upright. But the paper slipped out of my hands and fell to the floor. I got up from my chair and bent down to retrieve it.

  “At that moment, everything changed. The paper was gone, the classroom was gone, and I was no longer a child. I was now standing outside in the middle of what appeared to be an ancient Middle Eastern landscape. In the distance ahead of me was a multitude of people in robes and sandals. They were all involved in a major undertaking, a construction project. Some were surveying and measuring. Others were moving massive stones into place. Others were directing.

  “As the project progressed and the building began to rise from the ground, I realized what I was seeing. It was the reason I was taken back to that classroom and reminded of that picture. It wasn’t just a tower—it was the Tower of Babel. And what I was now witnessing was the building of the Tower of Babel.”

  “And wasn’t that what appeared on one of the nine seals in your first encounters with the prophet?”

  “Yes, the ziggurat.”

  “And a ziggurat is what again?”

  “A terraced or stepped tower made of rectangular sections, each one smaller than the one below it. And that’s what was now rising from the earth before me. The tower ascended to such a great height that it looked as if it would soon touch the clouds. But it was then that its ascent came to an end. That’s when I heard a voice, the voice of the prophet, who was now standing to my left.”

  “And they said,

  Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves.1

  “Do you know, Nouriel, what the word for tower is, in the Bible, in the original language?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “The word migdal. It comes from the Hebrew root gadal. Gadal speaks of greatness. It literally means to become great, to increase, to be enlarged, or to be lifted up. And even that root word, gadal, can be translated as ‘tower.’

  “And that’s the heart of the matter. The people of Babel sought to build a tower to make a name for themselves. They were seeking greatness.”

  At that, he pointed toward the tower.

  “Look, Nouriel.”

  I looked and saw now other towers rising from the ground. No one was building them; they were just going up . . . all of them ziggurats, just like the first, but of differing heights and widths and with differing facades. It became a city of towers, a skyline of ziggurats, towers of babel.

  “So,” said the prophet, “as kings and kingdoms rose to the heights of world power, they built towers to stand as monuments to their greatness.

  The towers of the ancient world boasted of the powers and glories of the civilizations that erected them. Their heights would bear witness to the heights attained by their builders. They stood as symbols and embodiments of the kingdoms that built them.

  “The connection between towers and greatness as revealed in the word migdal has continued into the modern world.”

  “How so?”

  “Paralleling America’s rise to world power was the rise of its towers. In the twentieth century, when it reached the heights of power and greatness no nation or empire had ever before attained, so too its towers, its skyscrapers, would reach heights no man-made structure on earth had ever before attained.”

  “The Empire State Building.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Twin Towers.”

  “Except the Twin Towers were not erected in the age of America’s rising, but of its falling. It was as the nation turned away from the moral and spiritual foundation on which it had been established, as it turned away from God and His ways, that it built those towers. And they rose at a time when America’s power relative to the rest of the world was declining. But there’s something else that the Hebrew for tower is linked to.”

  “What?”

  “Pride. And so the towers of the ancient world were also linked to the pride and arrogance of the nations, kingdoms, and civilizations that built them. You see, to seek greatness and power and glory apart from God and in defiance of His will . . . is pride.”

  “As in the Tower of Babel.”

  “And so the towers of nations become monuments as well to their pride and arrogance. And so it was as America fell away from God, that the Twin Towers rose from the earth.”

  It was then that I noticed two ziggurats of similar height towering over the rest. I knew that they represented the two towers of the World Trade Center.

  “In the beginning of a nation’s judgment, that which is high and lifted up is brought low. Listen to what the prophet Isaiah wrote of that day:

  For the day of the LORD of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up—and it shall be brought low.2

  “And again . . .

  The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low.3

  “So in that day,” said the prophet, “the pride of man is judged. And that which is lifted up is brought low.”

  It was at that moment that the ancient skyline transformed into a modern one, each ziggurat changing into a skyscraper and the two highest ziggurats, into the Twin Towers.

  “Thus a civilization under judgment will see that which it has lifted up and set on high be cast down to the ground.”

  “The Twin Towers,” I said, “were high and lifted up. And on 9/11, they were brought down to the ground.”

  “In the days of a nation’s judgment,” said the prophet, “its high places are broken down by its enemies:

  And they shall throw down your shrines and break down your high places.”4

  “So on 9/11,” I said, “America’s high places were given into the hands of its enemies, the terrorists . . . and were broken down.”

  “And the scriptures speak not only of the nation’s high and lofty places, but more specifically. In the day of judgment, destruction will fall . . .

  Upon every high tower.”5

  “On every high tower,” I repeated, “the Twin Towers.”

  “And it is written,” said the prophet, “that on the day of a nation’s judgment,

  They shall . . . break down her towers. . . 6

  “It will be a day of alarm, warned the prophet Zephaniah, ‘against the high towers’7 . . . a day, said the prophet Isaiah, ‘when the towers fall,’8 the sign of a fallen nation. When the high towers fall to the earth . . . a nation’s judgment is beginning.”

  “And it all happened,” I said, “on 9/11, the day that America’s high towers fell to the earth.”

  “A most ancient sign,” said the prophet. “The same sign that appeared to ancient cities and kingdoms now appeared to America.”

  “And the whole world saw it.”

  “Nouriel, why was it that the enemy attacked the gate?”

  “Because the gate was the vulnerable part of the wall.”

  “And do you know what they did to strengthen the gate?”

  “No.”

  “They built towers by the gate. So the gate was the place of the towers. What does that reveal?”

  “The gate of America will be the place of its high towers . . . New York City.”

  “The city known especially
for its high towers,” he said. “So at the beginning of a nation’s judgment, the enemy will attack the towers of its gate.”

  “The towers at America’s gate.”

  “And do you know what form the towers of the ancient gate would take?”

  “No.”

  “They would build one tower on each side . . . two towers . . . built of the same materials and in the same image. So standing at the gate would be two matching towers . . . twin towers.”

  “The Twin Towers.”

  “Yes,” said the prophet. “And so on 9/11, the judgment began as the enemy attacked the Twin Towers that stood in America’s gate.”

  “And what does it mean?” I asked.

  “As with the gate,” he replied, “it speaks not of the end but of the beginning . . . of judgment—the warning. The tower embodies the nation. American civilization was founded for the purposes of God. But it ascended to heights no civilization had ever attained. It became a high tower . . . a great high tower that turned against the foundation on which it was built. And so unless it returns to that foundation . . . the tower will fall.”

  “And then I awoke.”

  “What happened next?” asked Ana.

  “The next revelation would take me to the mystery’s other ground and its other side, which the prophet had never before opened.”

  Chapter 6

  The Wall

  I FOUND MYSELF INSIDE a museum . . . ”

  “In reality or . . . ”

  “In a dream, in the next dream. I was walking down its corridors, passing ancient artifacts on my right and left. I came to a gigantic stone wall. It had to have been at least fifty feet high. It was covered with engravings. The imagery and style of the engravings looked familiar.”

  “In your first encounters with the prophet,” said Ana, “he met you in a museum in front of a stone relief.”

  “Yes,” said Nouriel, “an ancient Assyrian relief. And that’s what I was now staring at.”