From the packing case there had been taken a gigantic image of Lucien Apleon, and it had been reared upon a plinth of dark green marble, upon the tessellated platform _within_ the Temple.
The statue was of gold, and upon the green marble plinth was engraved: "I AM THAT I AM!"
In amazed, frightened horror, the High-Priest gazed for one moment upon the idolatrous abomination, then, as his blood boiled with a holy, righteous indignation, he thundered forth the words:
"Thou shalt have no other G.o.d before me.
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, . . . . Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy G.o.d am a jealous G.o.d--."
"Take that foul, idolatrous thing hence!" he cried, with pa.s.sionate warmth. His eyes were fixed upon Apleon"s chaplain, (the false Prophet) whose mocking smile, as he stood by the gang of workmen, angered him beyond measure.
Not a man moved at the order of the High-Priest, and he thundered forth his command again:
"Take that abomination down, and hence, or I will call upon Jehovah to send His judgment fire down and consume you all, and the idol as well."
With a blasphemous oath, the false Prophet, spat in the forehead of the fulminating Priest, and hissed:
"Silence, fool, idiot, driveller!"
As the foul spittle touched the face of the Priest, he fell p.r.o.ne upon his back on the pavement of the Temple. A dead hush fell upon everyone present, for as they gazed upon the face of the dead Priest they saw that the whole forehead became filled with the "Mark of the Beast."
The silence of this awesome hush was suddenly, startlingly broken by a peal of mocking laughter. It came from Lucien Apleon"s deputy, the false Prophet.
Then, more startling still, the lips of the golden image parted, and in deep, solemn tones the idol cried:
"So perish all who shall dare to oppose the Emperor Lucien"s will."
This was no trick. It was not a mechanical device within the image.
It was not a clever piece of ventriloquism. Of this we are a.s.sured--the image actually spoke. G.o.d"s word cannot lie, and John, under the command of G.o.d, wrote it down: "_It was given the false Prophet to give spirit to the image of the Beast, that the image of the Beast should even speak_."
"_To give SPIRIT to the image_!" What does that mean? Does it mean that life was given to it, temporarily? Who shall say? Certainly it _spoke_!
Unseen, unnoticed, at the very moment that the High-Priest fell, slain by the false Prophet, there had entered the Temple, Cohen, who had been High-Priest for the _first_ year of this new Temple"s history.
He slipped away as the image uttered its speech. He met many of the priests of other of the Courses, as they were approaching the Temple, also numbers of the devout Jews of the city and its suburbs, and many from other parts of the world, who had been specially drawn hither by the news that had been flashed world-wide, as to some great event about to happen in Jerusalem.
"Stay!" he cried. His looks told of something serious, and in an instant he was the centre of an eager, anxious, enquiring crowd of Jews.
"Jehovah help us!" he went on. "For those who would be true to Him now, must be prepared for flight or for death. Apleon, is a traitor!
"_He hath put forth his hands against such as be at peace with him; he hath broken his covenant._" Psalm lv. 20. "_He confirmed a covenant with us for seven years_." Daniel ix. 27. "_The words of his mouth were smoother than b.u.t.ter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were drawn swords_." Psalm lv. 21."
Cohen, even while he had been speaking had led the crowding Jews away from that main road, and now, in a _cul-de-sac_, he was continuing his words.
"Blind! Blind! that we were, all of us, I, especially, for my Gentile friend, the editor of "The Courier"--London daily paper--warned me. He told me of the meaning of our own prophet Daniel"s words, "_In the midst of the week_ (the seven years of the covenant we made with that apostate) _he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease_."
"This he has done this morning. The priests were stopped in their preparations for the morning sacrifice.
""_And,_" said our father, Daniel, "_for the over-spreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation_."
Daniel ix. 27.
"Brethren, of the House of Israel, the Lord our G.o.d is one G.o.d. I am no Mehushmad, but in common with many of our rabbis, I have read the Gentile New Testament, and there, in the words of the Nazarene Prophet, (Matt. xxiv. 15, 16.) He prophesied exactly what has come to pa.s.s this morning in our beautiful Temple, for he said:
""_When ye_ (that is we of the House of Israel) _therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place_ (of the Temple)--_whoso readeth, let him understand:--then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains . . . and pray ye that your flight be not on the sabbath day.
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, nor ever shall be_."
"Jehovah help us, brethren! This morning has convinced me that these times are upon us. What _this_ day will bring none but Jehovah can tell! My last word to you, my advice to you all, is, flee this city, flee the neighbourhood. For weeks I have had it borne in upon my soul, that the man we have covenanted with, was working some deep, subtle, h.e.l.lish scheme. Now he hath shown his hand, there are but three courses open to us, _idolatry_--worshipping that idol set up in our holy place, yonder; _flight_; or _death_."
Even as Cohen harangued his crowd of priests and Jews, Apleon rode up the white marble road to the Temple. The Hebrew crowd was quite hidden from any observation from that main road. It was well for them, doubtless, that it was so.
A moment or two after Apleon and the mighty throng which followed him had pa.s.sed, the crowd of Jews left the _cul-de-sac_, and silently, anxiously dispersed in various directions.
Cohen found himself walking with the man who had been Hight-priest last year. Together they conversed in low, serious, guarded tones, until they suddenly discovered themselves close up to a mighty throng gathered about the now well-known witnesses, Enoch and Elijah.
The two priests paused to listen to the witnesses" denunciations of Apleon, whom they designated "The Beast."--"The Anti-christ." Both men had listened often before to these prophets of G.o.d, and both had often been well-nigh convinced of the truth of the testimony of the two witnesses.
"It is said," whispered Cohen, to his fellow-priest, "that these two men are the two prophets of the Most High G.o.d, Enoch and Elijah--those two of G.o.d"s servants who never pa.s.sed through death."
"The three and a half years of their witnessing," replied the second priest, "have been crowded with incident, miracle, and much that has been supernatural. They say that no man has seen them eat. That, like Elijah, when upon earth, they too have been super-naturally fed. Then, too, nothing has been able to harm them. Apleon (the priest"s voice was lowered to the merest whisper) has directed his agents to war against them over and over again. They have shot at them, hurled vitrol upon them, and tried to seize them, to bind them, but as they have themselves testified again and again, nothing can harm them _until they have finished their testimony_."
Cohen bent closer to his fellow-priest, as he whispered: "The book of Revelation, in the Gentile New Testament, declares that "_they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sack-cloth.
And when they have completed their testimony, the Beast that cometh up out of the abyss_ (I believe that is Apleon) _shall make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them_.""
"Now if this come to pa.s.s, then they will die to-day, for it is a thousand two hundred and sixty days, this very evening, since they began their preaching, and----. But, listen, to what the one of them is saying."
The voice of Enoch rang out as it had done five thousand years before, when he had prophesied, saying, "_Behold! the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment upon all; and to convince all that are unG.o.dly among them of all their unG.o.dly deeds which they have unG.o.dly committed, and of all their hard speeches which unG.o.dly sinners have spoken against Him--_."
But now the message of the prophet had in it testimony as well as warning:
"Have we not warned you for three years and a half, that the man, Apleon, whom you have all trusted in, was but the tool of his father, the Devil? Have we not told you often that he worked upon your deluded minds and imaginations for one purpose only, to keep you from "The G.o.d of Salvation," and that, presently, he would set up his own image to be worshipped in that gilded thing of unbelief, upon that mount, yonder?"
A peal of derisive, mocking laughter greeted this statement.
The voice of the prophet cut the laughter, with its supernatural incisiveness, so that it rose clear and distinct above the laughter:
"And now all that we prophesied has come to pa.s.s. The image of Apleon (the abomination of desolation) spoken of by Daniel the prophet, has this morning been set up in the Temple over there. "_And that Man of Sin . . . opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called G.o.d, or that is worshipped; so that he, as G.o.d, sitteth in the Temple of G.o.d, showing himself that he is G.o.d_." 2 Thess. ii. 4.
"Upon the pedestal of his image, that was reared this morning, he has caused to be engraved the very name of our Jehovah G.o.d--"I AM THAT I AM!" as he supposes it to be, because it is thus translated in the Bibles of the world. There is no sense in that way of putting it, as there is no sense, nothing but vanity and coming failure and fall, in that "Man of Sin" himself. But he has chosen to ape Jehovah-G.o.d by using "_I am, that I am!_" instead of the true translation which has evidently been hidden from him and which is: "I AM HE WHO AM FOR EVER!"
"_He is Anti-christ, that denieth the Father and the Son_. 1 John ii.
22. The Scriptures have been issued by millions, every soul of you here has had an opportunity of knowing the things whereof we again testify. You have heard, or read, or both, (or you could have done if you would) that he, the Man of Sin, "_would cause an image of himself to be made, that he would give life to it, and that the image should speak_" (Rev. xiii. 14, 15). All this has happened this morning, and all else will happen that is prophesied. Therefore we cry:
"_Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die? Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in you, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores: Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before G.o.d"s eyes; cease to do evil. Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?_"
Strangely affected by the power and earnestness of this witness of G.o.d, Cohen and his fellow-priest turned reluctantly away. In the heart of each of them was the determination to be clear of the Jerusalem neighbourhood that very forenoon, if possible. In fact before one o"clock had struck, that mid-day, there had taken place a really remarkable exodus from the city and its neighbourhood. Of these, many were Jews, in whose composition there was deeply engraved a deep-seated antagonism to all idolatry.
Then, too, there were many "Kingdom believers" (by what other name can we call them, since, having missed Salvation by the "Gospel of Grace,"
they now served G.o.d, while waiting for Christ"s coming to set up His kingdom.) Many of these fled the city and its neighbourhood, for they counted not their lives dear when it came to a case of blasphemy and idolatry. Yet, because the love of life is inherent with the race, and because, too, these "Kingdom believers," learned to bring others to G.o.d, before the final judgments came, and knowing that it was written "that as many as will not worship the image of the Beast shall be killed," they fled Jerusalem.