The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (71 page)

Ben-Judah nodded. “The day you lost your agnosticism.”

“Right. Well, I was on an airplane, headed for London, the day of the disappearances.”

“You don’t say.”

And Buck was off and running with the story of his own spiritual journey. He wasn’t finished until the rabbi was out of makeup and sitting nervously in the green room. “Did I go on too long?” Buck asked. “I realize it was asking a lot for you to even pretend to pay attention with your mind on your own presentation.”

“No, Buck,” the rabbi said, deep emotion in his voice. “I should be able to do this in my sleep. If I tried to push any more into my head at this late date, I would lose it all.”

So that was it? No response? No thank you? No “you’re a fool”?

Finally, after a long silence, Tsion spoke again. “Buck, I deeply appreciate your sharing that with me.”

A young woman with a battery pack on her hip, earphones and mouthpiece in place, slipped in. “Dr. Ben-Judah,” she said. “We are ready for you in the studio for sound check, and ninety seconds to air.”

“I am ready.” Ben-Judah did not move.

The young woman hesitated, looking doubtful. Apparently she was not used to guests who didn’t simply nervously follow her to the set. She left.

Tsion Ben-Judah rose with his notebook under his arm and opened the door, standing there with his free hand on the knob. “Now, Buck Williams, if you would be so kind as to do me a favor while you wait here.”

“Sure.”

“As you are a man of prayer, would you pray that I will say what God wants me to say?”

Buck raised a fist of encouragement to his new friend and nodded.

“Want to take over?” Rayford asked his first officer. “I wouldn’t mind catching this special CNN report.”

“Roger. That rabbi thing?”

“Right.”

The first officer shook his head. “That would put me right to sleep.”

Rayford made his way out of the cockpit but was disappointed to see that the television was not on in the main cabin. He moved toward the back where other dignitaries and press were gathering around another TV. But before Rayford was completely out of Carpathia’s conference room, Nicolae noticed him. “Captain Steele! Please! Spend a few minutes with us!”

“Thank you, sir, but I was hoping to catch the—”

“The Messiah broadcast, yes, of course! Turn it on!”

Someone turned on the set and tuned in ICNN. “You know,” Carpathia announced to all within earshot, “our captain believes Jesus was the Messiah.”

Chaim Rosenzweig said, “Frankly, as a nonreligious Jew, I think Nicolae fulfills more of the prophecies than Jesus did.”

Rayford recoiled.
What blasphemy!
He knew Buck liked and respected Rosenzweig, but what a statement! “No offense, sir, but I doubt many Jews could believe in a Messiah—even if they think he is yet to come—who was born other than in the Holy Land.”

“Ah, well, you see?” Rosenzweig said. “I am not that much a student. Now this man,” he added, pointing to the TV screen where Tsion Ben-Judah was being introduced, “here is your religious scholar. After three years of intensive research, he ought to be able to outline the qualifications of Messiah.”

I’ll bet,
Rayford thought. He stood in a corner and leaned against the wall to keep out of the way. Carpathia slipped off his suit jacket, and a flight attendant immediately hung it for him. He loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and sat down in front of the television holding a fresh seltzer with a twist. Carpathia obviously considered this a good hour’s diversion, Rayford thought.

An off-camera announcer clarified that “the views and opinions expressed on this broadcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Cable News Network or its subscribing stations.”

Rayford found Dr. Ben-Judah a most engaging communicator. He looked directly into the camera, and though his accent was thick, he spoke slowly and distinctly enough to be easily understood. Most of all, Rayford sensed an enthusiasm and a passion for his subject. This was not at all what Rayford had expected. He would have imagined an ancient rabbi with a long white beard, hunched over some musty manuscripts with a magnifying glass, comparing jots and tittles.

Ben-Judah, however, after a brief introduction of himself and the process through which he and his team did their research, began with a promise. “I have come to the conclusion that we may know beyond all shadow of doubt the identity of our Messiah. Our Bible has given clear prophecies, prerequisites, and predictions that only one person in the human race could ever fulfill. Follow along with me and see if you come to the same conclusion I have, and we shall see whether Messiah is a real person, whether he has already come, or whether he is yet to come.”

Rabbi Ben-Judah said he and his team spent almost the entire first year of their project confirming the accuracy of the late Alfred Edersheim, a teacher of languages and Grinfield Lecturer on the Septuagint. Edersheim had postulated that there were 456 messianic passages in Scripture, supported by more than 558 references from the most ancient rabbinical writings.

“Now,” the rabbi said, “I promise to not bore you with statistics, but let me just say that many of those prophetic passages are repetitive and some are obscure. But based on our careful study, we believe there are at least 109 separate and distinct prophecies Messiah must fulfill. They require a man so unusual and a life so unique that they eliminate all pretenders.

“I do not have time in this brief hour to cover all 109, of course, but I will deal with some of the most clearly obvious and specific ones. We consulted a mathematician and asked him to calculate the probability of even 20 of the 109 prophecies being fulfilled in one man. He came up with odds of one in one quadrillion, one hundred and twenty-five trillion!”

Dr. Ben-Judah gave what Rayford considered a brilliant example of how to easily identify someone with just a few marks. “Despite the billions of people who still populate this planet, you can put a postcard in the mail with just a few distinctions on it, and I will be the only person to receive it. You eliminate much of the world when you send it to Israel. You narrow it more when it comes to Jerusalem. You cut the potential recipients to a tiny fraction when it goes to a certain street, a certain number, a certain apartment. And then, with my first and last name on it, you have singled me out of billions. That, I believe, is what these prophecies of Messiah do. They eliminate, eliminate, eliminate, until only one person could ever fulfill them.”

Dr. Ben-Judah was so engaging that everyone on the plane had stopped talking, moving, even shifting in their seats. Even Nicolae Carpathia, despite the occasional sip from his glass and the tinkling of the ice, barely moved. It seemed to Rayford that Carpathia was almost embarrassed by the attention Ben-Judah had commanded.

Trying not to cause a distraction, Rayford excused himself and quickly slipped back into the cockpit. He put a hand on his first officer’s shoulder and leaned down to talk to him. The first officer lifted his left earphone.

“I want this plane to not touch the ground before five minutes after the hour.”

“We’re scheduled for about two minutes to, Cap, and we’re making good time.”

“Make whatever adjustments you have to make.”

“Roger.” He reached for the radio. “Baghdad tower, this is
Global Community One
, over.”

“Baghdad tower, go ahead
One
.”

“We’re reducing speed a few knots and are setting a new ETA of five minutes after the hour.”

“Roger,
Global
. Problems?”

“Negative. Just experimenting with the new plane.”

The first officer glanced up at Rayford to see if that was all right. Rayford gave him the thumbs-up and hurried back to the television.

Buck prayed as he watched. Other staffers had gathered around monitors. There was none of the usual behind-the-scenes banter. People were glued to the broadcast. To keep from jumping out of his skin, Buck dug out his notebook and pen and tried to keep copious notes. It was nearly impossible to keep up with the rabbi, who rolled on and on with prophecy after prophecy.

“Messiah is not limited to just a few identifying marks,” Ben-Judah said. “We Jews have been looking for him, praying for him, longing for him for centuries, and yet we have stopped studying the many identification hallmarks in our Scriptures. We have ignored many and made favorites of others, to the point that we are now looking for a political leader who will right wrongs, bring justice, and promise peace.”

Chaim Rosenzweig stepped over to Carpathia and clapped him on the back, turning to beam at everyone. He was largely ignored, especially by Carpathia.

“Some believe Messiah will restore things as they were in the glorious days of Solomon,” Rabbi Ben-Judah continued. “Others believe Messiah will make all things new, ushering in a kingdom unlike anything we have ever seen. And yet the prophecies themselves tell us what Messiah will do. Let us examine just a few of them in the remaining time.”

Buck was getting a glimpse of what was to come. Jesus was either the Messiah, the chosen one, the fulfillment of God’s Word, or he could not stand up to the scrutiny of the record. If only one man could possibly fulfill the prophecies, it had to be Jesus. It didn’t appear the rabbi was going to use the New Testament to try to convince his first and primary audience, the Jews. So the prophecies from hundreds of years before the birth of Christ would have to be clear enough to make the point—if indeed that was where Tsion was going.

Dr. Ben-Judah was sitting on the edge of the table where he had displayed the several-hundred-page conclusion to his research study. The camera zoomed in on his expressive features. “The very first qualification of Messiah, accepted by our scholars from the beginning, is that he should be born the seed of a woman, not the seed of a man like all other human beings. We know now that women do not possess ‘seed.’ The man provides the seed for the woman’s egg. And so this must be a supernatural birth, as foretold in Isaiah 7:14, ‘Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.’

“Our Messiah must be born of a woman and not of a man because he must be righteous. All other humans are born of the seed of their father, and thus the sinful seed of Adam has been passed on to them. Not so with the Messiah, born of a virgin.

“Our Messiah must be born of an extremely rare bloodline. While he must be born of a woman, that woman must be of a bloodline that includes many of the fathers of Israel. God himself eliminated billions of people from this select bloodline so Messiah’s identity would be unmistakable.

“First God eliminated two-thirds of the world’s population by choosing Abraham, who was from the line of Shem, one of Noah’s three sons. Of Abraham’s two sons, God chose only Isaac, eliminating half of Abraham’s progeny. One of the two sons of Isaac, Jacob, received the blessing but passed it on to only one of his twelve sons, Judah. That eliminated millions of other sons in Israel. The prophet Isaiah years later singled out King David as another through whom Messiah would come, predicting that he would be a ‘root out of Jesse.’ David’s father, Jesse, was a son of Judah.