The moment Rebecca saw the Ark in the Plenum, she knew Israel would never be the same again. And it wasn’t because the Ark had come to Jerusalem; it was because Caleb had come to the Ark.
They had taken a ride from Eilat with a reservist headed to Jerusalem, and the further north they drove, the more enigmatic Caleb had become. He had stopped talking altogether as they entered the city. But it wasn’t until she’d been told that her father was here, at the Knesset, that she really began to understand the significance of Caleb’s coming.
He was a Christian from the desert, unknowing curator of the Ark, and he had been practically dragged north by a strange, undeniable power that she now knew came from the Nazarene.
It was as if her father was really the Roman governor, Pilate, and Caleb had come to reopen a two-thousand-year-old case. The Jews versus the Nazarene. The old Ark versus the new ark, the one that was now in man. A spike of dread nudged her heart as she walked towards her father.
Rebecca embraced him.
“I was told you were dead,” he said.
“I was,” she said. She smiled. “But no more. Do I look dead to you?”
“No. No, thank God!”
Her father turned to Caleb. “And this must be . . .”
“Caleb.” She turned to him. “This is my father.”
But Caleb might not have even heard her. He was staring at the gold Ark and a glint lit his eyes. A glint she’d seen before.
“What is the meaning of this?” A member she recognized only by sight called from the fourth row back. “Please, we don’t have time for this!”
Caleb turned his head and looked at him, stupefied. The man settled to his seat, as if reprimanded. Rebecca glanced at her father. He was watching Caleb intently. She backed up, struggling with an uncertain emotion that rose through her throat.
Her worlds were meeting. The old and the new. Old wineskin, new wine.
Caleb turned back to the Ark and walked towards it.
“Stop!” Solomon ordered.
Caleb stopped, one meter from the Ark.
“Who is this man, David?” the prime minister demanded. “What is the meaning of this?”
Solomon answered without removing his eyes from Caleb. “This is Caleb. He’s from the monastery where we found the Ark.”
“And what’s he doing here?” the prime minister asked in a low urgent voice. “We don’t have time for this!”
Solomon hesitated. “I don’t know.” He glanced at Rebecca, brows arched. “Rebecca?”
Rebecca looked at Caleb and their eyes met. She might as well have been looking into pools of bottomless love, she thought. Because she did love this man, more than anything she had ever loved. Her knees felt weak. He was here for a definite reason, and the love that had grown between them somehow fed that reason. He had lost his first love and then found it—and she had played a part in that. She had inadvertently forced him to face his faith, and now his reborn faith would be tested here, before this court.
“I think he wants to tell you something,” Rebecca said. “You should listen. He is a prophet from God.”
A few protests rippled through the auditorium.
“We don’t need a prophet,” Solomon said. “We have the Ark.”
Caleb turned and faced the camera in the gallery. He looked at it for a few seconds.
“The world must see what I have to show you,” he said. “Is this camera broadcasting?”
Immediately an objection was raised, but the prime minister raised his hand. “No. But it is recording.”
“I must object,” Solomon said.
“Let him speak, David.”
The cameraman bent behind the camera, face glued to the eyepiece.
Caleb turned then walked slowly around the government table, blinking, like a lost child examining a strange breed of aliens. He tapped his fingers on the wood as he walked its length. It was unreal. The Knesset just watched him, stunned.
“You are the Jews?” he asked. What was he asking? Of course they were Jews—he knew that.
No one answered.
“When I was a child, I sang and a thousand people fell down. Did you hear about that?”
A low murmur said that some of them had.
“Then I somehow misplaced my love for God. It can happen to anyone. But I have found it again. And I’ve come to tell you that his love is now in the hearts of his children. It’s no longer in the Ark.”
“You have no right to come in here and tell us about God’s love!” Solomon bit off, furious. “You are a Christian! Your people have killed more of us than the Arabs.”
“You mean the Nazis? They weren’t my people, and they weren’t God’s children. God’s power now lives in his children, through the Holy Spirit, not in this Ark.”
Shouts of protest boomed across the auditorium.
“Blasphemy!” someone shouted. The call pushed others into open argument, and the noise rose to a dull roar.
Caleb looked around, as if perplexed by the scene. He turned and walked to the Ark and then spun around so that his dirty white tunic swept around his ankles. He planted his feet wide and shoved both arms over his head.
Rebecca held her breath.
Caleb tilted his head back and screamed at the ceiling. A long, chilling Ahhhhh! sound that ripped through the room and silenced every last man and woman with their mouths still open.
Rebecca felt her heart melt. She lowered her forehead into her right hand and stifled a sob.
Caleb’s cry echoed to silence and he looked around. Tears slipped down the prime minister’s cheeks. Others in his cabinet blinked at their own tears. Confused, they looked down, avoiding Caleb’s eyes.
“The power of the Messiah fills my bones,” Caleb cried. Now several began to weep openly.
“But I am not the Messiah. I am only like a voice crying in the wilderness. The Messiah has already come and he was the Nazarene. He was Christ.”
It was all too much for the Orthodox Jew, Haim Edri. He jumped to his feet. “You are speaking blasphemy! How dare you defile this holy place of God!”
A dozen others jumped to their feet and joined in the protest, red faced. Rebecca watched them and felt her heart bleed.
Caleb suddenly threw his hands skyward and yelled again, the same long, chilling Ahhhh sound that had stilled them before.
The effect was immediate. Those standing, including Haim Edri, collapsed to their seats. Weeping broke out like an epidemic, and suddenly Caleb was weeping with them. Standing with his feet spread and his hands lifted, weeping at the ceiling. Tears rolled off his cheeks and fell on his tunic. The room swelled with the terrible sound.
Solomon stood to Rebecca’s right, staring angrily at Caleb, fighting his own tears. She wanted to rush over and tell him that it was all going to be just fine. That all of his dreams were not being dashed by this seemingly impossible moment. But she knew that it wasn’t true. Whatever it was, encountering the Nazarene’s power could not be characterized as just fine.
Above them the camera continued to blink green. The prime minister sat with his head in his hands, crying like a baby.
Caleb suddenly stopped, looked around as though dazed, and then walked for the Ark. He reached out and touched it before anyone could stop him.
Silence slammed into the room.
He shoved the lid sideways with a scraping sound that grated across the Plenum. The members were too stunned to respond. They only gaped with horror.
Caleb reached into the Ark and pulled out first an ancient looking scroll and then a flat tablet of stone. From where she stood, Rebecca could clearly see the black markings on the slate. She was looking at the fingerprint of God, and the realization made her dizzy.
He held them up, one in each hand. “Yes, real. The Ark of the Covenant. Stone, paper, gold, and wood.”
He tossed the relics back in the chest and they landed with a loud clunk. “But powerless!” he yelled. “Powerless!” He walked away from the Ark.
“The same power that once flowed through the prophet Elijah is now upon me.” His eyes flashed eagerly. He walked to the government table and back, staring out at the people.
Still no one spoke.
“And if God gives you a sign today, will you then believe? How many times must he speak before you listen? Not the Jew only, but the world!” He pointed into the camera. “The Muslim and the Christian and the Hindu—all of you!”
Caleb lifted a hand. He looked over at Rebecca, eyes on fire. “Do you believe, Rebecca?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Do you believe?”
“Yes! Yes, I believe!” she yelled.
He closed his eyes and immediately she felt the energy tickle her skin. The hair on her neck stood on end. It was as though an electric current were passing through the room.
“If you cannot believe what he has said, then at least believe in the evidence of his power,” Caleb said in a loud voice. “‘As men gather silver, bronze, iron, lead, and tin into the midst of a furnace, to blow fire on it, to melt it; so I will gather you in My anger and in My fury, and I will leave you there and melt you.’” He was quoting a prophet.
His hair moved in a breeze that inexplicably swept across the room. His arm lowered slowly, eerily, with a single curved forefinger pointing towards the Ark, as if Michelangelo himself had painted him on the stage. The wind continued to blow softly across the room, sweeping at his tunic and hair.
His arm stopped level with the Ark and hung there lazily.
The wings on the cherubim closest to Rebecca began to sag, and she felt her heart jump in her chest. The angels bowed together, until their heads touched. The rim about the lid began to fold out slowly.
The Ark of the Covenant was melting!
A shriek of alarm shattered the silence. Haim Edri stood pointing at the Ark. Those seated closest, around the horseshoe table, shoved back in alarm from a sudden heat radiating out from the Ark.
Like lead in a furnace, the Ark withered. The two angels melted flat into the lid, and now the ancient acacia wood under the gold bared itself and burst into flame.
Caleb stood with eyes closed, hand suspended, smiling. Scores of members had fallen to their knees and wept bitterly. But whether they were weeping for the Ark, or for the presence of God carried on the wind, Rebecca did not know.
Scores of others were too stunned to move.
Solomon sank slowly to his knees, weeping. Father, I beg you to reveal yourself to him, Rebecca prayed. Her father lowered his head and shook with sobs.
It was over in two minutes. The burning ashes of the wood sat on top of gold that had melted to the table and dripped like icicles to the floor. Only then did Caleb lower his arm, still smiling wide like a child.
The camera still blinked green.