Jerusalem: 2010...It begins

ONE

And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
Revelation 11: 3
Jerusalem: 2010
The Beginning of the birth pains


The headlines could have read the same as twenty years earlier. Another war. Another bombing. Another earthquake, hurricane, tsunami. Another plague. Another thousand people left dead or homeless. Another child murdered. Another killer set free.
The difference? No one paid attention to the headlines anymore. Most people had become anesthetized to the world’s most shocking news stories.
They’d become little more just every day tragedies.
But not for me. For me, they were personal. You see, I write those headlines. My name is Kendall Roberts. In some small part, this is my story. But in a greater sense this is the world’s story. The final chapter of life here on planet Earth.
I’d been reporting those graphic headlines for almost two years. They should have served as a warning to us all. If only we’d been listening.
Tonight, the streets of Jerusalem were dark and silent. A far different city than what appeared here this morning. The streets had been jammed with his frenzied followers. Many hailed him the savior of Israel because he’d brought the country back from the brink of annihilation and accomplished what no other political figure had managed since King Solomon’s time. He’d ushered in peace at last to the Middle East. And he’d done it not by force but by the use of a humble diplomacy that had become his trademark.

The White Rider Revealed

In the distance, footsteps slowly picked their way carefully up the hillside. His servant had arrived.
He would be the last. There had been others foreshadowing his arrival, but he would be the greatest of all. He served one master and that master was destruction.
His servant, the one that would become known to the world as the Antichrist. He would leave in his wake millions of atrocities to mankind. Death, destruction. And the total annihilation of God’s creation. Now, he fell at his mater’s feet as a humble obedient child awaiting his father’s blessing.
“I’m ready my father. I await your command.”
He didn’t need to look at his servant to know he would move this mountain itself to do follow his bidding. He was but a vessel. A means to fulfill destiny.
High above the City of Hope the breeze grew stronger. A chill made his servant gather his jacket closer. And above the breeze could be heard the screams of the dying. The tortured souls of the righteous who would die for the beliefs. The death pains of nation after nation who would succumb to the dark and bloody one. Cries of a world on the brink of extinction.
But it was not the cries of misery and death but the soulless eyes of his father that finally drove the servant into the world of madness.

Approaching Hoofbeats - The White Horse Rides...

PROLOGUE

The Day Of Reckoning

And behold a white horse. And he that sat upon him had a bow, and a crown was given unto him. And he went forth conquering and to conquer.
Revelation, Chapter 6:2

Jerusalem: December 2003

The City of Hope. Where was hope tonight? Not here. Not if the latest suicide bombing was any indication. No, neither God nor hope was anywhere to be found in this city tonight.
He stood upon the Mount of Olives, high above the City of Hope looking down upon the silence below.
How many times had he stood on this mountain through the millenniums? A thousand? Perhaps more. He knew every stone that made up the mountain.
A light breeze shifted through the olive trees reminding him of other days. Better days. Before he arrived on the scene and made time and his purpose here all the more critical.
The mountain hadn’t changed much since those days. Only the players. And perhaps the stakes. But then again maybe they hadn’t really changed all that much either. There was still only the three. The father, the Son. And the fallen angel.
Perhaps the only real thing to have changed was the boundaries.
It had been here in this place that the Son of God in the weakness of his human form had prayed for his life. That the cup pass from him. He had been a silent witness that night knowing full well that the Messiah as he’d been hailed upon his entrance into the city knew of his presence there. He could have destroyed him and those threatening with but one single command. The Son had humbly accepted his destiny.
A dark day for planet earth and for him.
The Messiah. Ridiculous. God purposely sent his son into a world filled with darkness hoping somehow to redeem his creation? All for nothing. The miracle of his birth and the glory of his death had long since been extinguished. Instead of filling the world with brightness and hope, the creation had become more lost and dismal than ever before. The church meant to carry on the Messiah’s purpose was now nothing more than a farce.
The warm breeze touched his skin again. It carried on it now the hint of something that had been conceived with the beginning of time. His pulse quickened with renewed excitement. His biggest challenge, his greatest moment was almost here.