“Then they fired missiles from the drones,” Eva said.
“Right.”
“The cars parked along the side of the road would have provided a perfect cover,” Zalinsky added. “To the world it looks like a series of car bombs and IEDs. But a drone strike is far less complicated to plan and far more precise.”
“It’s just a theory,” David said.
“It’s a good one,” Eva said, increasingly impressed with David’s quick mind and sharp instincts.
“Can you get the analysts to review all the videos of the first explosion?” David asked. “If you slow them down enough, you might actually be able to see the incoming missile and its initial impact.”
“We’ll get right on it,” Zalinsky said. “But let’s say you’re right. It wasn’t us, so who was it?”
Does he really have to ask? Eva wondered. She knew exactly what David was going to say: the Israelis.
“It was the Israelis,” David said without a trace of doubt in his voice.
“I hope you’re wrong,” Zalinsky said. “The president is going to go ballistic.”
“Why?” David asked. “The Mossad is trying to avenge the attack on their prime minister. They’re trying to cut off the head of the snake. Personally, I’m surprised they hit back so fast, but I don’t blame them one bit.”
“The president is doing everything he can to avoid a new war erupting in the Middle East,” Zalinsky said. “This now almost guarantees the war will happen anyway.”
Eva strongly disagreed. “Jack, come on; if a war is coming — and I grant you it probably is — it was Iran’s nuclear bomb test that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, not this.”
She tried to picture David on the Citation, looking out the window of the jet at the blackness below, smiling, thinking he couldn’t have said it better himself. They made a good team, she thought. She just wished she were traveling back into Iran with him.
Zalinsky, however, had a different perspective. “If you take a shot at a man in control of eight nukes, he’d better not make it off the pavement,” their boss said with an intensity she hadn’t anticipated. “If it was the Israelis, it was an enormous gamble — and it failed.”
The phone rang in the darkness.
Roger Allen fumbled for the light and his glasses. He’d been home less than an hour and asleep for no more than thirty minutes. But just seeing the caller ID gave him a jolt of adrenaline. It was the White House Situation Room.
“Allen speaking…. Yes…. Right now?… I understand…. Of course…. I’m on my way.”
His wife rolled over and tried to rub the sleep from her eyes. “Who was that?” she asked.
“The chief of staff,” Allen said. “They’ve got a plane waiting for me at Andrews.”
“Where are you going?”
“Israel.”
“But you just got back.”
“The president is terrified Naphtali is going to launch a preemptive strike on Iran in the next few days.”
“Can you blame them?”
“Not entirely, but he wants me to talk them off the ledge.”
“Can you?”
“I serve at the pleasure of the president.”
“No, no, obviously you’re going to go. But can you persuade Asher not to go to war after all that’s happened?”
“I’ve known him since college, but honestly, sweetheart, I have no idea.”
“Did they give you new instructions of what to say?”
“No. They just said get moving. We have the entire flight to figure it out.”
Marseille was up at the crack of dawn.
She got on her knees, prayed for a while, and began her morning devotions. She was trying to follow a plan her pastor had asked everyone in their church to do: read through the Bible in a year. But she was way off. She was supposed to have covered Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians the previous October, along with everyone else. But here it was March and she was only in chapter two.
There were lots of reasons. Sometimes she was just plain lazy. It was hard to get up so early and study the Word before going in to teach, and at night often she either was too tired or just wanted to curl up with a movie or a novel. Other times, she was so fascinated by a particular passage that she would hunker on it for several days rather than sticking to the plan. That had been the case all the way through 1 Thessalonians and in the first chapter of the second letter as well.
Who could not be fascinated with — and deeply concerned by — verses like “the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day”?
As Marseille began chapter 2, however, she found herself entering into an arena she had never studied before.
Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
As best she could tell, these were prophecies about the coming of the Antichrist. But as she read, she found the description reminded her of things she had seen and heard about the man calling himself the Twelfth Imam.
She had never really done a study on the Antichrist, she realized. She had heard the term many times in sermons and from other Christians, but she had never bothered to consider the term carefully or figure out what it really meant. As for the Twelfth Imam, she didn’t know much about him either, except for what she had been reading in the papers and seeing on television in recent days. But she was curious about both, and for the first time in a long while, she actually had some time on her hands. She wasn’t teaching. She wasn’t home. She was stuck in a hotel room indefinitely. Maybe the Lord was giving her a gift, the freedom to spend time in His Word today.
She eagerly got out her notebook and wrote at the top of a clean page: “What the Bible says about the Antichrist.” Then she jotted down a few observations based on the text.
1. The Antichrist will come before the Day of the Lord comes.
2. A period of apostasy will precede the coming of the Antichrist and the Day of the Lord.
3. The Antichrist will be thought of as the man of lawlessness and the lawless one and will be connected somehow to the mystery of lawlessness.