A Premature Apocalypse by Dan Sofer

Author:Dan Sofer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dan Sofer
Published: 2018-06-23T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 54

Yosef pored over the holy books on his desk in the Vice Prime Minister’s Office, Reverend Adams’s words ringing in his ears. Moshe Karlin is the Messiah.

But how could Yosef know for sure? He needed more information. In the past, he had turned to Rabbi Emden and the Great Council. Who was left to guide him now?

The task was impossible. There were too many variables, too many contradictory traditions. This wasn’t even his job. Elijah the Prophet should make these decisions. But where was he?

He must not get this wrong. The stakes were too high: the world’s Redemption; and Yosef’s life.

If he was going to make any progress, he had to reexamine his assumptions, and not just about the Messiah.

“Is this the eternal bliss we’ve been hoping for?” Adams had said. Yosef felt the stab of disappointment too.

For centuries, the dispute had raged among the sages. Did the Future Reward require the reunion of body and soul in This World, or did that eternal bliss belong to the World of Souls alone?

When Moshe had awoken in his second life, he had remembered nothing of the World of Souls. What was the soul, anyway? Did the soul even exist? If the body was all we had—all we were—then what of eternal reward? The axioms of life, the very ground beneath his feet, wavered over a dark abyss.

He closed the heavy tomes of Talmud.

Body and soul. God and Satan. Dualism appeared in many guises. But there was only one God. No devil encroached on His dominion. Was the body-soul divide an illusion? The six hundred thirteen commandments sanctified life in this world. But if we have no incorporeal existence, then the Resurrection made sense. Without the Resurrection, there could be no afterlife. The World to Come was the here and now, just later.

Yosef’s phone vibrated. The text message from an unknown number contained a single word: BOOM.

Yosef’s guts clenched. He made an educated guess as to the identity of the sender. How had he obtained Yosef’s personal mobile number? The same way he had sneaked into his office under false pretenses. Had the sender graduated from persuasion to bomb threats?

A sudden apprehension made Yosef nudge his laptop from slumber.

The YouTube clip from the reverend’s email still displayed on the screen. Yosef clicked play and skipped to the end. A jarring detail in the video had gnawed on the edges of his consciousness, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. On the Temple Mount, men in blue overalls constructed a dais opposite the golden Dome of the Rock ahead of tomorrow’s mass gathering.

Yosef played the section again. One worker had caught his eye. The man kept his head low as he carried a package on his shoulder. The shot was distant and pixelated, but Yosef knew the red beard and sparkling eyes beneath the flat cap.

Oh, no. Yosef guessed what he was up to and had to stop him.

Yosef grabbed his desk phone.

“Ram, get the Police Commissioner on the line. It’s

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