The Last Sacrifice by Hank Hanegraaff & Sigmund Brouwer

Author:Hank Hanegraaff & Sigmund Brouwer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / Historical
ISBN: 9781414322612
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-30T21:00:00+00:00

Since the day his father, Ananias the high priest, had appointed him governor of the Temple, Eleazar could not recall a single moment when daily familiarity with the Temple Mount had led to the slightest loss of any of the sense of awe at the dwelling place of the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Anytime he walked through the immense Court of the Gentiles, Eleazar had a new appreciation for the workmanship. Under Herod the Great, the slopes of Mount Moriah had been flattened and extended as a foundation for colonnades that enclosed the inner Temple, paving it with the finest marble possible.

In the Court of the Gentiles, any direction he looked, he was filled with joy at the sights and sounds of thousands of worshipers and hundreds of attendant priests. The blowing of the shofars, the psalms of praise from the choirs of Levites, the smoke from the altar, the low murmurings of reverence, even the bleating of terrified lambs facing slaughter, and the smell of the blood that ran down from the altar—all of this enforced for him the greatness of the Temple, a physical reality that pointed to the greater spiritual reality of God’s glory and holiness.

As Eleazar stepped out of the shade of Solomon’s Porch, the portion of the colonnade opposite the Holy of Holies, he noted again with pleasure the burnished gold that plated the marble blocks of the sanctuary. There was profound truth in the saying of the rabbis: “The world is like an eye. The ocean surrounding the world is to the white of the eye; its black is the world itself; the pupil is Jerusalem, but the image within the pupil is the sanctuary.”

The holy dwelling place of the Lord God Almighty!

It was so sacred that no dead body was allowed to remain anywhere in the entire city overnight. No accident had ever interrupted the services of the sanctuary. Rain had not once extinguished the fire on the altar; no wind had ever blown the smoke back into the sacrifices; never had worshipers failed to bow at the massive altar.

Yet on this morning, the usual hum of activities was muted. The markets for the selling of animals for sacrifices had been closed. The temple police were standing guard along the tops of the walls and at all the entrances.

It wasn’t the muted activity that filled Eleazar with concern. Weeks earlier, he’d been deliberate in the act of rebellion that had led to this—prohibiting foreigners to make sacrifices in the Temple—and had no regrets at his course of action, nor at the consequences that, for the most part, he’d easily foreseen.

Indeed, he’d known well that by preventing foreigners from making sacrifices, he had in essence barred Caesar from the Temple, and that the last sacrifice on behalf of Caesar meant war had been declared on Rome.

He’d expected, too, that the establishment of Jerusalem would beg and plead against this sedition. And, of course, he’d planned for the militant action against them: the taking of the Temple and the lower city.

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