The Second Harbinger: The Terrorist – Chapter 05

Is it possible…
That there exists an ancient mystery that holds the secret of America’s future?
That this mystery lies behind everything from 9/11 to the collapse of the global economy?
That ancient harbingers of judgment are now manifesting in America?
That God is sending America a prophetic message of what is yet to come?

Chapter five, the second Harbinger, the terrorist, the figures on the seal, Noriel, what did they look like?
She asked men with beards in robes and with some sort of head coverings, their beards were squarish and heavily stylized.
Some were holding bows and arrows and aiming them upward. All very ancient looking and alien.
So how did you unlock the mystery by the ruins of an ancient people? That was the clue.
The figures on the seal had to be the ancient people he referred to that much seemed obvious.
But which ancient people who were they? So what did you do? The Metropolitan Museum?
It’s filled with artifacts of ancient peoples and it’s enormous.
So I figured that whoever these people were, if they were of any historical significance, their artifacts would be on display in that museum.
I would go there with a seal hoping to find a match and it was as impressive as I hoped it would be with artifacts from Egypt, Rome, Greece, Persia Babylon.
I started with the Egyptian Wing on the first floor but nothing matched.
Then I searched through the Greek and Roman Wing but again, no matches.
Then I made my way up the grand staircase and over to the Department of Ancient, near Eastern Art.
That’s where I saw it. It was impossible to miss. It was gigantic. What was gigantic?
She asked, massive stone walls covered with reliefs of giant figures, warriors, priests and a number of creatures, part human part bird composite creatures.
I took out the seal and compared the figures to those on the wall.
They were the same figures, the same squarish beards, the same clothing and all in the same style of artwork and engraving.
It was a match, an exact match. It wasn’t the same image.
He replied, but it was the same people, the same civilization. So who were they?
They were the ancient Assyrians. And what did you make of it?
I didn’t have time to make anything of it.
I was studying the images on the wall when I heard a voice from behind me, walls from the palace of Ashur Nasal King of Assyria.
I’d assumed it was someone who worked for the museum or some other expert.
I continued staring upward at the ancient figures from the city of Nimrud ninth century BC. The voice continued impressive.
I said, not being able to contribute anything more informative or substantial to the conversation.
The ruins of an ancient people replied the voice with that.
I knew it was him and he knew you’d be there.
Either he knew I’d be there or I was there and he happened to be there or he was there and I happened to be there.
I stopped trying to figure out how it worked.
I turned around and there was the prophet standing in his long dark coat in the Department of Ancient, near Eastern Art.
If you didn’t know who he was, you wouldn’t have noticed he blended in. You. Go to museums.
I asked, does that surprise you? He answered? Why wouldn’t I, I don’t know, I just didn’t picture you.
I told you it would be by the ruins of an ancient people.
How many ruins of ancient peoples are there in New York City? Outside of museums? So what have you discovered?
It’s the Assyrians. The ancient people are the Assyrians and they have something to do with the second Harbinger Good Noriel.
Now let’s go deeper. What do you see, what do you mean look at them?
How do they strike you kind of stony? And what do you think lies behind their stoniness?
I have no idea. And with that and with an assurance one would expect from a museum tour guide.
He began introducing me to the history of this ancient people.
They came from the mountainous regions of northern Mesopotamia for centuries. They lived in the shadows of stronger kingdoms.
But at the dawn of the first millennium BC, they began their rise to world power.
They began their conquest of the surrounding lands and people the Assyrians would march into Babylon, Syria, Lebanon Persia and Egypt until at the peak of their power, most of the ancient Middle East was under their rule.
So what kind of people do you think they were militaristic with the largest army ever to stand on mesopotamian soil?
Up to that time, they devised new technologies of warfare.
The movable tower, the battering ram, their empire was a war machine built on the subjugation of other nations and kingdoms.
They were among the most brutal people ever to have walked the earth.
The very mention of their name inspired dread throughout the ancient world. But why such dread?
I asked other nations have been militaristic. one word said the prophet terror.
The Assyrians made terror into a science.
They systematized it, perfected it and employed it as no other people or kingdom had ever done before.
They burned cities to the ground, mutilated their prisoners laid alive.
Those who rebelled against them and nailed their skins to the wall for public display.
The Assyrians were the masters of terror. And what do they have to do with the mystery?
It was the dark shadow of a Syrian terror that loomed over the kingdom of Israel.
This was the danger against which the prophets warned and it was only the hedge of God’s protection that was keeping that danger at bay.
But that was about to change with the nation’s descent into apostasy. It was no longer safe.
It was the Assyrians. I said they were the ones who caused the breach. Correct.
He replied in 7 32 BC where the nation’s hedge of protection, lifted, the Assyrians invaded the land of Israel.
So that must have made it all the more terrifying for the people of Israel that it was the Assyrians.
Exactly. There couldn’t have been any clearer warning of the coming judgment than that.
And when years later, Israel’s final judgment came, the Assyrians would again be the means through which it would happen.
But you’re not saying that God was siding with the Assyrians. Not in any way.
This is the prophecy he gave concerning them woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger and the staff in whose hand is my indignation.
I will send him against an ungodly nation. Yet he does not mean so. Nor does his heart think so.
But it is in his heart to destroy and cut off. Not a few nations.
The Assyrians were the epitome of evil and God was against them.
The prophecy continued, I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his holy looks.
Therefore, the Lord, the Lord of hosts will send leanness among his fat one and under his glory, he will kindle a burning like the burning of a fire.
The Lord would bring the Assyrians into judgment. Their empire would vanish from the earth.
But for a time in the days of Israel’s apostasy, they would be allowed to breach its defenses and strike the land.
If the Assyrian attack failed to awaken Israel from its spiritual stupor, then what could it was then that he asked me for the seal.
I placed it in his hand. He then began revealing its mystery. The second harbinger.
He said, as he held up the seal so I could see the figures engraved on its face.
An enemy strikes the land. The attack is plotted out by the merciless and executed by the brutal designed to traumatize the nation to inflict shock and fear terror.
The sign of the Assyrian, the second harbinger, the terrorist, the Assyrians were terrorists.
I asked as much as any people have ever been.
Terrorism is defined as the systematic application of terror, violence and intimidation to achieve a specific end terror as an applied science.
This was the dark gift the Assyrians gave to the world.
We began walking along the stone reliefs continuing our conversation while gazing up at the ancient figures above our heads from the temples of Nineveh to the beer holes of Weimer Germany, to the barren caves of Afghanistan from snare to Osama bin Laden.
It all goes back to Ancient Assyria.
The Assyrians are the fathers of terrorism and those who mercilessly plotted out the calamity on 9 11 were their spiritual Children.
Another link in the mystery joining America to Ancient Israel.
In both cases, the warning began with a manifestation of terrorism.
Do the 9 11 terrorists see themselves as modern day Assyrians.
It doesn’t matter, said the prophet, that’s what they were. Remember the prophecy against Assyria.
It is in his heart to destroy Osama Bin Laden and cut off.
Not a few nations that was his intention, but God would judge the Assyrians and their king.
Then all those responsible for 9 11 are under his judgment.
I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria said the prophet, yes, they are under his judgment and the Lord will send leanness or devastation among his warriors.
So the Assyrians are the spiritual fathers of Al Qaeda. Yes. And not only the spiritually replied.
And what does that mean? The Assyrians were Children of the Middle East.
So too, the terrorist of 9 11, the Assyrians were a Semitic people.
So to the terrorists, the Assyrians spoke a language called Acadian.
The tongue is long extinct but there is still spoken in the modern world.
One language considered to be the closest of all tongues to ancient Acadian, which is Arabic, Arabic, the tongue of Al Qaeda and the 9 11 terrorists.
Yes. And so when the leaders of Al Qaeda plotted their attack on America and as the terrorists communicated with each other on 9 11 to carry it out, they did.
So using words and speech patterns that mirrored those used by the Assyrian leaders and warriors as they planned and executed their attack on Israel 2.5 1000 years earlier in 7 32 BC, like an ancient drama replaying itself in the modern world.
He didn’t reply. We continued walking along the stone reliefs.
It was strange as I stared up at the ancient stone figures, I began to feel a sense of loathing toward them on one hand and some kind of dread on the other.
The Assyrian invasion said the prophet would ultimately draw ancient Israel into military conflict, war and a final and tragic national drama.
So too, the attack on 9 11 would draw America into military conflict.
A global battle against terrorism encompassing a war in Afghanistan and another in Iraq.
In the first war, the connection to 9 11 was clear, but in the second, it was not so clear and yet there was a connection but of a more mystical nature.
What do you mean in April? 2003 American soldiers would enter the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Mosul would become one of America’s major operational bases in the Iraqi war inside the city near the junction of the Tigris and Kosa rivers.
They rest two mounds of earth. One is called coun.
The other Nabi hidden inside these mounds are the ruins of a once great civilization.
The ruins are all that’s left of the ancient city called Ninevah.
Ninevah was the capital, the final resting place and the graveyard of the Assyrian Empire as Syria is Iraq.
It’s the same land the nation under judgment is drawn into conflict with the land of Assyria, Ancient Israel.
Now, America and American troops were now walking the same earth on which the feet of Assyrian soldiers had once marched.
And among those watching them pass by were those who could still claim to be the descendants of the Ancient Assyrians, Their actual flesh and blood descendants.
I asked, yes, he replied. And who knows?
But that the veins of the 9-11 terrorists did not also flow with the blood of the ancient Assyrians.
So ancient Israel in its time of judgment was drawn into war with Syria, which is now Iraq.
Yes, he answered. And now America was drawn into a war with the land of a Syria, Iraq.
But Israel would ultimately discover that the danger it faced could not be solved by the power of its weapons or the thickness of its walls.
The real danger was not outside its gates, but within them, when the nation turned from God, it lost its protective covering.
Apart from a return to God, there would be no safety.
But by the time they realized it, it would be too late, the chance was lost.
He stopped walking and pointed upward to the figure above him on the relief, a giant Assyrian archer.
And now the same sign that signaled the judgment of Ancient Assyria 2.5 1000 years before reappears in the modern world.
No less dark and no less threatening. The sign of the Assyrian, the attack of the terrorist.
And what does it mean for America? I asked that is the question he replied, isn’t it?
With those words? I sensed that our meeting was drawing to a close and I was right, he handed me the next seal, the seal of the third harbinger.
And what was on it? She asked, shapes, unrecognizable shapes.
This one may be a bit more challenging for you said, the prophet in a voice conveying both caution and sympathy.
So help me out. I replied a word. He said, what do you mean?
You’ll need a word to decode it. What kind of word the word that you need?
Do you enjoy being so mysterious? I asked, it’s not a matter of enjoyment.
He explained, it’s the nature of the job. Do you realize you’ve never even given me your name?
Would that make a difference? Noriel? No, I guess not.
But shouldn’t a journalist know who his source is and you don’t know who your source is?
He asked, I didn’t answer. I suspected it was a loaded question.
He resumed his studying of the ancient figures on the stone relief.
I did likewise but not for long when I turned again to ask him for something more to go on.
He was gone. I looked around in every direction but there was no sign of him.
I was alone again. Just me and the Assyrians in whose presence I was growing increasingly uncomfortable.
I left the museum in search of the Third Harbinger.
But it would be a search that would lead me to far more than I was expecting.
What do you mean? She asked?
It would lead me to the key that would unlock the mystery of all the Harbingers.