The Harbinger, page 13
He resumed his descent. I stayed where I was. But I shouted after him as I had done before, only now with more urgency at the thought that it might be my last chance of getting an answer.
“So what do I do now?”
“About what?”
“About everything. About everything you’ve shown me . . . ”
“You don’t forget it.”
“That’s not enough. I need something specific. What do I do now . . . specifically?”
When he got to the bottom of the first set of steps he stopped, turned around, and responded. “Specifically?” he said.
“Yes, specifically,” I replied.
“You go home. You go home . . . and you watch.”
“And what am I watching for?”
“There comes a second,” he replied.
He descended the next set of stairs as I finished descending the first. Then, from the terrace in between the two staircases, I watched as he walked away from the Capitol and down the Washington Mall . . . until he disappeared from my sight.
• • •
Ana waited for something more, for the account to continue. She was hoping it wasn’t end of the story. But Nouriel was silent.
“So what did you do after he left?” she asked.
“I went home.”
“And . . . ?”
“I watched.”
“For what exactly?”
“For what exactly I wasn’t sure. I focused on the prophecy. I went back to the library and spent hours and hours searching . . . poring through the commentaries on Isaiah 9:10.”
“And . . . ?”
“I found a match—what the prophet said to me when he left and what the commentaries said about Isaiah 9:10 . . . they matched.”
“How?”
“In one of the commentaries I found this:
“Divine anger, being a remedial force, will not cease until its purposes are wrought out . . . Therefore, if . . . Israel resisted one expression of the anger, another must be found.”1
“And that means what?” she asked.
“It means that there was a purpose behind that first calamity, that first invasion of the land by the Assyrians. It’s purpose was remedial—to correct, to wake up the nation, to turn it back to God, a purpose of redemption.”
“But you knew that already,” she replied. “What did you get from the commentary that was different, or that matched what the prophet told you?”
“What it’s saying is that those purposes won’t stop until they’re fulfilled. So if a nation rejects one expression of that purpose, another must be found. The force or purpose will manifest itself again in another form. That’s what I found in the one commentary. And then, in a second commentary on Isaiah 9:10, I found this:
“God’s first acts of judgment did not result in the transformation or ‘repentance’ . . . of his people Israel. The purpose of God’s initial disciplinary punishment was to restore his people, but the people stubbornly refused to turn to him. . . . Since the first act of discipline did not bring about a humble confession of sins, a second punishment was necessary.2
“The commentaries were consistent in linking Isaiah 9:10 with the same principle. And then, in another commentary, I found this:
“As the first stage of the judgments has been followed by no true conversion to Jehovah, the Almighty Judge, there comes a second.”3
“‘There comes a second.’ That’s what the prophet kept saying to you the day you last saw him.”
“He kept saying it because he knew it wasn’t the end. Isaiah 9:10 is the beginning, the first link in a chain of progression. There’s more to it. It leads to something else.”
“So then if Isaiah 9:10 is joined to America with the Harbingers, it means that what happened on 9/11 isn’t the end of the matter. Then it’s not over; there’s more to come.”
“Yes. Then there comes a second.”
“A second what . . . exactly?”
“A second warning . . . a sounding of the alarm . . . a second chastening . . . a second shaking.”
“But what exactly? What form does it take?”
“The prophet spoke of the Harbingers as symbols. That was a clue. The World Trade Center was a symbol of America’s global financial and economic power. So what would such a fall foreshadow?
“An economic . . . fall?”
“As in a financial and economic collapse.”
“The collapse that began the Great Recession?”
“Yes.”
“The collapse of the American and global economy is connected to 9/11?”
“Yes.”
“But how?”
“It all goes back to the prophecy . . . everything—the collapse of Wall Street, the rise and fall of the credit market, the war in Iraq, the collapse of the housing market, the foreclosures, the defaults, the bankruptcies, the government takeovers—everything—politics, foreign policy, world history—everything that happened after. It all goes back to the prophecy and to the ancient mystery.”
“That’s a pretty big proposition,” she said. “In fact, it’s colossal.”
“I realize that,” he said.
“And nobody else realizes it? All the economists and experts and think tanks and intelligence agencies, they have no idea?”
“I don’t know. I guess not.”
“But how do you know?” she asked. “How did you put it all together?”
“I told you,” he replied. “It wasn’t me. It was what I was told.”
“I understand that . . . with the Harbingers. But now you’re talking about what happened after you were shown the Harbingers. So how did you come to know these things if the last time you saw the prophet was on Capitol Hill?”
“But it wasn’t the last time.”
“He reappeared?”
“When we parted that day on the Capitol steps, it was the first time he left me without a seal . . . or without a new seal. So I assumed there was nothing more to be revealed. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. Still, occasionally I’d walk alongside the Hudson to the place where we first met, in the hope that he’d reappear. But he never did. Several years passed, and just when I had given up any hope of seeing him again . . . ”
“ . . . he reappeared?”
“He reappeared.”
“But the last time you saw him, he told you that his time with you was finished.”
“It was finished. He appeared the first time to reveal the first part of the mystery. The first part was complete. But there was more.”
“So he appeared again, but this time to reveal the second part of the mystery?”
“Because there comes a second.”
Chapter 15 The Isaiah 9:10 Effect
At that he was quiet. She was quiet as well, thinking it right to give him a chance to rest from speaking but, at the same time, concerned that if she waited too long, he might not continue. Finally she broke the silence.
“You are planning to tell me the second part of the mystery,” she asked.
“As long as you have the time,” he replied.
“Forget time,” she said. “I want to know the second part.”
“I know how busy you are.”
“Not any more, Nouriel.”
“I just wanted to make sure.”
“Wait. Before you continue . . . what if we go for a walk? I need to walk, if that’s OK with you.”
“It’s fine.”
They left the office, took an elevator down to the first floor, exited the building, and began walking down the street. They would walk down many streets that night, passing office buildings, stores, street vendors, apartment houses, and others also walking the city streets that night. But the two were largely oblivious to their surroundings, caught up in the ancient mystery and the words of the prophet.
“So when did you see him again?” she asked.
“I was working on a project that had me in Lower Manhattan for several weeks. During my free time, I’d go for walks around the area. One day, during one of those walks, I stopped in front of the New York Stock Exchange. I was staring at it, at the side with the columns, the famous side. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I heard the voice.”
“The voice of the prophet . . . ”
“It had been several years since I last heard it.”
• • •
“You didn’t forget, did you?” he said.
I turned around. He hadn’t changed . . . nor had his long dark coat. He looked the same as when I last saw him. “Forget what?” I asked.
“What you were shown.”
“I recorded everything. But, no, I didn’t forget.”
“Good. And how have you been, Nouriel?” It was the first time he ever asked me that.
“OK, I guess,” I replied. “And you? What have you been up to these past few years?”
“Watching,” he answered.
“Watching.”
“And now to begin the second part.”
“The second part of . . . ”
“The mystery. Are you ready to begin?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been ready.”
“Then let’s begin. What concerns us now is that which comes after . . . starting with the prophecy. What comes after Isaiah 9:10?”
“What do you mean?”
“What comes after Isaiah 9:10?”
“Isaiah 9:11.”
“Not the number . . . the words.”
“I can’t remember . . . offhand.”
“Isaiah 9:10:
“The bricks have fallen,
But we will rebuild with hewn stone;
The sycamores have been cut down,
But we will plant cedars in their place.1
“Now, Isaiah 9:11:
“Therefore the LORD shall set up
The adversaries of Rezin against him,
And spur his enemies on.2
“So what’s going on in Isaiah 9:11?” he asked.
“The nation’s first shaking is followed by a second?”
“And why is that?”
“Because the nation didn’t wake up or turn back after the first.”
“Isaiah 9:10 is a vow of defiance. Isaiah 9:11 is a prophecy of future calamity. The two are connected. The one leads into the other. The first brings about the second.”
“So the vow brings about the nation’s future calamities?” I asked.
“The vow,” he replied, “but not the vow alone. If it were only a vow and nothing more, it would have ended differently. It’s what the nation did once the vow was made that determined its future.”
“Which was?”
“It fulfilled the vow with quarried stones and sycamores. The nation embarked on a campaign to rebuild and fortify itself, to emerge stronger and greater than before . . . “
“So by executing the vow . . . the vow to defy the first calamity . . . the nation ends up ushering in the second.”
“Or the second disaster is brought about by the very campaign to prevent it.”
“But why?”
“What would happen, Nouriel, if a gardener tried to remove a weed from his garden by cutting off its leaves?” he asked.
“The leaves would grow back,” I replied.
“And if he cut off its stem . . . ”
“It would sprout another.”
“His efforts would be doomed to fail. You can’t solve a problem by dealing with its symptoms . . . its manifestations. You have to deal with the cause behind it. In the case of the gardener, the cause lies hidden beneath the surface, in the roots. So even if he solves one problem, another will reappear . . . and another . . . and another . . . until he finally deals with the underlying problem . . . the root.”
“So, in other words, Israel’s real problem was a spiritual one—its separation from God. Everything else was just a symptom, or manifestation, of the underlying problem. So the vow to rebuild is like a gardener attempting to remove a weed by cutting off its leaves.”
“Exactly. The ultimate problem wasn’t national security or defense or the Assyrians or even the attack. If a nation’s underlying problem is spiritual, then all the political, economic, or military solutions will do nothing to remove it. Such things can only treat symptoms—the bricks and the sycamores. A spiritual problem can only be solved by a spiritual solution. Apart from that, every solution will end up producing another crisis.”
“So the only solution is to return to God.”
“But Israel would choose otherwise. The nation would harden itself, seeking to come back stronger without addressing its spiritual descent. And the strategy appeared to be working . . . for a time. The clearing away of the ruins, the construction, and the sight of a nation rebuilding itself created a sense of national resurgence. But it was all an illusion. The judgment hadn’t been averted—only masked. The root problem was never addressed. They were moving farther and farther away from God. The resurgence was hollow. They had vowed to rebuild. But what they were building was a house of cards. And in time it would all collapse.”
“And it all began with the vow.”
“It was the vow that set it all in motion,” he said. “The same spirit of defiance that led to the vow would eventually lead Israel to reassert itself, to flaunt its strength, and, through a series of strategic maneuvers, to challenge the Assyrian Empire. That challenge would lead to calamity. So it was the vow, and the spirit behind the vow, that triggered a chain of events that would ultimately bring about the nation’s destruction.”
“The Harbingers are manifestations of the vow,” I said. “So is it inevitable that the Harbingers lead to . . . ”
“Calamity? The Harbingers lead either to calamity or redemption. If heeded, they lead to redemption; if not, then to calamity. Now . . . it’s been years, Nouriel, but is it possible that you still have the last seal?”
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled it out.
• • •
“The one he gave you at the Capitol?” Ana asked.
“Yes . . . with the image of the scroll on it . . . the seal of the Ninth Harbinger.”
“But you gave up on seeing him again.”
“That’s right.”
“So why did you still have it with you?”
“I didn’t know I did have it until I reached into my pocket. For a time . . . after that last meeting, I made sure to keep it with me, as I did with every seal. But after giving up hope of seeing him again, I wasn’t as careful to make sure. Still, it was there in the pocket of my coat . . . and that’s what I just happened to be wearing that day.”
“So you gave him the seal.”
“And as he examined it, he began to speak.”
• • •
“If a nation rejects the call of God to return, and if the Harbingers aren’t heeded, then comes a second stage. So we move now to the second stage, within which are contained four mysteries.”
“Four mysteries . . . ”
“Do you see this?” he asked as he pointed to the image on the seal . . . to what looked like a shadow around the scroll, a shadowy double image. It was faint, and nothing that would have struck me or anyone as noteworthy.
“It’s significant?” I asked.
“It’s a double image . . . a second image.”
“A second image as in there comes a second?” I asked.
“As in there comes a second, yes. So what would it mean?”
“The prophecy has a second part, it leads to something else . . . to a second manifestation.”
“The Isaiah 9:10 Effect.”
“Which is what?”
“This:
“The attempt of a nation to defy the course of its judgment, apart from repentance, will, instead, set in motion a chain of events to bring about the very calamity it sought to avert.”
“And this all has to do with America?” I asked.
“Seven years after 9/11,” he said, “the American economy collapsed, triggering a global economic implosion. Behind it all, and all that followed, was something much deeper than economics.”
“Behind the collapse of Wall Street and the American economy was . . . .”
“Isaiah 9:10.”
“How?”
“The explanations for an economic collapse are endless,” he said. “No one factor stands alone. And one can go back in time as far as one chooses to search for causes. But according to the Isaiah 9:10 Effect, the second calamity must be effectively born out of the first . . . and out of the nation’s response to that first calamity.”
“So then the collapse of the economy and Wall Street would have to somehow go back to 9/11.”
“And it all does go back to 9/11,” he said. “The smoke was still hovering over Ground Zero when the ancient vow of defiance was proclaimed from Capitol Hill. In the days and years that followed, the nation would attempt to fulfill that vow. The rebuilding was never just about Ground Zero—but about rebuilding the entire nation. Remember what was proclaimed over the hewn stone:
“It will forever remain a symbolic cornerstone for the rebuilding of New York and the nation.3
And when the ancient vow was proclaimed in its entirety, it happened in Washington DC, the nation’s capital. In both cases, it clearly had to do with more than Ground Zero and New York. It was about America as a nation. And it would be the nation as a whole that carried out the vow. Just as it happened in ancient Israel, it would happen in post-9/11 America—the vow would be turned into reality. Isaiah 9:10 would become the nation’s foreign and domestic policy.”
“How so?”
“What did ‘We will rebuild’ mean for ancient Israel?” he asked.
“It meant they would repair the damage and rebuild their fallen buildings, towers, homes . . . ”
“And their walls,” he added. “They would rebuild their walls and fortify their defenses so as to become invulnerable to future attacks. In the same way, America, after 9/11, would embark on a campaign to rebuild its walls of protection, to strengthen and fortify its systems of defense. The campaign would mean the establishing of the Department of Homeland Security, the launching of a global war against terror, and two conventional wars abroad, one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq. It was all a reaction to 9/11. America was doing exactly as ancient Israel had done in Isaiah 9:10—attempting to defy the first calamity. In fact, the speech that would launch the nation’s War on Terror would contain the words, ‘We will rebuild.’ America was waging war against 9/11, trying to reverse its consequences, overcome its impact, and nullify its danger. So in the years following the attack, American foreign and domestic policy was, in effect, a translation of the ancient vow.”
