Book Three: Days of Fire

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Days of Fire: The Feast of Tabernacles and the Fall of the Temple represents a unique blend of historical fiction and educational non-fiction. Taken as a whole, the book provides an insightful perspective on the powerful significance of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles (In Hebrew, Sukkot) to the Messianic (Christian) faith.

Whereas the stories in the first two books of the Passover Trilogy take place in rapid succession, Book Three depicts events in the year AD 70—eight years later. Beloved characters like Priscilla, Aquila, John and Milos are joined by Luke the evangelist, as well as many historical figures such as Josephus the historian, Phannias the High Priest and Longinus the Roman soldier.

The story begins with a triumphant celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem in the year 69, followed just a few months later by the historic Roman siege of that city. While some characters are able to escape to shelter in the wilderness, others are trapped inside the walls as the city is burning down. Both cohorts are confronted with challenging people, and new ideas about what the Temple, and God’s Appointed Times, really mean to the burgeoning Messianic community. In the process, Aquila, John and Milos encounter an injured Roman soldier, a turncoat fleeing for his life, and a puppet high-priest with far more wisdom than expected. In the wilderness, Luke, Priscilla and her very-pregnant niece Ana struggle to survive alongside other desperate escapees, and work desperately to bring a new life into the world in the worst possible conditions.

Ultimately, the characters are forced to grapple with the delayed return of Jesus, the insidious notion of a “second Messiah”, the destruction of the Temple, and the dawning of a new era for both Judaism and Christianity.

Following the story is a deep dive into the themes of the Feast of Tabernacles—its historical and spiritual roots, and its contribution to the founding of the Messianic faith. At the end, resources for further study and connection are provided.

Spoiler-Free Snippets from the Book

The two priests held their pitchers high up in the air, above their respective basins. And then, at the culmination of an entire night—an entire week—an entire festival season—a line of prophecy was recited. Not a new line, but an old one. A line they’d all heard and repeated themselves a thousand times that night. But this time, it was not sung by a choir, or chanted by a group of priests. It was spoken by a single man.

“With joy—” the high priest began, “shall you draw water—” and he drew a breath to shout, “from the springs of salvation!”

The wine and water tumbled down, through the spouts, into the basins, down into the altar, down into the foundation of the Temple, and down into the firmament of the earth. Living water, once stored in the deep cisterns of heaven, now calling to the skies, the skies calling to the hills, the hills calling to the plains, the plains and rivers and lakes calling to the cisterns of the underworld.

Deep calls to deep. The earth is replenished for another year, ready to show forth its bounty again. Living Water, John recalled happily. “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” He clapped his hands and laughed the laugh of a thousand bubbling springs, joining the congregation as it sang the Great Hallel to the sound of many flutes.

……………………………

“Luke—” Priscilla began, then stopped. He was staring at his feet. She softened her countenance and opened her mouth to speak, then stopped again. She realized Luke didn’t need a concession, he needed a charge. “You can be our lookout. While we gather wood for shelter and a fire, we need you to keep an eye out for—”

“I know what a lookout does,” Luke interrupted. The two stood staring at each other for one breath, then another.

“Thank you. If someone comes, just—”

“I’ll show them my hands and tell them you did it.” Luke almost smiled. “And if they don’t clear out, they’re next.”

Ana chuckled. Priscilla looked at Luke sideways, and silently blessed God for the joke. “Ok, but really—”

“I’ll shout for you.”

“Right. Thank you. We’ll be quick.” Priscilla, Ana and John disappeared into the woods, leaving Luke behind to sit on a rock and wait.

……………………………

“Is that your shelter?” she gasped, with one hand over her heart.

“Yes—we have been here four days. Though it feels like forty,” John replied with a grin.

“Yours is no mere shelter!” the husband added with a hearty laugh. “It is a sukkah! Bless Adonai, you are running from death, but also celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles! Mayim, mayim, mayim, mayim, hey!” the couple sang together their celebration of water, raising their hands joyously on the final “hey!”

“You are in a very good mood,” Luke quipped.

“Well, well, my friends,” the Pharisee hunter chuckled darkly. “We have lost many loved ones. And we have narrowly escaped with our lives. But we are reminded how precious these lives are that we have. And that is a gift as well, yes? When the wine barrel runs dry, we remember once again the blessing of water, do we not? And that, to make a very long story very short, is the meaning of Sukkot, my friends! But come come, you knew that already. Who are these others? Please, introduce us!”

……………………………

“Jesus indeed! Jesus of Nazareth.” Phannias repeated, with Longinus nodding along. “A scintillating prophet and an innocent man. Peace be upon him.” Aquila and Milos glared at him reflexively. “Oh! Forgive me, my brothers. You worship the Nazarene as a living man.”

“A resurrected man. And more than that!” Aquila proclaimed.

“Of course, of course. But not a god, no?”

“No, not a god. The God. One with Adonai.”

“Yes, I have heard such things. Of course I cannot agree, but I see that you sing the Sh’ma with the rest of us, do you not? You honor the God of Moses as One God, beside whom there is no other. You—just have a funny way of understanding it. One God, but two persons.”

“Three, actuall—” Milos started to correct him but Aquila elbowed him in the ribs. Not now.

……………………………

Longinus then ran to the corner of the stable, retrieved a cast-off sword from the floor, and brought it back to the gasping and panting figure on the ground. “Aquila, hold the shaft between your hands like this. Closer together.” With a quizzical look on his face, Aquila complied.

Longinus spread his feet to steady himself, then cocked the sword on his shoulder, ready to strike.

“No!” Aquila objected, letting go of the arrow. “I’m not doing that.”

“Milos?” Longinus entreated. “Help me save him?” Milos shot a painful glance at Aquila, then kneeled down to grip the arrow with all seven fingers.

“Just a thumb’s width between your hands, please!” Longinus instructed Milos. “That’s it!” then he slashed his sword through the air, and clean through the shaft of the arrow between Milos’ thumbs. “Now, turn him on his side. No, the other side!”

Once Phannias was steady on his side, Longinus felt his back for a tip. “The arrow didn’t go through. Okay, here it goes— hold him still.” The soldier cocked his sword again, and with a powerful stroke slapped the broken end of the arrow with the broadside of his weapon.

Phannias let out a scream as the arrow pierced his back, but only the point. “Once more!” Longinus barked. And with one more swing the arrowhead emerged in full, with a short length of the shaft behind it, drenched in blood. “Hold him, hold him!” he shouted again, as he grabbed the shaft behind the arrowhead and with a great cry yanked it through the body of Phannias, who screamed a third time, then collapsed flat on his back again.

……………………………

“What’s a contraction?” Ana was shouting and crying simultaneously.

“It’s part of childbirth, my love,” Priscilla interjected, as she rushed back to the patient’s side. “We call it the Curse of Eve.”

“But I’m not Eve!” she insisted. “I’m Ana!”

“That you are.” Priscilla affirmed, locking eyes with her niece. “You are Ana. Daughter of Michal. Daughter of Avigail. Daughter of Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. You come from a long line of women with strong bodies and stronger faith.” Priscilla reached into her robe and pulled out a large staurogram—one of the many fashioned by Demetrius—and slapped it into Ana’s open hand. “You carry all these generations with you now. Adonai is with you now. And I am with you now.” Ana pursed her lips, and her eyes turned to steel.

……………………………

“But we!” Leonidas thrust his hands outward as if to bless the crowd before him. “You and I are not bound for destruction, but rather to dwell in the shelter of our Messiah’s glory!” With that, two of his disciples began pulling on ropes at the corners of the room, and an opening appeared at the bottom of the curtain. Slowly it grew into a triangular entrance, just large enough for a man to enter on his knees. The men yanked harder on the ropes, and the triangle doubled in size. But another obstacle remained—a velvety white curtain behind the outer one. The two men found another pair of ropes, and began tugging again.

There are two curtains for a reason! John insisted silently. No man is supposed to see inside the Holy of Holies—the Inner Sanctum of God—much less invite himself in. But there Leonidas stood, with his arms stretched outward at his sides, and his palms pointed toward heaven. John felt the Spirit swelling up inside him, filling his air with lungs and forcing his mouth open to speak.

………………………………

“I’m so ashamed.” Ana started to weep again.

“You are in pain, my sweet flower. You have invested your entire body—your entire being—to bring forth this new life into the world. Years ago, your Ima invested her being to bring you forth, and now it’s your turn. It is the hardest thing you will ever do, and also the most beautiful. Just imagine, a bright little bundle—part Milos and part Ana—the best of your Jewishness and the best of his Greekness. Two heritages, two traditions, two very different stories flowing into one precious child.”

“They will call my baby a half-breed,” Ana moaned.

“People will talk, and we will let them. But we know what God will say. Because God delights to take the two, and make them one. This is what our Messiah has done in all of us, is it not? Flesh and Spirit, law and grace, slave and free, male and female, Jew and Greek—we are all made one in him. Each of us is made whole in Jesus!”

Luke stood to one side, marveling at Priscilla’s wisdom. “You—you have said such things for many years, have you not?”

Priscilla glanced at Luke, blushing slightly. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Our brother Paul, writing to the Galatians—” Luke said slowly, his eyes opening wider. “He borrowed these words from you. Painting a picture of the church—two traditions in one…”

“That’s the idea, anyway,” Priscilla went back to Ana’s side. “But what kind of church will this little one inherit from us?”

……………………………

“Now!” Aquila commanded, grabbing his friends and hustling  them away from the Sanctuary, with Leonidas still standing on top. Aquila, Milos and Longinus raced toward the exit, but John pulled away from them. “Oh you of little faith!” he scorned. Then he turned back to the Temple and shouted at the sky, “Come quickly, Jesus! Come quickly!”

The men then craned their necks to witness the grand façade splitting in two, with a great fissure running from top to bottom. Crown to Gate. The inner supports were now punching through the outer walls and hurtling toward the crowd. John stood and watched it come his way like a lumbering behemoth, with his arms in the air and his feet frozen to the ground.

A moment later, the entire structure came crashing into the Inner Court with a deafening roar. The only thing louder was the desperate screams of the crowd being swallowed up in its path.

“John!” Milos cried, diving to wrap him up in his arms just as a colossal cedar beam rushed down from above.

……………………………

“Longinus!” he shouted, spotting the tall Roman frame pinned beneath a rafter beam.

“It’s me,” the soldier grunted. “Rescue me this time?” Without a word, Aquila rushed to the far end of the beam where he could get some leverage, then gritted his teeth and rolled it away from his friend.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I was stuck, that’s all.” Aquila smacked him on the shoulder and smiled, then wrapped him up in his arms. Longinus laughed and returned the embrace. But then they remembered the others.

“John! Milos! Where are you?” Aquila shouted. Then Longinus. Then Aquila. Then Longinus, scouring the mountain of debris.

“Aquila?” a gravelly voice inquired.

“John! Yes, it’s me!”

“We’re under a smooth round stone!”

“I see it!” Aquila cried, rushing to a section of broken column from the colonnade. He and Longinus stood side by side, found a solid footing, planted their feet and counted to three. Bellowing with all their might, they budged the stone by a digit, then rocked it by a cubit. With one last furious shove the men rolled the column up and over a cedar plank. Aquila rushed into the gap to find his friends, and saw them both.

……………………………

Through the Temple gate, through the outer wall, and across the Kidron Valley, John, Aquila and Longinus trudged. No soldier stopped or harassed them—all were occupied, scrounging for a scrap of something precious. Eventually Longinus began to grunt and strain under the weight of his burden, having been crushed under a corpse himself, only a day ago. But it was a holy burden, too precious to concede to the wounds and weaknesses of an embattled host. Each step became an act of worship. Behind them, John clutched to Aquila’s side, padding along as if walking in his sleep, with mindless steps and an empty face, occasionally persuaded to point the way to where their friends were sheltering.

As they climbed southward into the Judean hills, the sounds of chaos faded behind them, replaced little by little with the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves. Soon they were back in a world that knew nothing of priests and altars, soldiers and swords. They crested a hill and hiked down the other side, toward a stream which had provided water for the survival of many refugees the last eight days. But when they arrived at the bottom of the valley, there was only mud and stones where the water once flowed.

……………………………

“The Word has become flesh,” John added, glancing toward their Sukkah in the wilderness. “And dwelt with us. Tabernacled with us.”

Each one turned thoughtfully to consider their shelter. To rehearse the events of the past week—the past season—and all the years that preceded it. To meditate on the songs that were sung, the love that was shared, and the blood that was shed.

“No Sukkot will ever surpass it,” Priscilla said.

“Nor should it,” Luke affirmed.

Just then, Priscilla looked up. “Did you feel that?” Aquila, then Luke, then John, Damos, Martella and Longinus all held out their palms to the sky and lifted their eyes to the darkening clouds.

……………………………

Glancing through the window of our second-story room inside the cliff, I see the bustle of the marketplace, as Jews of every stripe rush to prepare themselves for the Seder on the first night of Passover, this very evening. I watch intently, hoping I might catch a glimpse of Aquila, or another sister or brother, standing in line to select their matzah, or wine, or bitter herbs. In some homes, the celebration is already beginning in earnest, with happy greetings and bright lights and impromptu singing and dancing.

As I said, many of us here are survivors of the siege of Jerusalem. We nearly starved, or nearly burned, or nearly battled to the death. In some cases, all three. Every Jew in Petra is grieving the Temple’s demise, and angry with the Romans—as usual—for burning it down. But to most of our neighbors here, especially those who cannot afford to travel to Jerusalem, it hardly matters. Their Passover celebrations will continue exactly as they always have—in their homes, around their tables and in the synagogues and streets and squares of the city. They will rejoice that the Angel of Death has chosen, once again, to pass them over—that they might live another year.

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