ANOINTED ONES
Yomi
Sigh... Sometimes I really hate my job. As a Reaper, I get to keep living, but if I were to do nothing, I know I was become bored and suicidal rather quickly. But I know that as Reaper of Death, there is a logical contradiction with the idea of killing myself. Still, my job is rather unpleasant, compared with the others. Chiku gets to make flowers bloom. Seishi gets to see a baby as it is first delivered from the womb. But I... I get the dubious honor of watching the sick, the lonely, and the old as they breathe their last. Some, like the depressed, rush towards death. These people make my life easier, as the suicides become Pales of Death. But most of them have a pained look on their face during their final moments. "Please don't let me die!" they cry out, but I have to end their lives. If that isn't bad enough, their loved ones with their pleading eyes that sometimes turn angry.
Hey people, if I didn't do my job, this would would be so packed that nobody would be able to move around. But I help send them them on, where Rinne and Seishi help things run smoothly.
Ahhh right, why am I talking about this? Well, it's because of the strange things I deal with on a daily basis. Humans make problems for Reapers with their destructive impulses, with everything from strange spells that we have to correct (at one point, these court wizards summoned some weather called the Oobleck), to hysteria like the Salem Witch Trials, to actual Monsters being summoned by their imagination. It is not that humans have the power with anything they do to overturn God's plans, but they are designated as co-creators by God, so this means they can cause a great deal of trouble. Today was, I am ashamed to admit, something far worse than the normal frog rain or summoning meteor showers to deal with an enemy town, I'm afraid. But it was part of the job description.
It all started, as many of our bigger problems do, thousands of years ago. You see, the prophet Ezekiel had made three prophecies of particular importance. First, that the Messiah would come as the Lord himself, and pass through the eastern gates of the Temple. Second, that a Temple would be built by God that had none of the stupid restrictions that the other temples had (no court separating men and women, no wall keeping out Gentiles, no incense needed for the forgiveness of sins, and no veil to separate humans from God). This Temple appears to have been built in the death of Christ, so that leads us to the third prophecy. That once all of this was completed, the gate would be forced shut.
Humans, whether Jews or Gentile, try to pretend these prophecies don't exist, holding out for the Messiah to come (or come again). But the gates are closed, and it's intended this way. Unfortunately, humans sometimes take matters into their own hands...
Rachel
I had seen my parents carry on at the Wailing Wall when I was growing up. As a Jewish woman growing up in Israel, I saw the Temple Mount where instead the monstrosity known as the Dome of the Rock was built over top our sacred grounds. I was not a typical Jew. I had Christian friends, who showed me the difference between their text and mine. One of these friends, before I stopped listening to him, had told me that the Messiah had already come through the gate and that all of our waiting and hoping was worthless. I couldn't accept that. I knew that the Messiah would come and free us from our oppressors. But his words annoyed me. Year passed, and I still couldn't let it go. I had argued with him as a teenager, but was now a grown woman. I had become fixated on a single thought, the idea that the Messiah would come in my generation. Even if I had to bring it about myself!
While other Jewish women were faithfully following the Torah,listening to the rabbis, and preparing for their day of marriage, I was becoming estranged from the community. I went to the synagogue, but something felt missing deep inside my heart. It was like Adonai was calling me, telling me to follow this goal. I couldn't seem to let go. I was beginning to see these Muslims who defaced our holy mountain as the Amalekites that I had read about in Esther. I was beginning to draw parallels between the events of Maccabees, and how the Temple was defaced in those times to the building that was literally parked on our holy ground.
All of this was in my mind while I heard the Torah being read at the synagogue. I couldn't concentrate for the rest of the service, and I left in a funk. I live south of the site of the Temple Mount, north of what is called Hezekiah's Tunnel, to the east of Wadi Hilwa, and just south of HaOfel. The synagogue that I left was called Four Sephardic Synagogues. Or rather, it's a complex of four synagogues joined together, though the one that I left was Synagogue Emtsai. It occurred to me that I had actually left before the service was over and actually created a small stir, but by this point, I had already wandered several blocks. It was Saturday morning, but a strange force led me to explore the town. I walked up a ramp, and continued parallel to the road, eventually winding up in a forested area. Trying to get my bearings, I walked slightly to the west, and I figured it out, but something was odd. It appeared that I was currently in the woods between the roads of HaOfel and Jericho, but here was a tunnel that I'd never noticed before.
Following it, I saw the two sealed doors of the Golden Gate, the Bab al-Rahma and the Bab al-Taubah. While I found it bizarre that this emptied to the exact area that I wanted to be, stranger still was that there were no authorities near the wall, no guards, no Muslims, and in the other direction any traffic that might have witnessed me. It was as though I had arrived at the dead of night, but the sun was still up. Stranger still was that there was a sledgehammer sitting on the ground with text inscribed on it. It seemed to glow slightly, but that must have been the sun.
Satan
I shall be honest. I may have tweaked circumstances slightly so as to give her an opportunity. She just seemed so earnest that I wanted her to go ahead with things. I may have possibly contracted some of the Reapers (particularly Bosatsu) to make traffic head elsewhere, and to create the tunnel and such. I was tempted sorely to see what would happen if she succeeded. And no, I didn't care about "bringing the coming of the Antichrist." There were Antichrists every day. But, a break from the monotony was sorely needed these days.
Rachel
I lifted the sledgehammer and was about to swing at the gate, when a little girl called at me. "Wha'cha doing there?" she asked. Startled by her sudden question, I almost dropped my tool. I wasn't particularly strong, but the hammer seemed sturdy to smash the wall with one blow, yet light enough to lift with one hand. I tried to ignore her and swing again, but she interrupted again, "So you're gonna bust up the Messiah's Gate? You sure about that?" I eyed her, "What? Are you going to call the police?" She shook her head vigorously, "No way! But if you do that, they'll come. Are certain that's what you want?" They? I explained to her, "The Jews have been waiting for the Messiah to come, but this gate and this graveyard beyond it is in the way. The Messiah is the only hope of the Jewish people for all of these years." I looked at the girl. She seemed very familiar, as though I had known her for thirty years or something, but that was impossible. She couldn't have been more than about eight years old. The girl quoted Final Fantasy X, a game far older than she, "Hope is...comforting. It allows us to accept fate, however tragic it might be," she continued, "The Jews wanted another Messiah because they couldn't accept that their Messiah did not oppose their enemies or that the Temple fell due to their own disobedience. The Christians wanted the Messiah to come again, because they couldn't accept a world where everything was resolved yet evil still exists. The Muslims didn't want the Messiah, so people like Saladin blocked this very entry. Yet here we are, the kingdom of God that Daniel prophesied has been built, but evil still exists. The third Temple that Ezekiel prophesied has been built, but people still do not understand why this pathway has been sealed." I was strongly tempted to ask, "Just who are you?!?" The child was abnormally knowledgeable about the Torah, after all. Instead, the first thing out of my mouth was, "What are you talking about? Our Temple is still fallen! Our Messiah never came! And we certainly don't have the kingdom that Daniel foretold!" I got a pitying look that seemed to say, You poor child, you still see so little, but at this point the fact that a child was looking down on me made me annoyed enough to start bashing away at the wall. The little girl shrugged and said, "If you ever want the wall filled in, just call my name, and I'll do it for you." A few hours later, I was done. I left the hammer where it was, and I returned back to home.
The next day, there was an uproar of sorts. I work as a secretary in a small office building, answering phone calls, and delivering things to my manager. Unlike the day before, where I was dressed in comfortable slacks and a tee shirt that said, « המשיח מגיע » (I had my prayer clothing for worship, but since I had nobody over for Sabbath, I tossed those clothes in a bag to go for a walk), today I wore a smart white blouse, black jacket and skirt, nude stockings, and some black pumps. But as it turned out, I only had a half-day. Everyone was talking about strange events and I was sure that some police officers would notice my fingerprints on the hammer. As it turned out, no hammer was found at the scene. The news said instead that the gate appeared to have been professionally opened, showing a pan of the Golden Gate cleanly opened, not like my random bashing with a hammer. Moreover, there were more changes. Overnight, apparently the Wailing Wall was rebuilt, as were northern, southern, and eastern walls. The Dome of the Rock was shoved out of the way, and the Temple Mount was swept clean. More importantly, Herod's temple had returned! All of the gates were usable, the Court of Women was back, and so were all of the other features of the temple. I watched the news some more, "Wait, I see something! Is that...? Yes, it appears someone is entering the gate reserved for the Messiah!" A man introducing himself as Ari Adir Ben Judah came through the gate riding a donkey and carrying a rod of iron. He pointed his finger at several Muslim and Christian worship sites, and an earthquake swallowed each other them up. The man was well-built, more of a warrior than a king, but he appeared to not only be strong enough to lift the donkey that he was holding but it appeared that God was working miracles through him.
I decided that the time I had hoped for had finally come, and this would be the man to liberate the Jews from their oppressors. And so, I got in my car, made up my face, and headed over to the western wall of the temple, where we had always worshiped. However, the traffic was jammed, so I had to park my car. I saw a great deal of people also walking. "Did you hear?" one asked me, "The Messiah has come!" I nodded, "Yeah, I heard, his name was Ari Adir something?" But he shook his head, "No, there was another one! He's called Atarah David Shalom. He just said 'May there be peace everywhere.' In the last hour, there has been no fighting anywhere in the world! Surely the promised on has come." Another man mentioned a man named simply Orel who apparently spoke only a single word in some ancient dialect of Aramaic or Hebrew, and the Temple had rebuilt itself. Yet another named Reuben Emmanuel had raised the dead around the Muslim graveyard blocking the entrance, and used them to sweep the grounds clean.
As I made my way into the ancient path to the refurbished second Temple, I remembered the commentary some of my old Christian friends had told me of some of the excesses of Herod's temple. Those with skin conditions like atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, and rosacea were forbidden from entering further. So was I. As a woman, I was treated little better than what would traditionally be called a leper. The practice of sacrifice offerings had resumed, as had the practice of buying and selling sacrificial animals. I slipped out before anyone noticed me. There was something very wrong about this Temple. But beyond that, there was something very wrong with all of this.
I sat on a bench outside the walls of the Mount and thought. Then I remembered what the little girl had predicted, "But if you do that, they'll come. Are certain that's what you want?" She had known that this would happen. I thought about what the girl looked like. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that she looked like me as a child. But that was impossible! I thought. I needed to meet her again, and talk to her. But before that, I needed to figure out what was going on here.
In a matter of days, I was back to work as a secretary, as people adjusted to the new normal. People began to pray at the new old Temple, and some even started sacrificing animals on the mountain. It was near Passover, so pretty soon everyone would decide to dispense with the lamb shanks and go ahead and eat the real thing. I was sure there were enough, honestly, since we hadn't prepped for the whole nation to be eating lamb at once for quite a few centuries. But things were still changing. Priests were being anointed, having done a DNA test on ancestry and confirmed that they had the right bloodline. After the major Messiah candidates, a seemingly endless flow of "lesser Messiahs" all came through the Golden Gate, all gave some minor sign or made some speech, and all came in on a donkey. This happened over several weeks, but gradually the number swelled to 7560 candidates before it finally stopped. All of these crowded the Jerusalem area claiming to be the fulfillment of one prophecy or another, but most of them satisfying either the bloodline of King David, the prediction that the Messiah would be a strong leader that would restore the Temple and free Jerusalem from oppression, and so on. As for the four main ones, their power began to expand. Orel, no longer content with Herod's Temple began to stretch the height of this Temple higher and higher. Ari Adir Ben Judah had expanded outward from Jerusalem and was consolidating land around Israel, freeing it from hostile forces. Yes, that way. He raised his rod, and they were dead. Atarah David Shalom, no longer content with world peace, was trying to make his followers even unable to feel emotions, since fear leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to all sorts of darkness. Every person that he touched became utterly unable to feel anything. While peaceful, they had something missing in their souls. As Reuben Emmanuel's raised dead, he didn't stop with those near the Temple Mount, and began to raise all dead ever. The city became quite crowded as a result. I brushed against one of them by accident and I felt a cold chill around me.
I jumped back as I felt a hand on my shoulder. "You noticed too, didn't you?" a woman's voice spoke to me, though it was hard to picture a woman standing at nearly double normal height, dressed in long black robes, and carrying a long scythe in her hand. She disappeared as my body fell away from her hand. She touched me again, this time slowly and gently, "I'm sorry, unless you're very old, very young, very sick, or very spiritually sensitive, I have to touch you in order for you to see and touch me. My name is Yomi, and I am the Grim Reaper. I was saying, you noticed it too? How those people... didn't seem quite alive?" This time, her hood had been pulled back, and her scythe lowered. She had long black hair and a surprisingly kind face. She looked like someone who had a lot personally regretted every death she had to cause. I looked again at the man who just walked away. There indeed was something strange about him. Now that Yomi was touching me, I looked again at the man. Where before, I only felt a chill, he looked totally different. There was this dark shadow possessing him, and he was hunched over strangely. And his skin looked to be in a severe form of decay. Like a zombie. "What... what is this?!?" I gasped. She explained that these people were using a power that was only borrowed from God. They weren't using their own power. "You must understand," she said, "these people are not the Messiah. They are given power to perform false miracles." But this didn't make sense. "But why?" I asked. And then I heard a familiar voice behind me.
"Because... of you," the little girl explained. Like an insect caught in amber, the moment I looked into her eyes, I was pulled in. I wasn't standing in a crowded city, but rather a garden with a familiar face looking at me. It wasn't someone I could describe as a boy or a girl, it was a person, like I'd seen anywhere, but more importantly, I understood that this was the man Jacob wrestled with. A person so generic that it was unclear whether this was a black or white person, male or female, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile. It just didn't matter. This was a person, yet this was Yahweh as Adam and Eve had seen walking in the Garden of Eden. Yahweh reunited with mankind. Someone so gloriously familiar that my soul cried out that I loved this person instantly. The Jews had made all kinds of myths about how the presence of Adonai was so sacred that none could look on him and live. Yet now I understood now that these were just silly taboos. Would an all-powerful God really be unable to speak with others if they wished? I had to ask, "What is your name?" The person before me chuckled, "You humans and your names. I invented thousands of names for each of these false Messiahs. They are just angels. I strip them of their name, and they cease to be. My name? You can call me Yeshua, that's what I am called by some of those folks. Or you can call me any name you want. I am God, because I don't need a name to feel important. You can even call me Rachel." And suddenly, it was as though I was looking in the mirror. Dammit, I had a pimple on my shoulder. I fumbled for words again, before I asked, "So what did you mean by that it happened because of me?" The other me sighed, "All your life you have been driven by a need to make sense of all this. Much more than others, who just accept what their rabbis tell them, and don't bother to question things. You talked to people outside your own faith because you wanted to figure out why the Messiah had taken so long. But it's like your friend said. I don't need to come back, because I already carried out my purpose. Those prophecies about me being a warrior king or making world peace? Or rebuilding the temple? They were what the prophets wanted. Don't you think that I would know what I wanted, and be able to decide that for myself? I came to you, not to convert you to Christianity or any other religion, but because it seemed like you really needed a friend. Your own group had rules for life, but you seemed lonely there." I thought of how little I fit with others, with my driven obsession with bringing about the coming of the Messiah. Or should I say Second Coming. I'd noticed a few Christians have picked a Messiah, and are telling others that they have the wrong one. I had another question though, "But, what happens if these continue here? Isn't it good to give people hope? I mean, you said earlier that 'Hope is comforting,' but I don't really understand. Can't the Golden Gate stay open?" The other me shrugged, "I could allow it, but a lot of them would have to go. They were designed to show you the problem with waiting for a Messiah. There can't be a single one that is all things to all people, so... I had to split this into several ideas. And each idea has a unwanted logical extreme. Reuben Emmanuel would flood the world with undead, and there would be a zombie apocalypse. Even if I made them really come back to life, some would breed with the population, and the Earth would be a desert in about five years. Atarah David Shalom would take away free will and happiness. Even if only a small portion of people were touched by him, this is an unacceptable amount of bored listless people. Ari Adir Ben Judah will likely kill most of the population. Orel would continue to grow the size of the Temple until it was a second Tower of Babel. And have you noticed? The Temple has become an idol. I never intended anything beyond worship of me, and even that wasn't necessary. I don't have needs. I don't need to be worshiped. If it fills you with joy to share your devotion to me, then go ahead. But I don't need it, and I certainly don't want you getting obsessed with scrolls, buildings, walls, or other nonsense. These are just things. What I want, what I really want, is for you to figure out how you can be happy." But I really didn't know how to be happy, especially now that my sense of purpose was gone. I thought about it for quite some time. Then I told her that I had three wishes, "Uhhh, God? First, can you reseal the gates, and get rid of all of these jokers? And can you make it so nobody has any memory or videos or other records that anything happened? And ummmm, well this is gonna suck..." God probably knew what I was gonna say, but wanted to hear me say it. After some goading, "I want to be your girlfriend. Not as a specific person like most people just meet the love of their life, and you kinda work through them. I want to date you as you. Shapeshifting and all. But I suppose that means I'll have to die and be in the World to Come." God shrugged, "You could, and I could get Yomi to kill you off. But it doesn't matter whether you're alive or dead. I can give you new eyes to see me." And so, I carried on a relationship, meeting different people, until finally I sorta settled down. Sorta. I never really got married, but carried on with a semi-regular lover. I found that a girl named Nessa caught my eye the most.
Yomi
I returned to Unseen World. My job is hard on me, but some days are better than others. I am glad that I met Rachel, even if I will never see her again. I hope that I can feel that sort of connection too one day. "Hey, what you thinking about?" said Seishi. Hmmmm, the two of us spend some time together. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to go on a 'date', I think the word those humans use to call it. Maybe later.
