FIFTY-THREE

Word filtered from Iran to its contacts within Hamas in Gaza, at the southern end of Israel, where it bordered the Egyptian Sinai. It was the Persian word Qiam, the signal for Arabs everywhere, including the Palestinians in the Gaza, to become part of the Qiam, the “uprising.” The Iranian subversives in Gaza didn’t know about the impending missile strike. Their order was only to begin the insurgency.

And so they did.

Hamas terror cells rounded up hundreds of supporters and rushed the IDF checkpoints just north of the Gaza, overpowering the IDF officers there.

They received a second message as well: “Take Jerusalem.” The implication would have been clear if they had the whole picture. The missiles that Iran had sent into the heart of Israel would spare Jerusalem. That city would now belong to Allah, and an army of Palestinian terrorists would be part of the effort to secure that city for Islam.

In Jerusalem, warning sirens were blaring. The residents of the King David Hotel were rushing down the emergency stairs to the basement, which served as their bomb shelter for the hotel. People were shouting out questions to each other, trying to find out what had triggered the air-raid drill, but no one seemed to know.

Deborah Jordan and Esther Kinney were caught in the stairwell amidst a shoving mass of humanity. They were shoulder to shoulder on the cement stairs, on the level below the lobby when, somewhere farther down the stairs there was a gunshot. Then another. Screams. Someone down there shouted, “Go back up! Go back!”

Now the crowd was turning around, with people toppling off their feet and being pulled under by the crush of the mob. Below, Hamas gunmen had entered the hotel and were randomly shooting hotel guests trapped on the stairway.

Deborah was only ten feet from an exit door leading to the hotel lobby, but the crush of people in the stairwell was crowding the trapped hotel guests against the door, keeping it from being opened.

“Do this!” Deborah shouted to those around her. Then she turned to face the crowd behind her with her arms up in front of her and fists tucked under her chin like an offensive lineman in a football game. Several others followed suit, forming a human defensive chain to hold back the mob that was pushing up the stairs in a frenzy. With the space that Deborah’s maneuver had created, a man in the stairwell next to her was finally able to swing the door open.

The crowd, including Deborah and Esther, poured through the exit door and into the familiar lobby, with its blue ceiling and tall square columns. People were scattering in all directions, running for their lives. There were more shots. Now they were ringing out in the lobby from somewhere.

A gunman appeared with a revolver, and he was shooting randomly at the hotel guests.

Deborah called to Esther, “To the pool!”

They dodged across the lobby and down one hallway until they found the door leading to the outdoor pool. It was surrounded by trees and shrubs. Deborah jumped down behind some bushes and Esther joined her. They were out of breath. Deborah surveyed the area to see if it was safe to escape the hotel grounds.

Just then she saw a bearded gunman jogging around the perimeter of the pool, looking for victims. “Stay down,” she whispered to Esther.

Deborah peaked through the bushes. Suddenly, a broad-shouldered, clean-shaven man, who looked like a tourist, ran up to the gunman from behind. He locked his forearm around the gunman’s throat. The two struggled. The tourist took him to the ground and slammed the gunman’s head on the pavement. Then again. The gunman was still. The tourist took the gun.

Only when he stood did Deborah get a good look at him.

“Ethan!” she screamed out.

Ethan March, gun in hand, whipped around as he recognized her voice. They locked glances. He sprinted around the pool and into her arms.

“Ethan, thank God you’re all right!” Deborah was crying as they hugged.

He said, “I thought I saw you running through the lobby. I followed you. Deb, the downtown is chaos — a killing zone. I’ve got to get you out of here. A tour guide dropped me off on the way to his condo outside the city, just as the sirens went off. No one seems to know what the threat is or what’s going on … but there’s clearly small-arms fire coming from small groups of terrorists. Nony, the tour guy, was on his cell with his wife, and she said the Israeli army has set up a checkpoint over where she is and it’s much safer. He said if I found you, I could bring you to his place. We can camp out with them. But Nony took off after dropping me here. He had get to his wife. We’ll have to go on foot over to his condo. It’ll be quite a hike I’m afraid. There’s not a cab to be found.”

“Ethan, this is Esther,” Deborah said pointing to her. “My friend who — ”

Before Deborah could finish her sentence, Ethan said, “Esther, come with us. You’ll be safer.”

Joshua was still sitting with his back against the bars. Dr. Abdu was on the floor of his cell, his face at the bars, where his cell met Joshua’s. Joshua’s head still felt like it had imploded, but his thinking was clearer now.

Abdu said, “So you know it intellectually …”

“Sure.”

“About God?”

“Yeah. He’s out there …”

“But in the Bible, Jesus said that even the demons acknowledge that.”

“So?”

“Here’s the real question. What do you think about Jesus Christ?”

“Pretty much the same.”

“Explain.”

“Thought about it. Haven’t told Abby … that’s my wife … very much about it. Should have though. I worked a lot out in my own head.”

“What does your head say?”

Joshua wondered about that. Was his brain really working after all he’d been through? He tried to recall something, just to test his memory, his thinking process. At least that’s what he told himself. Okay, see if you can lay it out logically. Make sure the gears are working …

So he started to talk. “Abby’s got this pastor. Peter Campbell. He’s explained it. You look at the accuracy of the stuff in the Gospel stories … about Jesus. Historical verification. Credible accounts … good historical data. And the stories come from eyewitnesses … the versions of the New Testament passed down … they’re reliable. So you’ve got that. And the fact that Jesus fulfilled all those prophecies … a hundred of them in the Old Testament, Pastor Campbell said, delivered centuries before the birth of Christ … about the miracles the Messiah would perform and even His manner of death. Jesus was the perfect fit. The only fit … and then there’s the people … who have faith in Jesus … it’s like they’ve walked into something miraculous. Life changing … That’s what my head’s telling me.”

On the last point, he had to think about Dr. Abdu, his brutalized, disfigured face, but the man also exuded an inner calm, a peace beyond earthly explanation.

“So,” Abdu said. “That is what your head says …”

“Yeah.”

“What does your heart say?”

Joshua paused for a second or two. “My heart? Well … that’s a holdout.”

“Too bad, because even though it’s all free — gaining salvation, eternal life, forgiveness of your sins, restoration of a relationship with the living God — all of that is totally free and available right now for you, what God wants from you now is all that you have to offer Him. God wants all of you. Your brain? Certainly. Yes, of course. But your heart as well. Trust in God’s Son Jesus Christ by faith, using your brain as well as your heart. My question now is a very simple one for you, Joshua … are you ready for that?”

There was no response …

Until several minutes later. Joshua had thought it out. Was all of this just an accident of fate? His being there, in a jail cell in Tehran, next to an Iranian pastor who was talking to him about the Christian Gospel? It seemed as though, in some strange way, for him it had to be in a place like this, on a concrete floor spotted with filth, blood, and cockroaches — though he didn’t know why exactly. Somehow it just fit.

For Joshua the time for avoidance had ceased.

A voice came out of Joshua’s cell. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah, now.”

“I have questions for you,” Dr. Abdu said.

“I’m ready.”

“Do you believe that you’re a sinner, Joshua, that you have broken God’s laws, are guilty of sin, and separated from God as a result?”

“That I’ve offended God? That’s a no-brainer … odd … never admitted that out loud before …”

“Do you repent of your sins … and do you want to receive forgiveness for them? Do you want to come into a relationship with the living God?”

“Hermoz, truth be told … I’ve tried to keep this a secret … tried to keep it screwed on tight …”

“Secret?”

“Tried hard to succeed at the externals in my life: military career, professional life. But the inside of me … a pretty dark, lonely, restless place … is a mess. Morally … spiritually … and every other way. I think God’s the only one who can fix it.”

“Then do you accept the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, the Son of God, who was the only, once-and-for-all, perfect sacrifice for your sins, and who then walked out of the grave three days later?”

“I accept that. I believe that … as God is my witness I do …”

“Do you invite Jesus the Christ to come and live inside you through the Spirit of God and to be your Savior and your Lord?”

But Joshua’s voice stopped at that point.

There was weeping somewhere, until Joshua realized that the tears were his own. His face was against the cold steel bars. Bowed and broken. Cornered and isolated. Faced with the most important decision he would ever make. In a forsaken place of torture. A jail cell that smelled of urine. A place of heartless cruelty. But one thought surfaced … this place … it reminded him of something else. The place of the cross? Where Jesus paid the price for him … crucifixion. He had known it abstractly, but now it was much more than that. As if he was standing before the crude, bloody cross of Christ. Now it finally seemed to make sense to him. That a place of horror and cruelty could also become the source of all that is good and true. So too this jail cell could be the right place, at the right time, for something miraculously good to happen.

Joshua’s words were hardly perceptible: “Jesus come into me … my Savior … oh God …”

Joshua tried to hold back the tears but couldn’t.

Then there were no more words.

Until another voice came out of the darkness, from another cell, from another prisoner.

“Dr. Abdu?”

“Yes …”

“Please, may I pray that prayer to Jesus too?”