Tough Love in Christ's Millennium Book II

(Novel length: 136,000+ words)

Tough Love in Christ’s Millennium: Book Two: A Panorama of Judgment continues to show how life may be in Christ’s 1000-year reign. Through the character of Saul Savage we see one man’s redemption from disobedience to God’s representatives (Lord Stephen, Prince Daniel, and Governor Lucas).

In the Data Room with its Nerve-plex and Data Cams, Saul works on his designs for virtual games (like “Quasar Quest” and “Comet Collision”) while Nabal, his son, and Ramera, his daughter, continue their mischief. And Saul suffers for his sins his wife Lydia lies in another man’s bed.

In the end Prince Daniel reveals to Saul the heartbreaking truth about Lydia while Susanna makes one last-ditch attempt to save her from herself. The finale sees Christ, the Great Physician, heal the bodies and souls of repentant family members while Lydia meets her day of judgment.

Here is an extract:

CHAPTER ONE

THE RUIN BEFORE THE REIGN B.C.

The Liar

The heat of mass hysteria blazed like the Judean sun. It was the year 5 B.C.  Marketplace vendors, anticipating a brisk lunch trade, tended charcoal braziers frying pastries and savory snacks. An angry mob charged past them, their sandals slapping the pavement and kicking up dust. Their deafening cries reached a shrill crescendo at the rim of a deep abyss which served as the town dump.

A grim figure in black motioned for silence, then looked down at a pitiful girl lying at his feet. She hid her face in her luxuriant black hair, for her veil had been ripped off. Her dress was torn.

“Rebecca, daughter of Noah ben Ezra,” came the grim decree,“I sentence you to death for playing the whore in your father’s house! Take this profane woman and stone her, as the Law commands!”

The girl swooned, overcome by intense emotions. From earliest childhood, she had been noted for her deep piety. It was she whose lovely songs of praise had brought smiles to the faces of so many. Hers had been a life of quiet contentment. Until this outrage.

The prospect of wedding a cruel customs agent had withered her heart, turning her childlike praises to ashes in her mouth. Never before had she known such fear.  It had driven her to run away with Amos, whom she had loved since childhood; the man who loved her as his own soul. 

Statutory adultery. That was the charge levied against the young couple. although Noah had neither considered Judas as a son-in-law nor published banns of betrothal in the synagogue. No one had ever heard Noah endorse a union between Rebecca and Judas Elias. But two lying witnesses swore they had seen Noah approach Judas in the courtyard of the synagogue to receive a handsome dowry payment, in reality slipped surreptitiously into Noah’s bag as he was caught up in a spirited religious debate with a regent of the synagogue. 

Once home, he’d found the money but had no inkling of its origin. Until two shady officials came calling to say what a fine match he’d made for Rebecca, and when would the betrothal feast be held? 

Noah’s  protestations were drowned out by congratulations for the princely price paid for Rebecca in the presence of so many witnesses. Before Noah could return the money, the men were gone.  

To whitewash his dirty deed, Judas unctuously said that Rebecca had flouted parental authority by breaking the betrothal, and thus, God’s own. He decried her violation of the spirit of the Law of Moses, even in the absence of any declared commitment to himself.  

Thirsty for revenge, Judas had ordered his men to sell Amos to a caravan bound for the Far East, far away from his beloved City of Jerusalem. Judas’ cronies nodded, grinning. Surely such a handsome fellow as Amos would fetch a fat sum to compensate Judas for his hurt feelings.  And as for the little hussy who’d spurned his affections, she would pay in blood. 

Everyone knew the Law stipulated the death penalty for adultery. Rebecca might be innocent of the charge, but it was risky to cross Judas Elias, who presided over a band of brigands who owed him favors. People’s crops could be burned, or their property destroyed. Judas knew the poor peasants were tied to their tiny family farms. Without crops in the field, their little children would go hungry. The local rabbis were just as afraid to denounce Judas as the decent folk of Ein Yonah, who languished in spiritual bondage. Bold in his wickedness, Judas interpreted and enforced the Torah his own way. 

Remorse gnawed at Rebecca’s heart. Now her poor family was in jeopardy. Her father could lose his livelihood, for few would dare patronize his carpentry business now. But her greatest regret was was that, in her distress, her ardent devotion to God had turned to bitter resentment.

Judas had given Noah just a couple of days to publicly endorse the match and set the date for a betrothal feast. In that time Rebecca and Amos, along with his Aunt Esther, slipped away in the dead of night. But their capture by hooded vigilantes  at a crossroads ended all hopes of freedom. Now Rebecca wished she had not turned her back on the only One Who could have delivered her.

Alas, it was too late to speculate on what might have been. Her earthly life was now forfeit. But God, in His mercy, was offering her an eternal one with Himself. The illiterate girl remembered scriptures learnt at her father’s knee; and Amos’ parting words as he was dragged away: “Remember the tender mercies of David, and we’ll meet one day in Abraham’s Bosom.” There was a blessed place of rest for departed saints who trusted in the Mercy of the Lord, a haven from which they would be resurrected to Newness of Life in a Glorious Age to come. These meditations gave her hope.  

Now there was nothing to lose by boldly confessing her faith, revived in her hour of doom. In that dark moment it shone even more brightly than it had in her happiest days as a child. Her spirit glimpsed her great Deliverer, spanning the gulf of time and eternity. “O God of my fathers,” she moaned , “be merciful to me a wretched sinner who allowed my love for You to die. I repent of hating You, and declare to these my enemies that though I die, my love for You will endure forever. Put away my sins, even as You did for the great King David, who trusted in You.”

“How dare she lay claim to the tender mercies of David!” shouted one of the bearded elders.

“Aye!” replied a haughty religious scholar. “You just heard the girl herself! She has sinned! God is too holy to lower Himself to forgive such filthy sins as hers, and accept love from a whore!”

Rebecca radiated a quiet peace, in spite of the bloodlust of her persecutors. “God shall redeem my soul from the power of the grave, for He shall receive me!” she boldly proclaimed. 

At that, Rebecca’s jilted suitor knocked her to the hard ground with one blow of his fist. “God’s Holy Scriptures must not proceed from the mouth of one so defiled! Let her die! Let her be cut off forever from the Holy Covenant!”

“Amen!” responded the cruel mob. Some shouted abuse at the terrified girl. They quarrelled over whose hands would hurl her headlong over the cliff into the grimy abyss below.

“Oh God of my salvation,” murmured Rebecca, closing her eyes to the swirling rabble. “Receive my contrite spirit, a sacrifice which You will not despise!”

“Blasphemy!” objected a phony Pharisee. “An insult to the Holiness of the Almighty! Stone the whore without delay, lest more outrages escape her defiled lips!” The mob howled like wolves, even making mockery of her repentance. A woman’s sins ought never to be forgiven, they thought.  

The strongest of them roughly shoved his friends aside. Effortlessly he threw Rebecca into the deep gorge. She  glanced off the branch of an olive tree, then hit the sun-baked earth. The evil eyes above her discerned a slight twitching in her broken body. With terrible imprecations the demon-driven mob rained down big boulders upon her slight form. To their dismay, she died quickly.

A radiant angel with a lovely face stooped down to lift up Rebecca’s departed soul. She felt liberated and light, as if unchained from an unbearable burden. With infinite tenderness her rescuer clasped her close to his heart. “You are in my care now,” he consoled her, his love soothing away all the horror of her demise, and healing her bruised soul. “Never again shall you know pain. All your sins are forgiven you, and you shall sorrow no more.” How sweet were those words.

Never before had Rebecca known such an unshadowed, restful joy.

Judas approached the girl’s father, who was ripping his clothing and throwing ashes over his head. How Judas savored this chance to deepen a deadly wound. “Our God is offended by all the tumult you are making over the lawful execution of an adulteress.”

“I might as well die too,” Noah wept. “I failed her. Had I been a man, I would fought for her, would even have shed my own blood to send her away. But I wavered like water, and shifted like sand, bound by the usury you said I owed you. She fled out of fear. Fear of you, and fear of being sold by me. Here’s your dirty money! Now leave us alone!”  A shower of silver coins hit Judas’ feet. 

Judas stayed his henchmen from seizing Noah and said, “My, such contempt for wealth in a wretchedly poor town like this.”  

“Yes, and who made it wretchedly poor but yourself!” cried Noah. “I should have taken my loved ones and fled this God-forsaken town, but I forced her to choose between two evils!”

 Inspired by the Serpent, Judas’ retort came: “Ah, but you had no choice. I own all of Ein Yonah. I hold sway over all the outlying farms and settlements. My word carries weight, and is backed by the authority of the mighty Roman Empire. You lacked both the courage and the means to go elsewhere and start afresh. Besides, the roads can be quite hazardous this time of year. 

“See how I am loved?” He grinned at  his cheering cohorts. “Money is power.  Power a rich son-in-law would have given you. But you rejected me. That’s why I have loads of friends, and you don’t.”

“Well, you don’t have us anymore!” cried an elderly man hobbling toward him on a cane. 

“Oh, Father, it’s you,” said Judas, with a patronizing smile.“Really, I didn’t want you to come see this frightful affair . Why aren’t you and Mother resting? It’s much too hot for you to be outside.” 

“We came just as she began to call upon her God,” said Elias, Judas’ father. “Didn’t I warn you not to force her family into this? You know full well she loved another.”

“But you gave me your blessing, Father,” protested Judas. “You wanted me to be happy.”

“Because I was a far greater coward than this poor man!” wailed Elias, gesturing toward Noah. “Let everyone present know that Judas threatened to desert me and his mother in our old age, if we withheld our consent to his union with that saintly girl! Her fear of Judas drove her to a swifter death than marriage to him would have been!”

“How dare you slander your own son!” cried Judas.

The old man spat on the ground, and ripped his robe. “And who are you to mock a dying soul pleading for God’s mercy! You called her accursed of God, but that dear child was far more upright than I, who betrayed my God and gave my lying consent to your wickedness! She had more peace in her death than I shall ever have again in my life,” he wept. “If only I could raise you all over again! I shall fast and pray that God will likewise accept my prayer for mercy even as He did for her!”

“I, too, have sinned,” lamented Naomi, his mother. “It was I who ruined you. Not once did I ever withhold any pleasant thing from you if it was in my power to give it to you. You, my only son. I turned a blind eye to your cruel ways, for surely my handsome, clever son could do no wrong. I remember all the dead songbirds you brought home to show me, birds you killed just to prove your skill with your sling. How you stoned the dogs in the street, and beat up children smaller than yourself. Now my son is drinking the lifeblood of the poor. And you destroyed a man whom Noah loved as a son, to steal his only lamb and kill it for your pleasure.” Naomi shook with sobs and raised her eyes to heaven.  

“How my sin burns within me as a brand in my breast!” she moaned. “I fear I cannot be forgiven. Would God I had taken less pride in you, and taught you to know God, and fear His Name!”  

Judas’ parents went to weep with the dead girl’s parents, and mourn the son who was dead to God, though he still drew breath. Somehow Noah and Hannah found the strength to forgive them. What nobler memorial could they give their daughter, who had ever rejoiced in the Mercy of the Lord?

 A master at manipulation, Judas raised up a scriptural lament: “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up! Behold, my affliction! Who is on the side of righteousness?”

 To Judas’ chagrin, many of the other villagers drifted over to join Rebecca’s parents, and his own. They cast dust on their heads. They bewailed their cowardice in the face of evil, cursing the day the Romans had appointed Judas as district tax collector. A man who was kept on a long leash, so long as sufficient revenue was squeezed out of the poor working folk.

“All those who would snuff out the Light of Israel,” cried Noah, “may side with Judas! I am comforted to know that my Rebecca did not die in vain!” 

“Blasphemy!” protested the elder who still insisted God had no right to forgive any woman’s sins. “How dare that dog hallow the death of a common slut!”

The crowd held its breath as Rebecca’s mother strode over to him, fire flashing in her reddened eyes. “The day will come when you will need the Mercy of the Lord, but it will be withheld from you. You are as soil baked so hard it cannot receive the refreshing of rain. My daughter had peace with God, but you shall die in your sins. The Way of Peace is forever hidden from your eyes.”

That elder was the very one who had shoved her away when she’d tried to cling to her doomed daughter in the street. He would have hit her, had Noah not stepped in. 

“Tomorrow,” Noah growled, “we shake off the dust of this place from our feet and never return! The earth is stained with the blood of the innocent, and is crying out to God for vengeance!”

“Well, that is your concern, poor man!” Judas taunted, striding toward him. “Had you been a bit firmer with that little hussy and taught her a few morals, she might be alive now!”

Noah balled up his fist, but Hannah gripped his arm and said: “Let us go, Noah. We are surrounded by enemies. Surely the great Judge of all the earth will avenge our daughter’s blood.”

Noah shouted: “It is written, Vengeance is Mine. I will repay, says the Lord!  His vengeance will seek you out, evil one, and you will not come to your grave in peace!” 

His head hanging low, Noah joined the sympathetic villagers. They began their descent into the deep ravine to recover Rebecca’s battered body. At least they could give her a decent burial.

Judas’ cronies went home, smirking. Their free entertainment had cost only their souls.