The Last Temple by Sigmund Brouwer, Hank Hanegraaff Read Free Book Online

solidness that told him it was barred on the outside.
    He explored the walls with slow sideways steps and almost stumbled over a small table. It held a jug of water, a bowl of oranges, and another bowl that contained, as he discovered with a tentative nibble, delicately spiced cooked strips of chicken. He sat on the edge of the bed and drank. Ripped apart the meat with his hands and devoured it. Pulled apart the oranges and had them as dessert.
    So focused was he on satisfying his belly, it took a while to realize the fingers on his injured hand were not crushed or broken. He’d been removed from the cross in such a way that his hand had been protected from further injury.
    Only the governor could have ordered this, so the real question was why.
    Had Damian returned from Jerusalem in time? No, he decided, otherwise there would be no shackles. And Damian would have been waiting for him to wake, ready for Vitas to show proper gratitude at Damian’s rescue, prepared to ignore any protest that it had been Damian’s idiotic schemes that put Vitas on the cross in the first place.
    So what reason or person had persuaded the governor to commute the death sentence?
    A disturbing thought: perhaps it had not been commuted but only delayed. After all, Vitas did wear these shackles.
    Before he could contemplate this for long, Vitas heard the bar sliding on the other side of the door.
    Flickering torchlight outside the room gave him a brief view of the figure who entered, covered with a shroud.
    “Who are you?” Vitas asked. “Where am I?”
    “Understandable questions, both of them.” A man’s voice. “I am Joseph Ben-Matthias. You are under guard in a rich man’s villa.”
    The man spoke Vitas’s native Latin, but with a Jewish accent.
    “Why am I here?” Vitas asked. “In this room and not on a cross?”
    “We have little time. What should matter to you more is why I am here. If I am caught with you, I will be set up on a cross alongside your brother’s mute slave.”
    Vitas had been alert from the moment the door creaked open, but this brought his senses to an intensified level.
    His mind registered the fact that Jerome was still on a cross. But Vitas pushed that aside. The mystery man in front of him knew the true identity of Vitas. And this meant . . .
    “Does that suggest you need to listen?” the man asked. “Because I’m letting you know that I know who you are?”
    Vitas shifted slightly, and the chains of his shackles betrayed him.
    “I also know that those chains aren’t enough to keep me safe from you. Trust that if I’ve risked my life to bribe a guard that I might speak to you, you need to hear what I have to say.”
    “Then speak,” Vitas said. If this man knew about Vitas and Damian and Jerome, surely he was part of the mystery of those who had rescued Vitas from Nero and sent him away from Rome.
    “The city of the Beast. And the city of the second beast. What are those cities?”
    “Rome,” Vitas said. “Jerusalem.”
    “I’m impressed,” the man said. “I knew you had read the letter of John. This tells me that you have made efforts to understand it. Few in Rome have. I expected no less, however, given the message that brought you to Caesarea.”
    Yes, the man was part of it. Vitas’s own stillness gave away the fierceness of his concentration on the man in front of him. Vitas could quote the entire message that had been on the scroll he’d been given at his escape from Rome.
You know the beast you must escape; the one with understanding will solve the number of this beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666. . . .
    “I’m told,” Ben-Matthias continued, “that John himself was on the ship that carried you away from your death sentence.”
    “You’ve succeeded in impressing me that you know enough about my situation. I’d like to know why.”
    “Do you believe the prophecies of the letter of Revelation? That Nero will die? That Jerusalem will fall? That the