and the fall of Masada, the first day of exile and the last day of the resistance, is a time span of 1,333 days.”
“So then to reverse it, we would have to find the day that Israel returned to Masada and count 1,333 days forward. But we would have to know the exact date. Do we know it?”
“We do,” said the Oracle. “It was the day that Yigael Yadin, Israel’s archaeologist general, inaugurated the excavation of the desert fortress. It all began on the morning of October 13, 1963. So we must now take the time period between the fall of Jerusalem and the fall of Masada, the 1,333 days, and add it to the day Israel returned to Masada, and see where it brings us.”
“October 13, 1963, plus 1,333 days . . . brings us to what?”
“June 7, 1967.”
“June 7, 1967!”
“The exact date of Israel’s return to Jerusalem. So it was 1,333 days from the loss of Jerusalem to the loss of Masada . . . and 1,333 days from the return to Masada to the return of Jerusalem.”
“Down to the exact day! So the Six-Day War had to happen exactly when it did,” I said. “And the Arab world had to threaten Israel exactly when it did. And the waiting period had to go on for the exact number of days it went on. And the Soviet Union had to send a false report to Egypt on the exact day they sent it.”
“Not only that superpower,” said the Oracle, “but the other one as well. It was America that restrained Israel from acting until finally giving the go-ahead just days before the war. Without that restraint and that go-ahead, the restoration of Jerusalem would not have taken place on that exact day.”
“And the soldiers,” I said, “they had to enter the Lion’s Gate on that exact day. They had to return to Jerusalem on the 1,333rd day.”
“Yes,” said the Oracle, “and nobody planned it. And look at the world in which it happened. It all took place in a time of social upheaval, a war in Southeast Asia, a countercultural revolution, a race to the moon, and a ‘summer of love.’ It was in the midst of all these things the ancient mystery was moving . . . as it was the year of Jubilee. And it all came about through the intrigues of an atheistic superpower, the fury of the Arab world, the mobilization of armies, a song that touched a sacred longing, and a war that shook the world and brought an ancient people back to their lost possession. The ancient mystery was working, bringing every event together to coalesce into the appointed purposes . . . to the exact day.”
“That was the last of the mysteries of the fourth door and the last time I would see the Oracle in the garden.”
“And what was waiting for you behind the fifth door?”
“Three mountaintops, the ancient mystery behind a more recent American president, a woman of bronze, the return of an ancient king, the Jubilee of Capitol Hill, a golden man, a mystery of seventy years, a pool of lights . . . and the magi.”
THE FIFTH DOOR
Chapter 43
THE FIFTH DOOR
I WAS STANDING in front of the fifth door with the Oracle to my left. He handed me a key. I placed it in the lock, opened the door, and walked through. I was again standing on top of the desert mountain.”
“The same mountain?”
“Yes, and with the same man in red, Moses, and at his side a ram. Around its neck was a chain, on which hung a white stone, on which was the same symbol as on the fifth door. It was the strangest of all the rams I had seen up to that point. Its appearance was of white marble. Its legs and horns had the appearance of grooved columns; its face, the appearance of chiseled stone; and its hair, the sculptured adornments you’d find on the top of an ancient pillar. And yet it was its torso that was most striking. It resembled a marble cylinder covered with rows of wedge-shaped symbols or letters. And it was in motion, the symbols rolling slowly upward. But it wasn’t the cylinder that was moving but the symbols, the letters themselves, rotating along the cylinder as if they were shadows. But they weren’t shadows; they were wedge-shaped engravings in motion. The ram made its way down the mountain and into the desert. I followed. It turned its