The Prisoner in the Third Cell Read Online Free PDF

blood, his only cousin.
    â€œJohn, your pain is great. I feel it. Tonight you so desperately need to understand me, to fathom my ways, to peer into the riddle of my sovereignty. Your heart is breaking. But, John, you are not the first to have this need. You are but one in a long train of humankind stretching across all the centuries of man who have called out to me with questions and doubts. You are but one voice among so many who wonder and who agonize over my ways.”
    With those words spoken, a scene of an event that had taken place long ago began to emerge before the eyes of the Lord.
    Jesus shuddered. Before him was Egypt. The Lord of time stepped into the streets of the city of Pharaoh. “I have been here before. I have walked down these streets, listening to the quiet cries, the murmurings, the prayers of my own people . . . held here in slavery.”
    The Lord paused and looked about. He could clearly hear every prayer being prayed. They seemed to be lifted up to him in harmony with their rustling chains.
    â€œYou who are descendants of a man named Jacob, you have cried out to me so long, suffered so long, and wept so long. You have lifted your faces to heaven for years without number. But the heavens are stone. It appears your God has gone deaf. You have been born in slavery. You have grown up, cried out for freedom, and then died, without your prayers being answered. Your children came along to take your place, were fettered with the same worn chains of their fathers. They, too, cried out for deliverance, and they, too, died with their chains still forged to their wrists.”
    The Lord walked on.
    â€œYour children’s children have grown old. They have come to me with their prayers myriads of times, calling out, ‘God deliver us from the Pharaoh, deliver us from this slave master who does not know our father, Joseph. Oh, our God, lead us back to our homeland.’
    â€œBut I did not answer, not so much as one word. And so it continued for you and your offspring . . . for twelve generations.
    â€œI left you in slavery for almost four hundred years. Never once in all that time were your prayers answered. You cried out to me, but I did not respond. No clear word, no insight into my ways, no explanation of my purposes, no reasons were given why I did not answer your cries. Your hearts were broken before me.
    â€œBut my heart was broken with yours.
    â€œAfter four hundred years, there were still men and women who were believing in me! After four hundred years of not hearing from me, still you believed!”
    At that moment came a piercing cry. It was the voice of a mother.
    â€œOh, God, if You are there, will You not answer? Tomorrow this beautiful child will be taken from my arms, forever. He will be shackled, enslaved, and forever doomed to make bricks beside the river Nile. I will die never to see my child again. He will grow old and die in the chains they forge upon his wrists tomorrow. Will You not hear my cry?”
    The eyes of the Lord filled with tears.
    â€œOh, Israel, you are confronted with one simple fact.
    â€œOh woman, you, like all those before you . . . you, like my cousin John, rotting in a pit . . . have come face to face with one stark truth.
    â€œYour God has not lived up to your expectations.”

Chapter 15
    The scene changed. Once more the place was Egypt, but it was many years into the future. On this occasion, the Lord of time stepped into an unfolding drama that was a scene, not of slavery, but of death.
    Women were frantically running down the streets, with Egyptian solders in pursuit. Every newborn Hebrew male child would be slain that day. That is, all but one. The one lone survivor would grow up to save Israel from Egypt. But these panic-stricken mothers did not know this. They would live out their entire lives without even one of them ever knowing that eighty years hence God would avenge the death of their children and set Israel