I finished a real page-turner yesterday. I picked this up on the way home from our trip.

What Hank Hanegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer have done here is write a very good alternative to the Left Behind series (which I believe someone desperately needed to do).

Unlike Left Behind, the Last Disciple places the events of Revelation in the first century. As the authors' point out in the afterword, "the apostle John tells his first century audience that with 'wisdom' and 'insight' they can 'calculate the number of the Beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666' (Revelation 13:18). No amount of wisdom and insight would have given them the ability to figure out the number of a Nicolae Carpathia character in the twenty first century."

Much of the book is taken with the Romans and other unbelievers trying to decipher this new letter from John, the son of Zebedee, which gives the book a National Treasure feel.

So what's the big deal about the fall of Jerusalem? I'll let a couple characters from the book explain that:

"Yes. But remember the other improbable prophecies. That the temple in Jerusalem will fall, for example. If you've ever seen the temple high on the mount, you'd know how... well... how stupid that prediction is."
"Just for a moment, consider what if the impossible happened, that the temple did fall, as the self-proclaimed Messiah Jesus also claimed," Damian said. "What would that say about Jesus?"
...
"Vindication, I suppose," Azariah said slowly. "On several occasions Jesus called judgment on those who were about to kill Him. Used a Jewish prophecy phrase that means exactly that and was used repeatedly in our ancient writings: coming on clouds. He combined that phrase with another from a psalm of coronation and exaltation. Jesus declared to them, 'Hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.' I remember the wording I read because of the absolute audacity of Jesus' claim. In effect, He was claiming deity in pronouncing judgment over Jerusalem, and if Jerusalem and the temple were to fall within the near future--may it not be so--it would mean that Jesus, not Caesar or another Jewish messiah, is Lord and King."
Azariah paused before continuing. "And there would be an incredible irony. He claimed to be the Lamb that was slain to redeem us. With the temple gone, there would be no other way to reach God but through Jesus. If He truly was divine."