The Altar of Pergamon

Ariel Herzog, a professional skeptic and debunker of the supernatural, opens the narrative writing from a desert in hiding. He warns that powerful forces have already tried to kill him to prevent him from revealing what he calls a "cataclysmic knowledge" (2), an ancient mystery hidden in the Middle East that holds the secret behind the greatest evils in world history. His story begins at a lecture he delivers to fellow skeptics in New York City, where he dismisses the supernatural to a standing ovation.

After the lecture, a disheveled, anxious man in an old trench coat insists on speaking privately with Ariel. The stranger claims to have broken away from a group devoted to fulfilling the purposes of "the Dark One," the evil being the group serves. He produces an illuminated manuscript page written in an unidentifiable script, tells Ariel he is "the one" chosen to open the mystery, warns that possessing the page attracts mortal danger, and departs. Days later, Ariel learns the man, identified under the alias Max Yildirim, has been murdered, thrown from the forty-second floor of a Manhattan hotel with a note around his neck reading, "Thieves don't live long." When a detective contacts Ariel, revealing his name was found in the dead man's pocket, Ariel withholds the truth about their meeting. The murder convinces him the manuscript holds genuine significance.

Seeking help, Ariel contacts Lara Winter, a Christian museum curator specializing in illuminated manuscripts. Lara initially refuses, as Ariel has a history of mocking her faith and disrupting a seminar she organized about angel encounters. When he displays the page at the museum, she recognizes it as authentic but unusual: written in Koine Greek, an ancient form of Greek, and dating to the nineteenth century rather than the medieval period typical of illuminated manuscripts. Lara introduces Ariel to Professor Lorens Marinus, a Dutch scholar visiting the museum, who translates the text. The words reference a throne and an altar hidden then unearthed, language from the biblical Book of Isaiah's prophecy about Lucifer. The Altar of Pergamon, identified in the Book of Revelation as the location of "Satan's throne," was a colossal altar to Zeus in the ancient city of Pergamon in what is now western Turkey. In the biblical view, Zeus corresponded to Satan, making the Altar a satanic vessel. The professor urges Ariel to travel to Bergama, modern Pergamon, and persuades the museum to fund Lara's participation. Lara agrees after a vivid dream she takes as divine guidance.

In Turkey, they ascend the ancient acropolis, where a man identifying himself as a custodian meets them, already knowing their names. He explains that the Altar lay buried for nearly two thousand years while Christianity spread through the West, restraining the power of darkness, and that its unearthing reversed that restraint. He gives them a second manuscript page and departs. This encounter sets the pattern for the journey: at each destination, a guide appears who knows their names, reveals a portion of the mystery, and sometimes provides another manuscript page. Prophetic dreams guide some legs of their journey, while Lara translates certain pages to unlock clues.

In Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, a shopkeeper named Isik reveals that Carl Humann, a German engineer, discovered the Altar's remains and shipped the first pieces to Berlin in 1871, the same year Germany was born as a nation. That same year, the swastika was unearthed in the same region by a German excavator. In Berlin, a guide named Yaira explains how the Altar's arrival channeled satanic hatred of the Jewish people into Germany: the formal unearthing in 1878 coincided with the birth of the first anti-Semitic political party, and the word "anti-Semitism" was coined in 1879 as the first major shipment arrived. She reveals that the Altar's first reconstruction in 1888 coincided with Adolf Hitler's conception, and its completion in 1889 with his birth.

In Sarajevo, their guide Zoran traces the Altar's connection to World War I, showing how Germany's birth in 1871 set the war's causes in motion. He reveals how a German occultist named Rudolf von Sebottendorff founded the Thule Society, which gave birth to the Nazi Party. During a private conversation, Ariel reveals that his grandfather was a Holocaust survivor and that the incomprehensibility of such evil drove him to reject God; Lara shares that her faith arose from a genuine encounter with God during a teenage crisis. In Nuremberg, a boy reveals that Hitler's architect Albert Speer designed the Zeppelin Tribune speaking platform based on the Altar, acknowledging that the design was "influenced by the Pergamum altar" (105). The Pergamon Museum opened on October 2, 1930, which fell on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Alaina, a young Polish archaeology student they meet in Berlin, connects the Altar to World War II, tracing the conflict's seeds through the Treaty of Versailles back to 1871.

Throughout the journey, a parallel threat intensifies. An intelligence agent named Kazim Yarikan contacts Ariel early on, claiming to track a clandestine organization following them. Members of the "Guardians of the Throne," a group claiming descent from the ancient priests of Zeus, confront them repeatedly: a man warns Ariel in a Berlin hotel lobby, three figures threaten Lara in a Moscow elevator, pursuers chase them across Havana's rooftops, and their Italian cottage is destroyed by an explosion while they are fortuitously absent.

On a train to Auschwitz, a guide reveals that the Greek words holos (wholly consumed) and caustos (burnt) form "holocaust," making the Altar literally the Altar of the Holocaust. Near Birkenau's Gate of Death, Ariel discloses that his grandfather survived this camp, and Lara responds that the satanic nature of what surrounds them testifies to God's reality. Further guides trace the Altar's passage to the Soviet Union on May 1, 1945, the day after Hitler's suicide. In Trier, a guide reveals the Altar's connection to communism: Karl Marx, after moving to Berlin, transformed from a man of faith into an atheist who wrote Luciferian verses, and the Paris Commune of 1871 revived Marxism in the same year the Altar returned. Additional revelations connect the Altar to nuclear weapons, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall, and the European Union. Each possessor rose to dominance, waged war against the Jewish people and Christianity, and collapsed upon losing the Altar.

The climax comes when Kazim reveals himself as a Guardian of the Throne. He lures Ariel and Lara to the Pergamon acropolis under the pretense of safety, binds them, and prepares to sacrifice them on the Altar's ruins. With knives at their throats, Ariel prays for the first time since childhood. Three bolts of lightning strike: the first disarms the executioners, the second cracks the ground at Kazim's feet, and the third sends Kazim and two associates plummeting from the high place. The custodian from their first visit unties them and presents Ariel with the Gospel, explaining that if Satan is real, so must God be, and that the cross represents the "Altar of God." That night, Ariel makes his peace with God on the ruins.

In Jerusalem, their guide Meir reveals that the Altar of Zeus was first erected in the Jerusalem Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, a king of the ancient Seleucid Empire, as an act of desecration. Antiochus's ally King Eumenes of Pergamon simultaneously erected an altar on Pergamon's high place, and when the Maccabees, Jewish rebels, cleansed the Temple, only the Pergamon Altar remained. On Mount Sinai, Professor Marinus reveals he orchestrated the journey from the beginning and that Ariel is descended from Antipas of Pergamon, identified in the Book of Revelation as God's faithful martyr killed "where Satan dwells." During the professor's prayer, all the guides appear around Ariel and transform into radiant figures of light, confirming they were angels.

Ariel and Lara part in the Sinai Desert, sharing an emotional farewell and their first kiss. Ariel hints at wanting a different kind of journey together when they reunite. The next morning, he ascends Mount Sinai at dawn, sits on a ledge with his notepad, and writes the opening words of the book the reader has just finished: "I have come into a cataclysmic knowledge" (2).