Alphaeus reached out to gather Little Salome up to him.
"You don't worry," he said. "Once it was Cyrus the King who watched over us, now it's Augustus Ceasar. We don't care, because the Lord in Heaven is the only King we know in our hearts, and what man thinks he is King here on Earth, we don't care."
"But David was King of Israel," I said. "David was King, and Solomon after him. And King Josiah, he was a great King of Israel. We've known this for as long as we've known anything. And we're the House of David, and the Lord said to David, 'I will make you reign over Israel forever.' Isn't that so?"
"Forever..." Alphaeus said. "But who is to judge the ways of the Lord? The Lord will keep his promise to David in the Lord's way."
He looked away as he spoke. We were in the valley now. The crowd of those coming out of the mountains was large. We pressed together. "Forever... what is forever in the mind of the Lord?" he said. "A thousand years is nothing but a moment to the Lord."
"A King will come?" I asked.
Joseph turned and looked at me.
"The Lord keeps his promises to Israel," said Alphaeus, "but how and when and in what way we don't know."
--- Yeshua bar Joseph, age 7, conversing with his kindred (from Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt by Anne Rice, pp. 92-93