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CHAPTER THREE
YEAR 1733 BC
ONE OF THE CONTINENTS
LAND OF THE HITTITES
JACOB, who was the
second son of Isaac, who was the first son of Abraham the friend of the Lord,
and Jacob’s wife Rachel, and Jacob’s whole household, were traveling southward
from Bethel toward Bethlehem. Rachel, weary, leaning against this rock or that
tree, with every other fragile step, was heavy with child, and in the midst of
the rugged journey, Rachel’s foreboding hour of delivery had thus arrived.
Rachel travailed in
excruciating pain in a resisting birth for hours. Her misty eyes were waxy and
dimming of sight as the babe squeezed uneasily forth from the womb. Physically
spent in weeping desperation, she tried naming the infant. Her husband, Jacob,
in opposition, yet with sorrow flooding his benevolent heart, beholding her
silvering eyes, placed the tips of his fingers gently over her lips. “No, Rachel wife,” he
whispered in his low, sandy voice, “this babe Benjamin: Son of My Right Hand.”
Rachel’s colorless face and punctuated meditations
slid with uncertainty from her husband’s concern, but he returned his
concentration, and she squinted with halted effort toward him. “Oh,
Jacob...your eyes.”
He had raised his eyes toward the top
of a lofty mountain behind her and off in the distance. “I have vision,” he explained in a hushed tone, lips widened: “Golden
chest carried up to kingly city.”
Only an instant elapsed, and
as Jacob was shaking his head as if stirring from a hallowed dream, Rachel
died.
Not a score of years before
this heartrending day, upon this very land, where only several scattered but
kindred tribes were dwelling, Jacob had dreamt that he beheld a ladder set up on
the earth, and the top of
the ladder reached into Heaven. Overwhelmed by
that glorious sight, he had gazed in awe, as angels of God descended and ascended the ladder.
Fearing this tremendous vision of God, Jacob
had murmured, “How dreadful is this place! This, is none other than the house
of God, and—this—is the gate of Heaven.” Having afterward chosen and carefully erecting a sizeable but natural stone monument upon the earth beneath the
prophecy, Jacob gave
thought: Although unseen, how close Heaven is to man.
Time, however, not memories,
reminding him of his doleful responsibility, Jacob in solemn quiet buried his
beloved Rachel at the foot of his beautiful Mountain of the Vision,
within an area that would
someday be named and become part of a southern border of a
tribe called Benjamin. A short span of time after finishing his mournful
task, Jacob strolled meditatively away from his remaining family,
lifted his cheerless voice into the heavens above, and wept.
YEAR 1732 BC
VALE OF HEBRON
RACHEL’S HUSBAND, JACOB, now called Israel, dwelled at peace in the Vale of Hebron. His young
son Joseph, wearing a coat of many colors, sat
tranquilly before him, and Joseph’s brothers came, gathering themselves there,
as well.
“Father,” Joseph confided, maneuvering with his naked feet a large chunk of wood
and edging it toward the fire, “dream I yet other dream: Sun…moon…eleven stars
bow down to me.”
Israel, taken quite aback, looked at him, brows
descending, and sternly—very sternly, yet with eminent love toward his son. “This
dream you dream? Your mother, your brothers...me...come bow us down to earth to
you? Your mother dead!” Hence, Israel rebuked his son Joseph into silence.
Joseph’s brothers, with
jealousy churning in their soul, stared angrily at their young brother. Yet,
regardless of the expressions of contempt, and Israel’s resolute demeanor and disapproving words, Joseph pushed the large chunk of wood
another length, and turned to his own
deliberating: Father, you…mother...one flesh, told you me…you same flesh….
———
CONTEMPORARY ERA
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK
AMELIA, a faithful, blonde-haired, and rather petite wife of one
husband (now dead for many a year), a mother of three healthy and now
moderately wealthy children, a grandmother of four healthy grandchildren, and a
great-grandmother of many great-grandchildren; righteous in all of her customs;
abiding always in truth;
ever eager to teach prayer to the younger in the family; and daily
treating strangers well, died, and, after a period of time, arose back to Paradise.
“Light! That blessed light in
my ca—He heard my voice.
“God bless my grandson,” she
sighed peacefully to her hosts. “I’m home!”
Although she had no distinct
memory of the separation, she was now in her young, splendid body again: a
beautified mansion in contrast to the rotting, cancerous flesh she had worn for
so many years—but peacefully—incapable of complaining.
As her gladdened heart began
its contemplations of this living Heaven of living life, she asked the
inevitable but justifiably innocent question: “Do I deserve to go sit with the
Apostle Peter and hear him tell of his days with our Lord?”
“No Apostle Peter,” they
explained, “inhabits this field now.”
The young woman, puzzled,
rephrased her words. “I have a memory, thus could I possibly sit at the feet of
James or Matthew or John and listen to their stories of Jesus, for I know that
our Lord is here…but higher than here.”
Their straightforward answers changed
not. “They are not here, woman. No apostles of
Jesus are here; and we, too, have given mind to this.
“However, woman, talk did drift through here a season
ago a deacon called Stephen was here, yet they say he vanished. Not long
afterwards, a young man by the name of James appeared, whose greeters claimed
was an apostle of the Lord, Jesus. James spoke wondrous tales. Still, they say
he vanished likewise—and from their very sight. These were met by true men who
swore they recognized them, and those witnesses are here today. And these of
whom you speak...yes, and even Peter, they say have lodged here briefly—Young
lady…they have, every one of them, in their turn, vanished from here, without
trace….”
Amelia was undeniably
perplexed, yet still and serene in her modest deportment. “May I at least ask
you if my husband is waiting for me?”
“You will remember more as
you abide further, but seek not a husband. He will be along in a very short
spell, if he heard. Woman…if he heard, he will be here.”
Somewhat saddened, though unshaken
in her lifelong faith, Amelia took their uncomplicated directions and started
agreeably toward her prepared place in that Heaven. As she moved off in grace and peace from her saintly
reception, a man of the welcome called
compassionately to her.
“As with you, woman, we have
not lost faith. Just be happy with those accommodations you will remember and
those you will receive,
for hardly three among a dozen of the extremely few arriving here find for
themselves a hundredth of your reward, and they deem those meager comforts they
take possession of—miracles! But there is
he who is called Abraham, who will cheer your inquisitive affection. Ask
for him.”
———
YEAR 1495 BC
EGYPT
MOSES, of sound stature but terribly meek, filled with a gentle
but determined courage, stood fast by the side of his brother, Aaron, while an
annoyed, heavyset, and tawny-skinned Pharaoh, opening and shutting his anxious
fists, bending forward of the kingly throne, weaving and cording his fingers into virtual knots, listened
stubbornly to their supplicating words in the splendid hall of the palace.
“Let my people go!” Aaron
exclaimed, well rehearsed by his brother Moses, who had long ago forsaken the
king. “You have used them as slaves through your dark and malicious rule. You,
O Pharaoh, have done wickedness to us—”
“—And you, Moses and Aaron,”
Pharaoh snapped in a huff, “are hindering your own kinsmen, Moses and Aaron.
They shall remain my slaves. And because of you—Moses and Aaron, I shall double
their burden. Owing to you—Moses and Aaron, they shall corrode beneath my
heels, TIED TO MY VERY YOKE! Now leave me to my business!”
PHARAOH’S portending words were not without
deleterious deed. Nevertheless, as months dirged on, a
constant downpour of plagues in the land of
Egypt had at length reversed the pernicious heart in the king, and he at last
gave way.
“Take your whites…and your mingled
friends. Take your feeble nation, take all
your public, Moses and Aaron, AND BE GONE!” Pharaoh screamed, believing not his
own words.
WITH NARY A MOMENT’S
HESITATION, the Israelites first
secured a grandiose treasure from the troubled Egyptians and soon thereafter
began an extraordinary exodus from the land of slavery. Progressing swiftly
into an untamed wilderness standing wide and long-awaited before them, the
incredible myriad of souls numbered about six hundred thousand strong, not
including their thousands of children, the mingled companions, countless droves
of cattle and kine, and bevies of fowl.
AN EGYPTIAN MIND WAS
CHANGED, and a fevered chase ensued to the Red Sea. As Quid Pro
Quos would have it, however, because
Pharaoh had given his malevolent decree against the newly liberated, a
remembrance that the Egyptians had demanded the sons of Israel be drowned at
birth, enforced by Egyptian military; in like manner was there a command from
quite another Au-thority: indeed, a lofty Au-thority, and not the sons of
Israel but Pharaoh and the military sons of Egypt were drowned in the Red Sea—no floating
baskets provided.
THE INSPIRED PROCESSION OF
ISRAEL wound its humble yet
emancipated way through an endless corridor of the vast and unpredictable
wastelands, with their iron rattlings and scuffling hustlings and scurrying
bustlings, and millions upon millions of footprints raising miniature swells of
dust with each downward stamp of an urgent sandal.
The dispatched caravan alone,
spreading haphazardly across the forefront of their excited and singing
multitude, spanned six hundred feet and broadened to more than a thousand
hither and thither as the parade of unshackled life strode into their new and
unshackled world in a joyfully disordered assembly. Along with their rickety
carts, sagging litters, rumbling wagons, and lowing herds, they stretched
noisily the equivalent of seven and a half meandering miles across the rambling
desert, presenting an eagle’s-view impression of a multi-hued caterpillar, presented by man and beast
crawling leisurely into an all but concealed destiny.
MONTHS HAD FLED, seemingly as fast as the Israelites had fled and, after
the chosen of the Lord were at last secure, Jethro Hobab, Moses’ father-in-law,
having traveled tirelessly from the steep, igneous mountains of Midian, down to
the great camp of Israel, had delivered Moses’ wife, Zipporah, safely back to
him. Nonetheless, the descent of Zipporah did not sit well in the prideful
heart of Miriam, Moses’ sister, for Zipporah, Moses’ wife, was a black woman of
Ethiopia.
“Why must this unclean cousin
of Egypt have to dwell among us?” Miriam cried. “Have we not had
enough of their spiteful ways while under
those merciless thumbs from
which we have finally rid ourselves?”
Aaron, Moses’ brother, stood by Miriam’s side.
“—The
Lord, delivered us,” Moses declared meekly; “—we, have done nothing other than
the blood...out of faith…nothing, aside from the blood, and the spoiling of
their wealth.”
The LORD spoke suddenly to
Moses and Aaron and Miriam, “Come out you three, unto the tabernacle of the congregation.”
Whereupon, the LORD came
down in the pillar of the cloud, stood in the
door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam aside. The Lord reprimanded
them severely, His anger kindling against them, and He departed; and the cloud departed from the
tabernacle.
And,
behold,
Miriam
became leprous,
white
as snow
Upon hearing Moses’ cry,
“Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee,” the Lord said unto Moses, “If her father
had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut
out from the camp seven days, and after that, let her be received in again.”
Words
blazed forth from
hasty lips throughout the entire camp. “Miriam sinned!” resounded everywhere
there was a voice. “She liked white so,” an old
tanned and wrinkled woman murmured, “the Lord gave her a dose of white all
right. And now she would rather have healthy flesh of who cares what color than
be in her way. The Lord
deals with sinners, y’ know,” the old and wrinkled woman asserted frigidly as she ducked quickly into her booth.
BEFORE PARTING FROM THE CAMP of the Israelites, Jethro Hobab, Moses’ father-in-law, suggested to Moses the
construction of the world’s first national
judiciary assembly. In this manner did all the tribes of Israel thereafter remain.
DWELLING in the
curtained tabernacle of the wilderness, in the midst of the swarming camp, was the Ark of the Covenant,
designed by the Lord God, built by the hands
of men. Moses had placed in the golden Ark the Ten Commandments (on two stones
engraved by the everlasting Finger of the Lord), a golden pot filled with a portion of the manna God had sent down
from Heaven, and Aaron’s rod that budded.
The assemblage referred to
the manna as the corn of Heaven: food of the Heavenly angels, translated by the
barn-load from inside
Heaven and into this world, from God to the children of God, who were spared the savage torments that had
infested the desolated land of Egypt.
The Ark was to be revered
with a warning of strong cautions, for the mysterious power surrounding the Ark
was hurled into the two eldest sons of Aharown, and
they were now dead. Nadab and Abihu had mocked the Law of Moses by burning
strange incense carelessly before the Arown of the Covenant.
Although time had passed and
was to pass, not a soul among the congregation of the Lord had lost from their
memory the day Moses descended the mountain, with those Ten Commandments of his
God, embraced so carefully, for Moses’ face had glowed more brilliantly than the center-glow
of a tall candle, and the people feared him.
Moses thereafter would remove the veil from his face only upon entering the
Holy Place to stand before the Lord. From the day he returned with those stones of Law, until the day he
was taken up and hidden by the angel of the Lord, when dealing
directly with those in the encampment, Moses
wore the veil.
Behold,
the skin of his face shone;
and
they were afraid to come nigh him
YEAR 1455 BC
CITY OF JERICHO
THE ISRAELITES had enjoyed their freedom from the violence of Egypt for
many seasons. By the time they came upon a walled city called Jericho, the
Lord’s stern decree of forty years in the wilderness had met its exacting
fulfillment. Remembering his promise to Abraham and to Moses, the Lord God of
Israel, the Lord of Hosts, utterly condemned and destroyed the City of Jericho,
and would forever, from that time forward forever, avoid
administration of activities within the boundaries of the City of Jericho. With
this, Moses’ successor, Joshua the son of Nun, adjured them at that time,
saying, “Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this
city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his
youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”
———
CONTEMPORARY ERA
WHEN THE
YOUNG MAN RETURNED,
the resident was still hanging loose in front
of the store, talking with three of his friends. As they chatted, the young man
walked his animal to a point approximately forty feet west of them, and left her standing alone on the paved edge of the road. The animal stood patiently
in her place, not tethered, but motionless, as the man came forth and entered
the store.
By virtue of the Earth’s rotation,
several minutes dissolved into an eternity to
be, and the man exited with a chocolate candy bar and stepped into the sunlight. With his
back leaning gently against the outside wall
of the store, he lowered his torso carefully until relaxing flatly upon his
leather thongs.
The young man sat silently while eating his candy.
When the confection wrapper could offer no more flattery to the tongue, he rose
effortlessly to his feet, released the bodiless wrapper into a waste
receptacle, and walked to his animal, but no farther. He raised his thumb, and
the very first vehicle: a beat-up blue jalopy of a pickup truck screeched to a
halt. The driver alighted from the cab, lowered the tailgate, and allowed the
animal to hop into the bed of the truck. The
young man entered the cab, and westward they drove. He and his animal
had not stood hitchhiking long enough for the resident to light a cigarette,
and now the hiker was gone. This spectacle
happened so fast that the resident thought he had encountered a dream, and its memory immediately engraved
itself into his highly impressionable heart.
The strange part of this
whole quasi-Shakespearean scene: Habit was, no stranger ever visited those
hills without being interrogated by at least one of them good mountain
aristocrats. Outsiders were suspected of you name what, until the local boys
got used to them. The resident’s hardcore, beer-drinking buddies sputtered not
the laziest three-letter taunt to the young man: not a word. Not the toughest
of mankind could speak to him, as though an impenetrable window existed between
him and anyone standing near him. The resident could not grasp the peculiarity
of the situation: A
stranger in this territory, and everything’s peaceful? Stranger yet, the young man had used a tiny nugget of gold
to pay for his candy bar, a nugget he modestly explained to the surprised
clerk, “I just found….” She said his soft voice was amazingly courteous. She
could not describe the graciousness of his voice to a tee, but she did say,
“The nugget would have paid for forty candy bars!” For a solid week, the young
man was the principal talk of the town. The entire community knew he had walked among them, but not a soul could
utter a single word to him.
———
YEAR 1077 BC
LAND OF ISRAEL
WITH THE
BOLDNESS OF A HE-LION, King Saul, a fierce and mighty man of
the tribe of Benjamin (and there was not among the children of Israel a
goodlier person than he; and from his shoulders and upward, he was tallest
among all his people) had ruled the tribes of Israel for twenty-three untamed
years. Saving that war was now pending within the borders encompassing the
land, all was at rest.
In
those same days, into the sprawling
war-camp of the king came running a young and scrawny lad called David: the
youngest son of Jesse the Bethlehemite; and David admired both the Lord God and
the king. David, pleasant to catch sight of and until this time tenderhearted
in his nature and just thirteen robust years of age, was bringing parcels of food his father had
selflessly prepared and sent along for the
feeding of three of David’s older brothers—assigned within the war camp of
Israel.
Young David, wearing little
more than a leathern girdle, raced eagerly through the countless and twisting avenues of military tents and
shelters, hopping and sidestepping inactive instruments of war lying randomly before the wind-flapping openings of the
closely quartered lodgings
of the soldiers. Upon delivering the tasty breads and the meats from his father into the hand of the keeper of the carriage, and finding the army was going forth to the fight, and
shouting for the battle, David ran into their midst, found, and saluted his
three older and powerfully built brothers. As he talked with them, an enormous
giant, Goliath by name, a Gittite, came near to the camp of Israel, spitting the same raging defiance into their faces, as he had in the past, and shaming all
the men of Israel.
The soldiers of Israel fled
from before the giant; and as they did, David spoke with the men that were near
him, and asked, “What shall be done to the man that kills this Philistine?”
“It shall
be,” they replied, but in haste, “that the man who kills him, the king will
enrich him with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his
father’s house free in Israel.”
When Goliath approached the
very army of Israel (who was yet fleeing from him), David heard him for himself
and found this champion of terror to be a terror indeed. The Spirit of the
Lord, however, entered young David and made him now a fierce countenance
against the giant. Offended by David’s manifest enthusiasm, his three brothers
hated and mocked him outwardly. “Go back. Go back, David! Get on back and take
care of your lonely sheep, boy…!”
NEVERTHELESS, after he had gained by witness the grace of King Saul,
young David remained in the camp. Moreover, having convinced and impressed the
king by telling of experiences with wild beasts and steadfast confidence in the
power of the Lord, David was allowed to leave the muted war camp—and three older
brothers darkening behind a wicked veil of jealousy. Moving ever so faithfully
through the subtle botany of the peaceful vale, with purple-veiled mountains,
topped as if they were half-opened eyelids distantly guarding the commanding
valley set before him, David prepared to challenge Goliath.
Although in the observation,
bravery standing tall, David was not entering without concern the vast and
unconstrained arena. He paused: Jonathan’s armorbearer helped slay twenty
Philistines recently. Joseph’s brothers, wanting to kill him, sold him into the
hands of the Ishmeelites,
depending on them to do away with him; Esau hated his brother, Jacob, and
wanted to kill him; Abel killed by his
brother, Cain… David was aware of the sibling rivalry existing without pity,
and this rivalry often led so far as to the grave itself, and that, without
regard.
He moved farther into the
great Valley of Elah, and spying a small brook, David walked first to its bank,
And
he took his staff in his hand,
and
chose him five smooth stones
out
of the brook,
and
put them in a shepherd’s bag
which
he had,
even
in a scrip;
and
his sling was in his hand:
and
he drew near to the Philistine
Goliath (with his
shield-bearer before him, his blood-hungry army having descended the mountain, returned to its foot
and, intimidatingly close behind) sat blustering in the open field in the
midst of the fertile lowland. Surveying
through penetrating eyes from
right to left and from left to right the war camp of his chosen enemy (having descended their mountain), Goliath soon observed this mere adolescent of a boy actually approaching him. The
giant rose himself indolently to his feet,
stared in unbelief, arched a crooked finger toward the incoming foe, turned and laughed hoarsely at his shield-bearer, turned again and began to draw pugnaciously near to
young David.
“Am I a dog, that you come to
me with a staff? Come to me, stripling,” he growled impudently and with a
thunderous voice, “and—I—will give your flesh to the fowls of the air!”.
Without quiver in bone or
sinew, David glared across the field and
into the adamant face scowling upon the huge Philistine. “This day,” David
yelled back, “will—the Lord—deliver you
into my hand. And, I will take your head from you and give the
corpses of your armies to the fowls filling the air and to the beasts lying
wait in the field, so all the Earth may know there is a God in
Israel!”
David shook his head in disgust.
“Ahhh!” he breathed and, not allowing a doubt
to impede his forecast, burst into an impatient and high-speed run, astonishing the boisterous giant into
a glinting sneer of loathing. Goliath’s
shield-bearer, a flurry of steps in soft retreat, distanced himself from the
ensuing contest.
With the fierceness and rage
of a warrior, David’s naked feet applauded the solid earth beneath them
swiftly, mocking at fear and, as they swallowed up the ground, were neither
afraid nor turned back from the sword. Looking neither to the right nor to the
left, with his head lowered into the wind, yet his eyes upon the enemy, David flung his staff with
all his might westward in an abdicating fashion, reached deftly into his bag, drew forth a single smooth stone and, in the
run, stuffed it quickly into the pouch of his sling.
The Giant (his eyes following
the path of the airborne staff, confused as to why this stripling had so cast
off his weapon) gyrated his left fist in a swirling and self-confident manner. “AAAAAHH!” young David roared, as
Goliath turned, refocusing his bewildered
attention back toward his oncoming foe; but with a powerful and solitary
overhand swing of its cords, David had already loosed the smooth stone from its
leathern cradle, and had sunk the granite missile deep into the forehead, which
shrieked into the brain of the suddenly descending human colossus. Blood shot
bitterly through the lids
of Goliath’s instantly bloating eyes exploding with flashes of brightly lit flares and searing pain; and as his
failing loins relaxed themselves, the braggart crumbled, convulsing to his
watery knees, falling forward flat on his face to the earth!
David’s racing feet did not
pause but finished their awesome run with a valiant leap onto the hairy, sweaty back of—his, newly depopulated giant. Undaunted in his pursuit, David
unsheathed his ex-opponent’s sword, sprang gingerly to the ground; and with the
arcing swing of a trained executioner sliced the steel angel of death through the sun-filled air,
descending its razor-sharp edge as a strike of
lightning through the neck of the Philistine, skillfully cleaving the master of
the house from its forthcoming corpse. Bouncing with a quick hop and a tumble
off the ground, the titan’s massive head plopped earthbound with a dull thud,
and settled, glaring obliquely into its own now shivering jugular.
Goliath’s eyes reflexed with
twitching and wincing. His broad and thick open lips curled as if they were
soft billowing waves of the high seas, with tongue attempting to form soundless
words, as his lips and his tongue pursed outward and drooled and pursed outward again and sputtered
their fine sprays of saliva and blood,
bodilessly: Cannot rea — for — my shou — lers — Canno ree — fr m — shou — ler —
ersssssss…. As these oblivious nightmares
danced hideously upon the terrified face fronting Goliath’s head, a sickening
wet gurgle rattled with a grim, unsettled noise within the fluttering throat at
the end of the giant’s humbled remains. The earth and the giant’s spastic shoulders and
horror-ridden face splashed abruptly with a
viciously loosed river of gushing warm blood mingling with certain ungodly quantities of chugging
stomach upheavals. Headless and bodily dead
was he, and now dead for certain in the sight of the Philistine army!
Unyielding in his spirit, but
not forgetting the conditions that surrounded him, young David again leaped off
the grasses and onto the giant’s dismembered carcass; and, staring calmly into
the soul of Goliath’s shield-bearer, David began to reach slowly and
instinctively into his shepherd’s bag.
The shield-bearer took note
through a squint of his eyelids, spun, and ran in dread toward his camp.
Discovering his brothers fleeing down the Valley of Elah and into the far
horizon, the shield-bearer drove his speeding legs all the faster. The enemy of
Israel was now firmly beneath the soles of young David’s feet!
GOLIATH’S
DISCOLORING HEAD
swung as if it were a sheafed lead pendulum
(the top of its long locks of black hair tied firmly around a staff leveled and
pointing in the same direction as the dead nose), hanging from a staff slung over David’s left
shoulder, gripped tightly within his tanned fist as he returned to the war camp of Israel. As the young warrior approached
the army of his people boldly (his three older brothers mingled at its
forefront, with alternating and sober gazes), David, with his right hand
jiggled the four remaining stones—openly—and viewed with
hyphenated distrust the eyes of his father’s sons.
His three older
brothers, Eliab the firstborn, and next unto him, Abinadab, and the
third, Shammah, looked first at young David, regarded the stones in his hand,
considered the severed head of Goliath—his dead carcass now yellowing, filling
with squirming flyblow—and, taking all these formidable exhibits prudently into
account stumbled wisely to the side, allowing him to pass. David was now a
young man of war, an awfully cunning young man of war!
REMEMBERING that the death of Goliath would surely give life to an
inevitable victory, the whole army of Zion chased the Philistines into the
realm of the grave, looting their belongings quickly afterward! As the last of
Israel streamed across the great Valley of Elah, they could see from their
distance the multitude of fowl and the beasts and the lions in the fields of
those fearful days tearing
and clawing violently away at the flesh of the damned. The Lord God had in a stroke delivered David a son of
Jesse the Bethlehemite,
and the whole House of Israel, from the enemy bent on the destruction of His chosen.
DAVID rushed
fleet-footed to his tent and promptly secured the giant’s armour within, lest
scheming or jealous men with second thoughts were to consider instigating
against the young warrior’s magnificent victory.
And
as David returned
from
the slaughter of the Philistine,
Abner, the son of Ner, the captain of King Saul’s host, took
him, with the head of the Philistine in his hand, and brought him before Saul.
In a time to come, David would take the slowly drying (but fly.less)
head of Goliath to Jerusalem.
The
hand of God and years of adventure had
established David as King in Israel; and, regarding his three older brothers
and Jonathan the son of King Saul, King David took his son Solomon aside and
taught him this relative proverb.
A
friend loveth at all times,
and
a brother is born for adversity
YEAR 701 BC
LAND OF ISRAEL
THE CHILDREN of
Israel cursed and mocked at the warnings of Isaiah the Prophet and laughed him
to scorn.
———
CONTEMPORARY ERA
STATE OF ISRAEL
AL-QUDS WAS NOW BURNING out of control. Members of Hamas and related organizations
were running madly, scurrying, scrambling over their brothers, accelerated by
their disdain, their unadulterated hatred swelling their veins, torching every
tangible element in their path, murdering helpless tourists, Jews, fleeing
Christians, and even their own, without the slightest regard.
The Fundamentalists had gone
wild, tempestuous of thought, raging in their minds, savage frenzy and utter
confusion in their hands.
Allah had turned against them. “The bomb!” a man screamed. “The bomb! Is Zayed guarding the bomb?” Since the rising, not a man cared or
could give a damn! The sole theme in their racing hearts was the destruction of al-Quds
and the people of the Book.
The
night cometh,
when
no man can work
———
YEAR 601 BC
LAND OF ISRAEL
THE PRINCES of
Israel mocked and cackled at the warnings of Jeremiah the Prophet and threw him
bodily into a dungeon.
———
YEAR AD 1939
AUSTRIA
JOHN esteemed the mountain range serenely beautiful as he led
his llama along a narrow and winding trail toward a tiny village nestled at its
end. Curious and glistening eyes were exposing star-like blinks through shaded
clusters of thickly leafed boughs upon high and spreading branches and the low
and edging foliage on either side of the blossoming corridor, inspecting the
travelers and their briefly unoccupied footprints strolling deftly into the
dusty ground. Talkative brooks were composing and comparing infinite melodies
and endless songs into the whorls of ripples, plunging their
ever-newly-arranged notes lightly over and around smooth cobbles and heaps of
little pebbles. The Apostle had trekked these lush and vibrant hills in the
past, but those days were so long ago, so very, very long ago.
———
YEAR 1
LAND OF ISRAEL
A
COLLECTION OF SHEPHERDS were in the fields, compassed by a chilling wind beneath a cold and
emotionless moon, watching their flock by
night as a ewe gave birth to its lamb. The ewe did deliver well, the
shepherds decided, though the wet and shivering lamb bleated in sad confusion
through the frostbiting night and had wandered aimlessly for five detached
minutes until it had at last found warmth near the breast of her beckoning
mother.
The following morning was
warm but breezy, a variety of dry leaves were playing tumbling games across the
pastureland, and dancing flippantly between striding legs of shepherds; and, in
the midst of this frolic of nature, a cheerful, old gray-haired Jew with his
littered-burro came a waddling side by side down from the City of Jerusalem.
Finally entering the green and rambling
meadow, the old Jew meekly approached the shepherds, bartered for but a flick
out of time, opened his leathern sack and, with a shekel and a broken shekel,
selected and purchased from the grazing flock a young lamb without blemish. The
old Jew, to redeem himself from his recent sins, would have a priest at the
temple built in Jerusalem offer to the Lord God this fine and spotless lamb.
With the wooly and wiggling sacrifice
in tow, tied tight to the wobbly litter, the
old Jew, with the burro drawing the lamb-laded framework, shuffled off to their
germane destination. As the aged customer and his living train were disappearing
into the purple, awakening hills, the shepherds returned to their everyday
tasks. Becoming more reflective of the depth and breadth of his duty, one of
the shepherds smiled and praised loudly, “If not for the thousands of saviors
we and our brethren watch over, we Hebrew children of God would go to our
graves—unredeemed. Thank the good Lord for the covenant of God, my brothers. Peace! And meal to be bought!”
———
…and
the virgin’s name was Mary
And
the angel came in unto her, and said,
Hail,
thou that art highly favoured,
the
Lord is with thee:
blessed
art thou among women
thou
shalt conceive in thy womb,
and
bring forth a son,
and
shalt call his name JESUS
Mary puzzled at hearing these
words. “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”
“The Holy Ghost,” the angel
replied, “shall come upon you,
and because of this, that holy thing, which shall be born of you, shall be
called the Son of God….
The angel further told Mary
that her cousin Elisabeth was now with child, and it would not be long before the babe was born. These words now sealed within her guileless heart truly
inspired Mary to visit Elisabeth. Keeping her angelic visitation to herself,
Mary prepared immediately to leave.
And
Mary arose in those days,
and
went into the hill country with haste,
into
a city of Juda;
And
entered into the house of Zacharias,
and
saluted Elisabeth
When Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, for Elisabeth's eyes were waxing dim, and she could just see a feminine silhouette in the open door, the babe leaped in her womb, and Elisabeth became filled with the Holy Ghost. Having stepped slowly through the open doorway, and having turned and viewed Mary's face in the sunlight, and taken completely by this inner power of Holy Authority, old Elisabeth spoke out with a loud and commanding voice: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb… And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Blessed is she
who believed, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.”
These Holy Words of prophecy
fully penetrated Mary’s soul, and she grasped her own stomach instantly, her
young eyes widening into a blissful glaze and, nearly breathless, she bent in
the middle and leaned forward, steadying herself at the edge of the kneading
table. “The very moment…you said blessed is the fruit of my womb…, Elisabeth—I
was filled. The power of the Highest has overshadowed me, as promised
me. The word—The word you
have spoken has come upon me, and now furnished am I. Now a mother! My
soul does magnify the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For he has regarded the low estate of his
handmaiden, for behold,
from this very moment onward, all generations shall call me blessed. Now, Mary was with child, as so with her cousin Elisabeth, and no one could remark with reproach.
TWO YEARS AFTER THE BIRTH OF CHRIST
LAND OF ISRAEL
JERUSALEM
NIGHT HAD BLANKETED the sleepy land by the time the wise men had exited
cautiously from behind the walls of the luxurious palace of Herod. The chief
priests and the scribes knew where the Messiah was to be born, they had
answered that correctly, but they knew not how to interpret the sacred
scrolls: God had not opened their intellectual eyes. The wise men, having
waited two years before traveling to Jerusalem, and reasoning: “The Holy Scriptures revealed that our Messiah
will come out of Bethlehem,” again studied
into the arching heavens of all the Land of Israel. The star was nigh, and the
star was low: the oracular star of salvation….
There
shall come a Star out of Jacob,
and
a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel
The Sacred Scriptures were more exact
than at first perceived. The Prophet Micah had
written: ‘out of Bethlehem…shall
he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel,’ not in
Judah, but in
Israel—Nazareth, Israel—and all Israel! Certainly, the star would radiance the north of Judah—in Israel.
Allowing the star of the Lord
to guide them (rather than the misleading guesses offered by Royal Clergy), the
wise men, after securing the peace of the family, entered the house of Joseph
and Mary in Nazareth, Israel.
And
when they were come into the house,
They
saw the young child with Mary his mother,
and
fell down, and worshipped him:
and
when they had opened their treasures,
They
presented unto him gifts;
Gold,
and frankincense, and myrrh
Days before leaving their eastern
seaside domicile by the tower, the wise men had decided, “We will
bring him gold, for it is written: ‘…they
shall make the Ark of the Covenant of shittim wood…of this and that
dimension, and they shall overlay it with pure gold…they shall make upon it a
crown of gold round about.’ Moreover, we will bring him gifts of frankincense, for it is written: ‘Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and onyacha, and
galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense…thou shall make it a
perfume, and put it before the Ark. It shall be unto you most
holy.’ We will bring him myrrh, for it is written: ‘Take thou also unto thee three principal spices, of pure
myrrh…with other spices, and thou shall
make thee an oil of holy ointment…and thou shall anoint the
Ark of the Covenant.’
“By these,” the wise men
concluded, “the world should be made to understand the mighty personage and the
royal name and supremacy of this begotten King, who is to rule the prophets and
now all Israel: the voice from above the mercy seat of the Ark—the Lord of
hosts—the Son of God.”
———
YEAR 1494 BC
THE WILDERNESS OF SINAI
MOSES took the anointing oil and anointed the tabernacle of the
congregation and all that was therein and sanctified them therewith, and the
ark of the testimony, and Aaron, the first high priest of the children of
Israel, and his sons, and consecrated them that they might minister unto the
Lord in the priest’s office. Following the blessing of the Holy Ark of the
Covenant and the sprinkling of Same, and the act of the consecration of the
holy sacrifice, the heavens pealed.
And
for an unclean person
they
shall take of the ashes
of
the burnt heifer of purification for sin,
and
running water shall be put thereto
in
a vessel
And
a clean person shall take hyssop,
and
dip it in the water, and sprinkle it...
upon
the persons that were there
———
YEAR APPROXIMATELY AD 30
LAND OF ISRAEL
Then
will I sprinkle
clean
water upon you
JESUS WADED a short
distance into the shallow shore waters of the Jordan and was baptized by Prophet John the Baptist, whose coming had been prophesied by the prophet Ezekiel. With the anointing accomplished, Jesus’ face was peaceful, content, and more compassionate than ever, as He turned and waded straightway and onto the cool shoreline. As He stepped onto the bank of the river, there came a voice from Heaven.
TIME PASSED, AND AS JOHN THE
BAPTIST, the son of a white-haired
temple priest, stood dutifully warning his listeners of the menacing harms, which could
without warning be cast upon them lest they repented,
he was arrested by soldiers of Herod and dragged hastily off to prison. John,
while the presiding angels of God hid the spirit of agony, was afterward
beheaded with the sword by reason of a woman. Herod’s wife, Herodias, had
cursed the Lord’s prophet to the sword, not unlike the curse of long-dead King
Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, in her prophecy against Elijah the Tishbite prophet, who
the Lord had ordained to presage and prepare His coming into His glory.
And
Jesus increased in wisdom and stature,
and
in favour with God and man
NOW, UPON THE THIRD DAY, there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus (who
was wise, tall, strengthened by His trade, and
in favor with God and man) was there. What is more, both Jesus and
his disciples, men having listened recently to the wisdom of this carpenter, were called to the marriage.
When they wanted wine, the
mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”
Jesus replied to His mother,
“Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour is not yet come.”
Seemingly disregarding her
Son’s words, His mother called upon the servants. “Whatsoever he says to you,
do it.”
Jesus raised His eyes toward His
mother, Who is this speaking? and
beckoned to the servants. “Fill the waterpots with water,” whereupon, they
filled them up to the brim.
My
son, hear the instruction of thy father,
and
forsake not the law of thy mother
NOT LONG AFTER THESE DAYS, Jesus came to a man named Matthew, also called Levi, the
son of Alphaeus, sitting at the receipt of custom. Jesus said to him, “Follow
me,” and he arose and followed Him.
IN LEVI’S OWN HOUSE, he set in order a great feast for Jesus; and many
publicans and others sat with them. The scribes and the Pharisees, who were
among the company of the feast, taking keen note of the mixed assemblage,
solicited busy-bodily to his disciples, “Why does your master break bread with
publicans and sinners?”
With this graceless incitement under way, they likewise, but in muffled tones, protested against Jesus’ disciples, saying, “Why
do—you—eat and drink with publicans and sinners?”
When Jesus heard this, He
said to them, “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but
they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance. But go and learn what that means, and I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice.”
Sitting and inclining near
the end of a crowded table, a quick-witted disciple leaned toward another,
softened his brows, and touched the man’s shoulder. “Just how righteous does a
man have to be, before God gives him enough perfect health to avoid our
sacrificing physician?”
———
THERE WAS AN OLD MAN
of delicate build, modest attire, and meager possessions, who they referred to
as the elderly rabbi, enjoying the days of his declining years in peace,
beneath the roof of his timeworn yet sturdy little house of sunburned brick,
when his only son, a very
rich man, tall, lanky, and clothed in colorful new robes, who had followed not in his father’s Faith-filled
calling, entered through the doorway.
“Father, how comforting it is
to find you here!”
“Batsa, My son! Shalom!
Shalom! Come over here by the light of this window, and let me see you.
How are you this day?” his father invited joyfully, greeting him with a hug,
and a kiss on both cheeks.
“Oh, I do not know, Father,”
Batsa asserted, but somewhat snobbishly. “ If it were left to me—”
“A little
louder, my son. The daughters of music sing lowly these days.”
“If it were left to me, Father,”
Batsa accentuated, but with more intensity, “I would retrieve the dust of my
fields from the heads of my laborers. They steal my land with the help of their
friend—the wind.”
“But the poor also are they
who purchase from your fields,” his father declared, handing him a large
red pomegranate. “They support you,” he laughed, “Let them have a pinch of dust
with your melons.”
“—I, would give them not a
spent spew of my breath,” Batsa raved, as he lifted the pomegranate to his distorting lips. “A more useless lot could not be found, Father. The weakest prince
from our temple would give me a worthier profit from the bend of his back than
ten of these, these slothfuls do while they are bending theirs to drink free
water from—MY—brook!”
“Oh, you are so wrong, my
son,” his father replied amiably, attempting to placate this scene and move
himself toward an old oaken bench by a well-used reading and scribing table.
“Few men born into wealth would work, or even stoop himself low enough for the
wages his own help receive.”
Glaring at the old man, Batsa steamed instantly
defensive, “Father! Why do you always take their side? Am I not your son?”
“Batsa,” the old rabbi contended
as he leaned his torso to the bench, “not a soul favor I in this matter of your
heart. But I am familiar with the princes well enough to—”
“The princes! The princes, Father,” Batsa cried
sharply, “I am a prince, and I do my laborers a service by providing this toil
to fill their pockets, and their worthless hours. They should be grateful that
God has placed a man of my position before them.”
“Batsa…” the aging rabbi pleaded, “stop
and consider,” adding a humble smile: “The poor men of your
fields are constantly striving to beg your
sympathies, by their labors—Oh, why do you joy so at bringing me grief every
time you visit?”
“I joy not at bringing you
grief, Father. But they steal the soil of my land, in their shoes, and do not
give the slightest thought to shaking it from their feet before they depart at
night. I hate—”
A body rose, spindly knees straightened, and a burning
slap fell deftly from the old rabbi’s open hand—burning across the rich man’s
puckering mouth. “Get out of here! Get out of my house, and do not return. You
are no longer my son. You bring shame upon the whole house of Levi!”
“But, Fath—”
“You pant after the dust of the earth
on the heads of the poor,” his father rebuked,
“and turn aside the cause of the meek. Your reputation is spread over the land
as dung, as you and your very son have gone in unto the same maid to profane the Holy Name of God.
I pray for you, my young Levite—Now get out of my house!”
“But, Father, you don’t
believe—”
“Get out of my house, I said.
Now get out of here!”
———
CONTEMPORARY
ERA
WORLDWIDE
SEISMOGRAPHICAL
READINGS the
world over were ringing violently: Carlsbad, New Mexico—seven points Richter;
Brasilia, Brazil—ten
points Richter; Virginia Beach, Virginia—twelve-points Richter; Taichung,
Taiwan—nine points Richter, to mention only an incredibly few locations where Destruction was
caressing her new family of victims.
The world was slowing. International clocks were being reset a
minute slower, by subterfuge; and the blue and green Earth’s populace, fearful
of their very life, was wondering, panicking, considering new yet uncertain
destinations.
Although many
were enduring the tremendous discomforts, the sun shined brightly and hot: hotter onto the flesh of
both the poor and
the rich, the weak and the strong: hotter by ten and twenty degrees
above normal. Manufacturers of sun-repelling clothing (foil-shielded fabrics
lined with lightweight linens and cottons) were profiting greatly, covering the
fearful who found courage to walk the streets; and scientists were now
predicting temperatures as high as a hundred and twenty-five engine-blowing,
doorknob-scalding degrees daily to hit the summertime areas of the Earth
within a month. “But you have no need to panic,” was heralded ingeniously
through the news media: “Government astrophysicists have concluded that this phenomenon
will last only about another three months, after which, the usual weather patterns will return.”
———
YEAR AD 31
LAND OF ISRAEL
JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES sailed over to the other side of the sea, into the country
of the Gadarenes and the Gergesenes. When Jesus had disembarked the ship,
immediately a man who was living
in the tombs met Him: a man filled with a legion of unclean spirits.
Seeing Jesus afar off, he ran and worshiped Him. Jesus said to the unclean spirits, “Come out of the man, you unclean
spirits.”
Now
there was there nigh unto the mountains
a
great herd of swine feeding
And
all the devils besought him, saying,
Send
us into the swine,
that
we may enter into them
Forthwith, Jesus gave them leave, and
the unclean spirits went out of the man and
entered the swine (about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down a steep place and into the sea
and was drowned.
Those who kept them fled and went their ways into the
city and told everything, and what had befallen—to the possessed of the devils.
And,
behold,
the
whole city came out to meet Jesus:
and
when they saw him, they besought him
that
he would depart out of their coasts
for
they were taken with great fear
Jesus and his disciples entered a ship and prepared to
pass over to the other side of the lake. While in the midst of their brief
journey, the apostles broke their timid silence, and spoke among themselves.
“Those who came from the city,
did you see their eyes? They were as the man at the tombs before Jesus cast out
those devils. And those devils, same as those men from the city—feared the
presence of the Lord. Do you suppose those unclean spirits Jesus had loosed to the swine…after drowning
the swine—Do you suppose they…?”
I
have spread out my hands all the day
unto
a rebellious people
A
people that provoketh me
to
anger continually
Which
remain among the graves,
and
lodge in the monuments,
which
eat swine’s flesh,
and
broth of abominable things
is
in their vessels
Which
say, Stand by thyself,
come
not near to me;
for
I am holier than thou.
These
are a smoke in my nose
Behold,
it is written before me:
I
will not keep silence, but will recompense,
even
recompense—into their bosom
———
IN THE EARLY MORNING,
Jesus came again into the temple, and the people came unto Him; and He sat with
them, and taught.
Putting a despicably filthy
plan into action, a small band of scribes and Pharisees (half of them missing
half their grimy and crumbling teeth; and half of them missing half their
grayed and thinning hair; and half of them missing more than half their expired and long-buried youth) brought
to Jesus a woman taken in adultery; and when
they had set her in His midst, they confronted Him.
“Master, this woman was taken
in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses commanded us in - the - Law, that such should be stoned, but what do you say?” This
they said, tempting him, that they might find a reason to accuse him.
Jesus, however, kneeled and, utterly
ignoring them, as though He had full and
repulsive knowledge of their collective deed and had heard them not, with His
finger, wrote upon the ground.
10
9
8
7
6
Only half pacified but now
rather disoriented, the scribes and the Pharisees lingered on the subject until
Jesus lifted Himself and
frowned lightly at those who had taken the woman in adultery.
“He who is without sin among you, let
him first—cast a stone at her.”
These words spoke Jesus as if
He were giving them a choice, and He again kneeled and wrote upon the ground.
5
4
3
2
1
Those who heard these symbols
of righteousness speaking out of the ground and into their heart, convicted by
their own conscience, withdrew themselves a man at a time, beginning with the oldest even unto the
last—figuratively as the tenth unto the one.
The glorious finger of God
had written the first set of laws on tables of stone; and now the finger of God had written
them again, on the stony dust of the ground at the temple, and into
the hearts of the woman’s accusers, laws
neither the scribes nor the Pharisees could attain to…let alone throw—dis.regardless.
But
if I with the finger of God cast out devils,
no
doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you
———
Then
he called his twelve disciples together,
and
gave them power and authority
over
all devils, and to cure diseases
And
he sent them to preach the kingdom of God,
and
to heal the sick
And
the apostles, when they were returned,
told
him all that they had done
———
JANUARY 1998
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NEW YORK CITY
“APOSTLE OF EVIL,” U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy declared as he sentenced Yousef Ramzi to spend the rest of his life
in prison. “Two hundred and forty years…!”
“Yes, I am a terrorist and am
proud of it,” Ramzi retorted. “I support terrorism as long as it is used
against the United States and
Israel. You are more than terrorists; you are butchers, liars, and hypocrites.”
Ramzi’s protracted prison
conviction followed separate trials against him for the nineteen ninety-three
World Trade Center bombing,
in which he played a key role in the ruthless murders of six human beings and the injuring of a thousand others,
and the fatal bombing of a
plane flown by Philippines Airlines in the year
of nineteen ninety-four. Moreover, Yousef had contributed plans as a major
player to blow up innumerable U.S. airliners.
And
the great dragon was cast out,
that
old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan,
which
deceiveth the whole world:
he
was cast out into the earth,
and
his angels were cast out with him
Ramzi had arrived in the United States
and had joined himself to a hornet’s nest of Islamic extremists who were already purchasing
chemicals, planning to destroy the World Trade Center. The night of the bombing, Yousef’s cowardly feet
tired of the United States, leaving behind
vehement letters threatening more terrorism and denouncing United States’ support of Israel. During the
first thirty days after the attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
arrested more than a dozen Islamic extremists. Finally, in nineteen
ninety-five, Ramzi was subdued easily, jailed
in Pakistan and, soon afterward, deported to the United States.
In addition to the decree, the judge
foreseeing a possibility that someone could
possibly be “perverse enough to buy your story,” imposed a four and a half
million-dollar penalty against Yousef Ramzi and ordered him to pay two hundred and fifty million
dollars in compensation so moneys from potential book or movie
contracts would go to the families of the
unfortunate victims.
Before fully closing the
session of light, Judge Kevin Duffy leaned his elbow on the bench, and peered
over his glasses. “You are a follower of death and destruction…your god, your
master, your one and only devotion. …I recommend, Yousef…you remain in solitary
confinement for the duration of your entire sentence. This treatment is
reserved for people like you, who spread plague and pestilence throughout the
world. Court’s adjourned.”
And
I saw an angel come down from heaven,
having
the key of the bottomless pit
and
a great chain in his hand
And
he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent,
which is the Devil, and Satan,
and
bound him a thousand years
And
cast him into the bottomless pit,
and
shut him up, and set a seal upon him,
———
YEAR AD 31
LAND OF ISRAEL
…the
Lord appointed other seventy also,
and
sent them two and two
before
his face
into
every city and place,
whither
he himself would come
And
the seventy returned again with joy,
saying,
Lord, even the devils
are
subject unto us through thy name
Smiling lovingly at hearing
these words, Jesus said to them,
I
beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven
The seventy awed among themselves, “How
could Jesus be here on the Earth and yet at the same time
be looking at us from heaven? Truly, what
manner of prophet is he…?”
Remembering a past
conversation, a young man by name of Shemaiah, numbered among the seventy
disciples, added to this observation. “Nathanael, of the countless others like
us, told me not long ago, that when the Apostle Philip heard Jesus speaking at
Bethsaida, not far from Bethabara, where John was first seen baptizing—where Elijah the Prophet had
once walked—Philip went near a half-day’s
journey from Bethsaida to Cana and found Nathanael sitting beneath a fig tree.
Philip beckoned him to take the day and return with him ‘…and meet this Jesus,
this man of whom Moses wrote.’ Shortly after they arrived and stood in the
Lord’s presence, Jesus told Nathanael, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were
under the fig tree, I saw you.’ So you see, my brothers, this Jesus of Nazareth
has looked at us from heaven, on others, long before he looked upon us
casting out Satan.”
Additionally inspired,
another responded. “Nathanael spoke those same words in my ears and told me
further that the Lord told him, ‘Truly, I tell you, From now on you shall see
heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.’ And Nathanael, since that
day, has witnessed the body of a dead man, whose spirit of life had
ascended off the Earth into God, and the Lord
bringing the spirit of that dead man back to him. And remember, Jesus had first
told Nathanael, ‘upon the Son
of man’: as though it was—upon the Son of man’s command!”
JESUS, while
teaching in the treasury of the temple, riled the pride of a group of indignant
Jews, and they lashed at Him with an insulting pretext. “You are not yet fifty
years old, and have you seen Abraham?”
Jesus’ eyes did not flicker
as He listened to their jeers and, as they ebbed, He replied. “Truly, truly, I say to you,
before Abraham was, I am.”
Believing these words to be
blasphemy, the Jews took stones up immediately to cast at Him; but Jesus hid
Himself, went from the temple, progressed subtly through the midst of his
accusers, and so passed by the offended.
His disciples scurried along behind; but as Jesus was
moving swiftly through the ample halls and corridors, He, seeing a man who had
suffered blindness from his birth, came to a sudden halt. His disciples, in
fear of the Jews and amazed at Jesus, urged Him to move on with haste. “Master,
the Jews are set to kill you, and you prevent your steps—here?”
Their fretful pleas not prevailing,
however, they at last gave in to His fearless compassion and motioned
to Him and to he who was blind,
Master,
who did sin,
this
man, or his parents,
that
he was born blind?
A gentile watching from the midst of the throng heard
the disciple’s words, and pondered: Where could the blind man have lived to sin
before he was born? What is this Jesus teaching these men? Furthermore, a man
named Nicodemus, witnessing this unusual affair, gazed at his rabbi companion.
“That Rabbi Jesus a good while ago had told me no man had ascended into Heaven,
unless he had first come down from Heaven; and I believe I am now beginning to
understand what he meant, I believe so….”
The gentile overheard
Nicodemus, tapped him on the back, and spoke softly. “You are a master of
Israel, have you ever read a verse written in the books of your Faith, that
tells you, men of this world were first in a sort of heaven?”
Nicodemus half-turned toward
the man. “Now, it seems so, my friend,” he whispered, but raised his voice slightly, somewhat agog. “The Lord’s Prophet Jeremiah
wrote: ‘A glorious high throne from the
beginning is the place of our sanctuary…and they that depart from me shall be
written in the Earth…’ Only today am I beginning to comprehend these things.
But if Paradise—is Heaven, to where we Jews hope to someday ascend, Adam
and Eve, our Earthly parents, to be our Earthly parents must have first met
with banishment from Heaven—or Paradise, as the case may be. What is more, I
did hear John the Baptist say this Jesus is the true Light, which lights every
man coming into this world. John’s words are becoming more reasonable as
I stand here. According to them, we came into this world…apparently from
somewhere, but somehow through our mother’s womb. But let us listen to Jesus….”
Jesus considered the blind
man, the disciple’s question, raised his eyes, and enlightened all of His
followers. “Neither this man nor his parents have sinned; but, while it is day,
I must work the works of he who sent me, that the works of God should be
made manifest in
him. The night is
coming, in which no man can work.”
When
he had thus spoken,
he
spat on the ground
and
made clay of the spittle,
and
he anointed the eyes of the blind man
with
the clay
“Go now” Jesus comforted,
“and wash in the pool of Siloam.”
The blind man went quickly on
his way therefore and washed and returned—seeing.
The multitude rejoiced
unboundedly and, as they did, a young and stout disciple widened his lips into a broad smile and
whispered to a couple of nearby friends,
excitedly. “If the blind man had no sin and was
created without his eyes full in tact, God—owed him his sight!” The stout disciple’s mind was reeling with awed
perception, and his tongue could not be stopped. “Our master here did that
which the Lord did during The Creation, when he formed Adam.” The young follower nearly fainted in
adoration, his whispering words streaming
steadily into the ears of his companions. “He
formed man of the freshly misted dust of the ground—clay, yes? Jesus’ spittle
was as the mist that went up from the Earth in the beginning and watered
the whole face of the ground. Now the flesh of Jesus himself is from the dust
of the Earth, as with all of us. But this time, the mist of the Lord descended,
and the dust of the earth rose up and repaired the face of this man. Jesus just
completed the work—of God himself!” The young
man was beside himself with praises for Jesus. “From the clay that Jesus’ misty
spittle made from the dust of—this ground, he just now created and formed and
put into this man’s head—his missing eyes!”
SOON AFTER THIS PROCESS OF
CREATION, a gathering of Pharisees
confronted the man who was born blind and made to see. “This man is not of
God,” they declared jealously of Jesus. “Give God the praise. We know
this man is a sinner.”
Unilateral grilling showered
from between grimacing teeth of the Jews and the Pharisees; but at length, and
as though touched by the Holy Ghost, the blind man who was made to see, wholly unable to contain himself
anymore, spoke. “Now we know, God hears not
sinners; but if a man be a worshipper of God—and does his will—him he hears.
“Since the world began, was
it ever heard that a man opened the eyes of one who was born blind. If this
man were not of God, he could do nothing.”
Provoked to the quick by this
straightforward allegory, which publicly inferred that these miracle-deficient religious leaders were obviously not of God (or they themselves might have long
ago healed the blind man), the Pharisees spat indignantly back at him, “You were altogether born in sins,
and do you teach us?” and cast him
out of their resentful, publicly exposed, and jealous sight.
The
diseased have ye not strengthened,
neither
have ye healed that which was sick,
neither
have ye bound up that which was broken,
neither have ye brought again
that
which was driven away,
neither
have ye sought that which was lost;
but
with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.
the
cup
provident WAS THE DAY THAT
ARRIVED wherein
the mother of Zebedee’s children approached
with her apostle sons, James and John; and they worshiped Jesus and desired a
certain thing of Him. She, the mother of Zebedee’s children, inquired directly.
“Grant that these, my two sons, may sit, the one on your right hand and the other
on the left, in your kingdom.”
The children of Zebedee, wide-eyed and
innocently paraphrasing their mother’s request, entreated the
Lord, as well. “Grant unto us,” they petitioned, “that we may sit, one on your right hand and the other on your left hand, in your glory.”
Jesus beheld the children of
Zebedee, their eyes aglow with naive anticipation. “You know not what you ask.
Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with
the baptism that I am baptized with?”
“We are able,” James and John
exulted delightedly as Jesus placed his hands upon their shoulders and searched
affectionately into their youthful eyes. “You shall drink indeed of my cup,
and with the baptism that
I am baptized withal shall you be baptized. But to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine
to give, but it shall be
given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.”
———
DEEPER INTO THE SEASON OF
HEALINGS, Jesus came at last to the
edge of Jericho, a stormy-looking city, and healed a blind beggar. From there
and among the marveling throng, Jesus entered and passed through Jericho, restoring
not a soul within its borders. At the far side of Jericho, the city his servant
Joshua had cursed centuries ago, He cleansed another blind beggar, and others,
of their afflictions.
NOW, ON A CLEAR MORNING, when Jesus and His disciples were coming from Bethany, as
they returned to the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus hungered.
And
seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves,
he
came, if haply he might find any thing thereon:
and when he came to it,
he
found nothing but leaves;
for
the time of figs was not yet
Moved intentionally by the
Spirit, Jesus said to the fig tree, “Let no man eat the fruit of you hereafter
forever; and let no fruit grow on you henceforward forever.”
Jesus’ disciples heard His
prophetic disclosure, contemplated it, and amazed, “Seems as if our master,
when he cursed the fig tree, was staring straight through it and directly at
the temple. Will this
temple, here in Jerusalem, be someday altogether vacant, void of fruition?”
In a sweet, soft voice, Jesus
preached to His chosen. “If you have faith and doubt not, you might say unto
this mountain, ‘Be removed,’ and if you believe, it shall be done for you.”
The Apostle John, the
young—and more surprised—brother of the Apostle James, was sitting upon the
earth before Jesus, and with the hearing of these mystifying words from his
Master, his eyes grew wide with awe: Could this mountain of the Lord’s House be
removed—by the command of a man? Why...? When...?
DURING His glorious transfiguration on the mount, in the presence
of Peter, James, and John, when God told the apostles to listen to His Son,
rather than to Moses or to Elijah, Jesus’ face glistened as the brightness of
the sun, His raiment white as the light. As they descended the mountain, toward
the plain near its mid plateau, following the foot-worn trails of the herdsmen,
His disciples mentioned that the scribes had claimed, that before the Messiah
could arrive, Elijah must come first. Jesus turned toward His apostles. “Elijah
is indeed come, and they did to him as they desired, just as it was described
of him in the Scriptures.” The apostles looked at one another, a true aura of bewilderment shading their guileless countenance, “Described of him in the
Scriptures? Where in the Scriptures…?”
They wondered further the
significance of Jesus’ words, when He had told them and other of His disciples: “I
tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of
death, ‘til they see the kingdom of God.”
“Was the Kingdom of God going
to manifest within a week or a year?” they queried among themselves. Other parables equally did the apostles astonish at as their Master spoke.
———
YEAR AD 1994
SIX CYLINDERS beneath the hood of a Ford van smacks of economy, but the
six in that old eighty-two ran as though it were an experimental model released
accidentally from the factory. The thousand-thirty-odd miles were finished, and
gas and oil receipts totaling sixty-five dollars and eighty-six cents were now
tucked in a tattered envelope in the motor cover’s compartment, as the driver
pulled to the curb and a parking meter.
Although as exhausting as an
interminable marathon, the sojourner’s trip had proven to be near perfection,
but for one day in the midst of his miles. He had entered a truck stop
restroom, scrubbed his teeth, which were besieged with decay, convinced himself
they revealed evidence of years of neglect and too many sugary candies; with
his hands dished the water from tap to mouth; gargled twice and, raising his face
to the mirror, moaned pathetically. “…how long do I have to live like this?”
That was a dragging day, a
disillusioning day, a day in which the horizon of hope was sinking faster than
the sun. Confused, half depressed, anxious, doubtful of his next action, his
next home, his next
adventure, the transient had driven as if carried by a blinding wind of perplexities. That listless day had blended itself into
an indifferent night absent of even a single
star of gilded optimism. His confidence in his world-without-end lay barren
before his misty gaze; white highway line after white highway line had raced
past the side of his van; and those lines were yet winging toward him relentlessly through
the darkness of his blinks. Ultimately, he
laid his wired self onto his bed for that timeless medicine we call sleep.
Lifting his finger to the
side of his head, he, in a pensive fit of depression, his naked feet shoving
the blankets to the wall of the van, had pretended to blow out his brains,
filled with wrath at the
weak mortal that he was, though alive and certain he would remain in that condition. Another lonely hour shoveled
into the blast furnace of life, and he finished that melancholy night in an
agitated tossing of intermittent slumberings.
THE COAST OR BUST; or bust what? Yet, here
he was, finally, though
nearly out of funds, in a looming cloud of discouragement, standing before that un-enchanting cafe across from that
un-enchanting park by that un-enchanting ocean, with ever-dilute recollections
of his friend and his gracious assistance, budding in his un-enchanted mind.
———
YEAR AD 32
LAND OF ISRAEL
JESUS’ BRIGHT AND BRONZY
COMPLEXION contained the variant hues
from His entire heritage, and not a prejudice bone lived in His holy Body. He
was walking under the Nazarite vow of which Moses had written in the Scroll of
Numbers. Moreover, approaching the third year of His Earthly ministry, Jesus’
black, bushy hair had grown to His waist, and His beard in like fashion; and
the third Passover within Jesus’ ministry was drawing nigh.
His
head is as the most fine gold,
his
locks are bushy,
and
black as a raven
…thy
hair is as a flock of goats,
that
appear from mount Gilead
For nearly two years, Jesus
had preached eternal life, healed the sick, and raised the dead. Nevertheless,
the abundance of the fruit from this Tree was not yet to evolve. Once He had
left a particular coast, many Sadducees and many others would scoff at His
every word. “Behold the rubbish this troublemaker teaches about living
forever,” they would smear into the hearts of those who had listened
hope-filled to the Lord, “—only a fool would follow. Those new things he
preached had nothing to do with what Moses meant when he gave us the laws and
the statutes, which, if a man,” speaking mockingly, a wrinkling of adamant
lips, “walks them all perfectly, he indeed will live on, as you see us do, and
we know our destination—just as you know yours!”
PASSOVER had arrived, and at the end of Jesus’ last supper with
them, tired, young John
(the brother of James) leaned his curly and wheat-color-haired head upon
Jesus’ breast and listened to both Jesus’ heart and His words. “Until now, I
have spoken unto you in parables, but the time
will come when I will no longer speak to you in parables, but I will
show you the Father plainly.”
The rest of the apostles
(absent of the apostle Iscariot, who had departed the upper room in haste
before the night had ended, but to merge himself into the night—and its
end) mingled their roundabout
scrutiny at their Master, His words; and, in His sweet, soft
voice and loving manner, after having lifted his eyes to Heaven, Jesus,
in the midst of praying to His Father, spoke these extraordinary words:
“I pray for you to keep my apostles in this world, but keep them from the evil. I pray for them also
which shall believe on me through
their word…so they, too, may be one, even as we are one.”
the
cup
AT THE END OF THE HOLY
REPAST, Jesus, going before His eleven
apostles, faint sounds of their sandals descending the outside stairs
attached to the house, led them up into the Mount of Olives. There, Jesus took
aside with him Peter and James and John to watch with Him, and went and kneeled and wept in prayer, even as a frightened child might weep, and was heard
in that he feared.
“Abba…Abba!” Jesus sobbed.
“O…my Father, if this cup may not pass from me—except
I drink it…thy will be done.
In this fateful night, in
spite of the observable note that the enemies of God had fallen backward as though slain
by the Spirit, them who opposed Jesus (after a
betraying kiss and the healing of an ear) took Him peaceably from the hill and
Jesus’ distressed apostles,
and led Him to be tried before the numerous courts, false or ignorant, and the many false witnesses of those days.
Although, through these
exhausting ordeals, His accusers had no foreknowledge of the effects of their heinous actions,
the Law of Moses, and of the prophets—had and
would be fulfilled.
Faithful
are the wounds of a friend;
but
the kisses of an enemy are deceitful
YEAR 1494 BC
WILDERNESS OF SINAI
And
he shall lay his hand
upon
the head of his offering
YEAR AD 32
LAND OF ISRAEL
JERUSALEM
AS THE PRIESTS INTERROGATED JESUS, the sin-filled men in
the court, and the horde of false witnesses roving vulturously about with their
wide-open palms, randomly bashed Jesus’ face whensoever they pleased. Mixing
their jealous hatred along with their desires, they whipped Jesus with
unparalleled ferocity; and they spat upon Jesus and coiled their fingers into
His beard, as prophesied in the Isaiah Scroll, ripping great locks from Jesus’ face, attempting to make
fruitless His Nazarite vow. Furthermore, since
the Man did not heavily bewail His miseries, they held Him tighter, beating Him
all the harder: slapping Him, with their huge swinging palms, striking His
blindfolded face as if severely punishing a harmless lamb—laying their vicious
hands upon Him for every past sin ever committed by those drawn of the Father.
But
he was wounded for our transgressions,
he
was bruised for our iniquities:
the
chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and
with his stripes we are healed
Those that belittled the
goodness and the charity of the Man beat and spat upon Him repeatedly until He
was wet with blood and all their contemptuous filth; and they hated Him with
all their vengeful, spiteful might.
I
gave my back to the smiters,
and
my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair:
I
hid not my face from shame and spitting
HAVING
BOUND Jesus WITH CORDS: “Lies are a
bargain against the price of a sword!” the Jews led Him hurriedly from the
palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and afterward delivered Him
to Pontius Pilate, the governor.
Pilate saith unto the chief
priests and to the people: “No fault do I find in this man.”
And
ye shall offer that day
when
ye wave the sheaf
an
he lamb without blemish
PONTIUS PILATE FREED
a scantily attired Barabbas: son of the fathers—the
result of the priests—and Barabbas fled into the wilderness, lest Pilate should
change his mind and call him back. The Law of Moses was again fulfilled:
And
Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats;
one
lot for the LORD,
and
the other lot for the scapegoat
But
the goat,
on
which the lot fell to be the scapegoat,
shall
be presented alive before the LORD,
to
make an atonement with him,
and
to let him go
for
a scapegoat into the wilderness
THE SOLDIERS (uniformed for public duty, sanguine belts of Roman armor
compassing their waists, and helmeted if there should happen to be a Jewish breach in the peace) took
Jesus into the common hall, and tore His
clothes sadistically from His body. They tied Him tight to a stone column, lashed Him fiercely, and
spat upon Him, showing no mercy whatsoever. Upon loosening Him,
they, as if He were the high priest, covered Him with scarlet and purple robes, and shoved a scabrous reed into His
right hand, and worshiped Him, mocking and spitting upon Him, again…and again…
Thy
throne, O God,
is
for ever and ever:
the
sceptre of thy kingdom
is
a right sceptre
Again, they whipped Jesus,
loving the redness at the end of their whip. If they could, they would
willingly draw the blood of every Jew in Palestine, doubly from those who were
perpetually rebellious against Rome. Mocking Jesus in a feigned worship, they
kneeled before Him,
laughing hysterically, and slapping one another’s back.
From an elevated garden
between the hall of Judgment and the common hall, a sniggering soldier of their
band had cut and braided a vicious crown of stabbing thorns; and now, with a
quick twist and an evil yank, wrenched it around the top of Jesus’ head,
tugging the twisted wreath downward and deep into Jesus’ flesh, until it
reached to the middle of His nose. With a deliberate flick of the soldier’s
wrist, he twisted the crown again, laughing all the harder at this jocular
sight until weak and nearly blue in the face, his avid peers following
equivalently in the thoughtlessness.
and
they bowed the knee before him,
and
mocked him, saying,
Hail,
King of the Jews
Now, Jesus stood before them,
battered, whipped, trembling from weakness. His head bowed humbly; the shabby
robes hanging loosely upon His torn body; the reed held gently in His lightly
shaking hand; the piercing crown tilted at the middle of His face—They spat
upon Him again and snatched the reed out of His hand and swatted it across His
head. “—Fool of the Jews!” the soldiers cried with a roar as they
threw his clothes back in His face.
Jesus stared calmly and did
not move. Yet reeling from their buoyant conniptions, the soldiers flinched and
paused abruptly and sobered at this seemingly cold response. Their mouths fell
silent as they put Jesus’ garments back upon Him, rotated the crown of thorns gently
to the level of His forehead, and, taking Him by a frail arm, led their
Prisoner again to before Pilate and from there to the hill of sorrow, to be
nailed to the timber of sorrow.
ascending THE HILL to the
Holy Altar of the Earth, Jesus reeled exhaustedly beneath the weight of His
heavy Cross: a butchered shin of a wide-forked-topped, rising-center-trunk tree hacked and
trimmed of its lesser limbs and shaved at its base to oblige the mouth of the
readied cavity in which it would be planted. They steadied Jesus back to His
path and selected a man of Cyrene, called Simon, to tow Jesus’ withered
accommodation the rest of the way.
But
I was like a lamb or an ox
that
is brought to the slaughter;
and
I knew not that they
had
devised devices against me, saying,
Let
us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof,
and
let us cut him off from the land of the living,
that his name may be no more remembered
Jesus was bleeding and in
severe and biting pain from the uncountable wounds His assembly of mountaintop accusers
and the soldiers of the courts had lain upon Him. Nonetheless, a Law had seen
its keeping—Jesus was in shreds.
And
he shall lay his hand
upon
the head of his offering
UPON THE HILL, the soldiers had stripped Jesus of His clothing again,
and He was now naked as a sheered Lamb. The Condemned was as thin as the shadow of a stalk of tall
grass at sundown, and weak through the long abstinence of food during His
ministry.
I
am gone like the shadow when it declineth:
I
am tossed up and down as the locust
My
knees are weak through fasting;
and
my flesh faileth of fatness
Having regained their
contemptuous dispositions, the soldiers shoved Jesus’ utterly mutilated body to the harsh ground,
and kicked and rolled Him onto the gravid
wood. The frenzied multitude, incited by the priests, the scribes, the
Pharisees, and the Jews scorned and laughed, and the soldiers kept mocking as they held
their victim tightly against the rough grain. They teased savagely the flesh of
His palms, with the biting points of the nails before bearing their full weight
slowly down upon them. The legion of unrestrained oglers, many having traveled purposely
from the country of the Gadarenes and the Gergesenes, crazed themselves into a wild-eyed madness. Jumping with riotous applause, they laughed as the
sweating, grinning soldiers pushed the iron rods of judgment finally through the
hands of our Lord—pinned as a Ram to a thicket. “More blood…!”
Jesus went limp in horrid misery, but
did He utter a word? No:
He
was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet
he opened not his mouth:
he
is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,
and
as a sheep before her shearers is dumb,
so
he openeth not his mouth
Jesus lay naked and torn in pieces upon that sardonic tree: the center bough three spans past Jesus’ head. A painful respite to be assured, but as Jesus gazed in tremendous suffering, yet silent through His tears and into the open skies, the soldiers callously grabbed His ankles and nailed His feet and His miraculous hands firmly to the ruggedness of the Cross. As they did so, the Holy Carpenter beheld a haloed and full-feathered, pure white dove flying overhead in the sun-filled day.
At length, as the impatient soldiers were raising the
Cross carelessly into its final, vertical
posture, Jesus lowered His vision gradually down from the heavens and
onto the swarming souls beneath His feet: the flock that had brought Him to the
slaughter.
His
eyes are as the eyes of doves
by
the rivers of waters,
washed
with milk, and fitly set
The bottom of
the Cross had not yet descended into its socket, so the
soldiers, as they balanced the weighty post, kicked and shoved at its base
until it fell with a violent thud to the low, granite floor
of the hole, wracking hideously the very soul in the Man
above.
I
am tossed up and down as the locust
The jagged mouth cresting the
hole was an inch larger than the base of the tree, giving the upright trunk a
slight nod toward the East. Jesus, draping somewhat forward and off-center,
hung awkwardly from the nails. The taunting masses were beside themselves with hysteria. Jesus’ bleeding
head hung toward His bleeding chest, and His
bleeding knees melted from the weight of His shivering, bleeding body, dripping its innocent ruby
sacrament onto the weeping Earth.
Father,
forgive them;
for
they know not what they do,
spake He, thrashed,
disfigured, and battered as He was.
For
he shall grow up before him
as
a tender plant,
and
as a root out of a dry ground:
his naked
flesh parched mercilessly by the sun, and bent of body.
…he
hath no form nor comeliness;
and
when we shall see him,
there
is no beauty
that
we should desire him
As if murdering Jesus was not
enough to appease their hate-adorned agenda, the chief priests stood mocking
Him, shaking their fists violently at Him, insulting Him, and saying among
themselves with the scribes, “He saved others—and look at him—himself
he cannot save!” “And why,” another jeered with cutting maliciousness, “can he
himself not personally forgive us, as he taught his disciples to pray, but asks
it of his father…who or wherever he is? We know exactly what we’re
doing!”
He
is despised and rejected of men;
a
man of sorrows
Although the day was
reasonably mild, as He hung from our family tree, the sunlight took a
predictable toll from Jesus’ naked flesh; and, by late forenoon, the fiery crimson was evident between His innumerable opened wounds.
Behold
the fire and the wood:
but
where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
And
Abraham said, My son,
God
will provide himself
a
lamb for a burnt offering
YEAR 1490 BC
WILDERNESS OF SINAI
IN THOSE days in the wilderness, every law
touching the sacrifice was to be executed
without diminish:
And
two turtledoves, or two young pigeons,
such
as he is able to get;
and
the one shall be a sin offering,
and
the other a burnt offering
YEAR AD 32
LAND OF ISRAEL
JERUSALEM
Then
were there two thieves crucified with him,
one
on the right hand, and another on the left
THE FIRST THIEF,
crucified next to Jesus, was a spiteful man. The other after a short
while began speaking kindly to the Lord,
knowing his own punishment was a just reward for his crimes,
And
he said unto Jesus,
Lord,
remember
me
when
thou comest into thy kingdom
Jesus heard the fervent plea
moaning from the conscientious thief. Nonetheless, instead of speaking of hopes
befitting His kingdom, and because the Psalms had declared of Him: “I will open
my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old,” and that it would
again be written of Him: “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude, in parables; and
without a parable spake he not unto
them,” Jesus spoke a proverb of
Paradise to the thief.
YEAR 1490 BC
WILDERNESS OF SINAI
IN A SWEET, soft
voice from between the two cherubim joined to the lid upon the golden Ark of
the Covenant (built by the hands of men), the Lord communed with His great
prophet and friend, Moses Ben Amram.
YEAR AD 32
JERUSALEM
THE LORD looked
down from His Cross, which was fastened between the two thieves who were
likewise joined to the lid of the place Golgotha. John, His youngest apostle,
stood silent at the side of Mary, the grieving mother of Jesus.
When
Jesus therefore saw his mother,
and
the disciple standing by, whom he loved,
he
saith unto his mother,
in a sweet, soft voice,
“Woman…, behold…, your son…!”
Then
saith he to the disciple,
“Behold…, your mother...!”
John gaped wondrously
bewildered at Jesus and the sound of His words for an expressionless yet
distilling moment: Is Jesus beside himself? Why is he calling himself my
mother? Lowering his eyes toward Jesus’ weeping mother, Mary, John believed he
now comprehended the will of his Master....
Not long before this
barbarous day, Jesus had received the transfiguration in light by the hand of His Living Father.
Now, the children of grave darkness were
transfiguring Him in the blood he was giving from the fountain of His soul. Now
He possessed not a comfort
from this heedless world, for He had given every one of them back to this heedless world, and freely; but
thousands upon thousands
of those attending the Holy Passover at Jerusalem, having
traveled to the Holy City from all the winds of the civilized world, still wanted—wanted—plethorically…!
And
it was about the sixth hour,
and
there was a darkness over all the Earth
until
the ninth hour
And
the sun was darkened,
and
the veil of the temple
was
rent in the midst
YEAR 1490 BC
WILDERNESS OF SINAI
IN THOSE DAYS in
the wilderness, every law concerning the sacrifice was to be executed without
diminish:
When
either man or woman
shall
separate themselves
to
vow a vow of a nazarite,
to
separate themselves unto the LORD
He…shall
drink no vinegar of wine,
or
vinegar of strong drink,
neither
shall he drink any liquor of grapes,
nor
eat moist grapes, or dried
All
the days of his separation
shall
he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree,
from the kernels even to the husk.
YEAR AD 32
LAND OF ISRAEL
JERUSALEM
My
God, my God,
why
hast thou forsaken me?
… … …
Immediately after considering these words,
Jesus cried,
I
thirst!
Upon hearing Jesus’ sorrowful
petition, a principal person standing near the forefront of the multitude
hastened and fetched a wicked bucket of gall and dipped a dry old sponge deep
within its putrid interior. Laughing toward his inquisitive audience, in
addition, the principal person poured vinegar into the sponge,
and
put it on a reed,
and
gave him to drink
JESUS had earlier
refused the vinegar offered Him as He made his painful way to the crucifying
ground:
And
when they were come
unto
a place called Golgotha,
that
is to say, a place of a skull,
They
gave him vinegar to drink
mingled
with gall:
and
when he had tasted thereof,
he
would not drink
Now, however, the Lord was
nailed firmly to His Cross, the darkness would soon be gone, the sun would soon
be shining, and He knew He had to conclude His Holy Vow.
When
Jesus therefore
had
received the vinegar,
he
said
It
is finished
Thereupon, with a shrill,
with a loud voice, with a thundering scream, Jesus shrieked into the heavens—
FATHER
INTO THY HANDS I COMMEND MY SPIRIT
and
having said thus,
he
bowed his head,
and
he yielded,
and
he gave up the ghost,
having died the death of every one
of you who would believe.
THE PROCEDURE OF DEATH HAD TAKEN ITS TOLL of the moment. Darkness fled from the Earth, and the sun
shined again. An
incredulously howling laugh spat from a ruler of a preeminent synagogue in Jerusalem. An extremely fat priest, clothed in purple and fine linen, having fared sumptuously that morning, whose
hair had long ago preceded him to the grave, though middle-aged, whose rotting
teeth seemed desperate for like but surviving neighbors, flamed out at the
straining public. (The extremely fat priest hoped to inflict even more
confusion but this time into the hearts of those standing among the throng, who
may have believed and trusted
in Jesus, His miracles, and His words.) “YOU UNDERSTAND NOW, MY PEOPLE?” screamed the extremely fat priest, clothed in purple and fine linen, having fared sumptuously that day. “This man had sin and
was filled with sin. If he were not, God would not have turned his face from—this—this self-proclaimed
savior of yours. God would have verily heard
his pitiful screams and his crying, and your Jesus—Hear me…! Your Jesus would
not have died!”
For
he hath not despised
nor
abhorred the affliction
of
the afflicted;
neither
had he hid his face from him;
but
when he cried unto him,
he
heard
Scores of onlookers, who
heard the middle-aged fat priest’s self-acquittal, doubted the priest and his
many pastors and the Pharisees and their preachers and their pious clergy and
the scribes, and their opposing doctrines, for the populace knew in their hearts
the priests and all their hypocritical princes would surely die, as well. They
are indeed infected with sin, even as we are this very day;
they are no different, the not-so-naive
thought to themselves: But this man…this man was a righteous man.
Why did the Jews have to kill this rabbi? Son of God or not, they
still murdered a righteous man—if the truth ever be told, a righteous
man.
NEEDLESS TO SAY, not a mortal standing, sitting, or laughing upon that
hill could see the ghastly afflictions lying hungrily at bay and beneath the
feet of the multitude of Jesus’ accusers and their seed and their seed and
their seed (His blood be on us, and on our children.), and those who
mocked His presence, and their seed and their seed…
They
gave me also gall for my meat;
and
in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink
Let
their table become a snare before them:
and
that which should have been
for
their welfare,
let
it become a trap
Let
their eyes be darkened, that they see not;
and
make their loins continually to shake
Pour
out thine indignation upon them,
and
let thy wrathful anger take hold of them.
Let
their habitation be desolate;
and
let none dwell in their tents
For
they persecute him whom thou hast smitten;
and
they talk to the grief
of
those whom thou hast wounded
Add
iniquity unto their iniquity:
and
let them not come into thy righteousness
Let
them be blotted out of the book of the living,
and not be written with the righteous
———
The
earth opened and swallowed up Dathan,
and
covered the company of Abiram
BY REASON OF those three shame-filled hours of darkness—by two
or three witnesses the matter is established—an additional day had slipped passed quite unnoticed. Now,
a dead Body hung in the place of a skull, rather to say by the Spirit: in place
of death and above Goliath's hidden skull. Moreover, owing to this unique arrangement of time, it was now by the
eternal laws of God—the Sabbath Day! Nevertheless, a very celebrated Law was
again fulfilled:
But
at the place
which
the LORD thy God shall choose
to
place his name in,
there
thou shalt sacrifice the passover
at
even, at the going down of the sun
———
And
it shall come to pass in that day,
saith
the Lord GOD,
that
I will cause the sun to go down at noon,
and
I will darken the earth in the clear day
And
I will turn your feasts into mourning,
and
all your songs into lamentation;
and
I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins,
and
baldness upon every head;
and
I will make it as the mourning of an only son,
and the end thereof as a bitter
day
———
THE JEWS yet believing it was the preparation
day and that dead bodies should not remain so
inconveniently on the crosses, in what they assumed
to be the approaching Sabbath (though that bitter day had already developed
legally), and because this particular Sabbath was a high day, came and besought
Pilate. “The legs of those criminals should be broken. Let them hang without
their shinbones, that they might choke to death—all the quicker; that they
might be taken away before Sabbath arrives.”
Pilate gave leave, and the
soldiers returned to the hill of suffering and broke the legs of the first and
of the other whom they had crucified with Jesus. The two thieves screeched into
the air, quickly began to writhe, jerked, uttered wrenching gurgles and
strangling sounds from their suffocating lungs and quivering throats, wriggled
their torsos vehemently from side to side another minute or so, and finally
breathed their last. When the soldiers came to the Carpenter-Rabbi, however, and saw He was
already dead, they halted from breaking His legs. Nonetheless, one of the
soldiers stepped forward and with a spear pierced the side of Jesus, and,
forthwith, blood and water trickled from the wound of that Holy Name to the
ground attached to the Holy City.
Only
thou shalt not eat the blood thereof;
thou
shalt pour it upon the ground as water
Not only was the blood of the Holy
Innocent—as the Jews had prophesied—on the obligated hands of
themselves, their children, and their future
generations, but it was also on the obligated hands of the chief
priests, the elders, and all the people the chief priests and the elders had persuaded,
and on the hands of the Holy Mountain, as
well.
So
ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are:
for
blood it defileth the land:
and
the land cannot be cleansed of the blood
that
is shed therein,
but
by the blood of him that shed it
———
LAWS, PROPHETS, AND BAPTISMS had and were to be
fulfilled; and not ascending to Paradise, the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ
descended into the atmosphere—a Living Wind filled with a Living Light into the cheerless
prison longtime lodging the dead and dwelled
and preached among the still, lifeless souls within for a day and nearly
sixteen hours,
being
put to death in the flesh,
but
quickened by the Spirit:
By
which also he went and preached
unto
the spirits in prison
for all those forty hours and
instructed in the Word of Life those spirits of the long-time dead and in
prison.
For
for this cause
was
the gospel preached
also
to them that are dead,
that
they might be judged
according
to men in the flesh,
or
live according to God in the spirit
Those lying dormant among the
infinite legions of the dead, who verily opened their heart and heard Jesus and
believed upon Him and chose between worlds—lived.
Thy
dead men shall live,
together
with my dead body shall they arise
Awake
and sing, ye that dwell in dust:
for
thy dew is as the dew of herbs,
and
the earth shall cast out the dead
———
And
the graves were opened;
and
many bodies of the saints
which
slept
arose
and
came out of the graves
after
his resurrection,
and
went into the holy city,
and
appeared unto many
———
THE PRIESTS had had the stone mortared firmly to the opening of the
tomb, believing, “If this Jesus does revive or rise, he will surely rot away
and die of lack of air inside the carven tomb, being not able to loose the
sealed stone from the opening. Our positions are not lost, my brothers. Let him
rot! But set a guard there as a precautionary measure.” For what? a guard
pondered to himself, to murder him again if he does escape the black whirlpool
of death? If the priests do this, they will certainly do the same to many of
his followers, and his future followers, very possibly of my own.
UPON HEARING of the absence of Christ’s body, Peter and John ran in
doubt to the tomb and entered it through the open but narrow slot. Discovering
their Teacher of Righteousness absent, they sensed a personal shame in unison
with the doleful words of Mary Magdalene’s pleadings echoing into their worried
minds. The napkin that
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea had wrapped
about Jesus’ head, not as with Lazarus whose face was bound about, lying not by the other garments, but wrapped
and folded together in a place by itself.
the
cup
soon AFTERWARD, on two
distinct occasions, Jesus appeared in the midst of His disciples and had astonished them to the quick. The first manifestation was to an apostle and a disciple
as they were journeying to a village called Emmaus, where the Lord (Whose voice
had burned within their heart) tarried with them for a while, took bread and
blessed it, and broke the bread with His beautiful hands, and reached it forth with
His beautiful hands unto the apostles, who perceived a
murder in His beautiful hands, and
immediately recognized their guest to be their risen Savior. The second occasion occurred in the house
in Galilee, where eleven of His apostles were
gathered, but not Thomas.
After
these things Jesus shewed himself again
to
the disciples at the sea of Tiberias;
and
on this wise shewed he himself
Simon Peter, and Thomas,
called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and
two other of Jesus’ disciples were assembled together when, quite unexpectedly,
Peter turned. “A fishing go I.” The rest replied readily, “We will go with
you.” Grabbing their meager gear and supplies, they left immediately, and
entered a little ship.
Throughout the still and silent night, they caught not a thing. When the early
morning light began sweeping the sea of its tired fog, they saw a Man standing
on the shore, but the disciples did not know He was Jesus.
Jesus beheld them from His
distance. “Children,” He cried to the fishers of fishes, “as yet, do you have
meat?”
Leaning half over the firm
rail of the little ship, they gave a hardy shout toward the shore and the Man.
“No…!”
“Cast the net on the right side of the
ship, and you shall find!” was the instructive reply from the Man on shore.
Heeding the Man’s advice,
they cast and, forthwith, it became so filled with fish, they were not able to
draw it back into their vessel. By this wondrous display, young John was
elated. “That man is the Lord!”
Now when Simon Peter heard
John’s words, he donned his fisherman’s coat—for he was naked—and dove into the
sea. The other disciples followed quickly in their little ship, dragging the
net with fishes. As soon as they had moored their craft near the shore, they
saw a fire of coals and fish laid thereon, and bread setting beside the embers.
Jesus welcomed them
peacefully, and beckoned, “Bring the fish you have caught.”
Simon Peter went instantly
and drew the net of great fish onto the land and, overjoyed, counted a hundred
and fifty-three great fish: With these, Peter thought, we will be equipped to
make numerous and desired purchases.
And
the cares of this world,
and
the deceitfulness of riches,
and
the lusts of other things entering in,
choke
the word, and it becometh unfruitful
THIS WAS NOW the third
time after He had risen from the dead Jesus had shown Himself to His disciples. Yet, with more
purpose, when they were finished eating, Jesus
motioned to Simon Peter and asked three soul-redeeming questions.
“Simon, son of Jonas,” Jesus asked, “do
you love me more than these? Young John turned his attention toward the great
fishes.”
“Yes, Lord,” Peter answered,
“You know I love you.”
“Feed my lambs.
“Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me?” Young John
again attach himself to the Lord’s exchange with Peter.
“Yes, Lord,” Peter replied,
“You know I love you.”
“Feed my sheep.
“Simon, son of Jonas, do you
love me?”
Peter was grieved because
Jesus had said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” Glancing at Jesus and
remembering the three sad times he had denied Him, and the tears he had cried
so bitterly at the court of the priests and Pharisees, Peter lowered his head
to the left but without taking his eyes off Jesus. “Lord, you know all things.
You know that I love you.”
“Feed my sheep. Truly, truly,
I say to you: When you were young, you girdled yourself and walked wherever you
wanted to; but when you are old, you shall stretch forth your hands, and another shall bind you and carry you where
you do not want to go.”
The Lord spoke these words to signify
by what manner of death Peter should glorify God; and after
Jesus had spoken, He rose and looked at Peter.
“Follow me.”
Peter began to move but noticed young
John starting to follow Jesus, also. “Lord,”
Peter sighed, “and what will this youth do?”
Jesus’ deliberate steps did
not slow, but He turned himself half-about and gazed at Peter. “If………I will
that he should abide until
I come………, what is that to you? You…follow me.”
From this day, gossip
traveled abroad among the brethren that Peter would someday be crucified and that the Apostle John
would not ever die. Yet, Jesus did not say to
Peter that John would live forever and ever; but, He said, “If — I command
that he abide until I come, what is that to you?”
THE LORD, JESUS, had risen and dwelt with the believers forty remarkably
enlightening days. Among those believers and the faithful were Mary Magdalene, Cephas, the rest the Lord’s apostles; and at a certain
place where more than five hundred brethren had assembled, they beheld Him and
His words and loved Him. Jesus, however, would not reveal Himself to all who
were about, only unto
witnesses chosen before of God, and to them that ate and drank with Him after He had risen from the dead.
Those necessary days swiftly
but sadly exhausted themselves; and, at the last, after Jesus had led His
Eleven Apostles up into the mount called Olivet, He told them they must pray
and would receive power, once the Holy Ghost had come upon them.
And
when he had spoken these things,
while
they beheld, he was taken up;
and
a cloud received him out of their sight
YEAR 1490 BC
ETHAM, IN THE EDGE OF THE
WILDERNESS, WITH MOSES.
And
the lord went before them by day
in
a pillar of cloud
YEAR AD 32
THE DAY OF PENTECOST
had fully come and with the mind of peace. The apostles of the Lord were seated
in like-minded rapport in a separated place, when suddenly a sound came from
heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the entire house wherein they
were sitting; and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and
it sat upon each of them.
Filled with the Holy Ghost,
the apostles began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance.
Now, at this moment, Jews were dwelling
at Jerusalem: devout men from every nation
under heaven; and when the apostles’ actions were noised abroad, these devout
men came together and were confounded, as each man heard the apostles speak, in
his own language.
Hearing the tongues of their
homelands, these religious men of the seed of Israel amazed and marveled and turned, saying each to his companion, “Behold, are not these Galilaeans that
speak? And if so, how hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were
born?”
Others mocked, saying, “These
men are drunk.”
Peter, hearing their insults,
stood in defense with the eleven, and lifted his voice above the multitude, and said
unto them, “You men of Judaea, and you that dwell at Jerusalem, be
this known unto you, and hearken to my words: These men are not drunk, as you
suppose they are, seeing it is only the third hour of the day. But this is that
which was spoken by the prophet Joel…”
With many solemn words did
Peter make clear the prophecy and the Man to Whom it referred; and when the crowd
heard these things, they were pricked in their
heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren,
what shall we do?”
Pausing not for a second,
Peter replied “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus
Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost. For the promise is for you and your children and to all that are afar
off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” Moreover, with many other words did Peter testify
and exhort, saying, “Save yourselves away from
this obstinate generation.”
When the devout men and women
and the rest of those who were truly listening had heard these words, they, who
received them gladly, desired baptism and, just as gladly, received. Yet, an
unintentional few among them asked bystanders politely if they would not mind
watching their children, while they themselves partook in the baptism: the
water of life.
“What?” several of their
acquaintances exclaimed in awe, raised fingers pleasantly pointing toward Peter. “Did you not hear what that man said? He said be baptized every one of
you…for the promise is for you—and your children! You’d best take
your children along with you.”
Hence, the same day, about
three thousand souls (to whom the priests, scribes, and the Pharisees had spent
days apprehensively inventing new ideas and doctrines concerning who or what
the Messiah was, and altogether discrediting the Scroll of Daniel and avoiding
the slightest mention of Messiah), were added unto the church.
The
cup
YEAR AD 36
LAND OF ISRAEL
OUTSIDE THE CITY OF JERUSALEM
FILLED
WITH SPITE and
well-stuffed ears and hearts, the priests and
the Pharisees and the hypocritical zealots stoned Stephen to death as he was
calling upon God and crying into the firmament, “Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit…lay not this sin to their charge.”
The priests and the Pharisees
scorned indignantly through seething teeth, hurling stone after vicious stone,
“Again, a so-called lover
of God screams to his God to forgive. Why can you not forgive us yourself, dog!” As his many accusers were
screaming this verbal assault, Stephen fell asleep.
the
cup
YEAR AD 36
LAND OF ISRAEL
KING HEROD
stretched forth his evil hand.
And
he killed James
the
brother of John
with
the sword,
and the apostles gathered the body
of James, and took him and prayed over James a powerful lamentation.
FOUR DAYS of trepidation, and more believers in the Way vanished
from the land, and fully convinced the murder of James had pleased the Jews,
Herod took Peter and cast him into prison, delivering him to four quaternions
of soldiers to keep him. When Easter was by, Herod would bring Peter forth to
the people.
Despite these elaborate and
cumbersome arrangements, the angel of the Lord came in an hour of the starry night and set Peter unbound. The iron gate introducing the city to the eyes of
its outgoing traffic was opened in like manner by the power of God, and Peter went out free—still
thinking passionately of the life of James, now a brother of the Lord.
Finding himself so alive and
liberated, Peter (yet loosing not from his heart the reflection of the murder
of Brother James, so alive and so zealous for the spreading of the Gospel of
the Lord) ran with purposeful haste to the house of John Mark’s mother, Mary, and knocked on the door at the
gate. A damsel hearkened, named Rhoda, and
opened the gate and went to fetch those in the house. First believing they were
hearing Peter’s angel, the men and the women declined Rhoda’s invitation, but
at last exited the house and approached the gate, cautiously. Peter declared
unto them his astonishing experience, yet with the memory of James so alive
again in his heart, finished his report of the wonders, smiled, and, in the
order of honor, whispered:
“Go
shew these things unto James,
and
to the brethren.”
Having imparted his profound
instructions, Peter withdrew and went into
another place.
———
YEAR AD 1941
PALESTINE
NEAR AN ANCIENT and steadily decomposing community, some enduring
miles of downhill travel from the laboring city of Jerusalem, a small group of believers in the way, as they sat peacefully
near rippling shores of the Dead Sea, listened subliminally to the bubbling of
lightly curling waves, but attentively to Andrew.
“In the beginning,” Andrew
began in a patient tone, “the Lord separated the glorious light from the black and barren
darkness. And now the day is drawing nigh in which he shall, at the end,
separate forever the children born of the Light, which God called good,
from the children conceived by the darkness.”
These believers hearkened
with care as the apostle spoke.
†