Identity Theft (15 page)

“Hello David, my name is John—not the John you met earlier. I wrote of that John and his revelation that Yeshua was the Lamb of God in my account of the life of the Messiah. I am John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. We were very close, actually best friends. Even before I understood who He was, I looked to Him as an older brother—a mentor. After a long night in prayer, He chose me and eleven others to be His closest associates and then He spent the next three and half years training us.

“The amazing thing about the Master is that even though thousands followed Him, He always found the time to be alone with us and focus on our training. Most people, who have even a fraction of the charisma and wisdom of Yeshua, seek to use it to take advantage of people. Yeshua did just the opposite. He shunned popularity and focused on leadership training. We didn’t understand it at the time, but He was raising us up to lead the Jerusalem revival once He left. And it could not have been easy for Him.

“We were a quarrelsome bunch. My mother once asked Him if my brother, Jacob, could sit on His right hand and I on his left in the Messianic Kingdom. This led to all kinds of backbiting, gossip, and jealousy among the disciples.

“Meanwhile, He always spoke of being a servant. Yet it wasn’t until He washed our feet, just as a servant would, that we finally began to understand. And not a moment too soon, as just a few hours later He was nailed to an execution stake showing us the full extent of His servant’s heart.

“I was able,
Baruch HaShem
, to outlive all the other apostles. It wasn’t easy, mind you. Emperor Domitian, who hated believers in the Messiah, commanded that I be
boiled alive
in oil! Roman guards seized me in Ephesus and extradited me to Rome. I was nearly ninety years old, in an age when most men barely made it past fifty. And what was my crime? Atheism, of all nonsense!

“I stood before a man who claimed to be God, as they accused me of being a heretic.”

“How could you be an atheist? You were a believer,” I asked, puzzled. “Goodness, you wrote the book of John!”

“And Revelation and the Epistles, uniquely titled First, Second, and Third John,” he added with a smile. “The one religion that covered the entire Roman Empire during those years was Caesar worship. Every emperor after Caesar was thought to be divine. So those who wouldn’t worship Caesar were considered atheists or heretics. The punishment for this depended on the ruling emperor of the time. When I was on trial, Domitian was Emperor of Rome. He was referred to in his public documents as
Our Lord and God
and he took his divinity quite seriously. He was one of the most vicious men in history. In 96
CE
, he put to death his own cousin for being an atheist. Of course he was actually a believer in Yeshua, but any refusal to worship the emperor as God earned you the title of atheist. And you are going to be amazed at how he came to faith! Just wait.”

A quote, though not from the Bible, appeared on my tablet. I was reminded that Ariel had forewarned me that he would be downloading information from a variety of sources.

He informed all governors that government announcements and proclamations must begin, “Our Lord and God, Domitian, commands”…They must call Domitian God—or die. Thus the issue was clear. It was a matter of gods. Either the Lord Jesus Christ or the Emperor of Rome was Lord-God. It was Jesus or Caesar.
¹

“I was brought before the Emperor to be judged. We were in a full coliseum-turned-courtroom, and he asked me, ‘Is it true you are an atheist, and refuse to declare that Caesar is God?’

“I serve Yeshua, the Messiah, the King of Israel, Savior of the world.”

“
Whoa!
Dude, that is impressive! What did he do?” I asked.

“He got a little upset.” John smiled, clearly understating the event.

“The great Domitian responded,” John now assumed a grand imperial tone, “‘You understand that the penalty for atheism is death?’

“I was in my eighties, David. What was he going to threaten me with,
Heaven?
I was more than ready to join all my friends who had gone on before me, each one of them dying for the cause. Now it would be my turn, or so I thought. Domitian was, in essence, doing me a favor. I can’t tell you that I was too excited about being
boiled in oil
. But David, God will always give us grace for anything He permits. In that moment I thought of Stephen.”

“Who is Stephen?” I asked.

“Stephen is one of my heroes. He was one of our disciples in Jerusalem and a true servant. When the first apostles were feeling overwhelmed by all the administrative duties involved in serving such a large and growing body of believers, we appointed a group of godly men as servant leaders who were suitable for the task.”

“Like Yeshua, when He washed the feet of the disciples?” I turned to Ariel who smiled and nodded assent.

“Stephen not only served the people with compassion and humility,” John continued, “he was also a mighty and effective communicator of the good news. People would listen to him mesmerized at his ability to explain their need for salvation. Through him, God did many mighty miracles. Blind eyes were opened and the lame walked. At the time, the Kehilah was growing rapidly. Even many Jewish leaders had come to faith. Something the Jewish ruling council was none too happy about.

“God was using Stephen powerfully to bring many Jewish souls into the Kingdom. At that time we were only reaching out to Jews—mostly from Jerusalem, but the message of salvation and forgiveness was also touching many Jewish visitors to the Holy City. Stephen had a supernatural power of persuasion that I have not seen since, and being backed up by signs and wonders, opponents found it difficult to argue with him. He was so full of the love of God that many who sought to hate him ended up following Yeshua. He would lead them to Yeshua and then they would return to their hometowns or homelands as believers in their Messiah, taking the good news back with them.

“Some of these Jews who had come to Jerusalem from other countries began to argue with Stephen. They mistakenly assumed that they could easily defeat him in debate, as they were far more learned than Stephen. They were confident that once the bystanders saw how ‘baseless’ Stephen’s arguments were, they would abandon this ‘nonsense that the Messiah had come, and had risen from the dead.’

“Well, their scheme didn’t go quite as planned. They were the ones who invariably ended up looking foolish as Stephen skillfully countered their every argument. He simply amazed everyone with his quick-wittedness and knowledge. You would have thought he was wearing an earpiece and someone was feeding him the answers. It was as if the Spirit of God was simply telling him what to say. He was a young man speaking to men who were twice his age and who had studied the Hebrew Scriptures all their lives.

“Of course, this is exactly what Yeshua said would happen:

Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it.
At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you
(Matthew 10:17-20).

“Those leaders were flabbergasted and infuriated when they couldn’t stand up to Stephen’s Holy Spirit-inspired wisdom. So they moved to Plan B. It is amazing to what depths men with wounded egos will stoop. Humiliated by Stephen, they produced false witnesses who accused Stephen of speaking blasphemous words against Moses and against God. This was then reported to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, and Stephen was arrested.

When Stephen began to testify in his own defense, the people listened as if entranced. It was supernatural. He stood before those who clearly wanted to kill him, and spoke as if he were an invited guest lecturer. It was obvious to all that he was far more concerned about their well-being and their eternal destiny than he was in defending himself. He used his last chance to defend himself to seek to bring other Jewish men to Yeshua—to salvation.

“It was as though he was seeing deep into the soul of every man there. Take a look.”

I did, and saw Stephen testifying before a makeshift court; his face was glowing, like that of angel, as words spilled from his mouth. The members of the Sanhedrin were growing ever more furious. But Stephen, clearly full of the presence of God, was not concerned. He looked up to Heaven and cried out:

“Look, I see Heaven open, and the son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

This so provoked the crowd that with a scream they rushed at him. It was as if the presence of God, which produced such peace in Stephen, had the exact opposite effect on his hearers. They recognized that the more he spoke, the more convincing and powerful he became, but their hearts were so hard; they just wanted to silence him.

They dragged him outside the city and formed a circle around him. Then stones started flying, as one after another hurled rocks at Stephen, gashing his face so badly that blood poured from an open wound on his forehead and from his nose. One missile hit him directly on his left ear, slicing it in half. I could hardly bear to watch as rock after rock found its target. They were killing him. And yet, I couldn’t turn away either. Amazingly, despite facing death and being surrounded by a frenzied mob, Stephen remained as calm as any man I had ever seen. No hysterics, no begging for his life. He seemed almost detached…and then I saw why.

As rocks continued to slam him from every direction, he prayed—he actually prayed: “Lord Yeshua,” he cried out, “receive my spirit.” Then he fell to his knees, and cried out again, one final cry, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And he died.
²

Even in his final seconds, he was more concerned for his killers than himself. I was truly in awe.

I turned to John, “
They killed him!
” he could see the tears in my eyes.

“Actually David, Stephen has never been more alive! When he gave up his spirit, he simply left his body and went to receive his reward. In fact, all of Heaven was cheering when he arrived!”

Notes

1
.   Patrick M. Jones,
Revelations from Revelation
(Brushton, NY: TEACH Services, 2008), 19.

2
.   You can read the full account of Stephen in Acts 6 and 7.

“It was that peace that you have just witnessed in Stephen that gave me the courage I needed as I stood before Domitian. I trusted that God’s presence would cover me in the same way.

“That demented dictator, Domitian, continued to rant like the madman he was, ‘Bow before me, heretic, and declare, “Domitian is god!’”

“I shouted in Hebrew, then in Greek, ‘
Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohanu, Adonai Echad
.’”

“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” (Deut. 6:4). In English I quoted from memory the Shema—one of the most sacred creeds in Judaism.

“Yes,” said John, “and this infuriated him even more. ‘Death to the atheist!’ he shouted. The crowd joined in. ‘Boil him alive! Death to the heretic Jew! Feed his boiled flesh to the lions!’ In your day, David, people rail against Hollywood for making ungodly forms of entertainment—and rightly so in most cases. But in my day, there were no movies or reality TV competitions—this was the entertainment. Coliseums would fill to capacity just to watch a man being torn apart by lions, or burned alive or, as in my case, boiled in oil.

“Anyway, as the crowd clamored for my execution or boiling, I stood there enveloped in the peace that passes all understanding and I thought,
This is it. I am finally going to be with Him. Reunited with my best Friend! No more sadness, no more pain, just forever in His presence
—until my thoughts were rudely interrupted by Roman soldiers, men who had been turned into bloodthirsty savages by the inhuman nature of their work, violently grabbing me. They dragged me over to the vat of oil as the crowd followed, eager for a spectacle, and then they hurled me over the top. My body plunged into the massive pot, my eyes closed to keep the oil out, and as quickly as I could, I stood up. The oil, dripping from my head and clinging to my beard, came up to my armpits.

“‘Light the fire!’ came the command. A flame ignited the dry brushwood beneath the pot. Within minutes I could see tongues of fire rising higher than the massive pot of oil in which I was standing. As the flames burned higher, I knew it would only be a matter of time before the oil would heat up and begin to boil.

“
Time for one last sermon
, I thought, knowing they wouldn’t kill me quickly because that would put an end to the show. I opened my mouth, for what I assumed was the last time on earth, and shared as passionately as I knew how about the love of God and His desire that all would be saved. Rather than plead for my life, I exhorted the crowd to turn to Yeshua. ‘No emperor can save you. He is not God. No man is divine, but One. Yeshua is the only One who can give you eternal life!’