Tartarus: Kingdom Wars II (13 page)
Read Tartarus: Kingdom Wars II Online
Authors: Jack Cavanaugh
“I just spoke with Jana,” Sue said to me as she set the tray down. “She and her crew are at Ben Gurion airport and will be flying out within the hour.”
“Jana Torres has put herself and KTSD on the map,” the professor boasted. There was no residual bitterness over the press conference. He set to work sweetening and creaming his coffee.
Sue appeared relaxed, happy to be home, happy to be with him.
“Abdiel will be joining us,” the professor said, sitting back and sipping his coffee. “Sue tells me you read the Alexandrian text. What do you make of it?”
“Obviously it’s overshadowed by his appearances. In some ways it’s more threatening. The appearances combined with the archeological findings appear to validate it.”
“Agreed. How do you feel about his recognizing you?”
“Like a marked man.”
“For good or ill. It’s the price you pay for the protection.”
“I think I made him nervous. He threatened me.”
The professor nodded. “Sue told me.”
“Obviously he’s not who he claims to be,” I said. “He admitted as much to me in Khirbet Kana. And he’s definitely taken everyone by surprise. But for all the slapstick humor, the thing that I’ll remember is the little boy sitting on his shoulder, smiling and laughing, able to see and hear for the first time. Whatever we think about the Joker Jesus, that was impressive.”
“What?”
The coffee tray rattled at the sound. Abdiel had appeared as I was speaking.
“What did you just say?” he bellowed.
“Calm down, Abdiel,” the professor said.
“Not in the face of heresy. No, I will not calm down.”
“I didn’t say I believed in him,” I said, defending myself, “all I meant was—”
“All you did was confess to being deceived by an agent of Lucifer,” Abdiel said.
“I have not been deceived! I know who he is. All I’m saying—”
The professor came to my aid. “How can healing a blind and deaf boy be a bad thing?”
“Yeah. That’s it exactly,” I said. “Regardless of what else he’s done, this was a good thing. If you’d seen the expression on his mother’s face, you’d agree with me.”
“The woman’s prayers had been answered,” the professor said.
“Yeah, her prayers—”
The comment brought me up short. The woman had prayed to God for her son’s healing, and her prayer had been answered by an agent of Satan. I was beginning to see Abdiel’s point.
“He is entertaining, this Joker Jesus,” the professor continued. “He plays to the crowd. Gets them laughing. Then he dazzles them with a few signs and wonders.”
“And, like me, people begin to think he’s a good guy,” I said, following his train of thought.
“The greatest evil comes with a smile, Grant,” the professor said. “The grin of a drug pusher, the caress of a pedophile, the promise of a crooked politician, and the laughter of an impostor savior.”
I had a sinking feeling, the kind of feeling you get the moment you realize you’ve been duped by a smooth-talking salesman wearing sandals.
“So why don’t you make an appearance of your own?” I said to Abdiel. “Confront him. Reveal to the world that he’s a fraud and a charlatan.”
“We are pleased to serve the Father,” Abdiel replied.
“What does that mean?”
“Each generation must find its own way,” the professor said. “God doesn’t swoop down every time evil presents itself. We must learn to recognize it, no matter what form it takes, and confront it in faith.”
“But this is different! Nothing like this has ever happened before!”
“It is an ancient strategy,” Abdiel said.
“He’s right,” the professor said. “He’s correct. As far back as Jannes and Jambres in Pharaoh’s court, adversaries have been duplicating the acts of God. And in the days of the early church outcast angels took the form of aerial spirit guides who claimed to be messengers of a new truth. Men who embraced these spirits became powerful. The spirit would perform on command, ruining their competitors, opening doors, stirring up winds, destroying, even killing. One such spirit was instructed to fly in the air over Rome and defy the teaching of Christians. The ancient world was filled with idols that spoke, came to life, and granted favors to those worshiping them.
“In a letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul catalogs the Satanic forces at work in his day—principalities, powers, dominions, thrones, messengers, world powers, spiritual hosts, elemental spirits, and demons.”
Abdiel gave them names. “Cybele, Hekate, Dionysus, Demeter, and Serapis. One of the most powerful at the time was Asclepius, the idol god who healed the sick and afflicted. In reality, it was the rebel Belial. You know him as the Joker Jesus.”
“You discovered his identity?” the professor said.
“There is no doubt.”
“Interesting,” the professor said. “Toss in a little modern science and we swallow an ancient lie.”
“Lucifer is the father of lies,” Abdiel said. “That has not changed.”
“The beauty of the deception,” the professor said, “is that instead of debunking the miraculous and the resurrection, they embrace it. Had they attacked it outright, the churches would have risen up and fought them.”
“But now that we know that, we can stop them,” I said, getting excited. “We can get the word out. Expose them.”
The professor rubbed tired eyes. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Alexandrian manuscript was discovered now.” He tested his vision with a couple of blinks. “And I don’t think it was a coincidence that a young Christian girl was the one who found it. You have to ask yourself, why now? Why not a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now?”
Abdiel nodded. “I agree. The Father directed her to the cave.”
“You have access to heaven,” I said. “Can’t you find out?”
“It pleases me to serve the Father,” Abdiel replied. “He does not report to me his every action.”
“But it makes sense, doesn’t it?” Sue Ling said. “God has known the manuscript was there all along. He knows what it contains. He could have orchestrated its discovery. But the question remains, why now?”
“Possibly,” the professor suggested, “it has something to do with this being the first generation in thousands of years that has a Nephilim.”
All three of them looked at me.
“No,” I said. “No. There has to be another reason.”
“It’s certainly worth considering,” the professor added.
“No,” I said again.
“I think you’re on to something,” Sue Ling said. “The discovery of the manuscript triggered the arrival of the Joker Jesus, not the other way around.”
“But what if Lucifer initiated the discovery?” I argued. “He could have lured the girl to the cave.”
“Not likely,” the professor said. “Tiffany Sproul is strong in the faith. To hear her description of the events that led up to the discovery…there was no temptation involved.”
“Agreed,” Sue Ling said.
“When Lucifer crafted this plan ages ago,” Abdiel said, “he did so using conventional tactics. He did not consider the possibility of a Nephilim. That may give us an advantage.”
“No,” I said.
“You said it yourself, Grant,” the professor said. “When the Joker Jesus encountered you at Khirbet Kana he threatened you. If you were of no concern to him, he would have ignored you.”
“I will teach Grant Austin some standard tactics to prepare him,” Abdiel said.
“And I’ll give him a crash course on particle physics. Maybe together we can discover what other angelic abilities he has,” Sue Ling said.
“No!” I said.
“We’ll get started in the morning,” the professor said.
“No!”
Abdiel approached me. “Grant Austin. On the Emerald Plaza tower you declared your allegiance to the Father. Now you must prove that allegiance.”
“But I have a book to write,” I said.
W
elcome to what has to be the biggest special of my broadcasting career.”
Barbara Walters faced the camera. A slight tremor in her voice belied her characteristically calm demeanor. The camera pulled back to reveal her sitting opposite her guest.
Bearded, hair to his shoulders, wearing a white tunic, he sat with his legs casually crossed.
“To begin,” Ms. Walters said, “I have to say that never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would one day interview Jesus Christ.”
“It is a pleasure to appear on your show,” the Joker Jesus said.
WALTERS:
Excuse me, but I have to ask this. Are you really Jesus Christ?
JESUS:
I am.
WALTERS:
But you don’t act like the Christ we’ve been taught to worship. How can we be certain? Can you prove to us that you are who you say you are?
JESUS:
Do you mean other than transforming water into—
WALTERS:
Dr Pepper. How are we to take you seriously when you do things like that?
JESUS:
You disapprove of Dr Pepper?
WALTERS:
That’s not my point. Why Dr Pepper and not wine?
JESUS:
(grinning) Once you know me better, you’ll understand. I also walked on water—
WALTERS:
Tripped, fell, splashed, tap-danced on water.
JESUS:
—healed a blind and deaf boy, and rose from the dead. What else would you have me do?
WALTERS:
If I were to bring someone onstage who is seriously ill, could you heal them?
JESUS:
A long time ago I was at the home of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. She was ill. I healed her. Word spread throughout the town, and a line of people formed at the door, all of them wanting to be healed. I healed them, one after another, until the sun went down. The next morning the line was even longer. Dozens of healings were not enough to convince the town of my identity then; healing a person on national television will not convince them now.
WALTERS:
Your appearance on the Mount of Olives was certainly dramatic.
JESUS:
That one was by the book.
WALTERS:
Are you God?
JESUS:
If you are asking me if I created the universe…no, I am not God.
WALTERS:
(producing a Bible) Yet, according to the New Testament, Jesus Christ and God are one and the same.
JESUS:
I can explain that.
WALTERS:
(producing another book) Would your explanation be found in this? I have in my hand a newly published edition of the Alexandrian manuscript, which was discovered in an underwater cave.
JESUS:
That manuscript explains a lot. It’s a confession of sorts.
WALTERS:
(flipping through the book) The manuscript has been dated by experts to the early second century.
JESUS:
The dating is correct.
WALTERS:
And you wrote it.
JESUS:
Dictated it, actually. I had an amanuensis. I was in no condition to write.
WALTERS:
Were you injured?
JESUS:
I was drunk.
WALTERS:
Drunk? Jesus Christ was drunk?
JESUS:
It wasn’t the first time. I dictated it on a dare. It wasn’t one of my finer moments. Then, while I was—let’s say incapacitated—my buddies hid it from me, frustrating my attempts to find and destroy it. When it didn’t surface after a couple of hundred years, I figured it had been destroyed. I was wrong.
WALTERS:
You say you are Jesus, but not God. You perform miracles, but you also get drunk. And you have a fondness for juvenile humor. (She leaned forward.) Who are you?
JESUS:
I am not of this world.
WALTERS:
You’re an alien?
JESUS:
I suppose I am.
WALTERS:
From what planet?
JESUS:
You see now, that’s what makes explaining things so difficult. You have such a narrow understanding of life and the universe.
WALTERS:
Who are you? And why are you here?
JESUS:
You have to understand something about my race. They do not condone humor. Only a handful of us appreciate it. We are considered an aberration. There is nothing we love more than a good joke, yet all of our attempts to cultivate humor have been met with derision, lectures, and punishment. Humor is the heroin of our race. To satisfy our addiction we sought it among other races.
WALTERS:
You came to earth to laugh?
JESUS:
Among all the other races we visited, you have such a delightful sense of humor. You love to laugh. You appreciate a good joke.
WALTERS:
Yet you’re sitting here as Jesus Christ.
JESUS:
(laughing) Funny story. You see, we discovered that people want to kill you when they find out you’re not human. So we began passing ourselves off as humans. Sometimes traveling from place to place, sometimes living an entire lifetime in a village. If it got too boring, we went on a hunting trip and disappeared. It happened a lot back then. This went on for centuries. We laughed ourselves silly, sometimes with you, sometimes at your expense, but it was all good. Then, while we were living in Modin during the days of the Maccabees—there was this adorable little Jewish girl there who snorted when she laughed and kept us entertained for hours—I came across all these prophecies about a coming Messiah. And I thought, wouldn’t it be a hoot—
WALTERS:
You mean to tell me that you masqueraded as the Messiah as a joke?
JESUS:
Who would have thought anyone would take me seriously? Messiahs were a dime a dozen back then. It wasn’t as though I set myself up as Caesar or the king of England or the president of the United States—though the idea has merit. Mark my words: Someday a stand-up comedian will be elected president and you’ll all be singing, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
WALTERS:
But Christianity has become one of the world’s major religions!
JESUS:
What can I say? It got out of hand. Who would have thought all of this would come from a little backwater country? When things started heating up and it wasn’t fun anymore, I let them kill me, figuring that would be the end of it.
WALTERS:
But you rose from the grave.
JESUS:
Yeah. That was a mistake.
WALTERS:
What would you say to the millions of Christians around the world who worship you?
JESUS:
It was a joke, people! A joke.
WALTERS:
For two thousand years, millions of people have been living a lie.
JESUS:
What can I say? It got out of hand and took on a life of its own.
WALTERS:
But what about salvation? What about heaven?
JESUS:
The only reason we are able to do the things you consider miracles is that we have a deeper understanding of how the universe works. You’re an inquisitive race. You’ll get there. But, can I give you a piece of advice? You’re looking in the wrong direction.
WALTERS:
In what direction should we be looking?
JESUS:
Certainly not space exploration, as you know it. You’ll never get anywhere the way you’re going. Can’t you see that? The universe is hostile to you. Anywhere you go, you have to take your own planet’s atmosphere with you just to survive. And then, as large as you are? It’ll take you forever to get anyplace. You need to think smaller.
WALTERS:
Smaller? As in subatomic?
JESUS:
That’s the ticket! This body? I can’t begin to tell you how cumbersome and limited it is. In my natural state, I can transport across the galaxy in the blink of an electron and dance among the distant stars. And we do it without machinery of any sort.
WALTERS:
We? Your race?
JESUS:
Not just mine. There are thousands of races and civilizations that dwell among the atoms. I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but the smaller you are, the more the universe opens up to you. You’re too large to appreciate it.
WALTERS:
Your people, what do they call themselves?
JESUS:
Roughly translating into your language, I am an inhabitant of Tartarus.
WALTERS:
Isn’t Tartarus the name of a place in Greek mythology? A place in the underworld, even lower than Hades?
JESUS:
(laughing) Yeah. Funny story. We were messing with Hesiod, you know, the Greek poet? He kept going on and on about how it would take a bronze anvil nine days to fall from heaven to earth. We were ticked off at the time for being censured by our ruling council and one of us said, “That anvil would have to fall at least another nine days to reach Tartarus, a dank and wretched pit where there is no mirth.” Well, ol’ Hesiod liked that and started using it.
WALTERS:
If you are who you say you are, you have completely discredited a major religion. How do we know this isn’t just another joke?
JESUS:
Well, if you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe them…
Four figures—three men and a woman—appeared from nowhere dressed in first-century biblical clothing. They stood behind Jesus.
JESUS:
Allow me to introduce—I believe you call them my “partners in crime.” You know them as Simon Peter, Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus. Ask them whatever questions you have.
Chairs were brought onstage and for the next hour the five Tartarans, draped over the chairs like rock stars, reminisced about life in Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, telling humorous story after story about the personalities and about the events that took place behind the scenes of New Testament events.
At the conclusion of the special, Barbara Walters addressed her final comments to the camera audience.
WALTERS:
It hasn’t taken long for churches to embrace this new Jesus. All across the country Christians are rethinking the way they worship.
A video clip of a megachurch in Houston showed the pastors delivering a stand-up comedy routine that taught laughter as the mark of true worship. The church had hired joke writers on staff. Giant screens in a converted sports arena showed clips of Jesus in Cana and splashing in the Sea of Galilee to standing ovations.
A laughing young woman leaving the church looked into the camera and said, “Hey, like I used to hang out at a bar? Now I go to church. This is a Jesus I can relate to.”
