Lucifer's True History of Everything
Dec 28, 06 11:14 AM
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True Life of Jesus, cont.
At high noon on Good Friday, the miracles started: God the Father and God the holy Ghost teamed up to extinguish the light of the sun.
For three hours, the entire solar system went pitch black. That did not, however, stop the cruel Jews and the Romans from telling stupid jokes (Luke 23:44-45): "Why was Jesus late for dinner?" said a voice. "He just got hung up!"
"Mary of Nazareth walks into a Bethlehem hotel," said another. "She hands the innkeeper six nails. She says, 'Can you put me and my boy up for the night?'"
"You didn't tell it right," said a third. "That's not how it goes. It's only three nails, and it's Jesus who gives a Centurion the nails, and he says, 'Got a vacant king-sized single?'"
(Note: That's just how it was with stories about Jesus, in those days: you never heard the same two versions of the same anecdote – videlicit, the Gospels.)
There was still another story of the crucifixion, something about Jesus calling, "John, John!" ("What, Lord?") "I can see your house from here!" But that one cannot be true, either, because John's house was up north, in Bethsaida; and besides, by 2:00 p.m., when John first stood at the foot of the cross, Jesus could not see his own hand in front of his face. So you just have to be very careful before you believe some of those old stories.
I do have it on good authority that Caiaphas the Chief Priest was deeply annoyed with Yahveh for sending the solar blackout (or the eclipse, or whatever it was). "First the healed ear of Malchus," said Caiaphas, "and now this!" But it wasn't like the Jewish Chief Priest could change his mind. It wasn't like he could say, "Whoops, Jesus, slight miscalculation! Let's get you down from up there." For one thing, it was too dark.
When the sun got switched back on again at 3:00 p.m., Caiaphas just shrugged his shoulders as if there were no connection between Golgotha and the solar event. So God gave him another hint. At 3:01, just as folks were getting off work, a shaker hit, a violent earthquake, about 7.2 on the Richter scale: "The ground shook, and the rocks split, and the curtain of the Temple was torn in two." Walls tumbled, roofs collapsed. Stone tombs all over the holy land snapped open like walnuts (Matt. 28:45-52).
That earthquake sent a powerful message to Caiaphas. Many favourite dishes and clay pots at the Chief Priest's mansion were destroyed; plus, a section of roof over the rear portico collapsed, and fell into his wading pool, and damaged a lovely tile-mosaic of Aphrodite on the half shell.
Unfortunately, the earthquake also sent a powerful message to Jesus. It cannot feel good to be jiggled when you are being crucified. But this was no jiggle. Eyewitnesses said that the earthquake rocked Jesus' cross like a sailboat-mast in a high wind. Then it waved the cross about like a kid with a burning brand. Worst of all, I think, was when the earthquake pounded that cross up and down like a jackhammer (Matt. 27:54).
Jesus always knew that the Crucifixion would be no picnic. He knew it would be violent. In his divine foreknowledge, he probably even knew that someone, someday, would make a graphic, sadistic movie about his suffering, to entertain a decadent Western society. But I think he also thought, at this particular moment, that a teeth-rattling, jaw-banging earthquake was a little much, a little over the top.
"My God! My God!" he said, "Why have You forsaken me?" Well, he probably didn't mean to say it aloud, but it just slipped out (Matt. 27:46).
Jesus, to this very day, may harbor some feelings about that Good Friday Earthquake. Couldn't his heavenly Father have waited until they took him down first? Did Yahveh have no clue how that would feel, when His only begotten Son was bouncing up and down like that? Really, it was uncalled for. And I do think that God the Father owes Jesus a big apology.
Unfortunately, Yahveh's vocabulary has never included the phrase, "I'm sorry."
What happened next was quite remarkable, I'll never forget it. Anticipating our Lord's resurrection by nearly a full weekend, long-ago men of God – dead, buried, and rotten, mostly Old Testament heroes whom I hadn't seen in centuries – were resurrected in the flesh. They left their tombs in a heap. They wandered the streets of Jerusalem. And they looked fine, as fresh as a daisy. I stopped and spoke with one of them myself, the prophet Obadiah, who told me he was amazed at how built-up Jerusalem had become. He said that, for him, it was just like a time warp (Matt. 28:53).
– L.
(Tomorrow: What goes up must come down!)
Posted by Lucifer at 11:14 AM
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