The room is mostly dark as both of us take comfortable leather tufted chairs beside a nice fire in the library of an exquisite mansion the likes of which I’ve never seen before. To say the place is elegant or palatial would be an understatement.
He looks younger than I would have expected; an image I suspect that belies the longevity of someone immortal. He offers me a drink and it’s some of the finest Cognac I think I’ve ever had.
“What would you like to chat about, Keith?” He smiles. His voice is calm, smooth, and cultured, like it’s a mishmash of Euro-British. But I have no doubt that he could drop into native Latin or Greek or any language without a moment’s notice.
I don’t want to sound rude or waste his time. It’s the interview of a lifetime, so I get right to the point. “The world’s going to hell in a hand basket,” I begin—
“Is it?” he interrupts me. That soft British accent is very disarming.
“Isn’t it?” I ask. “We have nations at war. Poverty. A global pandemic.”
“And when have we not had all of those things, Keith?”
I nod once. “True.”
“The fact is, we’ve always had thugs, nations at war for whatever reason you can think of. Nebuchadnezzar. Alexander. Kahn. Hitler. Mao. Stalin. Take your pick.”
I nod.
“The last great famine, as I recall, was the fourteenth century; that lasted only a couple of years. Not really much of a famine if you compare it to others.”
“I really don’t know,” I admit.
“We’ve had plagues far worse than this latest one. You know the Black Death killed nearly 200 million people and lasted nearly a decade.”
I nod again.
“And how many have died from this latest one? Hmm?” he asks me.
“Almost 5 million,” I offer.
He chuckles.
“I don’t see how that’s funny—”
“There hasn’t been any global war in nearly a century. Stronger nations feed the weaker year after year as they have for decades. And this plague you speak of hasn’t kill a tenth of what previous ones have.”
I wince, pursing my lips. But I just nod. He’s not wrong.
“You were saying the world is going to hell in a hand basket, Keith. I don’t share your perspective.”
“But the Human rights violations in China and—”
“What kind of Human rights do you think Israel gave their enemies? Hmm? Or Nebuchadnezzar gave Israel, or any of the other nations he conquered? What Human rights did Emperor Titus give the Jews after their numerous uprisings, or to anyone who wasn’t Roman?”
“That was 2,000 years ago,” I counter.
“But you’re making my point, Keith,” he uses my name again. “All these things you complain about, have always been with Humanity. Nothing has really changed. If anything, they’ve gotten better. Much better, in fact.”
I nod. I want to disagree with him, but I can’t, not factually anyway.
“The Church is losing membership,” I change direction. “People are leaving it in droves. I suppose you’re really happy to see that?” I’m a bit pointed.
He gives at me quizzical look, “Why would that make me happy?”
“Fewer people worshipping Jesus? Jesus is your final undoing—”
The quizzical look fades as he chuckles. “Please. Keith. I created the Church.”
I blink. “Excuse me?!”
“Yes; I suppose that would take most people by surprise. I took charge of the ancient Priesthood as well.”
“How?”
“Blood, my friend,” he smirks, “and lots of it. Your race is infatuated with death. The bloodier the better. The worse it dies, you somehow think the better it washes away your sins. I merely capitalized on that belief.”
“You created the sacrificial system?” I’m stunned.
“Of course. Along with tossing virgin girls into volcanoes. Human sacrifices of perfect bodies. Animals worked just as well. Slicing them up on altars while they bled all over the place. It was perfectly disgusting to the Holy Ones.”
“Holy Ones? You mean God?”
He nods. “The angels, the gods, the whole Host of Heaven was utterly repulsed by it. That was the goal, after all.”
“So, you’re saying God didn’t ask for sacrifices?” I stammer.
He scrunches his nose. “Of course not. Why would they need to?”
“Because salvation is in the blood,” I paraphrase Hebrews and Paul, and John.
“Nice.” He smiles. “I wrote that.” He beams.
“You?” my brow lifts. “You wrote Hebrews?”
He nods. “And John.”
“I don’t believe you.” I try not to glare.
“Well John certainly didn’t write that book. Besides, why would I need to lie?”
“Because you don’t want people believing in the sacrifice of Jesus.”
“On the contrary. I do, actually,” he counters. “I do want them believing in the bloody Human sacrifice of Jesus. It’s what I’m all about, Keith. Otherwise, I would have spent all that time and effort rewriting Torah for nothing.”
“I’m not sure I follow?” I knew where he was going, but I was reluctant to admit to it.
“I plunged old Israel into the pagan practice of bloody sacrifice. I bade the Priesthood under Hezekiah to rewrite the Law to include those bloody ordinances.”
“But—God wrote those laws.”
“Yes, of course you do think that, don’t you?” He gives me a snarky smile. “That, my boy, was the real lie. I couldn’t touch their chosen nation. But I knew once I plunged the Holy Ones’ ‘oh so precious’ Israel into the bloody sin of sacrifice there would be no escape from their lust for even more carnage.
“The kicker was tying the whole bloody mess to the Holy Ones’ own Temple.” He chuckles like it’s a joke. “The whole Host were so disgusted that they removed their protection; and I just walked right in and took the whole nation captive.” He lifts his drink again. “You should have been there. It was a sight to behold.”
I wince. “I’m sure.” This interview is not going the direction I thought I was going to go.
“You look a little puzzled, Keith,” he sips elegantly from his rounded Cognac glass, like he’s an artist.
“I just thought you’d be happy to see people leaving the Church—”
“No.” His tone changes. “That does have me upset, to be sure.”
“You want people believing in the sacrifice of Jesus?” I ask. I’m curious now.
“I do. I had the old Priesthood exactly where I wanted them. A pagan bloody mess. I made sure they wrote their blood lust into their Laws. Then when Israel rose again, it was mere child’s play to plunge the whole nation right back into the same sin that doomed their ancestors.” He chuckles. “Idiots.”
“So let me see if I understand this,” I begin. “God never required sacrifices?”
“No. Why would they need them?”
I want to answer, but it just has more to do with the spilling of blood. I thought I knew a moment ago, but now I’m not sure. I just look at him, like I’m a deer in headlights.
“Evidently your race doesn’t read very well, Keith,” he chides. “Jeremiah wrote what the Holy Ones told him—‘When they brought Israel out of Egypt, they gave them no laws concerning sacrifices, of any kind.’ How could you miss this?”
I just shrug, lifting a brow.
“Truth be told, Keith, the real pain in my arse was John,” he admits. “Baptizing people and preaching a gospel of repentance. Bastard. That was the real deal.” His index finger points at me while still holding his glass. “That’s all the the Holy Ones ever required.”
“Just repentance?” I ask.
“Just?” his brow lifts to me.
“It seems like that would be a cheap kind of grace, right?” I counter. “No one has to pay the price for your sin?”
He scoffs shaking his head. “You still don’t see it, Keith. It just means I’ve done an exceptional job of deluding all of you. The truth is the ‘cheap grace’, as you call it, is getting someone else to pay the bill for you; you have no consequence for your actions. That is cheap.
“The fact is, repentance is the most expensive kind of grace there is; because it forces you to change your own behavior. It’s designed to manifest actual responsibility. You pay the price for your own transgressions so you wont want to repeat that sin again.”
“It feels like a lie. Because it’s 180-degrees from what we get taught in church,” I admit.
“Good. Exactly as I planned it.” He smiles.
“I’m having a hard time believing that you were allowed to write stuff into the Bible,” I offer.
“Yes, well, I wasn’t the only one writing ‘stuff’, as you say. The Holy Ones were countering me at every turn. Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel.” He rolls his eyes. “The fact is the truth has been out in the open for all of you to see and read all this time. Pity you ignore it,” he offers a wry grin, sipping from his glass.
I wince.
“But I have you so focused on someone else’s blood,” he continues, “someone else doing it for you, that you miss the real power of repentance — which is your own actions. Jeremiah and Ezekiel were especially deadly to my plans. You know I had to come up with a really good lie to get people not to read their books.”
“And what was that?” I’m very curious now.
“While it seemed like a really good dig at the time, my mistake was tying all the bloody sacrifices to the Temple,” he admits. “But then the Holy Ones abandoned the Temple, again,” he rolls his eyes. “I guess knew they would. But I was already ten steps and 1,500 years ahead of them.”
“I’m not following,” I admit again.
“Of course you’re not following, Keith. I wove a very tangled skein of lies and deceit that all of you just went for. And the bigger the lie, the more you just bought into it. The biggest lie of all was how I changed the old into the new. That was pure genius, I must say.”
“Old and new?” The only thing I could think of were the covenants.
“Everyone wants something new, Keith. It was an easy sell. The Old Covenant was a never ending parade of bloody sacrifices; so passé. No, my New Covenant came complete with its own bloody human sacrifice build right in. Out with the old, in with the new. A New Covenant, a New Testament, a New Contract. Even a New God.”
“The New Covenant was God’s plan, not yours,” I counter.
“Was it now? And why would the Holy Ones need to change? Samuel told you about them. They are not men that they should need to change their mind; about anything.”
“But—the Old Covenant was inferior. It says so in—”
“Oh, Keith, Keith, Keith,” he shakes his head like I’m a five-year-old. “Your race is so naïve. Somebody writes something down and immediately you think that just because it’s been written it’s automatically true. Like the Holy Ones themselves emailed it to you from on high.” He half smiles in a way that leaves me sick to my stomach as the revelation hits me, like I’ve just been sucker punched with a freight train.
“God would never allow you to mess with the Scriptures,” I glare.
“Wrong.” He deadpans in a corrective tone. “I messed with them all the time. I messed with Torah. All bloody hell was inserted into them at my direction. Jeremiah even told you what I had done, ‘the Law altered by the lying pen of the scribes’; but you ignored his words. Thankfully. Half the books of your New Testament were written by my apostles, not Joshuah’s.”
“Your apostles?” I start, but then back up, “Wait, who’s Joshuah?”
He chuckles setting down his now empty glass. “The real messiah,” he answers, a brow lifted.
“Real messiah?”
“Yes, the historical one. Yeshuah was his Hebrew name, quite common at the time, actually. The Romans called him Iesus, his Greek name. So I took his Greek name and translated it into the name of my messiah. I called him ‘Jesus’. It is this name that all of you now use, is it not?”
I find myself getting angry. It’s not very professional. I’m supposed to be interviewing the servant of Satan. But I cannot believe what I’m hearing. “You’re lying.”
“Not at all. Do your homework, Keith. I haven’t lied to you once during your whole time with me tonight.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I assure.
“You will. You ALL will,” his gaze narrows like I’ve just been corned by some jungle cat about ready to pounce. “In fact you already have. You’ve chosen my Jesus over the one actually anointed by the Holy Ones as their messiah.”
“I’ve chosen the Jesus of the Bible.”
His look softens and then he chuckles again. “But of course you have. Because I put him there.”
“God put Jesus in the Bible,” I demand, still trying to remain professional.
“No, not true. I put your ‘Jesus’ in the Bible. The Holy Ones put in the other one.”
“There’s only one ‘Jesus’,” I counter. I want to punch the asshole in the face but I refrain.
“You’re right.” He assures looking smug. “The other was actually named Joshuah. He followed in the footsteps of his cousin, John. When he began collecting his own disciples I could see what the Holy Ones were up to.
“Joshuah and his disciples were openly challenging the Temple priests, in front of the people. John and Joshuah were telling them that they didn’t need to offer sacrifices. All they needed was repentance, just like Ezekiel had written.
“The problem was, their gospel was working. Tens of thousands began following them. They weren’t sacrificing in the Temple anymore. The Sadducees were losing all kinds of money. They had to be stopped.”
“So you had John the Baptist murdered,” I accuse.
He shrugs. “He was a bit of a hot head anyway. But his cousin, Joshuah, he had more of an ambitious mind. He and his brother James started training others: Peter, John, Mark, Matthew and that lot.”
“The original Apostles,” I offer.
“I needed a counter force.”
“What kind of counter force?”
“Come, come, Keith, you’re not that dense,” he insults me. “Paul took twelve apostles of his own.”
“Paul was an Apostle of Jesus!” I demand.
He nods. “Of course he was. My ‘Jesus’. Not the Holy Ones’ ‘Joshuah’. The truth is Paul never even met Joshuah. Paul and his band clashed with James’ and Joshuah’s Apostles many times. Paul himself got quite ugly with Peter in Antioch.”
“Peter was wrong. He was teaching the Jewish Law to Gentiles,” I offer.
“Law-Schema,” he chuckles like he’s just said something I’m not quite understanding. “You miss the point, Keith. Who was the real Apostle in-charge? Who really ran the so-called Jerusalem Church?”
“I guess that would be James and Peter,” I reluctantly answer.
“Astute observation. The authority of the Jerusalem Apostles was very difficult to overcome. It literally took centuries for people to forget who the Apostles truly were. But eventually, all of you did forget; and in the end it was my buddy Paul who became your only real Apostle.”
“Jesus was sent to save us from people like you,” I counter. “Paul got his gospel directly from Jesus.”
He scoffs with a chuckle. “Of course he did. And now I have your whole religion believing in a bloody human sacrifice that was lifted from a pagan god named Mithras. How enchanting.” His grin is altogether smug and patronizing.
“Mithras?” I ask.
“Yes. I cooked up the whole Mithras gig in Arabia 1,500 years before John, James, or Joshuah would even be born. But I’m sure you’re already intimately familiar with Mithras,” he half grins.
I shake my head.
“The god who came to Earth as a man? Born of a virgin; surrounded by Magi; sent to die for the sins of the world; only to be raised three days later. His followers even pretended to eat his body and drink his blood.” His brow lifts. “Sound familiar?”
“That’s a LIE!” I half shout.
“I assure you, Keith, I have not lied to you once. Do your homework. I raised up the cult of Mithras, growing his influence even within Rome, to the point where he was crowned the savior of the Empire, just before Constantine took power; Mithras even shared the same sun’s day worship day as the pagan sun god, Solis.
“Even Mithras’ birthday celebration occurred with Solis’, just after the winter solstice on December 25th.” He snaps his fingers. “Oh, the same worship day and the same birthday as my ‘Jesus’.” Then his brow lifts. “Oh, but I’m sure these are all just coincidence.”
I make a few notes. But I’m probably missing a some details. I’m pissed. But at the same time I’m also feeling a sense of dread. What if he’s right? I cannot even go there.
“There’s no way God would allow you to delude the Church this badly!” I all but demand.
He chuckles. Then laughs with a big handsome smile that makes me want to hurl. “The arrogance of your race is impressive, Keith. You will blindly follow anyone with a good story and a good lie that tickles your egos.” He faux pouts, “Jesus loved you so much that he gave his life to save you.”
I just glare; my fist clenched. It’s everything I can do not to just punch the bastard.
“As ridiculous as all that human sacrifice business was, all I needed to do was wrap the lie in a nice catchy tune delivered from inside an impressive building and your multitudes just bought it without so much as a question. It’s a very expensive presentation. You have no idea the investment it took to get here,” he assures.
“God would never allow you to deceive—”
“There you go again with the arrogance. Just because you’re a Christian you somehow think you’re immune to deception.”
“God would not allow the Church to be this deceived,” I counter.
“Oh, but the Holy Ones did allow the Church to be deceived, didn’t they? Ever hear of the Reformation?”
I think my face is scowling, but I’m listening.
“I see that you have. The Holy Ones didn’t protect the Catholic Church from error, now did they?”
I don’t answer. He’s setting me up.
“You already know the answer. And the Holy Ones didn’t protect your Bible either. In fact,” he snaps his fingers, “Luther and Calvin dropped all kinds of books from it; books they deemed unworthy, ‘less than inspired’ were Luther’s actual words, were they not?”
I nod slightly. I knew the history of how the Reformers had dropped books from the Bible. Luther had wanted to drop the last five books of the Bible too, including Hebrews and Revelation, but Calvin and the others wouldn’t let him.
“The Reformers corrected the Bible, Keith. If the Holy Ones had really protected the Bible from error, there would have been no need to correct it, now would there?”
I just stare at my notes.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your answer,” he presses me.
“I guess not,” is all I say. I’m not going to agree with him. Even if he is right.
“You wanted the truth, Keith; did you not?” he gloats. “Now that you have it, are you satisfied?”
“God would have protected the Church,” I offer, not really sure if I believe my own words or not.
“Keith,” he captures my attention and I look up from my notes. “You asked me for complete honesty during this interview, and I have given you nothing but. So here is my final word—the Holy Ones do not deal in Temples, or Synagogues, or Churches, or buildings, or books, or scriptures, or dogmas, or your insignificant culture and traditions. These are ephemeral things too easily manipulated by beings such as me.”
My brow lifts as something about his tone strikes a chord.
“The Holy Ones deal only with individuals. You were led astray by a Church and a Bible they handed to you and then demanded you read as inerrant and infallible.” Then he mocks his own work. “This Church then demanded that their book was somehow ‘the Word of God’, when all the wile it had my Apostle directing and even obfuscating what you learned from it.” He sat back waving his hand. “And the rest you and your Church ignored. It was by my design, no less.”
“You’re calling the Christian Church the Church of Satan—”
“Isn’t it?” he sits up. “It preaches a bloody human sacrifice as the sole means of your atonement from sin; you celebrated my Mithraic Jesus on all of the pagan holy days while ignoring the ones Joshuah followed within the Commandments. And all of this paganism with all of its trimmings was veiled and wrapped up in a tidy little bow of a warmth and love and bright rosy sunshine. Like taking candy from a baby.” His gaze is unrelenting.
“Why wouldn’t God protect us?”
He shakes his head leaning back into his chair. “All this time with me and you still do not get it.”
“Get what?” I glare. “I don’t believe any of this!”
He gives me that huge handsome smug grin all over again. “And that is your choice, Keith; the same choice everyone has. Feel grateful you even have a choice. I would not have given you one.”
Then it finally dawns on me as the verses come to mind. “There are two different gospels,” I blink.
“Ooh, very good, Keith,” he mocks. “I’m glad you can see that now. I would have hated to waste all this time for nothing.”
“Why would God do that to us?”
“You seem to think that you have some control or authority over what the Holy Ones do or not do. And you you call me arrogant?” His brow lifts.
“Humanity has always had a choice to do and believe good or evil. I did my best to overshadow the gospel of repentance Joshuah and his Apostles preached. I dare say I was very successful. Even now with the truth before you, you’re teetering on whether or not Paul was telling the truth in his confrontations with the so-called ‘Super Apostles’, are you not?”
“Yea, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” I admit, nodding.
“Paul very clearly states that he preached a different Jesus; a different gospel; even a different spirit than the ‘Most Eminent Apostles’,” he reminds me of the very verses I was thinking of.
I nod.
“You have all the evidence you need to see that there are indeed two stories being told within the pages of this Bible your Church created,” he levels. “One is that of Joshuah and his Apostles; the other is that of Paul and his.
“The true antichrist of the Bible is not found in Revelation, but Romans.”
I wince.
“So tell me, Keith,” his grin fades while a brow lifts and he replenishes his empty glass. “Now that you know. Precisely which gospel, which ‘Jesus’, which spirit, are you now going to choose?”
