As the evening wore on and it got to be past Decker Donafin’s bedtime, the elder Decker and the Donafins went in the tent, but the conversation continued for another hour and a half. Tom and Rachael Donafin drifted off to sleep a little before ten. Young Decker held on for another half hour, though it was doubtful he was really catching much of the conversation. Finally, with all but Rhoda sound asleep and she looking droopy eyed, Decker suggested they go back outside. There were a few things he still wanted to talk about, and he felt it best that their conversation be away from the children.
“I don’t know if you can answer this,” he began once they were outside. He kept his voice down so as not to be overheard by those in the neighboring tents. “I’ve always wondered,” he asked, “why, during all those years that I thought he was dead, Tom never tried to contact me.”
Rhoda nodded, understanding why Decker would ask that question. “I can’t really give you a full explanation,” she said. “I wish I could. I know that he tried during and just after the war, but he was never able to reach you. After that, he never tried again. I asked him about it because he frequently talked about you and he always watched when you had a news conference, but he said that he and Rabbi Cohen had discussed it and agreed it would be best to wait. I do know that he wanted to let you know he was all right, but he said he just couldn’t.”
It was more of an answer than Rhoda realized, for it confirmed Decker’s assessment that Tom had somehow become a puppet of Cohen and the KDP.
“There’s something . . .” Rhoda hesitated. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“Yes?” Decker prodded. He could sense her discomfort.
“You were with Tom when he died,” she said finally. “Did he suffer?”
Decker shook his head reassuringly. “No. I don’t think so.”
She bit her lip and wiped away a tear as she nodded both understanding and appreciation.
“I only spent a brief time with him, but I know that he loved you very much,” Decker added. In reality, Tom had said very little about Rhoda or his children, but this wasn’t the time for strict adherence to the facts; for Rhoda’s sake a little supposition seemed in order. “I have some wonderful news for you, though,” he added. “Just before Scott Rosen had me kidnapped, Christopher told me that Tom has been born again — reincarnated — to a family in Paraguay. If you’d like, you and the children can come with me when I leave — assuming, of course, that Scott Rosen really does intend to let me go. I’ll talk to Christopher for you; I’m sure I can convince him to tell you where Tom is. He may not tell you all the specifics until Tom is older, but with patience, and if you’re willing to take the communion, you and Tom could be reunited.”
Rhoda shook her head politely. “I appreciate your concern, Mr. Hawthorne, but the Bible clearly teaches against reincarnation. It says, ‘. . . man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.’[112] When Yeshua talked about being ‘born again,’ he wasn’t talking about reincarnation. He was talking about a spiritual change that is so complete it’s as though we’ve been reborn as new people.”
“But what about all the people who remember their past lives? Some of them remember things that they couldn’t possibly know without having lived before,” Decker replied.
“I think that in most cases what they think they remember is really just something from a dream or their imagination or perhaps something similar that happened in their own life. Or maybe it was something that they heard or read about or saw in a movie. There are all sorts of possibilities. But in those cases where they really do know something that no one could know without having been there, I think that someone was there in that other life. But it’s not the people themselves. To use the vernacular of the New Age, I would say that an ‘ascended master’ or ‘spirit guide’ was the one who really remembered the event and that the guide shared the memory with the person. Of course, the Bible would call that ascended master or spirit guide a demon.”
“You don’t really believe in demons, do you?” Decker gently chided.
“You don’t really believe in ascended masters and spirit guides, do you?” Rhoda responded.
Decker smiled. He had left himself wide open for that. “Okay,” he said, “so you don’t believe in reincarnation. Are you so sure you’re right that you’re unwilling even to ask Christopher?”
“I wouldn’t ask Christopher even if he was standing here with us,” Rhoda answered in an even tone. “I know where Tom is and I’m quite certain it’s not Paraguay.”
Decker sighed in defeat. He could see there was no use arguing.
“Mr. Hawthorne,” Rhoda said, “I knew when Tom left that I wouldn’t see him again in this world.”
“You knew where Tom was going? He told you?”
“I knew he would be killed.”
“And you let him go? You didn’t try to stop him?”
“I know you won’t understand this, but I had no choice. I knew from the day I first saw Tom that he would die a violent death.”
“How?”
“Right after the Rapture, God gave Rabbi Cohen a prophecy about the Avenger of Blood, a man who the prophecy said ‘must bring death and die that the end and the beginning may come.’ When Rabbi Cohen brought Tom to me on the night the war started, he appeared so badly injured that I didn’t think I could help him. But Rabbi Cohen insisted. He said that Tom would recover — he had to — he was the Avenger of Blood.”
Decker shuddered. That was what Tom had written on the note he slipped into Decker’s pocket just before he died.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What does that mean?”
“There’s an ancient law, older even than the Ten Commandments. Its validity was recognized by Moses[113] and by Joshua[114] and by King David.[115] It allowed — within certain limitations — for a relative of a murdered person to avenge the murder by killing the murderer. It sounds rather barbaric, I suppose, by some standards, but it did keep down the number of murders and it prevented full fledged blood feuds between families.”
“But what does that have to do with Tom?”
“Before the children were born, Tom was the last of his line, Mr. Hawthorne. He didn’t even know it for most of his life, but Tom was the direct descendant of James, the brother of Jesus.”
Decker was shocked at the assertion, and his first inclination was to ask how Tom could possibly have “discovered” such a heritage, but there was something else that needed to be cleared up first. “I didn’t think Jesus had any brothers.”
“The Bible specifically mentions that Jesus had at least four brothers — James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude — and at least two sisters.[116] I should say half brothers and half sisters, of course, because while they had the same mother, Jesus had no earthly father.”
Decker found the information interesting but went back to the other question. “And how was it that Tom discovered he was related to Jesus?” he asked skeptically. “I suppose that was Saul Cohen’s idea.”
“I don’t know how he found out,” replied Rhoda. “He never told me. I think he probably realized it over a period of years.”
“Okay, so even if we assume Tom was related to Jesus, what does that have to do with him deciding to assassinate Christopher?” Decker asked. To his surprise, the emotion evoked by his memory of the assassination charged his voice with anger. He hoped Rhoda wouldn’t assume it was directed at her.
Rhoda apparently didn’t take offense. “The very first prophecy about the Messiah, in the third chapter of Genesis,[117] says that Satan would strike the heel of the offspring of God, and the offspring of God would crush the head of Satan. The offspring of God is Jesus. The striking of Jesus’ heel took place at the crucifixion when nails were driven into his wrists and feet. And then, adding insult to the injury, it was the cells from the wound to his heel that were used to create Christopher.”
The expression on Decker’s face asked how she could have known that last bit of informat
ion.
“You mentioned in an interview after Christopher’s resurrection that Professor Goodman had found the cells on a slide from the heel,” Rhoda answered in response to his unspoken question.
“And why do you say that added insult to injury?” he asked.
“Well, think about it. Satan used cells from the wounds that paid the price for the sins of the world to give life to the Antichrist.”
Decker filed that under ‘religious mumbo jumbo’ and got back to the point. “But how does this explain why Tom believed he had to kill Christopher?”
“As his closest living relative, Tom was acting as Jesus’ Avenger of Blood, striking the head of Satan in accordance with the prophecy in Genesis.”
Decker took a deep breath and tried another tack. “If you believe Jesus is God and that God is good, then how could anything evil be made from the cells of Jesus?”
“Nothing in the universe was evil when God made it,” Rhoda asserted. “But Satan takes what God meant for good and uses it for evil. Even Lucifer was perfect when God created him. But by his free will he chose to rebel. In the same way, Satan used the cells of Jesus’ own body for evil. It’s the ultimate evil irony. But it’s entirely in keeping with Satan’s standard operating procedure.”
Decker shook his head and sighed.
“But can’t you see that Christopher and Jesus are the same person?” he reasoned. “Christopher is Jesus, an exact duplicate with all his memories, all his powers, and all his love for Humankind!”
Rhoda laughed. It wasn’t an unfriendly laugh, but it was clear she disagreed. “Hearing you say that, I can’t help but be amazed at just how detailed and exact the prophecies about the Antichrist really were. In the book of Revelation,” she explained, “an angel told John that one of the reasons the world would follow the Antichrist is ‘because he once was, now is not, and yet will come.’”[118]
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning just what you were saying. You say Christopher is Jesus — that he came to Earth; he was gone for two thousand years; and now he’s back in the form of Christopher. Or from the perspective of John when he wrote the book in about A.D. 90, he once was, but at the time they were talking he was not, and yet he was to come in the future. And because of this, the world trusts Christopher and follows him, even while rejecting everything the real Jesus said and did.
“In short,” Rhoda concluded, “Jesus was God, made in the image of man, sent to reconcile man to God. Christopher, on the other hand, is a man made god created to separate man from the God.”
This was getting nowhere. “I just wish you could meet Christopher and get to know him. If you did, you’d realize what you’re saying about him couldn’t possibly be true.”
“I just wish you could meet Jesus,” Rhoda responded.
Rhoda looked at Decker and Decker at Rhoda. Both could see that neither was going to convince the other. Even though they disagreed, however, Decker found Rhoda not at all disagreeable. She was, in fact, quite pleasant to be with. He could easily see how Tom could love her. Ultimately, each resolved to let the matter pass. As for Decker, at least he had gotten an answer to what Tom’s note had meant. There was one other thing he hoped Rhoda might be able to explain.
“Just before he died,” Decker said, “Tom’s last words to me were, ‘He was going to leave me.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Rhoda shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know.”
When Decker arrived back at the cabin he was greeted at the door.
“Welcome back, Mr. Hawthorne.”
“Jailer, I thought you were gone,” Decker responded.
The jailer shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I can’t leave. I run this place. Besides, I still haven’t perfected my manna-cotti recipe, but I’m working on it.”
Decker was still far from certain that Rosen was going to let him go, but it was beginning to seem as if everyone else believed it.
“There’s just one thing, Mr. Hawthorne,” the jailer said. “Now that you’re free to come and go as you like, would it be all right if you didn’t call me ‘jailer’? My name’s Charlie.”
“Sure, Charlie,” Decker said.
Chapter 11
Rescue
Saturday, June 5, 4 N.A.
For the first night since he had arrived in Petra, Decker really slept well. In the morning he was greeted by a knock on the door, followed by the friendly voice of his young namesake.
“Mr. Hawthorne,” came Decker Donafin’s voice from the other side of the door.
“Wake up, Mr. Hawthorne. My mom says breakfast will be ready soon. If we’re late, Tom will eat everything.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” Decker answered as he sat up. “Run back to the tent to protect our share and I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
“My mom said I could wait here for you.”
“Oh . . . well, okay. I’ll be just a few minutes.”
Decker quickly brushed his teeth, ran a washcloth over his face and got dressed. Soon he and Decker Donafin were on their way. It was about three quarters of a mile to the tent and they had gone nearly half that distance before Decker realized that something was missing.
“Decker,” he asked the younger, “why is there no manna this morning?”
Decker Donafin looked at the elder in surprise that he should have to ask. “It’s the Sabbath, Mr. Hawthorne. The manna doesn’t fall on the Sabbath; that’s why we gather twice as much on Friday. It’ll be back tomorrow.”
Rhoda and Rachael had prepared a breakfast of fruit and manna pancakes. The manna was becoming a little monotonous, but the company more than made up for it. After breakfast Rhoda and the children went to a worship service at one edge of the camp. Decker was invited to attend but declined, opting to wander about on his own until later, when Rhoda and young Decker had offered to give him a proper tour of Petra’s ancient ruins.
Though he was far from where the KDP and their followers gathered, the acoustics of the basin carried the sound of their congregational songs. At first he could hear only the melody, and despite his resistance, he was drawn closer. The music was sometimes mournful, sometimes joyous, but always alluring. When he was close enough to hear clearly, he realized the futility of trying to make sense of the words: all were sung in Hebrew.
Standing high on a path and looking down upon the mass meeting a quarter mile away, he sighed as there was silence for a long moment. And then another song began. From the onset, Decker knew this song was astoundingly different. Sung softly at first by an all male choir, it suddenly exploded with richness and volume as ten thousand men echoed back the chorus. It was a song of praise to Yahweh, and this time Decker could understand it clearly. He felt somehow he even knew the words, and inexplicably, he found he could barely keep from joining in. At last he yielded to the impulse, but found himself unable to manage a single word. They were singing in the universal language.[119]
[Photo Caption: The Triclinium in Petra]
Decker met the Donafins at their tent when they returned after their services. He said nothing of listening to their songs. Rhoda packed a picnic lunch and her doctor’s bag and they headed out. Their plan was to start with the Broken Pediment Tomb, the Renaissance Tomb, the Triclinium, and the Roman Soldier Tomb. From there they would visit the facades of the Wadi Farasa and work their way around the rest of the southern end of the city. Along the way, Rhoda would be making a few stops to visit some patients. Decker and Decker could continue on whenever she stopped and she would catch up with them.
Rhoda’s plan brought up a question that hadn’t previously occurred to Decker. “Something I don’t understand,” he said as they walked. “Why do you need doctors here? I thought the KDP had the power to heal. Why don’t people just go to the KDP when they’re sick or injured?”
“It’s God who has the power to heal, not the KDP,” Rhoda answered. “Sometimes God chooses to have a member of the KDP act as his agent to heal someone,
but it’s not up to us to decide when that will be.”
“So if you’re sick you just have to hope Yahweh’s in a good mood. And if he’s not, then you call a doctor.” Decker wasn’t looking for an argument, but he couldn’t help himself.
“No,” Rhoda smiled, taking Decker’s remarks more as a joke than as a challenge to her beliefs. “It’s not a question of God’s mood. It’s what his will is for the individual. God never intended to do everything for us. He’s given us feet to walk and a brain to think and hands to work. Yahweh is a creative god, and as his children, it’s in our nature to create. When we work — whether as a farmer or a builder or as a doctor — we’re participating in God’s creation. A farmer takes the land and the seed and the rain that God has created and produces a harvest. A builder takes the resources God has created and builds a home. As a doctor, I study the workings of the human body that God has created, and when an injury occurs or when the body is invaded by some disease, then I do what I can to repair it. Work has always been a part of God’s plan,” she said. “Adam and Eve were told to tend the Garden of Eden, and we’ll continue to work even after Jesus returns and sets up his kingdom.”
Stopping to rest for a moment, Decker surveyed the panorama. Before them on the plain of Petra tents spread across the landscape for mile after mile, broken only by groves of fruit trees, play areas for the children, meeting areas, latrines, etc.
“Tell me about Petra,” Decker asked as he took in the sight.
“Well, I suppose you know,” Rhoda replied after a moment, “that the name comes from the Greek word petros, which means rock. The origin of that name for this place is obvious enough.” Decker nodded and Rhoda continued. “It was also known as Bozrah, which means sheepfold. The origin of that name’s pretty obvious, too, since the city is a giant enclosure with a single narrow gate.”
The Christ Clone Trilogy - Book Three: ACTS OF GOD (Revised & Expanded) Page 15