by Paul L Maier
“Fine, then,” said Gideon in closing the meeting. “We’ve already agreed on who will cover what in this probe. I remind you again of our need for absolute secrecy. Happy hunting, ladies and gentlemen! We meet again in three weeks.”
After dinner that night, Jon dialed Kevin Sullivan’s private number at the Vatican. With great good luck, he heard an answer after only three rings.
“Jon! I’ve been waiting to hear from you! I thought maybe you’d gone down to purgatory or something!”
“That’s exactly where I’ve been, Kevin. All your many friends down there say hello, by the way!”
Kevin chuckled. “What about those in limbo?”
“Same message! See, you could spare them all that if only you’d turn Lutheran!”
“Well, I’ll give it some serious thought!” he said, in jest.
“Okay, more seriously, Kevin, a lot has happened since we last talked.” Jon updated Sullivan on the most recent extraordinary events involving Joshua. Just reporting on the retreat with the Seventy along the Sea of Galilee took a half hour of trans-Mediterranean line charges. “You mean, he actually turned off a storm?” Kevin exclaimed. “Just like Jesus did?”
“Well . . . with this difference: Jesus did it from a boat.”
“No big difference! Oh, I forgot to ask: anything new on the David mosaic?”
“And I was just about to tell you! Got another fifteen minutes?” Jon took a deep breath and reported the new version of its meaning. Kevin was so soundless on the other end that Jon thought their phone connection had broken. Yet when he did respond, Kevin’s tone seemed to breathe faith rather than skepticism.
“What a beautiful, tangible proof something like that is! But, Jon, let me give you the picture here at the Vatican. It’s borderline bedlam. Over half of the Curia are sure that Joshua is Jesus, the rest are undecided or deny it. They’re all looking to the Holy Father for guidance, but he, in turn, is looking to you! I really think he wants to fly over there and meet Joshua himself, if possible. Think you could arrange that?”
“Is he well enough to travel again?”
“Getting there.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Uh-oh, I forgot to tell you the latest, Kev.” Jon now reported on the joint investigation panel.
“Excellent,” Kevin responded. “Overdue. Let’s stay in closer touch, Jon.”
“For sure. Ciao, good friend!”
After they had hung up, Shannon, who had picked up on the last, asked, “Don’t you find all this a little distasteful, Jon? You and the spooks sniffing out Joshua’s tracks like a pack of bloodhounds, especially after our magnificent weekend with him up in Galilee?” Jon hung his head and conceded, “Yes, darling. I’ll admit it: I really don’t find this pleasant at all. By now I admire Joshua so much that I really ought to take myself off the case due to conflict of interest. I tell you true: I really hope we find nothing fake in his background. In the long run, the world may even be grateful to us for testing everything carefully.”
“Okay. I can live with a bias like that.”
Such partiality would shortly be justified, and in a way no one could ever have imagined.
One morning, Jon picked up the Jerusalem Post and did a double take. At the bottom of the front page was a medium-sized headline: “BEN-YOSEF DISCIPLE CRITICALLY ILL.” Almost knocking over his orange juice, he called Shannon and read the story aloud to her:
Shimon Levine, whom many Christians regard as the Simon Peter figure in Joshua Ben-Yosef’s following, collapsed yesterday at Ein Kerem in southwest Jerusalem. He had gone there to celebrate the Christian festival of Saint John the Baptist and represent Joshua Ben-Yosef, who is in northern Israel at this time and could not attend.
Levine was rushed by ambulance to nearby Hadassah Hospital, where he is in critical condition with labored breathing from an undisclosed illness. Efforts to reach Joshua Ben-Yosef have thus far failed, according to Shimon’s associate, Yohanan Bihran, who is at Shimon’s bedside.
“How very sad!” said Shannon. “Remember? He didn’t look well at the retreat up in Galilee.”
“Not at all. They’d better get through to Joshua pronto. If he ever healed anyone, he should do it now!”
“I’ve always liked Peter. He may seem burly and even threatening, but he’s a kitty-cat inside.”
Both were silent for some moments. Then she said, “Jon, why don’t we drive over to Hadassah and see if we can be of any help?” “I was going to suggest that very thing.”
The Hadassah, on its new Ein Kerem campus, was Israel’s most advanced medical center. When Jon and Shannon arrived, they saw that a sizable crowd had gathered on the lawn outside the hospital, including media trucks. Police were guarding the entrance. Jon walked up to a man who seemed to be the chief of security and identified Shannon and himself as close friends of Shimon Levine.
“You may confirm this with other followers of Joshua Ben-Yosef who are doubtless inside,” he added.
The man studied Jon for a moment, then waved them through. They hurried to the reception desk and were told that Shimon was still in the emergency wing, Room 117. Hurrying there, they found Yakov and Yohanan on their knees in prayer beside the bed. Shimon himself was gray and sallow from lack of oxygen—despite the plastic tubing in his nose. His breathing was labored and crackling from the edema building in his lungs. An attending doctor shook his head as he left the room, promising to return shortly.
Suddenly Shimon opened his eyes and tried to focus on Jon and Shannon standing at his bedside. His lips parted, and he mumbled, “J-Jon?”
“Yes, Shimon! It’s Jon and Shannon here!” Jon answered loudly. “Good . . . so good of you to come . . .”
“Shimon, do you know where Joshua is? Why isn’t he here?”
He shook his head slowly, quizzically, then shut his eyes.
Yakov answered in his stead. “The Master was on retreat somewhere in Galilee. We haven’t been able to reach him,” he said sadly. “He should be here!” Jon snapped.
Shimon suddenly opened his eyes wide and tried to lift his head off the pillow as he gargled loudly, “Believe in Joshua, Jon! You must . . .” His head dropped back into the pillow.
“He shouldn’t have tried to exert himself,” Shannon whispered. “He only weakened—” She stopped in midsentence, for Shimon had quit breathing.
The green line on the cardiac monitor ended its oscillation between peaks and valleys and became one flat line, while the monitor buzzed a code blue warning that brought doctors and nurses rushing into the room.
After all CPR methods were tried—repeated poundings on Shimon’s chest, followed by electroshock paddles—they could only pronounce the patient dead.
Yakov and Yohanan wept as James and John would have wept twenty centuries earlier had Peter been taken from them. Shannon cried also, and tears welled up in Jon’s eyes.
The death of “Peter” was international news that evening. Much of the world was asking the same question that Jon and Shannon, the now-Eleven, and the Seventy were asking: where was Joshua, and why didn’t he heal his closest friend?
Joshua never even made it to the funeral and burial, which, according to Jewish custom, had to take place on the same day as a person’s passing. Israel Schneider, a wealthy Jewish Christian in Jerusalem who was one of Joshua’s Seventy, had a family burial plot on the Mount of Olives that included a small cavern with loculi— cigar-shaped cavities into which bodies of the dead were placed. It was one of the very few remaining burial sites on the Mount of Olives, the southwestern slope of which was a massive cemetery with many thousands of graves. Schneider offered his natural sepulcher as a temporary burial place for Shimon until the Eleven established their own final resting places, probably in Galilee.
Late that afternoon, units of the Israel Defense Force were necessary to control the crowds that gathered on the Mount of Olives to try to witness Shimon’s interment. Television cameras on cherry pickers zoomed in on the bereaved, including J
on and Shannon, as they threaded their way up the hillside. Seven of the Twelve stood reverently with them around the burial site as Shimon, wrapped in a white sheet, was laid inside the sepulcher.
Yohanan uttered the customary Jewish prayers for the dead, though with Christian adaptations that focused on the great hope of the resurrection. As he spoke the final “Amen,” a golden orb of sun dropped over the Western horizon.
After more tears, breast-beating, and much head shaking, the mourners slowly filed back down the Mount of Olives, barely comprehending what had taken place. All of them were overcome with grief, not only because Shimon was dead, but because Joshua, evidently, had been unavailable or even unable to help his closest friend. Joshua’s ministry, his cause, his mission had received a devastating setback not only in Israel, but across much of the world.
And, again, where was Joshua Ben-Yosef?
The next morning, Jon phoned Gideon Ben-Yaakov. “Naturally, I know why you’re calling, Jon,” he said. “I’ve phoned Shin Bet and— would you believe it?—they don’t know where Ben-Yosef is either!” “How’s that possible?”
“A stupid administrative screwup. Joshua and several of his men were spending the night at a hotel in Nazareth. The tail from Shin Bet was on duty in the lobby there until midnight, after which another agent was supposed to spell him. Some idiot in Jerusalem, however, had that agent scheduled twenty-four hours later. The agent who wasn’t relieved got tired and left, assuming that his replacement would arrive shortly, and that Joshua’s group wasn’t going anywhere in any case so late at night. Poor guy got the book thrown at him! Anyway, Joshua and the others left very early the next morning for points unknown, no tail in their wake.”
“Now that’s off-the-wall!” sniffed Jon. “Well . . . Joshua had better show up soon, unless he wants to see his cause damaged even further. Do get back to me if you hear anything, Gideon.”
“And vice versa. Shalom.”
Another e-mail from Rod Swenson arrived that night.
Sorry I haven’t managed to get over to Israel, Jon, as I had hoped. Washington has us working full-time to develop strategies against cyber-terrorism, which looks like Al Qaeda’s new weapon of choice. Besides, you emailed me that Ben-Yosef admitted that he was behind it all. That’s also borne out by the timing. We finally put together an exact timetable of when the incursions appeared, and the order was the same both times. Each announcement was separated by two minutes, the exact length of the message, as you’ll recall. The combinations are clear from the languages involved:
Israel
United States
United Kingdom
Most of Canada
Spain, Hispanic Central and South America
France, Quebec, and Francophone Africa
Germany, Austria, and Switzerland
Portugal
and Brazil
Italy
Norway
Sweden
Denmark
Finland
Poland
Greece
Russia
Slavic lands
And the list goes on and on, but you get the picture. Okay, Ben-Yosef did it, but how did he do it—unless, of course, he’s Jesus! So this problem isn’t over by a long shot. Stay tuned!
Cheers! Rod
Jon printed out the e-mail and then called Shannon. “Hey, look at this, honey.”
When she walked over to his desk, he asked, “What do you see?” “Well, it’s a cross, obviously. But what are the names of all those countries doing there?”
“The rest of the e-mail explains it. Evidently, Rod had his computer on automatic centering. He probably didn’t even notice the cross!” Then Jon shook his head and said, “Just another tiny facet of this whole extraordinary, improbable puzzle!”
Peter’s death provoked surprising reactions in the world’s press, as Jon quickly learned from faxes sent him by Marylou Kaiser. The Western media were generally sympathetic to Joshua in his loss, although some editorials wondered in print why the person who had provided such extraordinary healing in so many lives could not have saved his chief lieutenant.
Columnists in the Afro-Asian block, however, raised that issue frequently and in the form of a complaint. The majority were non-Christians who were puzzled as to how to handle the Joshua phenomenon and had never before covered him in print. Now, however, their restraint seemed to evaporate, and even some anti-Christian sentiment appeared to surface. Jon found this front-page editorial from New Delhi typical:
So often we Hindus are faulted by those in the West for our belief in the gods and goddesses who lead us all to the blessedness of Nirvana. They speak disparagingly of our “purple-faced deities gamboling about in a spiritual never-never land.” They characterize our beliefs as primitive polytheism and attack our caste system as evil.
Well now, is Christianity so much better? Christians claim to be monotheists, and yet they seem to worship three gods, who are known as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They even believe that one of these gods became a man two thousand years ago, and, incredible as it may seem, many of them now insist that this god has just returned as a contemporary Israeli named Joshua Ben-Yosef. And although this man is supposed to do “miracles” of healing, he was not even able to save his own best friend, who just died.
So, then, who deals in the absurd: Christians or Hindus? Perhaps it is high time to hear less preaching from the West. Perhaps it is high time for the West to learn some wisdom from the East.
Another, in the Cairo Telegraph, Egypt’s English-language daily, seemed equally helpful. It was written by Egypt’s principal mullah, Muhammed Abu-Bakkar:
La illaha illa Allah! “There is no god but Allah!” This, the greatest cry in Islam, is also the call of the present moment. While some in our brotherhood have been playing with the thought that an Israeli Jew named Joshua Ben-Yosef might conceivably be the returned Isa of Nazareth, events have now proved this to be ridiculous speculation. Any supposed prophet who cannot heal his own chief associate is not worthy of belief.
Only one prophet is so worthy, and his name, of course, is Muhammad. Now Muslims everywhere have an opportunity, given by God, to enhance our numbers: one billion of us across the world today, two billion more tomorrow—if we can convince Christians of their errors. The future is ours, beloved brothers, if we keep faith with God and with the prophet!
Jon filed both editorials. Should he let Shannon read them? Later, perhaps. Not now—she was worried enough about Joshua and his cause.
If only the man would return.
EIGHTEEN
It was early. Jon didn’t even hear the phone ringing, but Shannon picked it up and sleepily passed it over to her husband, who managed a barely coherent “Hello.”
“Sorry to bother you at 6:00 A.M., Jon,” said Gideon, “but you told me to do this. Anyway, he’s back.”
“Who’s back?
“Ben-Yosef. He arrived at their place in Bethany late last night. It seems that he and several of his men went from Nazareth to Mount Tabor for seclusion and prayer. He’s often been known to do that, I understand.”
“Um-hmm. Jesus also headed for the hills to pray. Any idea what their plans are?”
“Haven’t the foggiest.”
“Okay, Gideon, I’ll take it from there. Thanks for the good word!”
After repeating it all to Shannon, they got up and ate a hasty breakfast. Both knew that they would be heading out to Bethany at once.
Much of Jerusalem, it seemed, had the same idea. Word of Joshua’s return and whereabouts had been broadcast on Kol Israel since six-thirty, and they found the road to Bethany clogged with motor and pedestrian traffic. Soon their Peugeot seemed as imprisoned as a prehistoric bug in a cube of amber.
“Dunce! Dunce!” Jon shouted at the steering wheel. “What a dunce I was to take the valley road! We should have taken the high road over the Mount of Olives.”
“Well, take it now, then,” Shannon suggested. “There’s a
break in the oncoming traffic.”
Jon spun the wheel all the way left, inched out of the lane of traffic, made a U-turn, and sped the other way back up to Mount Scopus. “Made it, Shannon! Good thinking!”
A sharp turn to the right and they were driving southward along the top of the Mount of Olives. Where the road from Bethany intersected the summit drive, however, their way was blocked by a large crowd coming up from Bethany. Quickly they parked the car and jumped out, because in the center of the crowd they saw Joshua, dressed in his now customary white robe, walking with his inner circle of followers. Upon joining them, they learned that Joshua was going to pay his last respects at Shimon’s tomb. “I wonder if he’ll tell us why he wasn’t here in time,” Shannon commented.
“Yes. He’s almost a week too late.”
Partway down the western slope of the Mount of Olives, hundreds of additional people were lining the sides of the pathway to the cemetery, some cheering and applauding as Joshua passed by with his entourage and then joining it once they had passed. When they reached the Schneider burial site, they broke ranks and formed vast perimeter circles around Joshua and his party.
“This is incredible, Shannon,” muttered Jon. “Look, the TV cameras are back. Next it’ll be helicopters overhead!” Almost on cue, they heard the wiff-wiff-wiff of a helicopter heading in their direction. Along with some of the Seventy, Jon and Shannon were admitted to the inner circle at the burial site.
Joshua looked weary and depressed. His now-eleven disciples flanked him on either side as he walked silently to the tomb, raised his arms, and placed both hands against it. His forehead followed, hitting the rock with considerable impact. For some time he remained in that position, a living portrait of dejection. His eyes were tightly shut while his lips moved in anguished prayer. Tears trickled down his cheeks.