by Paul L Maier
“Good grief!” said Jon, glaring at the highway. “God must want Ben-Yosef to bring off his scheme after all! What if Vatican communications aren’t restored in time? What then?”
“Well, Jon,” said Gideon, “isn’t it obvious? Then you’d simply have to expose Ben-Yosef some time after Vatican III gets under way.” “But I’d hate to have to go that route. If Joshua does preside at the opening of Vatican III—and you know how masterfully he could do that with the whole world watching—we might never be able to reverse the damage. You can’t believe the number who would believe in him from that point on, despite any hard evidence to the contrary. At the very least, it would split Christendom.”
Two kilometers farther down the highway, Jon hit the steering wheel and said, “I just thought of something even worse: Kevin Sullivan, even if he gets our message in time, may not even be able to stop something with such massive momentum as Vatican III. He’d have only my message . . . no tangible proof to convince the pope and the Curia . . .”
“Valid point,” said Noah.
“True enough,” sighed Gideon. “So . . . any other ideas, Jon?”
Jon said nothing for long moments. But then he nodded very slowly. “There’s just no other way, gentlemen. When I tell you what it is, you’ll suggest that I seek psychiatric help, of course. But here it is . . . Gideon, you are my directly corroborating witness. You and I have to fly to Rome on the very next jet out of Ben-Gurion. With any luck, we’ll find one. By the time we land in Rome—and if there’s a God in charge—Vatican telecommunications should be back in service. At the airport or en route to the Vatican, we’ll phone Sullivan that we have some tangible proof—the latest documents there in my attaché case, including the printouts and graduation program from the Technion—as well as the whole litany of what happened to me at the Galilee compound. Meanwhile, Noah, you too have eyewitness proof for the State of Israel to swear out warrants for the arrest of Joshua and Baruch Levine, as well as extradition papers for them both. Fax the warrants to the Vatican if you can’t get them prepared in time for us to take along.” He paused. “Well, that’s it, gentlemen. What do you call it? Madness? Or the only way we may be able to stop a horrible international fraud?”
Neither replied. Gideon immediately called Ben-Gurion for flight information, while Noah called Daniel Cohen, the prime minister of the State of Israel.
A cacophony of dual Hebrew conversations in two cell phones commanded the next kilometers. Gideon was the first to end his.
“Believe it or not, Jon,” he said, “your insane scheme might work. KLM has a flight at 11:15 A.M. that arrives in Rome three and a half hours later at 1:45 P.M., since we gain an hour. When does Vatican III begin?”
“At 3:00 P.M. Book it, Gideon!”
At 10:40 A.M., they were racing through Netanya en route to Ben-Gurion, courtesy of a police escort for which Noah had again used his cell phone to good advantage. They still had not raised the Vatican by phone, but now there was hope. Noah arranged that Shin Bet would meet them curbside at Ben-Gurion with the legal documents and have them bypass security. Fortuitously, both Jon and Gideon had passports in their attaché cases.
Shin Bet would also contact their counterparts in Italy, who would meet the KLM flight at Rome’s airport, whisk Jon and Gideon through customs, and speed them on to the Vatican. Any faulty link in this inane chain of events, of course, would doom it to failure.
When they reached the outskirts of Tel Aviv, highway traffic was getting more congested, despite the wailing sirens of their police escort. Checking their watches four times every minute, they saw that they were running behind. Ten minutes to takeoff, and they were still fifteen minutes from the airport. Constantly on his cell phone, Noah put pressure on KLM to hold the flight for them. KLM replied that airline policy was never to do this. Friedmann insisted that the request was in the national interest of the State of Israel. At that KLM agreed to hold the flight for ten minutes, but no longer.
“Make that fifteen minutes?” Noah bargained. “This is probably in the world’s interest, not just Israel’s. Why not have the pilots make up for time lost by advancing their cruising speed? Israel will pay for the extra jet fuel.”
“Well, put it this way,” KLM responded. “Our flight 705 will push back at exactly fifteen minutes following scheduled departure. If King David himself were to come a minute later, we’d wave goodbye to him on the way to takeoff.”
“Agreed! Toda! Thanks.”
At last, the brakes on their Peugeot screamed to a stop at Ben-Gurion’s departure concourse. Shin Bet handed Jon and Gideon their boarding passes and whisked them through security. Both were now running to the departure gate, even though their watches had told them the bad news: they were seven minutes beyond the extension.
Still they pressed on, hoping KLM would relent. When they finally reached the departure gate, all signs for the flight to Rome had already been removed. The one remaining attendant didn’t even respond to their question. She merely pointed out the window at KLM Flight 705, which was just taking to the air off runway 08-26.
TWENTY-SIX
The Third Council of the Vatican, as it was officially termed, was set to convene at 3:00 P.M. on this Sunday of Sundays, July 15. A fierce thunderstorm in the early morning hours pelted the Eternal City, but by noon the rains had passed eastward. Opening masses in St. Peter’s Basilica had already taken place, and official council business would begin at midafternoon with an address from “God’s own delegate,” as Rome’s Il Tempo put it, Joshua-Jesus.
The entire colonnaded piazza before St. Peter’s was packed with humanity. Ordinarily, this would largely have been drawn from the Roman populace, in front of whom the pope would give his holiday blessings urbi et orbi—“to the city and to the world.” This time, however, most Romans would have to settle for their television sets to view the event. The hundreds of thousands who stood around the obelisk in the piazza this Sunday had to have tickets even to enter the colonnaded circle. They were leading Christians from all corners of the globe who had not been given reserved seats inside St. Peter’s, nor for the risers erected along the steps leading up to the basilica. To accommodate them, all principals in the opening ceremonies would process across the piazza before entering the basilica.
About two o’clock, the remaining clouds gave way to a halcyon sky, right on cue as background for the processional, which began along the Tiber at two-thirty and proceeded up the Via della Conciliazione into the Piazza San Piètro. Shannon and other privileged guests would see the procession from the top of the steps to St. Peter’s, and then be escorted to reserved seats inside the basilica. Once again, she was very concerned that Jon had apparently not yet returned to Rome from Athens—unless, of course, he surprised her by already occupying the seat next to hers in the basilica.
The very air in Vatican City seemed saturated with anticipation. About two-thirty, Shannon saw the procession begin to enter the piazza, led by the Vienna Boys Choir singing Verdi’s Te Deum. The scarlet-clad college of cardinals followed, after which the train of clergy turned black with bearded representatives from eastern Christendom, and then variously robed archbishops and the highest clergy of the other major denominations. Finally the pope, the Orthodox patriarch, and the Twelve preceded Joshua, who, like the rest, walked across the piazza to waves of worshipful adulation before ascending the steps to the basilica.
Shannon and others in her party were now ushered inside before the procession continued into the basilica. The sight inside St. Peter’s nearly overpowered her. She had visited the basilica before, and just walking inside the immense interior of the world’s largest church seemed to vacuum the breath out of her lungs. But on this day the effect was at least tripled. On the main floor of the nave, thousands were seated on eighteen rows of seats in rising tiers that ran the whole 615-foot length on both sides of the now-narrowed aisle at the center of this canyon of humanity. Additional rows of seating filled both balconies, while the thousands
more sitting in the side aisles and chapels would be able to witness the proceedings via television, receiving the same feed that was now transmitted live to networks throughout the world. About three thousand churchmen had gathered inside St. Peter’s for Vatican II, but almost fifteen thousand leaders of church and state were now awaiting the opening of Vatican III.
A mighty organ prelude resonated throughout the vast reaches of the structure as Shannon and all those who had flown in from Israel, but were not part of the procession, were conducted down the nave—almost two football fields long—until they finally reached the transept. Here at the basilica’s focal point—the papal altar beneath Bernini’s bronze Baldachino—they were ushered into the basilica’s equivalent of box seats. Later Shannon would tell anyone who would listen that she had had the best possible view of everything that took place on that most extraordinary day.
And now the Vatican orchestra and brass choir trumpeted forth Joshua’s signature flourish—the same fanfare that had accompanied his cyberannouncements and his mass meetings in Israel. Joshua had composed the music himself, as Jon and Shannon had learned, another token of his many-faceted genius. But now his entire score was heard for the first time, a masterpiece of brilliant, brassy themes interspersed with contrapuntal seraphic melodies that, unlike most music, pleased the ear the very first time it was heard. Later, music critics would compare it favorably with the best in Gabrieli or Bach or Handel.
Although silence was the best background for great music, this rule was violated when Joshua appeared at the end of the lengthy procession. Against general protocol, all in attendance stood up, applauded, and cheered as he passed by, blessing everyone on both sides of the nave. Many tried to kneel, but the cramped seating arrangements made this difficult. When Joshua finally reached a dais erected before the high altar, the Twelve fanned out to their designated seats while the pope, Joshua, and the patriarch sat down on three central thrones facing eastward across the nave.
In the north wing of the transept, the Sistine Chapel Choir sang the sublime Gloria chorus from Bach’s Mass in B Minor to supplement the grand harmonics preceding. When the last tones had spent themselves, Benedict XVI stood up, crosier in hand, and announced in traditional Latin, “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen!” Then Patriarch Bartholomew also stood up and announced, in traditional Greek, “Eis to onoma tou Patros, kai tou Huios, kai tou Hagiou Pneumatos. Amen!”
The rest of the ceremonies, they had agreed, would be conducted in the world’s international language—English—since the world was also attending St. Peter’s on this day of days. The pope now took his place at the lectern and said, “My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, it is my pleasure as your host, to welcome all of you—delegates and observers—to Rome, to Vatican City, to the Basilica of St. Peter, and to this Third Council of the Vatican. Despite its official name, this conclave far exceeds the bounds of Roman Catholicism, since its delegates have come not only from every corner of the earth, but from all major Christian denominations on earth. It is, then, in accordance with the directives of our Master, the first truly ecumenical council since late antiquity. The church universal is meeting here today!”
Wild applause and cheering erupted throughout the basilica, and it would not stop. Centuries of rivalry, mistrust, and even open hostility between Christian church bodies had always addled the consciences of dedicated churchmen, and Benedict’s statement pointed the way to a better future. After seven full minutes of ovation, the pontiff pounded the floor with his crosier and continued.
“The church universal is not only meeting here today, but it is meeting under circumstances which our forefathers, our saints, our martyrs, and Christians of all ages have anticipated but never witnessed: the return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!”
Another massive wave of applause broke across the basilica, and it, too, abated only some minutes later after the determined pounding of Benedict’s bishop’s staff. He continued, “To be sure, there are some, even in our Curia, who deny that our Master could return in this form or under these circumstances, and others present here today may also harbor doubts that Joshua is Jesus in fact. But was not this the case also in Jesus’ day? Even after His triumphant resurrection, Matthew tells us in chapter 28, ‘Some doubted.’
“As a mark of his great mercy, Joshua has urged us all to treat such doubters never with coercion of any kind, but only with patience, love, and prayer. In this spirit, then, it is my extraordinary, my God-given privilege to present to you the man called Joshua Ben-Yosef, whom a large majority of Christians today hail as the returned Jesus of Nazareth! Like the father of the possessed son in Mark’s Gospel, the church cries out to you, Blessed Joshua, ‘Lord, we believe! Help our unbelief!’”
The multitude of churchmen and statesmen rose to their feet as if one person, cascading swells of deafening applause down the tiers of seating. This time Benedict’s crosier seemed powerless to halt it, and the ovation surged on for ten minutes, despite Joshua’s own attempts to curtail it. Another trumpet fanfare finally succeeded when all else failed, and the assembly sat back down in expectant silence.
His robe dazzling white in the lone spot of an arc light, Joshua took his time at the lectern, first bowing his head in prayer, and then looking out across his vast audience for several moments with a fire of determination in his eyes. Not once did he look down to any script or notes before him, for there were none. When he opened his mouth, his words resonated across the distant reaches of the basilica and into its farthest galleries with authoritative reverberation.
“At the beginning of my first earthly ministry, twenty centuries ago, I was in the synagogue at Nazareth one Sabbath and was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to read aloud. I read these words:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
“Then, you will recall, I sat down . . . until I was asked for a brief commentary. I stood up again and said, ‘Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’—and Galilee was never the same after that!”
Unscheduled titters of laughter actually surfaced.
“I should now like to adapt Isaiah’s words for this solemn occasion and say: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to Christendom. He has sent me to proclaim release of the church from error and the recovery of its sight from blindness, to restore His oppressed people, and thus return the church to the Lord’s favor.’
“And today, this Scripture will be fulfilled in your hearing!”
The international assembly sat in stunned silence, wondering how Joshua would apply his revised version of Isaiah. Archconservative Cardinal Pedro Gonzales—a.k.a. “God’s Bulldog for the Faith”— furrowed his brow and exchanged worried glances with colleagues in the Holy Office. But Shannon and many others were hardly surprised, since Joshua had said no more than what many reformers inside Christendom had said for centuries. A church that had burned heretics and impeded science in the Middle Ages, or kept silence on issues ranging from the Holocaust to child sex abuse scandals in the modern era had its own catalog of errors. And wasn’t this exactly how Jesus would score the sins of His people?
With stunning rhetorical skill, however, Joshua knew how to keep all hearers on his side, even Cardinal Gonzales. He now welded their attention to the problems and challenges facing Christianity today that had prompted his call for reform. It was not a pretty list. In colorful detail, he attacked the evils, external and internal, that were compromising the faith. Outside the church there was the spiritual indifference of the modern world and its relativistic ethics; the challenges from Islam and the Far Eastern religions; the cults and “their para-religious claptrap masquerading as rational belief”; governmental intrusion curbing the free practice of religion in some co
untries; the persecution of Christians and Jews in the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East; and, in particular, the pseudo-intellectual, sensationalist attacks on the faith and its biblical basis by radical, revisionist critics. Again the entire assembly arose in prolonged applause. None of Joshua’s targets were made of straw, delegates knew, and they had all contributed to something of a stagnation in the growth of world Christianity. It was a sad but true statistic: more babies were being born across the world than were getting baptized. Shannon only hoped that the entire address was being recorded, since these words had compelling power.
Joshua held up his arms for silence. “Now, my brothers and sisters in the faith,” he continued, “we must turn to the internal evils that compromise our faith today, and this will be more painful. In the Upper Room on that bitter Thursday night, two thousand years ago, I prayed to the Father that you would all be one! And what have you done? What have you done? You have divided and subdivided, split and split again, separated and reseparated so that today there are hundreds of different church bodies. Is this a proper witness before the world?
“And some of you theologians, you shepherds of the flock, bear a heavy responsibility for warping the faith in directions that have suited your own fancies rather than reflecting my will for the church. You have introduced practices not warranted in Holy Scripture and then doggedly defended them.
“Sometimes you are hopelessly lax and open-minded in an ‘anything goes’ theology that puts our faith on an equal plane with other world religious systems. But more often you are hopelessly narrow and closed-minded, doctrinaire purists who, like the Pharisees of old, legalistically force your notions on the church and refuse even to pray with other Christians who don’t agree with you on all points of doctrine. Still others of you higher clergy have tolerated horrendous immorality among your lower clergy.”