Mission (57 page)

But it wasn't just what The Man was saying that posed a threat to the fortunes of the Sadducean
junta.
It was what he was doing. For it now appeared that he actually
did
possess some kind of extraordinary power. The Man had cured literally hundreds of people. It was little wonder that the ignorant, impoverished people that now surrounded him had been impressed. In his message of salvation and of the kingdom that was to come, they saw the promise of freedom from the burden of their daily lives; the often back-breaking toil in conditions of semi-slavery to which their humble birth and the system had condemned them. The Man's presence and his words were an affront to the authority of the High Priest and an assault on the sovereignty of the state and those charged with the direction of its affairs. Caiaphas, the then holder of that prestigious post, was in no doubt as to what had to be done. The Man would have to go.

The decision was simple but its implementation was beset with problems. The Jewish state, despite its sectarian class-structure which concentrated the power and wealth in the hands of a privileged minority, was, for its time, relatively humane. In Judea, the only capital crimes were blasphemy and adultery. For both of which the sentence was death by stoning. For all other offences, the most severe punishment was flogging. Usually thirteen strokes; with an absolute maximum of thirty-nine. Convicting The Man on a charge of adultery was, by all accounts, out of the question. There were a number of Pharisaic experts who thought that they could make a charge of blasphemy stand but, as always, it was a question of interpretation. The Man had already outwitted the rabbinic undercover men who had been sent out to ask him trick questions. Unless his conviction could be guaranteed it was a dangerous course to follow. If the confrontation with The Man was allowed to develop into a public debate it might end by diminishing the authority of the High Priest and making the Sanhedrin look ridiculous.

It was Annas, the High Priest's father-in-law, and ex-holder of the same office who came up with the idea of manoeuvring The Man into the hands of the Romans. They had the power to execute criminals and did so by hanging, beheading and crucifixion. If Joshua the Nazarene could be arrested and found guilty of a crime against
Roman
law, then the problem was solved.

There was one small snag. Roman law usually ensured a fair trial. But the plan had three weighty points in its favour. First, Pontius Pilate, the man charged with governing the province, owed the Sanhedrin. Caiaphas proposed to call in his marker. Second, Roman justice was highly efficient: once a man had been found guilty and sentenced, punishment was swift and inevitable. And third, if the Nazarene was tried and executed by the Romans his death would be
their
responsibility. And it meant that if, by some inconceivable trick of fate, Joshua actually was the Messiah, God's retribution would fall on the backs of the Romans and not the Jews.

One of the great miscalculations of all time. But Caiaphas could not help but reason thus. He was just playing out the part that had been programmed for him. Like the rest of us, he was a puppet on a cosmic string.

The Man entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, flanked by Mary of Magdala and his disciples and hailed as a conquering hero by his followers who lined the route into the city, waving palm leaves and throwing their coats on the ground for him to pass over. Reaching the temple courtyard, The Man overturned the tables of the money-changers and the piled-up cages of the merchants selling sacrificial pigeons and goats, then preached to an ecstatic crowd.

Outraged by this frontal assault on their authority, the High Priest and the Elders of Jerusalem wanted to send in the Temple Guard to arrest The Man. Annas counselled caution. The Nazarene was surrounded by an unwashed out-of-town mob. If the arresting officers were obliged to use force to take him into custody it might spark off an uncontrollable riot. They must, said Annas, wait for a more opportune moment.

At sunset, The Man left the city with his disciples and spent the night in a house in the nearby village of Bethany. The next day, he returned to the Temple where a crowd quickly gathered round him in Solomon's Porch. Hearing of his return to the city, Caiaphas sent a group of priests, all experts in the Mosaic Law, to challenge The Man in front of the crowd in the hope of luring him into making a statement that they could publicly condemn as blasphemous. The Man's reply confounded them but, under the pretence of seeking enlightenment, the experts kept trying to trap him with apparently innocent questions.

Once again The Man predicted the destruction of the Temple. A prophecy that, somewhat naturally, enraged the High Priest and his acolytes, the Sanhedrin, the Elders of Jerusalem and everyone else
who had a finger in the pie. For besides the money and power that flowed from it, the Temple was the shrine for the soul of the Jewish nation. The reconstruction work, started under Herod the Great, had been going on for nearly fifty years and was still far from completion. To talk of its destruction was the equivalent of proposing the demolition of the
Ka 'bah
in Mecca to a group of Muslim fundamentalists. It is not hard to imagine how the pillars of the Jewish establishment reacted. The Man's threat, for it was translated as such, caused them to experience every shade of outraged emotion from incredulous anger to purple-faced apoplexy. But, by sunset on the second day, The Man had still not been arrested.

Bitterly disappointed, he returned to Bethany to spend the night with his disciples. While the others slept, The Man woke Judas and Mary of Magdala and led them silently out of the house and back towards Jerusalem. The gates of the city were closed but Judas took The Man and Mary through a secret entrance used by the Sicarii – the underground resistance group to which he had belonged. Their destination was the house of Nicodemus, The Man's secret ally on the Sanhedrin.

The reason for this midnight call was to discover why the Sanhedrin had not yet arrested him. Nicodemus gave them an account of the latest twists in the labyrinthine plot to eliminate The Man. Since opting for Annas's devious solution, Caiaphas and his supporters had finally learned that The Man had not been born in Nazareth, Galilee, but in Bethlehem, Judea and, what is more, might conceivably be a descendant of King David. In addition they had learned, through their own informants at Herod's court, of the mystery surrounding his birth and his relationship with Johanan the Baptiser. Political expediency was one thing, but prophecy was the bedrock of Jewish history.

Annas and Caiaphas were now faced with the possibility that the Nazarene might not be an impudent impostor. Worse, Gamaliel, acknowledged to be the unchallenged authority in the interpretation of the
Torah,
had even gone so far as to suggest that, on the available evidence, The Man might even
be
the promised Messiah.

Gamaliel's reading of the runes had caused Caiaphas and his father-in-law to buttonhole the revered sage and take him off into a quiet corner to seek further clarification. Was he serious? Was it possible? To which Gamaliel's considered reply had been ‘Yes, but, –' as President Nixon was wont to say, ‘ – don't bet the ranch on it'.

In face of the evidence of The Man's remarkable powers and presence, some of you may find this mixture of cautious reserve, doubt and outright disbelief hard to understand. But as the Book showed, Israel had not been short of charismatic prophets. As any first-century Jew could have told you, Jehovah had been making promises for centuries. A land of milk and honey they could call their own, salvation, vengeance via his divine hand upon their enemies. All of which he had so far failed to deliver.

There was also another reason for caution. Caiaphas and his supporters had begun to be seriously worried by the testimony of those who claimed to have been healed, or to have witnessed miraculous acts by The Man. If the stories were true, they could only be explained by the presence of the legendary Persian angels, or demons – who could tell? But whatever it was, Caiaphas was reluctant to inspire its wrath by a rash move against its earthly agent.

The Man now knew what had to be done. And Judas was tailor-made for the job. As a one-time member of the Essene community in which Gabriel and The Man had resided, Judas understood the situation in a way that the other disciples, as yet, did not. There was no need for lengthy explanations. The Essenes were soldiers in the army of the Prince of Light. The
kamikaze
of the Celestial Empire. All The Man had to do was to tell Judas that he needed his help.

Judas was instructed to go to Caiaphas and offer to betray The Man. He was to demand payment so that his motive would not be suspect. He was to say that he could tell when Joshua's ‘spirit' had left his body and that, without it, Joshua had no power to harm them. He was to explain that the ‘spirit' could not bear pain. If they seized Joshua and beat him, the ‘spirit' could not dare re-enter his body and if they killed him, the ‘spirit' would be forced to return to the place from which it had come.

The Man explained that in order for this deception to work, his other disciples and followers must not know of this arrangement. The High Priest's spies were everywhere. Judas had to be seen as the betrayer, and risk the inevitable consequences of his action.

And so, in one of the most celebrated notorious acts in history, Judas went to the house of the High Priest and offered to betray Joshua of Nazareth in return for thirty pieces of silver.

At what has come to be known the Last Supper – to which Mary of Magdala was also invited – The Man warned the Twelve that, in a few short hours he would be arrested and, within a few days he
would be dead. Coming after The Man's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and the last two days when, faced with the best brains the Temple could muster, he had seemed invincible, the news was not only profoundly shocking, it was utterly unbelievable. And Shimon-Petrus was even more upset when, after swearing that he would go to his death alongside The Man, he was told that he would deny him three times.

Shimon did not realise that The Man was not accusing him of faithlessness but inserting a delayed-action command into his subconscious. It was a move designed to protect Shimon from his own foolhardiness. Ya'el wanted his disciples alive, not dead. That was why they were all programmed to run out on him when he was arrested. The guilt-laden supporters of a suffering Christ – what author Colin Wilson has termed ‘Crosstianity' – have made much of he fact that everyone abandoned The Man when the chips were down, but they are wrong. It was part of the plan.

The other point that needs to be clarified concerns the consumption of the bread and wine that The Man passed to those around the table. Two items which were used to symbolise his flesh and blood and which were to become the basis of the Eucharist – the central rite of Christian worship and, incidentally, a bone of contention within the early Church. Many of The Man's followers in the immediate post-Resurrection period could not accept the Pauline interpretation of the Last Supper and found the ceremony offensive. Well, the news is that The Man never intended it to become one.

The writers of
Mark
and
Luke
got it nearly right. The Man made no mention of any remission of sins. That was overlaid later. But it was certainly true that his death was on behalf of all of us. Only we don't have to feel guilty about it. Once we understand why, we should all be dancing in the streets. His death on the cross brought the release his spirit-being longed for. So let's set the record straight. Although the celebration of the Last Supper rapidly acquired a unique significance within the Christian church-state, this kind of sacramental rite was by no means exclusive to them. Variations of the same ceremony can be found in other belief-systems and all have their roots in religious practices that reach back to Methuselah and beyond.

If you want to know more about this, look up any references you can find to the sacred yellow plant
haoma.

The Last Supper was another occult metaphor that linked Ya'el with the earlier Celestial missions to Earth, which the Roman
Church ignored, as it proceeded to distort The Man's message. The deliberations of Ignatius, Clement, Irenaeus, Hippolytus
et al
which, through the adoption of the Nicene creed, gave a monolithic character to Christianity which was to last till the Great Schism in 1054, were based on two fundamental errors. The first being their implacable opposition to what was called ‘syncretism' – the attempt to reconcile the diverse threads of philosophic and religious thought and practices. Everything that had happened prior to The Man's birth was either ignored, or branded as heretical when, in fact, The Truth was there all the time, staring them in the face. The reason is not hard to find: ‘Brax had already got to work on those who saw the Apostolic succession as a vehicle they could use to propel themselves into positions of power.

If you believe nothing else in this account, you must believe that The Truth has been around from the beginning. It has lain buried in the heart and mind of Man in every age and has been expressed, often obscurely and incompletely, in every faith from stiff-necked Episcopalianism to the wacky spontaneity of Zen.

The second error which, like the first, was the result of some cold-eyed pragmatism concerns the Eucharist. As I've said, The Man never intended his last meal on Earth to become institutionalised. It was the Pauline organisation men who saw in its symbolic representation of the timeless mystery, the magic ingredient which, served up with some liturgical salad-dressing, was to be the cornerstone of the power-structure they were building.

What they proceeded to do with The Man's message, with a little help from ‘Brax, can be explained in terms of a modern marketing operation. Celebration of the Eucharist allowed the organisation men to get the corner on salvation. That was the product for which the bishops held the exclusive franchise. The churches were the retail outlets. And the people putting this deal together claimed to have been granted the licence to do so by Peter, who Paul had built up into The Man's sole legal representative. The only one to whom the secret formula had been confided.