It is written that in the End Times, the House of David will rise up again. That sounds just fine to most Jews.

Others, however, might rightly ask : What does this mean for Christians, or for Muslims? Are they simply excluded from further consideration? And what about the people of the so-called "East"; Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists and others? What is their place in this prophecy?

The answer is that the House of David is not what you think it is, and it's not where you think it is. All these religions are part of this House, and will rise up with it.

The guiding light of this Web Site is the prophecy of Micah, who stated that, concerning the End Times of this wicked age we live in:

(Micah 4:1-5).

Note that it is NOT predicted that everyone will be a "Jew"; only that they will come to Jerusalem "in the name of [their] god". What? If they're not Jewish, what are they doing in Jerusalem? Can you imagine how such a thing can come about? I can.

There is a certain group of religions which, by their very natures and histories, fit into the above prophecy very well. They are:

I shall show you that these 9 religions, collectively, constitute the "House of David" in the broadest sense of the word. All 9 are therefore incorporated into this Web Site.

How does it make you feel, to hear me say that all these religions are part of the House of David? I know that many people hate this! But I have to tell you, it makes me feel good! "Good" because I don't desire that the outcome of the 6,000 year-old "holy war", which has gripped mankind since the beginning of time, should be determined by a bloody confrontation. What would that have to do with God?

Also, and moreover, I don't desire that religion should be replaced by godless bank dictatorship. I absolutely guarantee that this will happen unless the "holy war" ends now.

A "holy war" doesn't end because it's "wrong" to fight, or because "all war is evil". It's not necessarily wrong to fight, and all wars are most assuredly not "evil". The "holy war" ends, if and when it is realized that the war is WRONG, and that the real enemy, in the final analysis, is an evil which lies within us all.

Therefore, if it makes you feel bad that your personal religion is not prophesied, here, to be destined to triumph over all others, then you don't belong here. There are plenty of other Web Sites on the Internet which proclaim that your church, whatever it is, will prevail. Please return to those sites.

If you are still reading, I will now prove that all these religions arose from an ancient form of Judaism, by the hand of God. The modern religion called "Judaism" is not the same religion as the ancient one, but, like it's cousins "Christianity" and "Islam", it is a "spinoff" of it. No one of the great Western Monotheisms embodies all of God's revelation. He's simply too big for that.

In order to see the larger picture, which includes six "Oriental" religions, we need to look at the history of the development of religions. It will be seen that there has been a marked tendency for major changes in humankind's spiritual development to take place every 600 years. When these changes are assembled graphically, they reveal an interesting timeline:

Please note now that in 600 BC, the nation of Israel was sent into exile -- "Diaspora" -- by the hand of God, for sin, and with cause. The process was not instantaneous, but took place in stages, over a period of a century. First, around 700 BC, the so-called "Northern Kingdom" of Israel was conquered and forcibly dispersed by the Assyrians. Then, in 600 BC, the "Southern Kingdom" was conquered by Babylon. That was the end, for the time being, of the ancient Israeli state.

Thus, for modern-day Jews (and for a not-inconsiderable number of modern-day Christians and Muslims), the 6th century BC was a horrible time in history. Yet the historian Bernard Grun, author of the popular book "The Timetables of History", calls that same period the "zenith of human wisdom and achievement"!

"Zenith"?! What happened to "horrible"? What's the meaning of this?

The meaning is as follows. The 6th century was the time of an amazing coincidence, namely the birth of no less than six new religions:

• Zoroastrianism
• Hinduism (in its current form, which is monotheistic)
• Buddhism
• Taoism
• Jainism
• Confucianism

In short, the whole of modern day Oriental religion arose in a single century! And that's not all. This was also the century of the "Seven Wise Men" of Athens, whom historians credit with being the founders of the greatest intellectual empire the world has yet known; namely that of ancient Greece. This was the empire which culminated in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and finally Aristotle, whose best-known student, Alexander the Great, summed the whole thing up by conquering the world.

It seems that everything in the world of enduring spiritual and philosophical value, with the sole exceptions of Judeo-Christianity and its cousin, Islam, came about in a single moment in time. And it certainly seems to have had something to do with the Jewish Diaspora, does it not? All these things, after all, followed on its heels. What were the relationships between these things?

It might be helpful to display the time line again, with the Oriental religions added on:

What this diagram shows is that Judaism-Christianity-Islam, or Western Monotheism, although it developed in one single place (the Middle East), did so on a long timeline, extending over a period of 2,400 years, from 1800 BC to 600 AD.

Eastern religion was quite the opposite. It did not develop in a single place, but over an enormous range of territories throughout Asia. But it developed at a single time. On our time line, we see all the Oriental religions clustered along a single horizontal line at 600 BC. Notwithstanding the great cultural differences, ethnic differences, and geographical distances involved, the whole thing happened in a single century! How can we explain this?

What influence did these Jews have? Perhaps the most succinct answer to this question was given by Strabo, the great Greek historian/geographer. Concerning the Jews, Strabo wrote:

What I am suggesting is that the destruction of the Jewish nation --- world-famous from the glory days of Solomon onward --- was a sobering fact to the peoples of the world. The arrivals of vast numbers of exiled Jews, God's "chosen people", appearing now as refugees from a devastation inflicted upon them by their own God, seems to have had a profound effect. That effect was manifested by the rise of Oriental religion, wherever these Jews went.

But the simultaneous appearance of these 6 new faiths cannot possibly have been coincidence. If one plays the "devil's advocate", proclaiming that Oriental religion and Judaism have no relationship whatsoever, then the founding of Zoroastrianism, monotheistic Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, and Confucianism, at the same time, must be pure coincidence. Is that possible? What are the odds?

For these 6 religions to have developed simultaneously in the same century by coincidence, the odds can be calculated as being "1" divided by the product of the number of centuries during which they could have developed. No matter "how you slice it" it didn't happen by coincidence. Suppose, for example, we claim that "all the religions of man developed between Abraham and Muhammad", a period of 24 centuries. What are the odds that every Oriental religion would appear in the same one of those 24 centuries? You don't have to be much of a mathematician to figure this one out. Using your hand-held calculator, you can readily prove to your self that the answer is:

1 / 24 x 1 / 24 x 1 / 24 x 1 / 24 x 1 / 24 x 1 / 24 = 1 / 191,102,976

... i.e., one-chance-out-of-191 million, which is 32 times less likely than winning the New York State Lottery! We haven't even included the rise of Greek civilization here, which would make the denominator a number in the billions, hard to even comprehend as a statistic. In other words, it didn't happen. That is, it didn't happen by mere coincidence.

Some might protest, saying that all these Oriental religions didn't appear in exactly 600 BC, and that the assignment of all of them to the same century is too strict historically. I'll go along with that, for the sake of argument. OK, let's assign them to two centuries (which is as much of a spread as history will allow), and let us repeat the calculation. Now the question is: "What are the odds that all 6 religions would appear within two centuries of each other"? There were twelve 2-century periods between Abraham and Muhammad. That gives us the following number:

1 / 12 x 1 / 12 x 1 / 12 x 1 / 12 x 1 / 12 x 1 / 12 = 1 / 248,832

This is a "much larger" number than 1-out-of-191 million, but is it probable? If someone told you your chances of jumping out of an airplane and living were 1-out-of-248,832, would you jump? I don't think so.

Note that I've been "lenient" with these statistics, because in truth, any new religion could have appeared at any time in history. Even if we assume that history only goes back to the beginning of Genesis, i.e., 6,000 years ago, then one could argue that these religions could have arisen at any time in not 24, but 60 centuries. What are the odds then, that all 6 of the major surviving Oriental religions would have arisen in the same century?

1 / 60 x 1 / 60 x 1 / 60 x 1 / 60 x 1 / 60 x 1 / 60 = 1 / 46.7 billion

I hope I've made my point, which is that the simultaneous appearance of all the world's Oriental religions in one century, preceded by the forced Diaspora of several million Jews and their relocation to these same places, is hardly coincidence.

If, as every believing Jew, Christian and Muslim professes to believe, it was the hand of God which sent the Jews into exile, then it must have been the hand of God which started Oriental religion. If so, then there must be a relationship between "God" and "Enlightenment" which explains both of them without detracting from either one.

In fact, there is just such a relationship, and one can realize and understand it if one seeks to. I sought to. Will you? Or do you want to exhaust yourself with an East-West "holy war", while the banks quietly put us all in chains?

It is not at all difficult to find "Enlightenment" in the Bible. But first, you have to want to find it, and then you have to look for it.

I looked for it. And, I found it.

Consider now the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis, which speak of the creation of man, and of mankind's fall from grace. According to the Bible, God provided for man's every need. The "deal" was that man was simply to refrain from eating from a certain "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil". What was the nature of this tree? In Genesis, Chapter 3, we learn its nature:

If you cannot believe that this story is "literal history", then you would be well-advised to immediately begin thinking of it as a parable, because it has immense depth. In fact, the truths embedded in this story are so deep, they are beyond human discernment.

According to the Biblical description, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was nothing other than a tree of "worldly" delights, viz:

• It looked good.
• It tasted good.

But what sort of "wisdom" was this?

Nowadays, we are inclined to define wisdom in one way or another which relates to "Godliness". This, however, cannot be the "wisdom" described in Genesis 3. Why not? Because Adam and Eve, after all, were in the very presence of God. God walked in the Garden of Eden and talked to them, face-to-face. How much more "Godly" can one get, if one is in the literal presence of God Himself?

No, this was a different sort of "wisdom" altogether. It was the "wisdom" of the world; namely the knowledge necessary for you to prevail over your enemies, to increase your food supply, and to obtain sexual pleasure.

This, then, was a tree of human desire; the desire for every sort of pleasure, and the desire for worldly power: power for the purpose of increasing worldly pleasure, and also for the sake of simply possessing the power itself.

Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Taoism all teach that Enlightenment is obtained by removing worldly desire. Thus, if we are open-minded, we can immediately see that the very beginning of the Book of Genesis reveals the "secret" of Enlightenment, and that it never really was a "secret" in the first place.

 Enlightenment is the state we were in originally, before we fell from grace (that is, before our predecessors were expelled from the Garden of Eden). In the West, it is taught that we lost grace because we denied the sovereignty of God, and that we will regain it through submitting ourselves to God's rule once again.

In the East, it is taught that we lost grace because we opened ourselves up to worldly desires, and that we will regain grace through purifying ourselves so that we are free of those desires once again.

These two teachings are obviously one-and-the-same. You don't think so? They both describe the same event, do they not?

When Adam and Eve ate from that tree, they were rebelling against God. The nature of the defiance was that they allowed themselves to succumb to worldly desire. When two things happen in the same place at the same time, they are the same thing. These two things are therefore one and the same.

The Bible says that when man re-submits to the rule of God, he will be saved. Since the original rebellion was a yielding to desire, it follows incontrovertibly that after we have attained salvation, it will be seen that we have removed those same desires. The two, submitting to God, and removing worldly desires, are therefore one and the same.

If East and West really teach the same thing, then one cannot but marvel that the world has been involved in an allegedly "holy war" with itself for 6,000 years. We're really not very clever, are we?

Perhaps you can see now why the prophet Micah did not prophecy a "one world religion", but predicted rather that everyone would come to Jerusalem and walk in the name of his god. Recall the passage:

Can you see now how this is possible? It is not necessary that there be a "holy war", and it is not necessary that you submit to a World Banking Dictatorship. But it is necessary that you actively pursue the truth, and that in doing so you have the courage to believe your own eyes, and your own mind.

Jesus made a statement which shows what the true nature of religious brotherhood is. It does not consist of everyone practicing the same ritual observances, or mouthing the same words. Of what, then, does it consist?

In a famous New Testament episode, Jesus was reported to have been addressing a crowd of his followers. In the midst of what must have been an impassioned speech, which certain of the people had traveled days just to hear, one of Jesus' disciples informed him that his brother, his sister and his mother had arrived, and that they wished to speak to him immediately. He turned to the disciple and said:

All these considerations show that God has provided a pathway to religious brotherhood, but philosophy is not enough. At this stage of the game, positive action will be required.

We have shown that the underlying bedrock of Eastern religion is very much contained in the Bible. There is no legitimate Bible-based war against the East. But what about the "holy war" we wage against ourselves, here in the West -- Jew against Christian against Muslim?

If you are a Jew, Christian, or Muslim, you believe, or ought to believe, that mankind fell from grace in the Garden of Eden. In this Garden, all was provided. We were simply to refrain from eating from a certain "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil".

But we ate. And we were banished.

We now dwell in a world of great difficulties. It appears to be filled with pleasures, but these pleasures are like mirages--very difficult to attain to. And when we attain to them, they are never what they appeared to be! Furthermore, the work of this world is never done, and the suffering thereof merely waxes and wanes; it never ceases.

All this was a punishment for our sin against God. See Genesis 3:16-19.

In whatever sense you are able to believe this story, be it as literal history, parable, or otherwise, you must believe it if you are to be saved. If you do not believe it, then you also, presumably, do not believe that there is anything to be saved from!

If you have already thought things through, and have concluded that Darwin was right; i.e., that the world is billions of years old, that man arose from slime by a process of scientific evolution and "survival of the fittest" (i.e., he with the most money), and that mankind will "perfect" itself by its great "wisdom", then you will have great difficulty with everything on this Web Site. There is little here that you will be able to believe.

For everyone who believes in and fears God understands; understands that this is not a particularly good world, and that there is another one which is better. It is frequently referred to as the "Kingdom of Heaven". Those who live proper lives, it is said, will reap the maximum benefit of this world, and will also be rewarded greatly in the next.

Although many young people cannot imagine such things to be true, it is sufficiently well-documented that people, when faced with death, suddenly get very, very concerned with the next world. After all, they're about to enter it! Then, and only then, they realize that they have, by their lives and actions, committed themselves to a certain fate in the next world: to be either better off than they are now, or worse. Which will it be?

And what is this fate? In the West, it is taught that there is one life, which is followed by one judgment, and one final disposition to Heaven or Hell. What a thought! Who can withstand such a thing?

In the East, the principle of reincarnation (or "transmigration" of the soul) is taught. This says that the final disposition is reached in stages, with each life leading to a partial judgment based on its own individual record, or "Karma". This judgment causes one to be reborn into the world in a better or worse state than he was in the previous life. This cycle of death and rebirth continues until Enlightenment -- or Hell -- is reached.

How many times does a man live, according to Eastern teaching? Buddha said:

My God. What a thought!

Most people never think about the following: If you take the time to consider the facts, you will see that there's really not much difference between the Eastern and Western point of view. According to either one, you face a potentially evil disposition which can only be overcome by "doing the right thing". And what is that?

We don't really know what's "right"; our ideas about "right" and "wrong" are changing constantly. Furthermore, even when we deeply desire to "do the right thing", circumstances may force us to choose between two choices which are both evil, so that we wind up doing evil in our own sights whatever our intentions may have been.

Long ago, the Lord God looked down upon us and felt pity. Therefore, he sent prophets, messengers, and a Messiah to help us out.

The first of those major prophets whose teachings are still very much with us was Moses. God's Law was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. When Moses taught this Law to the Children of Israel, and asked them if they would follow it, they are reported to have answered in one voice, in the affirmative (Exodus 24:3). Unfortunately, they were lying. Or, at least, they were wrong, because, for whatever combination of reasons, they didn't follow the Law too well.

God sent prophets to Israel to warn them that they would get into serious, serious difficulties if they did not "shape up". The Bible contains the works of four "major" prophets and 12 "minor" prophets, all 16 of whom strictly warned Israel to mend her ways. Although we, today, pay attention to the works of these prophets, they were roundly ignored in their own day. Therefore, the horrors they warned of came to pass, and The Diaspora we discussed above ensued, in 600 BC.

A relatively small number of the Jews in exile in Babylon were eventually permitted to return to Israel, less than a century after the Diaspora, and the seed of a new Israeli nation was sown. It was not, in the long run, morally better than the old.

God sent Jesus to this new Israel. It had already been prophesied that the Messiah would be killed for our sins, and that "with his wounds we would be healed". This prophecy is the backbone of the Christian religion. It is found in the 53rd Chapter of the Book of Isaiah.

The timing of Jesus' ministry was predicted by the 9th Chapter of the Book of Daniel. Thus, when he made his timely arrival, many knew exactly who he was. Numerous other prophecies about him made his identity virtually certain. Yet one of these prophecies was that he would not be believed. Therefore it was divinely required that the nation would "officially" reject him, and, in fact, kill him.

(For more discussion of these prophecies, see the title "Yeshua Messiah - Jesus Christ" in the Table of Contents.)

Another Biblical prophecy was that Christ would be a "light to the gentiles". After Jesus' death and resurrection, he developed followings in Israel and in Europe. It was the will of God that the European church, founded by the apostle Paul, would grow faster. Whereas the Israeli Church consisted mainly of Jews, the European Church consisted mainly of converts from pagan Rome.

Paul's new religion, therefore, removed many Jewish observances, the most significant being the rite of circumcision of newborn males, which, in the Torah, is the "Covenant" between God and man (Genesis 17:9-14). This made it easy for the Europeans to be Christians; all that was required was to believe in Christ (or to claim to be of such belief), and to refrain from gross acts of spiritual misconduct. This branch of the Church therefore grew rapidly.

But the Jerusalem church, sometimes referred to as the "Nazarene" church, was opposed to this new European religion, which was directly at odds with Jewish Law. The Nazarene church was simply an orthodox Jewish community which differed from the "mainstream" Jewish community in that the latter claimed "the Messiah is coming", whereas the Nazarene said "the Messiah has already come". All other Jewish beliefs and observances were preserved in the Nazarene church.

The Nazarenes were hated by mainstream Jews, by the European Christians, and by the Roman Empire. That's just about everybody! Surrounded by a sea of unremitting hostility, they were gradually driven to extinction.

In the end, this left remembrance of Jesus almost entirely in the European Christian community. However, the complete disappearance of the Nazarene church took place over a matter of some centuries, and much thought and debate transpired before it finally ended.

The issue of the "nature of Christ" divided the Church into two warring factions. On one side, those who believed that Christ was God were predominantly Caucasian Europeans who had no personal knowledge of the events which had transpired in the Middle East; other than through the testimony of others. On the other side, those who believed that Christ was a man were predominantly Middle Easterners, many of whom were presumably Negro and Arabic people from Egypt, Israel and Asia Minor. Many undoubtedly had genealogies tracing them back to eyewitnesses to the actual events reported in the Gospels.

The differences in opinion about the "nature of Christ" proved to be incurable, ultimately necessitating several world councils of Bishops. The first and most famous of these was the Council of Nicaea, which issued the so-called "Nicene Creed". Here are some excerpts from it:

The Creed established further that Jesus was of the same substance (whatever that means) as the Father, proceeding from the Father as a branch proceeds from the trunk of a tree. The all-powerful divine nature proposed for Jesus was established by the phrase "through him all things were made", which presumably made him the creator of the first week of Genesis. Not everyone liked this terminology either.

Finally, a Holy Spirit was proposed, which, as that aspect of divinity which interacted physically with man, was perceived as being a distinct third part of the Holy Trinity. This too fell far short of being universally accepted.

Although each and every one of these proposals was abundantly supported by scripture, there were equal numbers of scriptural passages which argued against them. The situation was really quite messy. That notwithstanding, there was a political majority, engineered in the main -- we are told -- by French Bishops, who thoroughly prevailed, and the Creed became, for all intents and purposes, "law".

Anyone who openly disagreed with the majority was excommunicated. For a Bishop who had devoted his entire life to serving Christ, to be excommunicated was an intolerable state of affairs. A number of new Christian Churches therefore burst forth at this time -- the work of the Bishops who had been excommunicated. The most famous of these were the Arian and Nestorian Churches, which spread throughout the world, and exerted, for many centuries, a profound influence on human history.

The dogmatic Christian belief, from the Council of Nicaea forward, was that Jesus was the Son of God, a member of the Holy Trinity, and therefore God Himself. He had caused Himself to be born into the world through the womb of a virgin female, and would return in the End Times to complete the judgment of the wicked on earth.

The dogmatic Muslim belief was that Jesus was a human being; a prophet much like all the other prophets. Muhammad taught that all the prophets came bearing the same message, and that all were to be equally revered. Jesus was conceded to be the product of a virgin birth, but this was considered to be miracle comparable to God's creation of Adam from dust, and not to be considered as the birth of God Himself in a man's body. The avenger of the End Times was called Mahdi by Muslims, who stated that they could not tell, in advance of his actual coming, if he was, or was not literally the same person as Jesus of Nazareth. We would have to wait and see.

After all, the Rabbis noted, Jesus never said "when I come"; he always said "when the Son of Man comes". Was the "Son of Man" always Jesus himself, or was Jesus one form in which the "Son of Man" appeared? Who in the world was smart enough to answer such a question? No one!

Therefore, the Rabbis devised the notion of two "Messiahs":

(1) "Mashiach ben Yosef" (= the Messiah, the son of Joseph), and

(2) "Mashiach ben David" (= the Messiah, the son of David).

The original meaning of "Mashiach ben Yosef" was "the Messiah, Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter" of Nazareth.

The remainder of the Talmudic history must be deduced, since it is not written down (anywhere I know of). When the spiritual battles between the three faiths -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- degenerated into physical fights, and casualties started to become a serious problem, action had to be taken.

It was observed back then (i.e., the Middle Ages), and remains true today, that Jewish youths who were taught scripture by Christian teachers often wound up converting. In order to prevent this, the Rabbis had to invent some subterfuges. I know why they did this, and I, for my own part, forgive them for it. But I think it's time, now, that the truth be told.

Since the Middle Ages, the Rabbinic teaching about the two Messiahs changed, and they began teaching that neither one has yet come! So "Mashiach ben Yosef", originally Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter, became a new and mysterious Messiah who will come, and who will die a violent death to prepare the way for final salvation. He simply hasn't done this yet!

Since there is no persuasive scriptural basis for a "Mashiach ben Yosef" (other than Jesus, that is), we may rest assured that the Rabbis knew, somewhere in their hearts, that Jesus was the Messiah, and that this teaching was false. I would imagine that they were not happy about this subterfuge, but that they felt absolutely compelled to devise it. After all, Jesus himself said

...and this must have been taken by the Rabbis as a warning not to err in the important religious questions solely for the glorification of Jesus. Therefore, to save the Jewish religion, and to keep the important questions alive, they did everything in their power to erase all memory of Jesus within the Jewish community.

And what are the important questions? Why are Judaism, Christianity and Islam still at war after 2000 years?

Clearly, the answer is "to fulfill scripture", since all was foretold. God will have His way in the end, which is what it's all about. We human beings will do everything in our power to "make a world for ourselves", but in the end, it will be His world, and it will be done His way.

The answer is contained in the Book of Zechariah. It is also contained elsewhere in the Bible, but nowhere is it so clearly stated as in Zechariah:

Let us excerpt the key phrases from this passage:

Read this passage carefully if you haven't ever read it before. It is the most sublime passage in the entire Bible, because it explains the whole agony of Western religious history.

Do you know what the passage means? Do you really know, or do you just think you know?

Although Reform Jews and their Christian counterparts pay no attention to this passage, the Orthodox of both faiths recognize the Messianic aspect of it, and the importance of it. But still, what does it mean?

If the fulfillment of the promise to "dwell in the midst of us" is the sending of a messenger, then can it be said that God has really "dwelt among us"? Is the phrase "dwell in the midst of us" merely a figure of speech? For, if the phrase "dwell in the midst of us" is not a figure of speech, then the messenger, dwelling in the midst of us, is God.

Recognizing the impossibility of a straightforward interpretation of this passage, the Rabbis coined the expression "intermingling of words", and applied it to this passage (and several others like it). But does the expression "intermingling of words" explain anything? Or does it merely put a label on an unfathomable mystery? I still want to know who sent whom. Who was the sender? Who was the messenger who was sent?

Christians who think a lot about the "nature of Christ" dismiss the difficulty here by invoking the Holy Trinity. Since God is God, and since Jesus is also God, then God is both the messenger and and the dispatcher. Therefore, there is no difficulty. At any rate, they do not inquire further.

There are others, however, who would like more of an explanation for this apparent paradox. So far, we see that the Rabbis call it an "intermingling of words", and the Christians call it a "Holy Trinity". The scholars of neither group really try to explain anything; all they do is put a label on it. For those who are content to be able to name things, it is enough.

Although it is not enough for me, I eventually realized, after thoughtfully considering the issue, that the problem had unfathomable depth, and that I wouldn't receive any more insight into it whilst I yet dwelled in a physical body on earth. So I have learned to live with the mystery.

Therefore it is apparent to me that God can be somewhere and not be there at the same time. I can't do that, and neither can you, but He can. I don't understand it, but the Bible says it's true.

By the same token the sender can be God, and so can the sent. I don't understand that, but the Bible says its true.

The Qur'an teaches that the messenger is a man. That's fine, but it doesn't explain to me, in a logically satisfactory way, what God means when He says "I will dwell in the midst of thee". He didn't say "I will send my agent", He said He was coming.

It is generally acknowledged that the word of God first came to the Jews.

Muslims are not quick to confess this, but under pressure, they'd be hard-pressed to deny it.

As the bearers of the Law, Jews have a special responsibility for the morality of the world. We are, after all, the "Chosen People". And we are utterly corrupt!

What good will anyone in the world be, as long as the "Chosen People" remain corrupted, addicted to money, and unrepentant about their own sins?

So God will redeem the Jewish people. In part, this redemption will be a redemption from the tyranny of money. In part it will be the undertaking of the task of mediating the millenia-long dispute between Christians and Muslims concerning the "nature of Christ". This requires, as an absolute prerequisite, that the Jews become the living fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah in Chapter 12, verse 10, which states

Note the "intermingling of words" again! Was it God whom we pierced, or God's messenger? But the importance of this passage is that we Jews will confess that the crime the Christians accuse us of was indeed committed, and that we are indeed guilty.

Of course, since God arranged for the whole thing, we really are not guilty. Never mind! We're guilty!

Therefore, I confess, as a Jew, that my ideological ancestors did indeed kill the Mashiach, and furthermore, that if I had been alive then, I surely would have gone along with it! I confess, further, that this was God's plan all along, and that He has done things this way to demonstrate His complete control over all human destiny. He is King, and He is my King, and there is no imposing of any human will upon Him or upon His plan.

Part of His future plan is that I, and all other believing Jews who have the capacity to embrace difficult truths, must help mediate the dispute between Christians and Muslims. It is in part for this reason that my people have been preserved: that we should provide this and other services. For, if there is so much as a single additional Christian-Muslim "Crusade", we will be plunged into the dark horror of unending World Bank Dictatorship. Do you doubt it? The enemy is united by his love of money; we are divided! If we fight the enemy on his own terms, we shall surely lose!

So here's my judgment: The Christians and Muslims are both correct. The Church says that Christ is God, and it is unequivocally true. The Bible says so.

Islam says Christ was man, and not-God. It is unequivocally true. The Bible says so.

God dwells among us, and He doesn't dwell among us, at the same time. I can't do that, but He can.

God is the messenger, and He isn't the messenger, at the same time. I can't do that, but He can.

If God can't do that, then there is no God.

I testify that there is a God, and that I have seen Him. He is what the Bible says He is. Christ was His messenger. Christ was also, in a way which I cannot explain, God Himself, dwelling among us.

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FOOTNOTES

India occupies a unique place in the history of religion, being the "melting pot" between East and West. There are no fewer than four major modern-day religions which began in India (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism ).

Each one has it roots in the 6th century BC.

Prior to 600 BC, the religion of India was a primitive form of Hinduism, which we mentioned briefly in our discussion of Iran-India above. This was a pagan, polytheistic religion.

A large number of dramatic changes began to take place during the period of the First Jewish Diaspora. It was around 600 BC that Hindu writers began composing the Upanishads, treatises which proclaim that there is only One Ultimate Reality, called "Brahman-Atman". Brahman is God, and Atman is the soul. God, in the Upanishads, is likened to the ocean, and our individual souls to rivers which flow into it. Although each of these rivers, to our eyes, has an apparently independent existence of its own, it may ultimately be perceived that they are all water; the same water as the ocean from which they sprang .

Thus, although we are not God, our souls are related to Him. Moreover, there is only one of Him. With the Upanishads, the age of polytheism in India came to an end.

India, however, never wholly abandoned its ancient gods. Instead, there appeared a pivotal work, the Bhagavad-Gita, through whose pages it was revealed that there is only one God, but that He has many appearances.

The Bhagavad-Gita describes events which are believed, by Hindus, to have taken place around 600 BC (the book did not appear in print for a few centuries after that). It forms part of an enormous epic called the Mahabharata.

The Mahabharata is central to most forms of modern-day Hindu practice. It recounts the story of a great war between two clans. The principal human character is Arjuna, whose charioteer, Krishna, reveals himself to be God. Krishna teaches Arjuna that he, Krishna, is the one and only God in the universe; all the innumerable other gods of India are manifestations of Himself. He transfigures Himself, before Arjuna's eyes, into His true form, which is too awesome for a mortal to behold. He then gives to Arjuna a set of moral precepts which do not differ significantly from those of the Old Testament.

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(The Apostle Paul's admission of "playing politics")

19. For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.

20. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law;

21. To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law.

22. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.

23. And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.

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This is the famous messianic prophecy from which emanates the world's understanding of an "End Times" of unsurpassing peace and prosperity. It is from this passage that the concept of the "lion lying down with the lamb" is derived (although, as you can see here, it actually says "the wolf with the lamb"):

Note that "stem of Jesse" means a descendant of King David (Jesse was David's father). Thus it has been said, for 2500 years, that the Messiah will be of the house of David. Please note that the word "Messiah" does not appear in these, or any other End-Times verses. Notwithstanding, this is the Messiah whom modern-day Orthodox Jews are anxiously awaiting.

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When Moses sent twelve "spies" up to Israel to "spy out the land" (Numbers, Chapters 13 & 14), and when ten of them came back with a false report, the entire community was punished by being made to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.

When, a millennium later, the Children of Israel rejected the Messiah, they were made to wander in Diaspora for 2,000 years! We are at the end of that 2,000-year period right now. It amounts to 50 times the length of exile that they endured in the wilderness:

{40 years} x 50 = 2,000 years

If the increment in the period of exile is always 50 times, and if God is once again testing the faith of Israel (as to whether or not they believe in His power to execute His "End Times" prophesies), and if Israel once again fails the test, then I presume that the length of the next exile will be

{2,000 years} x 50 = 100,000 years

This is a horrible thought! Let it not come to pass!

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Book: The Teaching of Buddha

The Teaching of Buddha is the most concise and all-inclusive Buddhist reference I know of, and I strongly recommend it to all. It is published by the Buddhist Promoting Foundation (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai), an organization established by Mr. Yehan Numata, who was the founder of the Mitutoyo Corporation, a manufacturer of precision measuring instruments. Mr. Numata was an Eastern "Gideon", who used his wealth to spread the word of Buddha throughout the world. Consequently, his book may now be found in many hotel rooms in the Orient, just as the Gideon Bible is found in the West. In America, The Teaching of Buddha may readily be obtained from: The Society for Buddhist Understanding, 16925, E. Gale Avenue, City of Industry, CA 91745. The book is free, although a contribution is appreciated. The Internet address of Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai is: http://www.BuddhistReading.com/bdk.html.

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