by James Frey
It was worse than I expected. I thought it a sinners’ paradise, brothers and sisters, a giant whorehouse being run by the Devil. I found myself a place at a homeless shelter. I stood on street corners and preached the gospel of the Lord. I went to Central Park, which at the time was a sinners’ field, where drinking and drugging, robbing and stealing, all manner of sodomy and sexual perversity were practiced with impunity, and tried to convert people to the ways of the Lord. I preached in Union Square. On Wall Street. In Greenwich Village. I stood in the center of Times Square, brothers and sisters, and shouted the word of the Lord at the top of my lungs. I felt like there were so many souls to save, so many sinners, perverts, homosexuals, and Devil worshippers that needed turning or needed to be brought into the flock of Jesus. I preached all day, every day, and I have to say, brothers and sisters, because I believed what I was saying with all of my heart, it was quite wonderful.
I started wandering into the other boroughs of New York, looking far and wide for people ready to be born again. I got beaten in Staten Island by some men in a Cadillac and threatened with my life if I ever came back. Nobody in the Bronx spoke English, and if they did, they looked at me like they wanted to kill me. With all the Jews in Brooklyn, I didn’t feel like there was a place for me. So I stayed in Queens, and saved a man, and then two, and then three. Brothers and sisters, within a few months I had my own flock. A fine flock. People who believed in the righteousness of my words, and believed that I was preaching the one true word. We started meeting in the back room of a dry cleaner owned by a man I had brought into the arms of Jesus. I started collecting money after every sermon to start a real church. People started telling other people about my relationship to God and his Son, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, about how I knew his words and his Gospels, about my personal connection to Heaven above us, and my flock grew until the dry cleaner couldn’t hold us anymore. And it wasn’t just the numbers, brothers and sisters; it couldn’t hold the power of our worship and devotion to the Holy Spirit, and it couldn’t hold our love for God and his Son, and it couldn’t hold the prayers we were sending on high. Lord have mercy, those were righteous days.
So I moved the church. We got our own building, one that used to hold an auto supply store. It wasn’t pretty, but worshipping the Lord isn’t about beauty, it’s about spirit and devotion, and that was not lacking, brothers and sisters, we had worship and devotion in abundance. Around that time is when I met Jacob and his family. Jacob was a seeker, a searcher, a man trying to find his way into the heart of the Savior. He just didn’t know how or where to go or have anyone to show him. He had been raised Jewish, and being a Jew had left his heart empty and his soul in turmoil. We met when I was preaching on a street corner. He walked up and asked for a pamphlet and I gave him one on the Second Coming of Christ, which I told him I believed was nearly upon us. He asked me how I knew, and I said no one but the Father knew the day or the hour, not even the angels of Heaven or the Son himself, but that it was my duty as a Christian to keep watch, and that my heart told me I would see something soon. Jacob asked me if I wanted to meet the Messiah, because he knew him. It was like a lightning bolt struck me, brothers and sisters, like the hand of God reached into my heart and said yes, yes, yes, like the mission of my life and my church had suddenly been revealed to me, the way the missions of their lives had been revealed to so many of the Bible’s holy men. I asked him who this Messiah was, and he told me his brother. I asked him how he knew, and he said since birth his brother had been identified by Orthodox rabbis as the Messiah, and that he met all the criteria and fulfilled all the signs. I told him the Jew Messiah and the Christ returned were different things, and his response was that Christ was the King of the Jews and that it would make sense that when he returned, he would return as the King of the Jews. The logic was simple and sound, and I knew he was right, in my heart, because God was telling me so. Christ would return as he lived and died and was resurrected by the Holy Father, as the King of the Jews. I asked him where this brother was, and he said he didn’t know, that he had disappeared, but that he would come back someday. Most people in my position would have thought this kid was crazy. But I was a believer in the Father, and his messages, and his history of choosing prophets, and I believed he worked in mysterious and unknowable ways. So I believed, brothers and sisters, and I opened my heart to Jacob, and took him and his family into my church, where I taught them traditional Christian values, and helped them rid themselves of their Jewish faith and their Jewish traditions. He became like a son to me, my closest advisor and my partner in the church, which continued to grow, and continued to save souls from the Hell of eternal damnation. And for years, we searched for Ben Zion Avrohom. We searched all over New York, all over America, and a few times we believed we had found his trail overseas, once in India, once in Africa, and once in China. We never lost hope, and I never believed the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, were sending me on a journey that would not have an ending. I knew we would find Ben Zion, or that he would return to his family. And I believed he would lead us towards righteous glory.
And he did return. He returned, and Esther found him. And it was a glorious, glorious day. Only the church elders knew of our belief in and quest to find Ben. We had prayed daily for almost sixteen years, and yes, brothers and sisters, we believed our prayers had been answered by the mighty Father himself. The Messiah had arrived. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, had returned. First time I saw Ben, I knew what he was and who he was. Oh my, he was a powerful thing to behold. It didn’t matter that he was on life support, and had wires and tubes coming out of him everywhere. He was glowing, brothers and sisters, he had the glow of God upon him, the glow of angels, the glow of Heaven, the glow of the Holy Ghost, the glow of eternity. I fell to my knees and I prayed and I thanked the Lord God for including me in his plans and I asked him for the strength to carry out his wishes. And when he survived the accident the way he did, which only a divine being could have done, and when he started having his seizures and speaking to who we believed was the Holy Father himself, and when he started reciting Bible verses and knowing the most ancient of the holy languages, and not speaking in crazy tongues, like the Holy Ghost makes some people do, but speaking in the holy languages themselves, brothers and sisters, how could there be any doubt? When something is staring you in the face in your life, and you see it with your own two eyes and feel it within the beating of your heart, only a fool doesn’t believe it to be true. And my momma might have raised a lot of things, but she didn’t raise no fool.
We prayed for Ben to recover, though there was never any doubt that he would. We allowed the Jew rabbi to visit him, because Ben insisted on it. We believed Ben would leave the hospital and return to his family’s home and would join the church, as we believed the Father had destined him to do. Both Jacob and I had had conversations with God about it, and believed God’s word to be true. When Ben disappeared while meeting with the Jew rabbi, we believed that the rabbi had taken him somewhere. There was no reason for the Messiah, Christ returned, the Lord and Savior himself, to flee the arms of a loving family and a loving church, unless someone forced him to do it. Jews had been trying, and in many cases succeeding, to control the world for two thousand years. They killed our first Messiah, had him nailed to the cross and killed him, though thankfully he did it to redeem us of our sins. I believed that in their hands the power of Christ would most likely be used for a diabolical end. At the same time, every good Christian worth his salt knows that Christians are dependent on the Jews to bring about the End of Days. They have to be living in Israel, and Israel has to exist, for the End of Days to happen. The Temple of Solomon must be rebuilt. The war of Armageddon will take place on their lands. The trumpets will sound, and the four horsemen will ride on across the desert plain, and the Rapture will occur. Jews are necessary for all of it. Evil, I believed, but necessary. So we watched the Jew rabbi. We had people follow him. We tried to tap his phone, but we couldn’t make that happe
n. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He went about his business in a seemingly normal way. We prayed extra long, and extra hard, and we asked the Holy Father for a sign to help us find his Son, and we promised that if we got him back, we would not let him go again. We read MSM newspapers and watched MSM news shows, even though we knew they were full of lies and propaganda, even though we knew they were controlled by Jews and homosexuals, hoping for a clue.
I saw the newspaper article on the black man’s apocalyptic tunnel cult. The idea of it made me sick to my stomach. I believed that human beings were the product of God’s glory and created in his image, and I can tell you, brothers and sisters, God would not approve of men and women living like worms in the dirt, even if they were sinners. After it came out, though, the Jew rabbi started acting different. He went to a bank, had long meetings with a lawyer, and went to the federal correctional center. The private investigator we had tailing him did some research and found out there was a man being held with the crazy black man that fit Ben’s description. We believed that it had to be the work of the Devil, who never sleeps, never rests, and is always working to foment sin and evil in the world. The black man was surely an agent of Lucifer, meant to capture the Son and hold him in an attempt to pervert him, and when that failed, because no one and nothing can pervert the Messiah, the Son of God, the Lord and Savior, to kill him.
We immediately went to a bail bondsman. We had been raising money for a new church, in part to celebrate the coming of the Lord, and knew it would be irrelevant if the Lord were in prison. We also believed that when the lawsuits Jacob was filing on behalf of Ben were settled or went to court, our coffers would be overflowing. So we pledged our money, and the building we owned that held the church at that time, as collateral for a bond. A couple of the elders were worried, but I told them, if money can’t be used for the glory of God and his Son, what can it be used for? And we wanted and needed to beat the Jew rabbi, who we believed was doing the same thing, though his sources had identified the issue before we did. That’s the way I believed it was with Jews. That they knew everything first. And that was one of the ways they sought to control the planet.
So we went to the federal correctional center downtown, which is a cesspool of sin and degradation. We went with a lawyer and asked for information about the prisoner they were calling John Doe #4. Can you imagine, brothers and sisters, calling the Messiah, the Son of God, Christ returned, John Doe #4? It was a disgrace. It was an abomination. And though we could not tell the authorities, who I believed were evil and in legion with the Jews and the Devil, who Ben was, I certainly let them hear some of my righteous fury. We first saw Ben in a visiting room. Jacob and I and our attorney, Caleb, a fine Christian who believed in the words of the Father and the Gospels of the Son. He was led in with his legs and arms shackled, like he was some slave. His face was bruised and swollen, one of his eyes was black, and his lip was cut. He looked like he hadn’t had a meal in a month.
We tried talking to him. He was very polite, but very distant. I assumed he was on some type of mind-control drug, which the government is known to have and use against people they believe threaten them. And the Messiah would certainly be a threat. The Messiah is going to bring it all to an end, or at least herald the end. Jacob hugged him and said we were going to take care of him. Ben said he was fine to take care of himself. Jacob said we were going to get him out of there as fast as we could, and Ben said he was perfectly happy where he was. Jacob told him how worried we were and how we had been searching for him, and Ben just closed his eyes and smiled. When I asked him if he wanted to pray with us, he told me I was free to pray, but it wasn’t something that he did. I asked him if I had heard him correctly, that he didn’t pray, and he said yes, you heard me correctly. It was mystifying. We were expecting a glorious reception from a holy man anxious to get into the world to spread the word of God. A holy man in the tradition of the biblical holy men. A holy man like Moses, or Isaiah, or John the Baptist. I was expecting to see Jesus before me. That ain’t what I got.
We bailed him out anyway. I went to court, and we pledged all of the church’s funds, along with the deed to the church property. Some of the other church elders thought we were risking too much, but I believed that if you can’t risk everything for the Lord, and I mean everything, brothers and sisters, your life and money and family, then you must not truly believe in the Lord. For if you truly believe in anything in this life, be it God, be it love, be it money or greed, be it anything, you will risk all for it. And I did, hallelujah I did, I believed and pledged it all. I did not hesitate, not for one second, and in doing so, I thanked the Lord Almighty for giving me the opportunity to serve him. The judge issued a decree stating that Ben would be released into my custody and the custody of his family. He required that an ankle bracelet be attached so that Ben could be tracked. I objected, because I believed the tracker would be used by the Jew and his allies to track and capture him, that surely the device must be part of the Jews’ plan, and by association, Lucifer’s plan. Caleb told me to keep quiet, that the judge was also a Jew. I knew then that keeping Ben safe was going to be a battle. Jews, blacks, sinners, and perverts, we were going to have to fight all of them.
When we actually took possession of Ben, in a small room at the correctional center, I was with Caleb. Caleb was also a good Evangelical man, a member of our church, a man of Christ who believed in traditional American family values. He had been an Episcopalian, but had left what I believed to be a perverted faith, a faith that allowed women and homosexuals a say where they did not deserve one, a faith that was not in line with the real values of the Lord and his Son, and found the true Christ. He had become an alcoholic, despite attending his perverted church’s services every week, which to us was a testament to the weak and blasphemous nature of his church’s faith, and started hitting his wife and children without cause. He was born again after he had a car accident. He was driving and turned around to discipline one of his children. As he was reaching for the child, he lost control of the car and slammed into a tree. He woke up in the hospital and thankfully, brothers and sisters, his wife and children were fine. He was better than fine. He said the Lord had spoken to him in the second before he hit that tree. And the Lord Almighty, in all of his grace, wisdom, and mercy, had told him he would spare him if he devoted his life to his one and only Son, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Devote he did, brothers and sisters. He left the firm he was working for in Manhattan, what we called the Devil’s Island, and opened a practice devoted to Christian causes. He fought for the unborn children murdered in abortion clinics, he fought against laws granting queers and faggots the rights normal, healthy people deserve, he fought for prayer in school and for creationism to be taught in science, he fought for the right of Christian men to bear whatever arms they choose in order to protect their families. He was a nightmare for the ACLU, which we believed did nothing but promote sin and perversity and sought to control and subvert Christians for the good of the Jews.
Ben walked in, shackled. Both Caleb and I fell to our knees and bowed. We bowed before the Messiah, as one always should, brothers and sisters. We had met Ben before and had not bowed before him. We weren’t sure, before our first meeting, what he would be like. No one, not even the holiest of the holy, not even the most righteous and pure of the Lord’s flock, had met the Son of God before. He was not what we expected, and when we talked about it later, we realized that we should not have expected anything. God is God. Omnipotent and almighty. The creator of Heaven and Earth. The Judger and the Redeemer. We did not know God’s ways and intentions. We did not know God’s plan. Only he could know. And he revealed what he wanted to reveal. And we believed, and I still believe, that Ben was his beloved Son. And we also looked back, brothers and sisters. We looked back to Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, the man who sacrificed himself on the cross for the sins of humanity. We looked back to the man we believed had been reborn in the holy vessel of Ben Zion Avrohom. Christ was beloved
by twelve men, twelve believers, twelve disciples, twelve apostles. He wandered the Holy Land, preaching the word of God. His message was unlike anything the world had heard before. His message was pure and beautiful and true, and straight from the Holy Father himself. His message was the future, and the world isn’t always ready for the future. The world isn’t always ready for the truth. He was a radical, brothers and sisters. A radical unlike any the world has seen, a radical sired for man by the ultimate authority on man. Christ was thought of as crazy by many. He was mocked and scorned. The rabbis of Israel laughed at him and dismissed him. His message was misunderstood and misinterpreted. There were only twelve who knew him in their hearts while he graced the earth. It took thousands of years for his true followers to find him, brothers and sisters, thousands of years. For people like me and my flock to be born again into the bosom of his love. Thousands of years and untold numbers of false churches with deviant messages. Thousands of years of popes and preachers and ministers and reverends and pastors spewing aberrant, heretical sermons and issuing meaningless edicts. They may have meant well, and their intentions may have been pure, but that does not relieve them of their roles as apostates. We determined, after much counsel and many days of prayer, and after untold numbers of conversations with God and with Christ, and after any number of intimate experiences with the Holy Spirit, that Ben was indeed the Messiah. We needed to accept him as such, and treat him as such, and protect him as such, and covet him as such, and worship him as such.
So he entered and we kneeled and bowed. I have never been so humbled, brothers and sisters, not even at the moment I gave my heart and soul to the Lord and was born again. As the guards took his shackles off, both of us prayed, and thanked the Father for his Son, and thanked him for the opportunity to serve him. The guards left but told Ben to stay and wait for the ankle bracelet. He stood above us, both of us still on our knees, still bowed. He spoke.
