by Paul L Maier
Since he had plotted his course ahead of time on a detailed city map, Jon had no trouble finding the address. It turned out to be a large, though not ostentatious, house constructed of typical grayish-white Jerusalem limestone, its windows framed with dark green shutters.
While locking the car, he was bothered that his pulse was accelerating. He had vowed a steely calm for his dialogue with Ben-Yosef, but apparently his heart had not gotten the message.
The door opened quickly to Jon’s knock, and the robust figure of Shimon filled the doorway. “Shalom, Professor Weber,” he said. “We’re so glad that you’ve come!”
“Shalom, Shimon. Were you the gentleman who was kind enough to deliver the invitation to a student in my class?”
“I confess,” he said with a grin. “The Master awaits you on the veranda upstairs. Please follow me.”
While climbing the stairs, John was awash in a riptide of emotional crosscurrents. Was he foolishly alone in the headquarters of a cult? Was he venturing into a Jerusalem version of Jonestown, Waco, or Rancho Santa Fe? Or was he part of a harmless pageant in which the scene of Nicodemus visiting Jesus by night was being replayed? Or again, in the least possible scenario, could this all conceivably be authentic: that he was being given the incredibly rare privilege of dialoging with the returned Jesus?
Shimon brought him out to a spacious terrace and then returned downstairs. Although it was late fall, nights were still warm enough in Jerusalem, and the outdoor veranda had a splendid view of the Jordan Valley. Ben-Yosef stood up from the chaise lounge on which he had been reclining and extended a warm hand of greeting.
“I can’t tell you how much I’ve looked forward to our meeting, Professor Weber,” he said, again in perfect English. “Please take the other lounge chair.”
While replying in kind to Ben-Yosef’s courtesies, Jon studied firsthand the features that were now appearing in the world’s newspapers and magazines. Undeniably, the man looked very much like traditional paintings of Jesus.
After exchanging brief small talk, Ben-Yosef came directly to the point. “By now, Professor Weber, you may well be puzzling between various alternatives as to who I might be. I’m quite sure you’re debating the options: Ben-Yosef is a possibly dangerous cult figure. Ben-Yosef is a harmless mountebank, reenacting scenes from the life of Jesus for whatever reason. Or . . . he may be more than that.”
Jon was speechless.
“Well, my friend,” Ben-Yosef continued, “which is it, if I may ask? What’s your opinion at this point?”
Jon replied evenly, quoting directly from John’s Gospel: “‘Master, I know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.’”
Ben-Yosef shot a penetrating stare at Jon. Then he smiled, chuckled softly, and said, “You don’t really believe that, do you?” “No.”
“But it was an apt quotation—Nicodemus’s response to Jesus in John 3—a situation very much like ours this evening.”
“I must commend you, a Jew, on your knowledge of the New Testament.”
“But I’m a Jewish Christian, certainly, so this is hardly unusual.” “In any case, might I be bold enough to ask why you gave me the privilege of this conversation, when so many others—especially in the media—are screaming for interviews but don’t even know how to reach you?”
“Well, that’s very simple, Professor Weber—or may I please call you Jonathan? And you may call me Joshua, of course.”
“Certainly. But make it Jon.”
“As I told you out on the pier at Tiberias, in all of the centuries of Jesus scholarship, no one has come closer to capturing the true essence of who Jesus was than you. Your book Jesus of Nazareth penetrates deeply and accurately into the very Jewish soul of your subject, almost as if you had been His thirteenth disciple.”
“You are very generous, sir! But to offer comments like that, you must obviously be a very accomplished Jesus scholar yourself.”
“As well I should be,” said Ben-Yosef with a slight smile.
Again Jon’s pulse quickened, and the words were out before he could restrain them: “I . . . don’t understand the ‘should be.’”
“Isn’t it obvious, Jon?” said Ben-Yosef, apparently staring through Jon’s eyes into the innermost recesses of his mind. “But I should not presume.”
Again, cold electricity tingled in Jon’s extremities as his thoughts raced to deal with the impossible. No, he decided, it was not yet time to ask the ultimate question. Instead, he changed the subject and asked about Ben-Yosef’s youth.
Jon expected vague information about a shadowy background, but Ben-Yosef was very forthcoming, providing a host of fresh details about his parents and ancestry that easily fit into the puzzle of his past. The sleuthing that Jeff Sheler and he had conducted proved accurate enough, including Joshua’s birth in a Bethlehem basement and his youth near Nazareth. Almost modestly, however, Ben-Yosef said little about his prodigious intellectual feats as a young student, and he had tears in his eyes when telling of the deaths of his father and mother.
“But enough about me,” said Ben-Yosef. “Now let’s talk about your background, Jon. You were born in Hannibal, Missouri, of parents named Erhard and Trudi Weber. Her maiden name was Becker, as I recall. What a fine man your clergyman father is, and how proud he has always been of you and your accomplishments! At your confirmation, he gave you a motto verse from 1 Timothy 6:12: ‘Fight the good fight of faith! Lay hold on eternal life, to which you have been called, and have professed a good profession before many witnesses.’ And how you have fulfilled that verse in so many ways, Jon! You resisted the usual temptations of youth at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, thanks to your conservative Lutheran upbringing, and you didn’t despair when your lovely wife, Andrea, was tragically killed in that Swiss avalanche near Davos. The Institute of Christian Origins you set up in Cambridge has been doing excellent frontier scholarship on Jesus and Christianity. And then, in becoming God’s instrument in saving the faith, you met Austin Balfour Jennings and his beautiful daughter, Shannon, who also overcame the tragedies involving her mother in Ireland.”
He paused, ignoring Jon’s dumbfounded stare, then smiled and continued, “One of your rare missteps took place while your father was marrying you and Shannon in Hannibal, and you tried to assume the status of deity in your wedding vows! But you quickly returned to humanity, and you’ve both been very happily married ever since.”
Jon sat riveted to the lounge chair, too stunned to speak.
“But these are only some of the highlights. I’d be glad to go into much greater detail about any year in your life, Jon, or in the lives of your parents. But that’s hardly necessary.” He laughed. “Obviously, you already know them!”
Jon started to reply, but he had to clear his throat to defeat the slight croaking that had seized his larynx. “That was very impressive, Joshua,” he finally managed. There, he had called Ben-Yosef that name at last—intentional bravado to cover his stupefaction, Jon knew.
“Impressive, Jon? You will see greater things than this.”
“Another biblical echo. All right, Joshua Ben-Yosef, the time has come to ask you the paramount question, which, of course, is this: Are you the reincarnation of Jesus of Nazareth—the Jesus who has returned? Or are you not?” Jon could hardly believe that this surreal conversation was actually taking place, or that he would even ask such an awesome—or inane—question.
Ben-Yosef smiled. “Thanks for putting it so directly,” he said, moving his legs off the lounger onto the veranda floor. Sitting upright, though bending toward Jon just a bit, he put his hands together, faced Jon directly, and asked, “Put the case that I am indeed Jesus of Nazareth who has returned: why would you have such trouble believing this?”
Jon easily had the answer to that query. It was the one overriding objection anyone who knew anything about the Second Coming of Christ would share. “It’s very simple, Joshua, as you must k
now,” he replied. “Christians believe that the Second Coming of Jesus will mark the end of time, the end of the world as we know it: Judgment Day, no less! As Jesus told the high priest Caiaphas at His hearing before the Sanhedrin: ‘You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ Where are those celestial clouds, Joshua? I don’t see any of that in your own version of the Second Coming. Nor do I hear any trumpets!”
Joshua nodded several times during Jon’s statement. “Exactly correct, Jon, and very proper theology. What’s more, every syllable of what I—what Jesus—predicted will come true.”
Again Jon felt tingles of shock at his use of the first person singular. “How, then, do you reconcile the two pictures?”
“Jesus will certainly do exactly as He promised at the end of time. This is not the end of time.”
Jon was perplexed, thought for a moment, and then asked, “Do you mean, then, that Jesus would stage, say, a . . . a sort of intermediate return to earth before His final return?”
“That’s precisely what I mean.”
“But . . . why?”
“Our Father, in His great mercy, has seen the perilous condition of Christianity in the world today. The faith is under attack on all fronts: Islam now has half as many believers as does Christianity, and its militancy grows. Christians who should be defending the faith have become lukewarm or listless due to attacks on biblical truth by radical theologians. And this at a time when the pervading malaise of secularism hangs over a society that sneers at anything smacking of the spiritual. In the name of multiculturalism and political correctness, the Christian elements in world culture are being excluded, Christian holidays robbed of their original religious values, and the cultured despisers of the faith often in control of government and society.”
Joshua stopped, a more serious, even mournful look clouding his features. “Just one local example,” he resumed, spreading his arms wide. “Here, in our beloved Holy Land—the very cradle of Christianity—our faith is now only a tiny, diminishing fraction of the population. Our heavenly Father simply had to intervene.”
Jon stared just over Joshua’s right shoulder at the moonrise over the Dead Sea, trying to comprehend what he had just heard. Then he shook his head in puzzlement and said, “This may . . . all be very true, Joshua. But what’s your role in all this? What do you propose to do about it?”
“The Intermediate Return, as you put it, is intended not only to firm up the faithful, but it will advance the kingdom of God very powerfully, as you will see very soon.”
Ben-Yosef’s rationale, Jon reflected, was cogent, even awesome. For the first time he saw some logic behind a returning Jesus. But was it all true? No! Impossible! How could it be?
He now issued another challenge. “How come, then, that the New Testament says nothing about an intermediate return or coming?”
“Easily answered, Jon: most things that have happened to our faith across two thousand years have not been specifically predicted in Scripture.”
“But something supposedly as important as this? ”
“Never make the mistake of trying to bind God through any formulas in which He ‘should have’ or ‘would have’ or ‘might have’ done this or that. If the Intermediate Coming had been spelled out in detail in Scripture, imagine how many would not have taken the faith seriously until proven by Jesus’ next appearance. This way, the world has a further revelation, a new opportunity to receive and celebrate God’s infinite grace in Jesus Christ before His final return and judgment.”
“You can’t be serious. God is giving humanity a second chance, then?”
“Yes, and isn’t that marvelously merciful of Him!” Joshua smiled. “Although I’d hardly use the expression ‘second chance,’ since God has always given repeated chances for people to accept or reject His grace, even if the Intermediate Coming is an extraordinary instance.” Their astonishing dialogue continued far into the evening, far beyond the tea and cakes that Yohanan brought up to them on the veranda. Jon fired a fusillade of fresh queries at Joshua, all of which he answered patiently and in detail. Many of them were pointed and bold, Jon knew, but they had to be asked, and apparently Joshua was not at all offended in answering them.
“Are you the only—presumed—reincarnation of Jesus?” Jon wondered. “I know your band of twelve don’t claim to be the original disciples. But are there others who will make their appearance? Like John the Baptist, perhaps?”
Joshua shook his head and said, “It’s only I. This time, John’s function was achieved electronically.”
“Then you were behind the worldwide computer incursions!”
“Of course!”
“But . . . but how did you ever bring it off? The world’s best cyberexperts still don’t have an explanation.”
Joshua smiled broadly and then laughed, the first time Jon had heard him go beyond a chuckle. “You still don’t get it, do you, Jon? Remember what, ah, Jesus said, ‘Having eyes, they see not. Having ears, they hear not’?”
Jon shook his head in silence for some moments. Then he asked, “In this presumed . . . replay of Jesus’ great ministry, is there a cross waiting for you also?”
Joshua shook his head. “One great sacrifice for the sins of the world was sufficient. Anything more would detract from it.”
Jon stooped over, propped his jaw up with forearms resting on his knees, and nodded. Finally, he asked two withering questions that should easily, he thought, puncture all of Joshua’s pretenses.
“If Jesus were returning in any Intermediate Coming, Joshua, why wouldn’t He just reappear as a grown man, rather than going through the whole babyhood and youth bit?”
“Good thinking, Jon. He might indeed have done just that. But the almighty Father, in His great mercy, arranged many parallels with Jesus’ first coming in order to help authenticate His mission during His subsequent return. And you will see many more con-gruences than these. Now what is the other issue of concern?”
How did he even know there was another issue? Jon wondered, before asking, “All right, then. Here, I think, is the problem that dooms your campaign, Joshua: your mother, Mariam, works fine as the parallel for Mary, the mother of Jesus. But your father is Yosef Ben-Yosef. Jesus, of course, had no earthly father.”
“Nor do I,” said Ben-Yosef evenly.
Another stab of shock skewered Jon. “Come again?” he asked.
“I have no earthly father either.”
“Would you like to . . . unpack that a bit?”
“Yosef Ben-Yosef was my distinguished foster father, but I always called him my ‘father,’ just as people supposed that Joseph was Jesus’ father at His first appearance.”
“How, then, were you conceived? Who was your true father?”
Joshua looked at Jon for several long moments. Then he replied, “Do you really have to ask that, Jon?” He looked upward toward the starry sky overhead and said softly, “I think you know the answer.”
“But . . . but . . . how did your mother respond to this . . . this modern version of the virgin birth?”
“As Mary did of old: in humble, grateful acceptance.”
“What? I thought your parents were Jewish, not Christian.”
“I would remind you that the two are not mutually exclusive, Jon. Again, consider what happened in the case of Joseph and Mary two thousand years ago.”
Jon nodded. Then, dizzying at the extraordinary revelations, he tried a new tack. “The miracles of healing attributed to you: are they physical or merely psychosomatic?”
“Some who come to me do have emotional and mental problems, which I easily cure. Twenty centuries ago, as you know, this was called ‘casting out demons.’ But in other cases, true physical healing certainly does take place, and not mental games. Do cancers vanish in response to any . . . voodoo psychology?”
“Well, the faith healers claim they do. But I don’t believe them, of course.”
“Nor should you.”
/> “Well, then, what about the . . . ultimate miraculous sign. Have you ever raised anyone from the dead?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Does that mean that you plan to?”
“That will be up to our heavenly Father.”
“All right, then, but we hardly need so extraordinary a sign. Why not try a simple one?” Jon pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket, laid it on a small table between them, and said, “Would you be kind enough to make that pen disappear?”
Joshua shook his head sadly and said, “I’m a little disappointed in you, Jon. I thought—”
“Agreed! I apologize!” Jon quickly broke in, embarrassed at the naïveté of his challenge. “I was harking back to my freshman year at Harvard, when my roommate told me why he had lost his faith. He said, ‘One day I got down on my knees and said, Please, God, if you exist, make this pencil disappear. I won’t tell a soul, and then I’ll become a believer for the rest of my life! But the pencil didn’t vanish: ergo, there is no God.’”
“Ah yes,” said Joshua, “the old put-God-to-the-test-to-see-if-He-passes challenge! Well, we may laughingly dismiss the pencil proof, but there’s nothing wrong with understanding the miraculous as the true sign of God’s presence.” He smiled and looked directly at Jon. “Therefore, dear Professor Weber, let’s go back to your freshman year at college: would you really like to see your pen disappear?”
While Jon fumbled for a reply, Joshua picked up the pen and said, “But that’s a gilded Mont Blanc you have here, and they’re expensive. If I made it disappear, you’d be out about $250, wouldn’t you? Foolish! So, how about this . . .”
Ben-Yosef placed the pen back on the table, pointed to the wall of the house, and said, “On your way . . .” The pen shot across the veranda, hit the wall, and dropped onto the tile floor.
