Yeshua ben Joseph hung from the cross, his life slowly draining out of him.
He had hung there for many hours...the time stretched out into an agonized eternity. His senses were becoming blurred. A haze enveloped him, blotting out his surroundings--the swarming insects, the rocky hills outside Jerusalem, the infernal blazing sky. He was alone, hanging in a void.
And then out of the emptiness there came a voice.
"Greetings, my rival."
Startled, Yeshua tried to turn his head. "Who...who speaks to me?" he managed to gasp.
"You don't see me, do you?" said the voice. It was a peculiar voice, bodiless
as an echo, yet smooth and mocking. "Ah, Yeshua ben Joseph! You ought to know
who I am. We've had quite a few, ah, conversations."
Yeshua blinked, shook his head. He must be delirious, he realized. The end was near.
"Yes, old friend. You have been most stubborn...refused to come to an agreement, the way any sensible man would." The voice was louder now, edged with sarcasm and amusement. "And now, in your arrogance, you think you've won over me. Don't you?"
"Yes, I've won," Yeshua flung back with painful effort, for it was difficult to draw breath to speak. But at last he knew who was speaking to him. Now he recognized the voice which had followed him on his journey to the desert, and tormented him ever since with its threats and blandishments. "I've done what I came to do... to be a light unto the world... Mashiach...atonement..." he trailed off, gasping for breath.
But the voice only laughed. "Oh, no! You have not. You think you have fulfilled your mission--but I have outwitted you." Mocking chuckles issued from the void. "Know this, Yeshua ben Joseph. I have taken what you've done and twisted it---until it has resulted in the exact opposite of what you intended!"
"What--?" Yeshua shuddered in dread. "What are you saying, Adversary?"
"Simple, really, my dear fellow," gloated the voice. "Let me tell you all about it. Better still--let me show you!"
There was a blinding flash, and the world was plunged into darkness. Yeshua cried out...
When he came to his senses, he found he was no longer hanging from the Roman scaffold. Instead he crouched on a barren rocky plain, the most desolate he had ever seen. It was a wasteland of chasms and fissures which had surely never held one particle of life. All was enveloped in shadowy grayness.
"Ah. Here we are," said the voice. Yeshua looked in the direction from which the sound came, to see the silhouette of a man--a man made up of darkness, like a hole cut in the fabric of the world.
"We have stepped outside of the world's time," the shadow-shape told him. "Now I shall show you a glimpse of this world's future--and you shall see what your mission has really accomplished." The shape waved an arm. "Behold!"
The grayness began to part, like a curtain opening. Beyond, Yeshua glimpsed swirls of motion, figures, voices. At first he could make no sense of them, then they began to coalesce and take on a greater solidity. A sea of color focused before his eyes and became a multitude of faces.
There was a host of men in white and crimson robes; they carried gorgeous objects of gold: candlesticks, incense burners, jewel-encrusted standards. Then another man appeared among them. He wore a tall pointed hat and the robes of a king. His bearing was regal and he was surrounded by worshipful attendants. The throngs knelt before him, and the great one allowed his adoring subjects to kiss his feet. Chanting voices filled the room...and though they sang in the Roman tongue, Yeshua was somehow able to understand the words: "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost...all hail His Holiness, Christ's Vicar on Earth!"
The great one raised a hand, then, and began to speak. "My children, we are all of us soldiers in a mighty battle--seeking to win a place in our Lord's Heavenly Kingdom--seeking to glorify His name."
There was a reverent chorus of "Amen's".
"Yet the battle goes on daily," said the great one. "All around us, the forces of heresy rise to confound us. Children, we must unite like a righteous avenging army to crush these servants of the Devil." The great one leaned forward, and his voice lowered. "The most dangerous heretics of all, my children--even more dangerous than the heathen Turks-- are the Jews. These servants of Satan rejected Our Lord--betrayed and crucified Him. And still they persist in their stiff-necked refusal to acknowledge Him. God Himself has cast them out and abandoned them. We shall tolerate their heresy no longer. As part of our Christian duty, we declare a great Crusade..."
The vision began to melt away, and another rose in its place: soldiers on horseback, carrying banners emblazoned with crosses. Their chests bore this same symbol. They rampaged through the streets, shouting and waving swords, hacking down terrified men and women who fled before them.
The soldiers advanced amid fire and smoke, closing in on a group of unarmed men and their wives and children. A white-haired elder stood at the front of the group clutching sacred scrolls to his breast, gazing at the attackers with sorrowful defiance. The soldiers shouted and drove their swords and lances into the group. Blood ran in rivers down the pavements. The elder fell, still clutching the Torah, gasping out "Sh'ma Yisrael!"
A soldier hacked off the man's head head held it aloft on his sword, shouting "Glory to God! Death to the Infidel!"
The visions chased each other across the shadowy void. Faces dissolved into other faces. Mobs cheered while wagonloads of sacred books were cast into a great bonfire. Men and women were dragged into churches by their hair, screaming as they were forcibly baptized. Endless streams of exiles, their shoulders bowed with their sacks of possessions, plodded back and forth across mountains and deserts and plains in a vain quest for sanctuary.
Yeshua tried to look away, but the intensity of the visions held him fast.
He saw dank rooms where prisoners lay bound on great wheels; he saw instruments that twisted their bodies and tore their limbs. He saw great fires in which people were burned alive. Day and night the fires burned, until their smoke blotted out the sun. And through it all a voice sang "for the glory of our Lord..."
"There, do you see?" The smooth taunting voice broke in. "See what's become of your light unto the world?"
Yeshua was unable to answer. His eyes streamed with tears.
"Look, you must see the rest of it. The best part is still to come," urged the voice, and the visions flicked by a bit faster. But still Yeshua saw them clearly. He saw the dark centuries; the narrow ghetto streets and the lives of fear and wretchedness. All the ages were compressed into a few tortured moments.
When the visions slowed again, Yeshua saw a huge crowd of people, so many that the line stretched out to the horizon. They were naked. Their bodies were gaunt and wasted; their faces hollow. Above and around them, tall chimneys belched out an infernal pall of black smoke. In the next moment he saw no more live people--only corpses. Millions of skeleton-like corpses, piled to the sky.
Yeshua gave a great cry and tore his hair by handfuls. His pain was beyond words; he could only utter incoherent sounds of horror.
Yet at that moment in the world's normal time, the sky had gone dark and those who stood on Golgotha hill stood terrified as they heard Yeshua cry, "my God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?"
* * *
"There," gloated the Adversary. "Your name has become a scourge and a curse. See how your own people have suffered because of you!"
"No," Yeshua wept, covering his face. "Dear God...father in Heaven...why have you allowed this to be? I would bear anything for your sake...but not this. I'll go back--I won't go through with my mission...I'll undo it all somehow. I'll go back to the carpenter shop in Nazareth!"
"Too late," the Adversary broke in. "It has already been sealed. Even God could not undo what has been done."
"Then I'll return to Earth once more," Yeshua said through clenched teeth. "I'll fight you and stop your wickedness."
The Adversary laughed, still smooth and unconcerned. "Oh, will you? Have you forgotten? God has declared that you will return to Earth with power--but not till the very end. Until then, I have the power. You have none!"
"Then I'll come without power. As a wanderer among my own people, whom you have made exiled and outcast. I'll comfort them in their sorrows. I'll appear and strengthen their spirits...I'll confront those wicked ones who oppress others in my name." Yeshua was no longer speaking to the shadow-shape. Instead, he gazed upward. "Father in Heaven--I'll be reborn on Earth again and again, for the sake of those who suffer in my name. I'll come as a light under a bushel, working secretly to undo the harm my Enemy has done. Father..hear these things I declare to you. Accept my most solemn promises."
He heaved a great sigh, and the scene before him began to dissolve. The shadow shape looked as if it were melting; the grayness thinned and a ray of sunlight pierced through it. The shadow-shape muttered curses in a fading voice as it became smaller and smaller, and then vanished altogether.
Yeshua opened his eyes to find himself once more hanging on a cross with nails piercing his hands and feet.
His eyes turned upward; he struggled for a moment against the death which waited to claim him. Then quiet came over his spirit. He had no more strength to draw breath...the end was near, and he welcomed it. He'd seen the future and learned what was to be--and he'd sealed his own future. He would carry out his promise.
In acceptance, Yeshua bowed his head. "It is done," he said, and drew his last breath.
* * *
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