The Hide and Seek God

Before today's feature presentation I believe we should pray for the situations in North Korea and in Iran with those three college students. We pray for all captives anywhere in the world that the Lord may extend his protection on them and free them at the earliest possible date. We also pray for Hillary Clinton and all others who would be in one manner or another ambassadors for America that their message would get out to others and their words taken to heart.

I'm also like to address a few questions you may have from a couple of postings back. You may want to know "Did you visit your father on Fathers Day of 1998?" I most certainly did. I would also like to say that all of my Dad's photographs that he took are in the safe possession of Pete Richards, who had said that for those photographs still on bulletin boards he said he intended to put them up on the walls of his drum room as sound proofing. None of the VHS movies from my Dad's collections that I have tried to find- - -were missing. I have always found every movie I searched for that I knew he had. None of the movies I have searched for have been erased.

The following movie is for
entertainment value only and should not be construed
to be any theological position taken by the author or authors.

JESUS – A MOST AMAZING MAN

This movie is mostly in black and white and starts off that way. Roll opening title credits to the tune of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” by the Animals, song to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun” and such a recording actually exists. Opening shot of a sign written in Hebrew that says “Bethlehem” and the caption “Bethleham” appears beneath the sign. Shots are of a rather desolate hilly countryside that’s wind swept with blowing snow drifts. Out in the distance three men in fancy Oriental Pursian garb are seen trudging through the snow, laden with gifts. They approach the sign. They converse in Pursian and English subtitles are given. They point and take off. Switch to a scene of a crowded bustling tiny home. The family is just finishing up breakfast and the dishes are being cleared away. It’s the Holy Family. Baby Jesus is six months old and can be heard insessently crying and Joseph the dad says, “Can’t somebody shut that damn baby up”. Meanwhile Mother Mary is preparing to get the kids ready for school making sure the younger ones have brushed their teeth and that they have their homework and all. She calls each of them by name so we know who they are. James, Simon, Judah, and Joseph, and they are all elementary school age. They let us know that baby Jesus is now six months old. Joseph bitches about the baby not really being his within ear shot of the kids, who don’t appear to be listening to him. After the kids leave Joseph talks to Mary about his dream about being a famous architect and brings out a lot of plans he has for public buildings, and says to her “Some day we’re going to move out of this dump”. He then says he has to get to work, and leaves for his carpenter’s shop, and as a parting shot says to his wife, “Oh and try to clean this place up while I’m gone, it looks like a pig sty”. Joseph leaves and the camera zooms in on Mary’s face and she assumes a rather dreamy expression- - - and we then go into a flashback.

The film now becomes in color. A caption says “fifteen months earlier”. Mary is a member of a holy order of prophetesses that pray every day in the women’s court of the Jewish Temple. Some nun person is addressing them and then says it’s time for the prayers that come several times a day. The young women are in royal blue robes and line up in the temple court and raise their hands to God and begin praying in Hebrew. In the next scene Mary is sneaking off to visit her not quite lover. He is a Roman Centurian named Pantera, and he is hoping to wed her. But she informs him that she has become espoused to a Jewish man named Joseph who told her that he had money- - some inheritance. He gets amorus with her and she after a while tells him to stop; he is getting too carried away- - and she says that she’s in an order of virgins. He corrects her to say that this order is ceremonial virgins only and that over half the women in the order are not virgins, and he names several by name. She tells him again to stop, and he goes on and rapes her and afterward she had a desolate expression on her face.

Back to black and white now. The three Wise Men have approached the magistrate of the city. They are looking for birth records and inquire whether there have been any births in the town in the past day or so and are told no. “Are there any women now great with child?” and again greeted with shrugs. They speak among themselves, “The angel did tell us that this day is born to you a savior of Israel”. Another asks, “Perhaps it wasn’t a literal 24 hour day but some Biblical day meaning time or season”. They head for Jerusalem to speak to King Herod. King Herod is very sick and is in the process of dying and in great pain and spiewing invectives at everybody, and says he knows of no other King who would dare rival him. The wise men ask to see birth records of all children two years or younger to see if they find what they are looking for, and are given a long list of names that they pour over in frustration. They then decide that they should again consult their astrological charts to see if they mis-figured.

In the next scene a month or so has passed and Joseph gets the word that King Archelius is now appointed King of Judea. Joseph and Archelius have connections and friends in common and he informs Mary that he has a good architect job lined up in Egypt. A representative of the King tells Joseph that this would be a good time to invest in gold if he has the money because Caesar is going to soon conthiscate all the free gold to make gold coins with images of himself, and melting down Roman coins is a serious offence punishable by a long prison sentence. Now it’s a couple of weeks later and they are loading up a bunch of camels and headed off to Egypt. Meanwhile the three wise men have refined their calculations and decide they know who the Messiah is and head to Bethlehem only to find the now vacant house of Joseph and the people inform him that the family took off for Egypt only a few days ago to find better work.

In Egypt Joseph is put in charge of designing public buildings and even Temples for the King, who has sway in Egypt. We flash forward to when Jesus is about seven or eight and learning magic from the local folks and books he has looked at. He does tricks such as turning clay pigeons into real pidgins who fly away. He strikes people with blindness who doubt his word, and does many other tricks. He even gets a rooster to speak in Hebrew “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. One of the children knows Hebrew and exclaims excitedly.

In this scene Joseph has made a killing in the commodities exchange and is now awash in money. King Archelius was replaced and Joseph lost his employment in Egypt and so that now they move to the city of Tyre in northern Israel. Others tell him of the idolatry and rebellion in the place but Joseph says that he doesn’t believe in the old superstitions. Joseph had gotten the money to invest in the commodities exchange by raiding his sons’ trust fund that had been set up. He used his connections with King Archelius to break the trust fund that was set up to send his kids to architecture college so that they could have a better life than he did. Now Joseph is awash in money and decided to become an industrialist and buys a tin mine near Kent, England and makes many trips to England and is often gone for months at a time. By now Jesus is about seven or eight and now he has mastered the art of tele-portation and one day he teleported himself to the tin mine where his father was supervising. He said to Joseph, who was shocked to see him, “Is it not fitting that a son should be at the work place of his father?” Joseph had vowed to be a just and fair employer. He paid his workers well above the prevailing wages for mining work. He insisted that they under no circumstances work longer than a twelve hour shift and have breaks for fresh air every three hours, and that they get time off for sick days, and that his employees receive health care.

Now Jesus is twelve and there is a new census of the population. But they don’t have to travel to cities of birth. Quarinius was the governor of Syria. Then there is a rebellion in the land and twelve year old Jesus goes off to watch the ensuing battle- - and he watches the carnage from a safe bluff. A Roman officer comes up to him and informs Jesus that he knows of his Roman patronage and the circumstances of his birth. And he tells Jesus that the Hebrew people will never again win any battle against Rome by means of war and that the smartest thing they all could do is be passive and submissive before the Romans. Jesus appears to take these things to heart- - and he can be seen in prayer wondering what contribution his life could make tword the liberation of Israel and what should he now do with his young life.

Joseph announces that he is now able to send Jesus to magicians school in England and he takes a boat there- - - this time. He is enrolled in the Salisbury Institute of Sorcery and he studies there for many years. After he graduates there at age eighteen or so he stays linger being hired on as an instructor. He is thus employed for another five years or so. But one day he learns that his father Joseph has been killed in a mining accident. Meanwhile Jesus’ older brothers and he have frictions. They point out that he raided their trust fund so that Joseph, prompted by his irresponsible wife (not proven) decides to blow all his money on that cmodities deal, and if he’d never done that he’d have never gone to England and bought the mine and he would be alive now. After the funeral, Jesus’ brothers quote to him the proverb, “If any among you would not work, neither should he eat”. Jesus takes this proverb to heart and finds employment as a carpenter building “tables, chairs and oak chests”. His older brothers are not exactly hurting for money. They all have respectable jobs in Tyre, but none of them is getting really rich either. More years pass. This is the end of part one.