[continued from previous message]   
      
   What may we glean from this story? First, Mary and Elisabeth, besides being   
   cousins, must have been close friends. Hence the recognition of Jesus by John   
   was hardly a miracle, nor even was it spontaneous, despite the apostle John's   
   protests to the    
   contrary. [149] Jesus and John must have known each other well; and, as they   
   had been destined from their very births, or from even before their births, to   
   form a two-man, closely-aligned team, it is little wonder that they did do   
   just that. [150] After    
   all, those were the roles they would have been trained from childhood to play.   
   If we discount all of the talk about angels, and substitute human beings   
   (perhaps, if one likes, psychically or even spiritually developed humans),   
   then the makings of a well-   
   planned and sizeable conspiracy emerge. But, what sort of conspiracy?   
      
   At the time of Jesus almost all Jews were expecting God would send the Messiah   
   soon. Throughout their history, whenever difficulties arose, the Jews have   
   always expected and often received a “hero or sage” to lead them out of their   
   predicament – but ever    
   and always they waited for the one great and final Savior. Just forty years   
   ago, those Jews languishing in Nazi concentration camps often maintained their   
   spirits with one thought – Ani Maamin, I believe – “I believe the Messiah will   
   come.” So it was in    
   Israel at the time of Jesus, Israel dominated by the incredibly powerful Roman   
   Empire, [151] the Jews could hope for an extraordinary and miraculous   
   liberation from the oppressive grip of those gentile barbarians. Some Jews   
   expected a supernatural being;    
   others looked for a military leader; many dreamed about the establishment of   
   an economic paradise where all their needs would be fulfilled without working.   
   All believed that, after the Messiah's advent, a utopia would be established –   
   either heaven on    
   earth or earth in heaven. In brief, the eschatological views of Christianity   
   regarding the Second Coming are roughly equivalent to what the Jews expected –   
   and still expect – from the Messiah's “first coming”.   
      
   In that particular time when Jesus appeared, an age permeated with the sweet   
   dream of emancipation and the harsh realities of politico-economic   
   exploitation, many pretenders arose to claim the “throne of David”. A cursory   
   glance at the books of prophets    
   will show how most of the accepted prophets, “messengers of God”, warned   
   against “false prophets”. [152] Even Jesus warned against “false Christs”.   
   [153] Back then the competition was feverish; and, throughout the centuries   
   since then, the lure of    
   Messianic power has continued to attract clever and audacious Jews to make   
   their bid for the post of God's Anointed. To name just a few of the   
   pretenders, there was Bar Kokba in the 2nd Century, Abraham Abulafia in the   
   13th Century, Sabbatai Zebi in the    
   17th Century and Jacob Frank in the 18th Century. These were some of the   
   Jewish contenders – if one includes all of the Christians and Moslems who had   
   similar delusions of grandeur, then the ranks expand considerably. Even today   
   there are at least two,    
   and maybe three prominent gurus based in the United States who are hailed by   
   their disciples as the reincarnation of Christ. To elucidate this point, let   
   me briefly relate one incident which occurred at the start of this Century.   
      
   The year was 1911, and Annie Besant had been for four years President of the   
   Theosophical Society in India. Suddenly she announced to the world that a   
   young Indian boy of barely 16 years would be the medium through which the   
   World Teacher would speak.    
   Jiddu Krishnamurti was named the messianic reincarnation of the Buddha. In   
   order to support his activities, Ms. Besant founded the World Order of Star,   
   which operated for seventeen years, until 1928, when Krishnamurti finally   
   admitted that the claims    
   made about him were false. Forty years passed and then, in 1969, the   
   Krishnamurti Foundation was established to propagate the new ideas of the   
   non-guru-no-guru guru.   
      
   Even this year (1984), just a few months ago many thousands of people waited   
   with burning expectation for Jesus to miraculously and simultaneously appear   
   on television sets all around the world. The charlatan who spread this   
   nonsense has quietly slipped    
   away; but, no doubt, his economic security has been well served. And we may   
   surely expect him to appear in public once again to give some far-fetched   
   explanation for the failure of his far-fetched prediction. When humanity can   
   today still be that    
   gullible, it is no wonder that people were somewhat receptive at the time of   
   Jesus. It is very much to the credit of the Jews then in Israel that they   
   were, by and large, not taken in by the clever game of John the Baptist and   
   Jesus. And it goes even    
   more to the credit of Jewish intelligence when one considers how skillfully   
   the Jesus scheme was orchestrated by the Essene Sect from behind the scenes.   
      
   The Essenes were a more or less monastic order of priestly origin based mainly   
   in the deserts of Judaea, and there are actually many pieces of clear evidence   
   indicating that they, the Essenes, were the real masterminds of the “Christ   
   Conspiracy” First,    
   there are at least two separate and credible sets of documents that have   
   appeared in Tibetan monasteries, which link the life of Jesus with the Essene   
   community. The first is The Gospel of the Holy Twelve, purported to have been   
   hidden in a Buddhist    
   monastery by members of the Essene order who feared corruption of the truth by   
   later opportunists. The second is a set of Buddhist documents (verified by   
   both Nicholas Notovich, a Russian explorer, and Swami Abhedananda, a founding   
   member of the    
   Ramakrishna Mission), which describe the training of Jesus in India under Jain   
   and Buddhist instruction, and which clearly refer to the earlier training and   
   later support of Jesus and John the Baptist by the Essenes. [154]   
      
   The second piece of evidence is based on information derived from the Dead Sea   
   Scrolls discovered in 1947. A careful analysis of the philosophy of the Qumran   
   Sect, (the Essene or Essene-like community which wrote, copied and preserved   
   many scrolls),    
   reveals a remarkable similarity to the philosophy taught by Jesus and John.   
   For example, the Essenes were very firm in their opposition to any kind of   
   oath-taking, and in their support of communal property – two themes which were   
   quite prominent in the    
   teachings of Jesus and John. [155]   
      
   Third, the lifestyle and activities of John strongly testify to his having   
   been a member of the Essene Community. His ascetic nature [156] parallels   
   nicely the rigorous monastic existence of the Essenes. His use of the baptism   
   rite, which the disciples    
   of Jesus used as well, [157] was by and large quite foreign to the mainstream   
   of Jewish tradition but, nonetheless, similar to the initiatory baptism of the   
   Essenes. The clear reference to John's desert training in Luke, [158] John's   
   preaching in the    
   Judaean desert when Jesus appeared on the scene, [159] and John's   
   self-description as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness”, [160] – all   
   these can only be taken as confirmation that John, himself, was an Essene. And   
   the fact that Jesus was ready to    
   accept the baptism of John, or rather that he intentionally sought the baptism   
   of John, [161] can only lend credence to the theory that Jesus also accepted   
   the authority of the Essene Order.   
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)