Wanna see it fall? Wanna see everything that Harmony built, everything that Brother Faith, Brother Justice, Brother Hoss, Rose, and Unity Church gave Adam crumble to the ground at his feet and burn to ash? In order to understand the true issue between Adam’s fall from God, we have to get one last gift from Sasquatch. One last attack to everything Adam loved and wanted from God.
The Catholic Church elected a new Pope not long ago. This guy broke everything apart. He did a lot of great things, a lot of things that made Catholics uncomfortable, but by far the biggest was this right here: The new Pope made the statement that any virtuous religion, if they are stalwart and true to the word of their God, if their God is just and they are devout, any follower of any church or religion, will find themselves on the path to the Lord.
Any follower of any religion can find their way to God. Jesus is just the way the Catholic Church does it. But Hindus, Muslims, any of the others, if they are devout and their religion is virtuous, they too can find the true God.
That statement blew everything wide open. It was either talked about and embraced and a new respect for other religions was found, or it was shouted down as heresy and he was cursed. It was not broadcasted everywhere, and not many people heard about it, but it found Adam on a night when he was trapped in darkness. The words of the new Pope gave him hope, and all he had to do was run it by his holy guide, sent by God, to see if he could embrace it.
You have to understand Adam needed a holy man or woman to lead him back to what the other alters had run from. He needed a way to make peace with his God, and he did not trust himself.
He had not been taught this by Tier. Tier worships H. Tier left God right out of the equation.
Shadow was burning on this path of flame.
Guardian bitter and broken by the loss of his war.
Servant had lost his soul when Harmony fell.
Adam could not listen to anyone in his mind about this. And Sasquatch let him know he had been sent by God to bring him back to the Lord. In Adam’s mind, that was a holy contract.
So when this new idea came from one of the greatest and most respected holy men of the age, Adam brought it to Sasquatch, his holy guide, to hear the man’s wisdom and see if this matched up with anything Sasquatch had ever heard from his God.
“That is the new Catholic Church. That is not God’s word. That goes against everything that all Christians believe,” Sasquatch said. “No, the Bible says that Jesus is the way to God and is the only way. The Catholic Church has lost itself.”
Then he changed the subject. Adam needed to say more, needed to make this a subject of as much conversation as possible. Maybe all the anger of all the alters could be routed if it was brought to a different deity. Maybe peace could be found with another religion, one that had not hurt every one of the followers in this body. But it was shut down when Sasquatch began talking about his artwork again. Adam let the subject be changed and took the hit.
Months later, Kraken, Sasquatch, and I were at his house on his deck, drinking beer and talking. I don’t even remember what was said, who said it, or how the topic of God even got brought up, but Sasquatch lost control of himself.
I think he was beginning to see that he was not getting through to me. Maybe he was starting to realize that no matter how long he talked to me about God, Christ, the Bible, all of it, all of his words were twisting on themselves.
When the subject of God came up, it was something simple. A statement someone made. And Sasquatch broke.
He began to rant. He described in detail the gruesome and hideous death of Jesus. He talked about what happened to Christ’s body. Talked about the way the nails went in, which was not biblical. He talked about wrists, when the Bible said palms. He talked about the way the body slowly suffocated and the pain of pulling yourself up so you can catch a breath before going back to the smothering. He said all of it, then he went back to the Cup of Wrath.
Now let’s take a moment to look at this nail thing because I hear it misquoted all the time and it bothers me. See Christians all around the world love to quote the Bible verbatim and talk about every word as if it is perfect. They talk about the crucifixion differently though. Their faith dies when they get to the moment of the resurrection.
Thomas is called Doubting Thomas for a reason. All through the book Thomas, Jesus’s disciple, is asking for proof and asking for more information. I think Jesus picked him for this reason. He needed a skeptic on his team so he could get more in depth in his teachings and see where he was being vague. But the greatest display of Thomas’s doubt comes when Jesus has risen from the grave and found his followers again.
Thomas asks for Jesus to display his wounds and Jesus holds out his palm. Thomas sticks his fingers through the holes of Jesus’s palm and the proof has been made. Also in every account of Jesus’s death, all of the gospels say that the man took the nails in the palm.
I’m not a biblical scholar.
I am a fantasy writer.
But as a writer I say what I mean, and mean what I say, and if the gospels that are depicting Jesus’s death say palm, then palm it is. But every Christian says that if he took the nails in the palm they would have ripped through the two middle fingers and he would have slid off the cross.
Rose, Brother Haste, Sasquatch, and everyone else will tell you with absolute certainty that when Paul says homosexuals need to burn, that it is true, because it is stated in the Bible. But when it comes to the most pivotal moment in the entire book, they are ready to discount the written word and make it however they think it was.
Pisses me off. Because what if the Roman soldiers did pierce Jesus’s palms like the Bible says?
It is already indicated that the Romans did not want to crucify this man. They tried every way possible to get around it.
They told the Pharisees that Jesus had done nothing wrong.
They beat him to try to appease his accusers.
They whipped him to try to get around killing this cat.
They brought out a vile gangster and said, “Yo, pick a dude for me to punish and it will be done.” And the Jewish people chose to loose the gangster.
The Romans tried in every way to let Jesus off. So what if they did pierce his palms hoping that Jesus would slip right off the cross?
But Jesus was told he would die. He was told he had to die in the worst way possible, so when he was pierced through the palms he refused to let it stop the Will of God. If the Bible is true, and Christian doubt is false, then Jesus was nailed through the palms and instead of letting himself fall, he gripped the nails. The entire three days he was up there, what if Jesus held tight to those nails knowing that God’s Will would not be done if he slipped off?
Sounds like Jesus to me. Sounds like the Original Gangster of God refusing to be stopped.
But I know nothing.
I have no wisdom.
I am not a Christian and I am not a man of God.
I just hate hypocrisy.
So anyway, Sasquatch goes on for about an hour talking about Jesus’s wounds, his horrid death and why he did it. He talks for nearly an hour about the Cup of Wrath and how Jesus is the only way to God, because he is getting desperate.
He is seeing that Adam is not falling into line, and he is seeing that no matter what he does, Adam will not just shut up and accept Sasquatch’s vision of the Lord.
So what was a simple question, just a topic brought up, turns into a rant that cannot be interrupted and kills all conversation. After this rant, Kraken excuses himself and goes home.
Adam can’t remember what he had been talking about and he leaves a few minutes later.
That is a look into the way things are developing. But this is it. Right here is the nail in the coffin, because if this piece of the Word of God is true, then God is not love. The Pope is very wrong, and Adam does not want anything to do with Christ.
The last time Sasquatch and Adam talked about God, the Cup of Wrath came up again, and Adam brought up the big issue with Christianity.
What about everybody else? What about those who don’t have a chance to know Christ?
After Sasquatch goes and give his message again, Adam begins. “What happens to those who never get a chance to know Christ?”
“Who do you mean?”
“Well let’s say you are an indigent citizen in the deep jungle of Africa. No white man has ever made it to your tribe. No missionary has ever preached to you about Christ or ever given you any message. You have not received a vision of the Lord, but you have been a great man in your community. You have been a leader and a caregiver for all, and you are faithful to those you love. In every way, you have spent your life doing good, helping people and guiding the young in wisdom.
“And you die.
“You die a good death surrounded by your entire village that will speak of you as a great man into their history.
“What happens to your soul when you pass?”
“You go to Hell,” Sasquatch said. “Listen, it’s not fair, I don’t think, but there is a road to God and that man, no matter how great a man he was, never knew Christ. He gets to hell to burn with the sinners.”
And Adam is out.
This chapter is from Reality of the Unreal Mind, Vol. 3: The Keep.
Jesse Teller 