with the rest of the stuff.”
As the appointed hour for Jeza's appearance drew near, Feldman made one more attempt to reach Anke on his cellular phone. This time he got through, only to encounter the answering machine. He left a detailed message of where he was, phone numbers and how he might be reached later. He pleaded with Anke to contact him soon, given that he might be leaving for Switzerland tonight. Frustrated, he snapped shut the phone and returned it to his pocket.
And then, without warning, the two newsmen were suddenly alerted to Jeza's presence by the eruptive excitement of the crowd. From nowhere, it would seem, the prophetess had appeared on the platform, unannounced, and was taking her place on the stand behind an array of microphones. In a panic, Hunter scrambled up to his perch on the rooftop. Feldman, captivated by her arresting image once more, had to force himself to turn away from the vision and return to his work. He took his place below and well out in front of the cameraman.
“How's my audio?” Feldman called into his wireless lapel mike.
“Fine,” the word came back through his ear set. “Hold for a sec while I clear our signal.”
Feldman's ear set went quiet momentarily, and then Hunter's voice crackled back. “Okay, we've got a green light. Go ahead and do your intro and just ad-lib until she starts her speech.”
That could take a while, as the crowd showed no intention of diminishing the volume of its wild welcome. Feldman, his back reluctantly to the stage, brushed off his coat, cleared his throat and addressed the camera. He got a hand cue from Hunter and began.
“This is Jon Feldman reporting live for WNN from historic Wailing Wall Square in Jerusalem. As you can see from the masses of faithful celebrating behind us here, this is a major event in the continuing story of the young visionary who calls herself Jeza.”
As Feldman opened his mouth to take his next breath, a huge cry welled up from the crowd. He turned to see Jeza raising her hands behind the transparent blast shield in what he assumed was a greeting to the crowd, or perhaps a plea for quiet.
The roar for Jeza was deafening now. It rose up from within the square and set off a chain reaction along the encircling hills of Jerusalem, blackened with the presence of five million witnesses to this supreme event. Jeza stretched her arms out to the crowd and finally, like the aftermath of an explosion, the cacophony rumbled to absolute stillness.
At length she lowered her arms and spoke out in a loud, authoritative voice that projected from the loudspeakers and echoed across the landscape of the Holy Land.
“In the name of the Father, I come to you!” she began in her well-known entree. The crowd erupted again, but she forged on, not encouraging their interruption. This time her speech was in English only, as if she had too much to say to belabor her delivery. The crowd immediately quieted again.
“I have spoken to you of the liberation of the soul,” she called out in a commanding voice. “I have spoken to you of the need to abolish your dependence on others for spiritual instruction that you may arrive at your own meaning of scripture. And I have warned you to leave your churches and temples and mosques and to abandon your religious leaders, as the direction they give you misleads you from God's truths.
“Today, I bring the Final Word that you might understand.” She paused and took a deep breath, as did the crowd.
“In the beginning, God prepared for you great blessedness,” she continued in her angelic voice. “A unity of heaven and earth and life eternal. It was God's plan, then, that all mankind should forever share in the glory and joys of paradise. But man was not ready for this great gift. In pride did mankind fail to recognize the sacredness of this unity. Of his own free will, man rejected God.
“And so came the fall from grace, when God divided life from death, and the earth from the heavens, and humanity from divinity. And man was banished to roam the wilderness, lost and alone.
“Yet even after the fall, God prepared a plan of redemption so that one day you should again partake completely in the wonder of His divine perfection. This plan did God set before you in the visions of the prophets. And in the messages of the Messiahs did God further reveal His intent:
“That man should learn and grow in the ways of the Lord, and work toward the day of the Final Judgment when the worthy might again be allowed to experience the unity of God in life. God left man with the promise that, at the Judgment, He would come again to reign with the righteous on earth. Until that time, only through death would man be reunited with the Almighty.
“But man has been slow to prepare himself for Judgment. He has been wayward in his journey toward righteousness. He has misunderstood and ignored the messengers of God. He has foundered and struggled in his understanding of God's intent.
“Thus have I come to you to carry forward the Word so that you may at last find your way back to the Father. For only in knowing the Word shall you close the abyss which separates you still.
“In the Word shall you recognize the enduring disharmony
With this ringing declaration, the turbulent, brooding clouds above the prophetess were rent by an enormous shear of lightning. The multitudes dropped to the ground in abject terror as the earth reverberated from the deafening, apocalyptic peal. But Jeza was unfazed and unblinking.
“I speak to you of the great iniquities that prolong your fall from grace,” she called out to them as the thunder faded and the cries of alarm escalated. “I speak of the ungodly separations of man from humanity!”
Collecting themselves and calming under the Messiah's continuing sermon, the masses regrouped and refocused.
“At the fall from grace,” she pressed on, “God ordained the separation between Himself and mankind. Yet, after the fall, man took it upon himself to create further divisions, unnatural and prideful in their conception, and blasphemous in the eyes of the Lord. In these unnatural divisions, man first chose to set himself above his mate, separating himself from woman, whom God had created as equal and counterpart.
“Over the millennia, man has sought to lend sanction to this wrongful division by corrupting the very Word of God. In the Book of Genesis, chapters two and three, woman is portrayed as secondary in creation; subservient to Adam; the perpetrator of original sin; the seductress who tempts Adam to taste of the forbidden fruit, thereby bringing about mankind's fall from grace.
“I say to you, the debased meaning of this book is the foremost of the many corruptions of the scriptures. These passages were first given to you as a holy message of the general and of the symbolic. Yet, has the true meaning been abandoned, reduced to the specific and the literal.
“Be it known to all that, in the true progression of life on this earth, it was the female form that came first. In the beginning, God created the primitive organisms. And in His design, He created them female one and all. Cell begetting cell, female begetting female. It is only later in time that maleness emerges, male issuing from female.
“And it is only later in time that man, as the hunter and protector, surpasses woman in strength and prowess. And then deigns to wield his powers to hold dominion over woman. Yet, when woman attempts to offset lesser strength with greater wit, she is condemned for her cunning.
“In the writings of the Bible and in all ancient scriptures, the symbol of woman suffers from the biased pen of man. Over the ages, these false meanings have been used to sanctify the enslavement and abuse of woman. Throughout the millennia, man has denied woman access to her true spirituality and religious authority, holding her in spiritless submission out of arrogance and stubbornness and jealousy and insecurity.
“Look about you in your midst,” she called out, arcing a reproachful finger over the crowd. “See among you the many women still bound by doctrine to conceal themselves behind long veils, their value discounted, their presence and importance diminished.”
There was an uneasy stirring in the crowd as the reclusive female subjects of Jeza's observations were made conspicuous.
“Look to the hypocrisies of the Western religions,” she continued. “And look to the successor of the Apostle Peter of the Roman Church who refuses woman control of her body in propagation; restrains her status within her house of worship; denies her blessed fulfillment in the performance of the sacraments.
“Be it known that, through me, God shall deliver woman from her spiritual bonds. For now, through me, does
