Ambassador Hotel, Amman, Jordan Monday morning, January 31, 2000
All but one of the WNN crew managed to escape Tamin's grasp. Arnie Bollinger had risked returning to his office to retrieve some important papers, but the IDF had been lying in wait and promptly arrested him.
Feldman, Anke and the remaining WNN staff, meanwhile, had made it safely to Amman, Jordan. En route, Feldman had thought to make a precautionary phone call to Anne Leveque. His warning, however, came too late. To his great anger and dismay, Feldman learned that the widow had already received another visit from Goene. The general had come armed with a search warrant this time, tearing apart her home until he found and confiscated her late husband's incriminating diary.
As tired as he was when he reached Amman, Feldman was unable to sleep. He felt a devastating guilt over the disastrous consequences of his
It was apparent that Tamin was coming under increasing political pressure back in Jerusalem. In a rare live radio broadcast, the defense minister vehemently denied WNN's accusations regarding the nature of the Negev Institute experiments. He also defended his repressive police actions against WNN as necessary to safeguard nameless “state security secrets.”
And then, in his most outlandish and brazen act yet, the defense minister announced an all-out manhunt by the IDF to take the elusive Messiah into “protective custody.”
Feldman was beside himself. As the reporter was well aware, with the Leveque diary now in the IDF's possession, the only remaining evidence left to indict Tamin and Goene was embodied, quite literally, in the person of the little prophetess herself.
Despite WNN's
But then at last, there came some good news. Perhaps as a token appeasement to the Knesset, the IDF finally released Bollinger later in the day without pressing charges. The exhausted, bedraggled newsman arrived shortly thereafter at the Amman airport to a hero's welcome. The large crowd that greeted him was led by a tired, but cheering, WNN news staff.
The message Bollinger bore from the IDF, however, was not good. WNN was barred from Israel indefinitely. All its properties had been seized under direct orders of Shaul Tamin. Sullivan had no choice but to immediately relocate all operations and personnel to WNN's regional headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, pending further developments in the Holy Land.
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Mormon Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah 8:42 A.M., Saturday, February 5, 2000
It was the second morning of the first convocation when, at last, the meeting got down to its most controversial topic of interest: “An Evaluation of the Authenticity of a New Messianic Presence.” From an elevated lectern at the front of the huge auditorium, a tall, gaunt, bespectacled Mormon elder called to order the assembly of over five hundred religious leaders.
Delivering today's keenly anticipated focal presentation would be a scholarly young Mormon theologian who was introduced as Brother Elijah Petway, a foremost authority on Old and New Testament correlations. Brother Petway was a small, lean, light-complected man with thinning blond hair, compressed face and pale blue eyes that blinked mechanically behind wire-rimmed glasses.
Eagerly taking the podium, Brother Petway beamed at his attentive audience. “My fellow Judeo-Christians, Muslim and Buddhist brothers and sisters,” he began, in a prim and precise voice as thin as his physique. “I thank you all for the opportunity to bring before you the results of my exhaustive studies.”
After a somewhat tiresome explanation of the methodology and thoroughness of his research, Petway launched into the gist of his findings-a litany of both obvious and obscure parallels drawn between scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and the recent occurrences in the Holy Land. The bulk of his correlations consisted of such things as a comparison of the alleged meteorite with the biblical Star of Bethlehem; similarities between the Japanese astronomers and the Wise Men of the Orient; the significance of the December 25 date on which the institute was destroyed, and so forth.
He finished with a controversial pronouncement.
“Obvious to everyone now, in light of the World News Network's revelations,” he maintained, “is the unique and biblically relevant nature of Jeza's nativity. As you'll recall, Jeza was created through a process of conception known as polar body fertilization. This process precluded the introduction of sperm into the reproductive organs of Jeza's maternal donor. Indeed, the procedure circumvented altogether the need for male gametes.
“We have, therefore, a pure, virgin conception and virgin birth, in the truest sense!”
There was a stir of rumblings from large sections of the audience, but Petway's enthusiasm was unabated. He took a large, self-satisfied breath. “I feel there is an inevitable conclusion this assembly must draw from the overwhelming body of direct and indirect evidence just presented. I submit to you that it is irrelevant whether Jeza be God-made through an immaculate conception, or man-made through artificial fertilization. God works in strange ways. If it be His decision to use man's folly to achieve His own objectives, who are we to question?
“I also submit to you that it is irrelevant whether the New Messiah be male or female. The apparent anomaly of Jeza's sex should not diminish her message. We must search for the higher meaning in why God has chosen a female to represent Him this time.
“And finally, I submit to you that, even if you agree with but a portion of the amazing correlations I've just identified, we must all of us now make the evaluation that this special presence among us, this saintly, godly creature known as Jeza, can be none other than the only begotten Daughter of God: Jeza Christ!”
This resulted in diverse reactions from the assembly, ranging from caustic outrage to merely appreciative applause, to tumultuous, standing ovations and enthusiastic Alleluias. Strong support emanated not only from the millenarian sections, but also from the Jewish contingent, which was made up of several excited rabbis, including the respected head of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Lubavitcher movement, Rabbi Mordachai Hirschberg, who held a hand over his fluttering heart.
Petway vacated the podium convinced of the persuasiveness of his arguments.
Certainly, for one quiet, inconspicuous gentleman sitting alone at a more distant table, Brother Petway had scored far more hits than misses. Carefully capturing every word on tape recorder, making precise entries in his notepad and feeling completely vindicated was the revitalized Cardinal Alphonse Litti.
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WNN regional headquarters, Cairo, Egypt 10:03 A.M. Sunday, February 6, 2000
Other than Arnie Bollinger's safe deliverance from the hands of Shaul Tamin, there were few positive developments to help alleviate Feldman's growing frustrations with his exile. Over the last several days, removed from all the action in Israel, he and his associates had little to do but hang around Cairo headquarters, hoping for WNN to get their visas restored.
Trying to keep abreast of current events this morning, Feldman and Anke sat in an empty WNN editing bay scanning a dozen TV monitors on the wall in front of them. Each set was tuned to a different channel, the volumes muted on all but the one that happened to last catch their interest.
