morning's events, but she seemed totally indifferent to the situation.
Before they began, Bollinger gave Feldman the background on the tape they were about to view. “This footage was taken Saturday morning, Jon, downtown at the Al-Azhar University campus. We got a call about nine- thirty that Jeza was on the grounds near the Student Union Center. By the time we got there, a professor had come across her and invited her into an auditorium to address a class.
“Our crew was able to squeeze in and set up in the back of the hall while she was preoccupied answering questions. You're going to find this interesting. It's one of her lengthier exchanges ever.”
The video opened with Jeza standing behind an elevated podium at the bottom of a large, darkened, bowl- shaped auditorium. The Messiah was dressed in a long, simple, white cotton robe, trimmed in a red and purple band on the sleeves and hem. Illuminated in soft overhead lights, speaking comfortably into the microphone in front of her, she held the audience in rapt attention.
The class professor, a swarthy, animated bearded man with dark, liquid eyes and a turban, was the only other person on the stage with the Messiah. He appeared to be moderating the symposium, selecting the questioners from the audience.
The videotape picked up on a question posed by a tall, thin, middle-aged clergyman in a dark cassock. “Jeza, pardon me,” he said in a polite tone, “but your teachings seem to contradict many tenets of the Holy Bible. Are you above the Bible?”
“Where I am,” she responded in that commanding, yet soft, soothing voice of hers, “is by the hand and will of God. I bring you His Word as His begotten messenger.”
After each of her comments, the hall was abuzz with low-volume conversation, which quickly and respectfully abated with the next question asked.
“Jeza?” A black male student in a colorfully embroidered robe was recognized by the class professor. “Your teachings would seem to follow Christian philosophy in that you have proclaimed yourself the Sister of Jesus Christ and the Daughter of God. Are you then God, and should you be worshiped?”
“None should be worshiped but God the Father,” she responded.
“Are you superior to Jesus?” he questioned.
“Is ice superior to water?” she answered matter-of-factly, without the slightest edge to her voice. “Both are the same elements in different form, for different seasons.”
The class professor now posed a question of his own. “Jeza,” he asked, “are you proclaiming a new religion, or are you an adherent of a current theology?”
“I bring you insight into the will of God,” she responded. “The New Light is the culmination of all religions. It is the natural goal to which all religions must aspire.”
“Then to what religion should we belong?” a young man in a bright yellow turban asked.
“The Lord will not judge you by your religion,” she answered. “Nor does He favor one religion over another, nor one person over the next. Each man, woman, child will be judged only by how far that individual advances toward the fulfillment of personal perfection in the New Light.”
A leather-skinned, angry-looking man in Arabic garb sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing with emotion. “But if you are the sister of Jesus, you are a Jew. Are you then not partial to the Jew over the Arab? What have you to say to the freedom fighter who has lost his homeland to the Jews!”
“I say this to you,” she responded solemnly, her face growing dark. “The embittered divisions between Arab and Jew are an abiding source of anguish to God! As I am the Almighty's daughter, so also am I sister to Muhammad. Know you not that both Arab and Jew arise from the same root? That you share the same heritage in the patriarch, Abraham? The same deity whose name is both Allah and Yahweh? You are brothers in the eyes of God unlike no other peoples on the face of the earth, yet you hate and you shed one another's blood as mortal enemies!
“To you who pursue violence to regain your homeland, know this: your issues are worthy, but you yourselves are not! The acts of terrorism that you bring are abhorrent in the eyes of God. I say to you, let the persecution of the Jews-and of the Palestinians, and of all religions and peoples-let it all end now, forevermore. Until you forswear such actions of violence, God will turn His face from you. Until you and your brother Jews can come together with love and a true desire for reconciliation and unity, neither will know a peaceful homeland!”
The hall was stock-still. Taken aback, the befuddled Arab slowly resumed his seat.
After a period of profound silence, a young female student tentatively raised her hand. “Lady Messiah, are you here to found a new religion?”
“The New Light is not a religion, nor is it a list of rituals. The New Light is the understanding by which each may strive toward God's will for mankind.”
The professor then asked, “What is God's will for mankind? And what exactly is the New Light?”
“All is being revealed according to God's plan,” she replied. “You must watch and you must listen.”
A young black man, raising his hand animatedly from far back in the audience, was called on and created a stir when he pleaded, “Messiah, my mother is very ill. I beg you, please cure her!”
The professor immediately rushed to the center of the stage and warned, pointedly, that any further attempts to seek interventions or personal favors from the Messiah would result in the removal of that individual from the auditorium. He then promptly called on another questioner. However, in an unsubstantiated report issued a few days later, a Cairo paper claimed that the young man's mother recovered that same hour, completely and inexplicably, from a purported terminal illness.
Another female student posed a question which brought about a rift of laughter. “Messiah, is God male or female?”
Jeza showed no undue reaction. “God is both male and female,” she said straightforwardly. “And mankind is separated from God by its sexes.”
The same student followed up her question. “You refer to. God as ‘He’ and to hunanity as ‘man,’ or ‘mankind.’ Isn't that preferential and sexist? Particularly since you yourself are female?”
There were a few whistles and catcalls in the audience. But the professor stood with a stern face and the auditorium fell immediately silent.
Jeza did not hesitate with her response. “It may be more correct to identify God as ‘It,’ and mankind as simply ‘humanity.’ But this is not the custom, and to depart from the traditional so late in the hour is more academic than purposeful. For you to dwell on these terms as divisive is to distract yourself from your purpose, which is unity. Nevertheless, if you wish to understand scripture as God intended it, it is wise to go back and remove the inequity, as I will make clearer to you in days to come.”
“You say ‘late in the hour,’ Messiah,” the professor noted with a catch in his voice. “Are you foretelling the end of the world?”
There was a palpable suspension of breath in the audience.
Jeza herself grew solemn and pensive. “A great change is coming,” she slowly answered “It will mark both the end and the beginning. You must be vigilant and you will come to understand God's plan.”
This caused quite a stir in the assembly and the professor had to stand again to restore order. He selected another individual.
“By what rules shall we live?” the student asked. “By the Ten Commandments? The Talmud? The secular laws of our nation?”
“All of these and none of these,” she responded enigmatically. “I say to you that through the ages, God's word has been revealed many times to man. It is the same word, spoken by many tongues, written by many hands. To some it is the Bible. To others, the Koran. To still others, the Torah. And there exist many more forms.
“As the banks of your Nile are changed each spring by the recurring floods, so also does the full meaning of the Word change with each iteration and translation and interpretation. To know the way of the Lord, you must hear more than words.”
“But Messiah,” another clergyman protested, looking upset and confused. “I have devoted my entire life to studying scripture and the great theologians. Are you saying that all my work has been in vain?”
“There is much to be learned from the scriptures,” the Messiah answered him, “even if the translations be poor. But there is little that you will gain from the writings of the theologians, even if you understand them perfectly. For there are as many interpretations of the Word of God as there are religions upon the face of the earth. And none can tell you the separate truth that lies only within your soul.”
The clergyman persisted. “Surely the great and learned religious scholars have better insight and
