Finished, Jeza held motionless at the podium. The assembly, shocked beyond measure, sat numb and silent. Stung, humiliated, deeply flustered.
Situated well back and high up in the stands, the Right Reverend Solomon T. Brady, D.D., was visibly shaken. The house lights abruptly came up and slowly the crowd reacted. The woman seated to Brady's right, a Protestant deaconess, was whispering to him, but the Reverend did not respond.
“Tell me she didn't say we should dissolve our churches? Is that what she really said?” Receiving no answer, she turned to her other side and repeated the plea.
From his seat so close to the stage behind the presiding panel, Alphonse Cardinal Litti gazed up at his Messiah, tears flowing freely down his fleshy cheeks. Several seats to the right of the cardinal, an inspired Rabbi Mordachai Hirschberg, aging leader of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect of Hasidic Lubavitchers, inhaled deeply as if to thank his God for having let him live long enough to witness the coming of the true Messiah. Nearby, First Reverend Richard Peter Fischer was flushed and sweating, grabbing at his right arm where a creeping sensation of numbness had developed. And Jon Feldman had risen from his chair, eyeing the distance between Jeza and the exit tunnel.
At the VIP table fronting the stage, eleven of the twelve panelists had scrapped their culled list of questions and were searching about desperately for a resolution to this unexpected dilemma.
Calm and collected in the midst of the confusion, Antonio Cardinal di Concerci had maintained a hard, unwavering scrutiny of the young prophetess. He, for one, was not about to let this appalling display go unchallenged. The prefect realized someone had to seize control of the deteriorating assembly. He addressed the microphone before him with a question that arrested the rising bedlam.
“And by what authority do you assert to us the will of God?” he asked loudly in his imperious, aristocratic voice. To ensure that he'd been heard by all, as the noise quelled he repeated himself. “By what authority do you assert to us the will of God? What credentials do you present to us?”
Jeza, who had been as immobile as a graven image, now looked down in sovereign composure at her challenger.
“My authority is of the Father, as is self-evident in His words that I speak. Your conscience confirms my credentials!”
Di Concerci didn't hesitate. “Then I must wonder at both your authority and your credentials,
“How can you understand if your heart is hardened?” she asked. “Those with most to lose, give least!”
Unaffected, Jeza's inquisitor pressed his attack. “You would have that the Church no longer celebrate the Mass? You would halt the sacraments? Deny spiritual comfort to the disconsolate, the sick, the dying?”
Jeza looked annoyed. “The Lord commands that you abolish liturgy and ceremony, the trappings that distract people from His true meaning. Abandon rites and rituals and devote this time to the service of man in the Lord's name!”
“But,” one of the Mormons on the panel pleaded, “the sacred practices of our religions hold great meaning and comfort for our congregations. There would be much sorrow and confusion over the loss of our spiritual communality.”
“I say to you,” she responded quickly, “there will be far greater sorrow for those whose souls are unprepared for the judgment of the Lord! Maintain your communality in charitable service to your fellow man, and interfere not with the communality of God.”
This talk of Judgment Day set the agitated assembly on further edge.
Nevertheless, di Concerci was not intimidated. “You claim that it's God's will for the organized religions of the world to disassemble themselves and you cite the Apostle Matthew to support your contention that God wishes man to isolate himself in matters of spirituality. Your interpretation, however, contradicts Matthew eighteen, verse twenty, which says: ‘When two or more are gathered together in My name, I am in their midst.’”
“By your very words do you prove me,” the Messiah responded. “This passage praises
Between each exchange, the angst flowed in tense conversation through the crowd.
The elderly, bespectacled Rabbi summoned the courage to ask, “My Lady, are you a prophetess? The only begotten Daughter of God? The Sister of Jesus and Muhammad?”
“I am as you say,” she responded.
He followed up, his voice quavering, “Are you the true Messiah of the Jews?”
“I am the Messiah of the Jews and of all people, everywhere.”
Di Concerci thought he saw an opening. “So, you proclaim to be the promised Messiah? How is it then that
There was anger in her voice. “I am as God has made me. And the truth of who I am is indeed in the Bible. If you desire to find the truth, you must look with your heart, not your eyes!”
“Messiah,” the evangelical on the panel cried, “I truly want to assist God in spreading His Holy Word. Is there no way I can continue my work?”
“In this manner shall you spread God's Word,” she replied: “To all you meet, give the writings of the Koran, the Talmud, the Veda, the Avesta, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible-all the great spiritual texts of the world. God's message is in all of them. But do not interpret God's Word for others, for mat is how the corruption begins.”
“Messiah?” It was the representative of the Presbyterian contingent. “If there is to be no more collective study of the scriptures, no more theologians and no more dialogue among religious scholars, do we not limit man's ability to understand the mind of God?”
Jeza softened in her response. “It is still possible for you to commune with your fellow man about the mind of God apart from the scriptures. Let the earth be your catechism. You were given this world, and in it, everything you need. Once you crawled upon its face, ignorant animals. Then God spoke to you and you began to grow. From this earth you fashioned clothes to cover you, fire to warm you, tools to ease your labor and weapons to protect you from the wild beast.
“In this earth is everything you require to complete your journey. All the materials necessary to satisfy your physical needs. To heal every disease. To travel the stars. So, too, in all these wonders is everything you require to understand the mind of God. In your physics and mathematics. In all your sciences. All the secrets of heaven exist everywhere around you. Commune in
Di Concerci narrowed his eyes at this surprising creature. She was certainly not what he had expected. While previously recognizing her to be a destabilizing influence on institutional religion, the prefect had considerably underestimated the magnitude. Standing here in her youthful vigor, so composed, so authoritative, she had summarily demanded no less than the immediate dismantling of two thousand years of sacred Christian heritage. This little slip of a girl!
He dared not concede the battle to her. He had to find a way to throw this apostate off-balance. Pull her into controversy. Somehow diminish the divine stature flooding out from her to the world through these damnable TV cameras. He had to search for weaknesses.
“Jeza, you purport to know the will of God?” di Concerci tried again.
“I
