Chapter 5 -- the Jesus Christ Show

Chapter 5

The Jesus Christ Show

I do not frustrate the grace of God:  for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.  --  Galatians 2:21

Jeremy made a light snack and a cup of tea then settled into the reclining chair with a book.  He couldn’t focus his mind on the words, and in his restlessness he decided to step outside and gaze at the night sky.  He softly went into the yard and looked up in awe, then laid down on his back and let his thoughts float to the universe.  Time vanished…he dozed off…and his thoughts became dreams.

When he awoke his eyes were drawn to the tractor, which was parked in front of the barn just beneath the full moon.  Then he recalled the headphones, and had a sudden and strange urge to listen to music. 

He walked over and fished them out from beneath the steering column, clipped them to his head and turned them on.  His right hand fumbled with the dial behind the ear, until he suddenly heard a booming, resonant voice say:  “Good evening ladies and gentlemen,and welcome to the Jesus Christ show.  I’m your host, JC.  Come walk with me from the fountain of living water into eternity and we will rock the stars!  If you’d like to speak directly with Jesus, I’m taking calls right now at one eight hundred JCROCKSTAR.  And if you’d like to be considered for my weekly journal, or to receive a copy, write to PO Box 1714 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  We have a lot to get to tonight, so let’s get right to it!”

“The abortionists are at again.  Did you hear the ruling in Denver today?  Those liberal politicians are going to increase funding for those clinics whose services include abortion.  They think they can sneak it behind our backs, or slip it under our noses, but the American people are too smart, and see through the disguise to the ugly evil inside.  The only way to correct the horrific wrong, this travesty of the law, is to replace the judges on the highest court, and the only way to do that is to replace the President and his cohorts in charge, and the only way we can do that is to rise up and take over the voting booths.  Are you with me, people?  Are you with Jesus?”

Jeremy left the radio tuned to the ranting for an hour or so, and his blood simmered listening to the liar who called himself the Lord.  He remembered the phone in Ralph’s house, and for a lark decided to dial the number.  To his surprise the line at 800JCROCKSTAR rang, and was answered by a man who asked Jeremy his name, roughly what he wanted to say, then put him on hold.  Five minutes later he heard JC say, “Next up is Jeremy in Pennsylvania.”

Jeremy stumbled over his own tongue.  “Hi J…uh.  I don’t quite know how to begin.  I’ve been listening for the last hour, and I’m puzzled by your attitude and your stance.”

“Are you now, Jeremy?  And who are you that you know enough about me to pass judgment publicly?” JC bluntly asked.

“I’m just a catholic priest out having a look around America.”

“The view from up here is magnificent,” JC boldly proclaimed.

“I do find it offensive that you call yourself Jesus Christ.”

“If I am a new person in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is in me, then I am become Jesus Christ,” JC explained.

“To say it as you do is sin, and since Jesus is without sin, you cannot be who you call yourself,” Jeremy rejoined.  “Notwithstanding that it’s simply irreverent disrespect.  And by obsessing about lawmakers and legislating sin instead of showing mercy to your brothers and to the poor, you put yourselves under the law.”

“But I’m not a lawbreaker, so it can’t harm me,” JC declared.  “And I will bear any and all influence in my power to save others and to make less deadly the sting and the condemnation of the law.”

“Then your own tongue will judge you,” Jeremy rejoined.  “If you wield law against a woman’s body, and her will, to save life, then go on to authorize your military to invade other countries and bomb their babies, you are guilty of murder, and the law is become the noose wherein you hang yourselves.”

“And if you support the liberal agenda that governs the law, then the law, in killing others, kills you, according to my biblical view,” JC explained.

“I know a thing or two about the Bible,” Jeremy proclaimed.  “Have you not read the truth the Spirit revealed concerning the law through Paul in his epistle to the Galatians?” Jeremy asked.  “Therein it is written, ‘received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing the faith?  The law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them.  By the works of the law no flesh shall be justified, but if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.  For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

“I do love my neighbor,” JC answered.  “As long as he leads a biblical life.  It is also written to not be yoked with unbelievers.  When the law is contrary to God, the law must be changed.”

“The whole law itself is contrary to God,” Jeremy rejoined.   “Wherefore it is written that ‘Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.’”

“Now you’re telling me I’m fallen from grace,” JC snidely replied.  “How very Christian of you.  Let’s move along to Rudy in Houston.”

The line clicked and went silent.  Jeremy was even more worked up than when he’d dialed the phone.  He laid the headphones on the table, found paper and a pen, opened his Bible and searched out a few scriptures.  Then he wrote.

O Untimely Birth

By Jeremy from Pennsylvania

Not every bud on the vine matures into fruit; some fall and rot in the earth, and nourish the roots.  It can be said that in a manner they are born again. 

Miscarriage, stillbirth and crib death account for millions of infant mortalities worldwide every year; it’s been a natural aspect of the human condition since man was cast out of the garden.

 The inscrutable, omniscient God, who knows the number of hairs upon your head and all the thoughts in your heart, takes every last babe up into His arms.  He also addressed it in His book long, long ago.

Job 3: 11-16  ‘Why died I not from the womb?  why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?  Why did the knees prevent me?  or why the breasts that I should suck?  For now should I have lain still and had been quiet, I should have slept:  then had I been at rest… as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw the light.  There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.’

It is a biblical truth essentially repeated in Ecclesiastes  4: 3-4,  ‘Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.  Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.’  And Ecclesiastes 6: 3  ‘If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.’

Would a true child of God abort a fetus?  Of course not.  Why then do you fret when they you surely regard as the daughters of the devil off their own young?

And why do you seek to legislate the sin of others?  We all know who the LORD says is qualified to cast those stones.

Speaking of stones, let us segue to Matthew 3:9, where John the Baptist denounces  the Pharisees (the ancient equivalent of today’s self-righteous conservative ‘Christians’), saying:  ‘God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.’

Knowing that, do you think that even one soul God determines to be has been or ever will be lost?  In John 6:39, Jesus says:  ‘And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.’

Jesus also accused the Pharisees repeatedly, including Matthew 23:23:  ‘Woe unto ye, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith:  these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.’

In this you pharisaical hypocrites make a show of your piety by taking up your indignation against abortion, but turn your backs upon the infants the moment they take their place among the living.  You despise spending tax dollars on the social programs that would feed, house, educate and give them health care, and by opposing such seek to subject them to the very evils the Bible says they’re better off never knowing.  Abortion is abomination, but so aren’t ruthless bankers who devour houses, making people homeless to accumulate money they’ll never spend; and heartless health insurers who alchemize blood by visiting death upon the impoverished; and the soulless politicians who enable and protect them in the name of God.  And even if the privacy laws were ever repealed the money saved would not be spent on the resulting babies—it would be divvied by and to the bankers and the insurers and the liars whom the Bible itself says would be better off had they simply been aborted.

As the late hours became the early hours, Jeremy at last drifted into sleep, and was still so doing when he was roused by the presence of Ralph standing over him.  “Stay down if you like,” Ralph said.  “I am going to start getting ready to work.  Do you have any plan?”

“I thought I’d ride out with you and work part of the day then move along from wherever we are,” Jeremy said.

“I’m going close to Punxsatawney to pick up more bales.  They’re already rolled.”

“Then I’ll ride along and get off there,” Jeremy said.

“Whatever you like,” Ralph replied.  “Coffee and eggs will be ready in ten minutes.”

They ate then went out front and climbed aboard the tractor.  Ralph put on one set of headphones and handed Jeremy the other.  Jeremy placed them over his ears, and said:  “I’ve got to say, these things are fantastic.  I put them on and listened to the radio for a couple hours in the middle of the night.”

“Really?  If you like them that much, they’re yours,” Ralph replied.  Jeremy tried to resist the gift, but Ralph insisted.  “Call it your pay for the morning’s work.  I can make another pair in an hour.  Let me show you the best feature, because I’m so proud of it.  Do you see that square bit of glass behind the left ear?  That’s a mini solar panel.  That’s your power supply, and it charges up enough during the day to run all night.”

“Why thank you so much. These will certainly come in handy, and definitely put to use.”

Jeremy tuned in some music and settled in for the long ride.  They worked for several hours loading hay, then had lunch together, said goodbye and parted ways.