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Like
oil and water (holy or otherwise), religion and science don't
mix well. They have pretty much gone their separate ways since
the birth of Christ, the final breach perhaps having been the
Inquisition's muzzling of Galileo in 1615 for questioning the
Bible and asserting that the earth revolved around the sun. (It
is heartening to note that the Holy See has recently seen the
light on this matter and has officially conceded the point to
Galileo.)
As we
stand poised on the brink of the new millennium, religion is again
trying to press science into service, this time to fulfill certain
prophesies in the Bible about the end of the world. My first inkling
of this was a reference to a web site that I came across the other
day--a site called www.clonejesus.com. I thought ''Now this I have
to see for myself.'' Clonejesus.com is home to the Second Coming
Project, which claims to have access to DNA from Jesus Christ and
intends to use it to clone Jesus in the womb of a young virgin.
The target date for the birth of this new Christ is December 25,
2001.
Problem
number one with this plan is the fact that no way, no how was Jesus
Christ born on December 25. That date wasn't even adopted until
the fourth century, when the early Catholic Church chose that date
to rival the date of an important pagan festival. Until that time,
the exact date of Christ's birth had been in dispute, with most
favoring May 20, which ties in to the fact that the shepherds were
watching their sheep by night, something that was done only during
the spring lambing. In winter, the lambs were kept penned and unwatched.
Then
there is the rather basic issue of ensuring that you have actual
DNA tissue from Christ. The web site glosses over this question
with glib references to Christian churches that have holy relics
such as Christ's blood, his hair, and his foreskin. (Jesus' foreskin?
You have got to be kidding.) Well, let's just say that I would want
to see some assurances on the provenance of the foreskin or any
other alleged DNA material before I sank my money into the project.
Be that
as it may, the point of the whole project is to precipitate the
Second Coming of Christ. Why Jesus can't be trusted to handle this
chore himself is but one of many things never really made clear.
(Another is the use of a web site to maintain that computers are
the instrument of the devil.) The thinking at the Second Coming
Project seems to be that God won't notice the difference between
a cloned Jesus and the real Jesus, so the cloned Jesus ought to
be good enough to kick off the Second Coming, an event that will
usher in 1,000 years of harmony. That's the good news.
The
bad news is that before that happens, there will be seven years
of strife and discord leading up to an epic confrontation between
Christ and the anti-Christ. True believers will be raptured up to
heaven during the seven-year bitch, leaving us non-believers behind
for the suffering we so richly deserve. Once Christ defeats the
anti-Christ, the true believers will return as priests to run things
for the 1,000 years of peace and harmony (a kinder, gentler Taleban?),
after which there will be the final FINAL battle between rival armies
of good and evil, otherwise known as Armageddon. The bad guys will
be led by prince Gog of Magog, while the good guys will have Jesus.
Needless to say, Jesus wins, the dead arise for the final judgment
day, and the New Jerusalem descends from the sky.
The
whole End Time scenario really does sound like the plot from a very
good science fiction novel. I mean suppose you go along with the
idea that visitors from outer space populated earth. What if they
are planning to come back, and we have some deeply embedded racial
memory of this promise? Suddenly the whole idea of a New Jerusalem
descending from the sky takes on a whole new meaning and is no more
fanciful than the plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The
clonejesus.com crew isn't the only one in a hurry to usher in the
Second Coming of Christ. There is a whole other scientific effort
underway to breed a red heifer. How, you might ask, is a red heifer
tied into the end of time? Well, the Old Testament says that three
things have to happen before the Second Coming of Christ (actually,
I suppose, the First Coming for Jews). These three events are the
restoration of Israel (done), the return of Jerusalem to Jewish
control (done), and the rebuilding of the Temple located on what
is now called the Temple Mount, which was in the news recently after
Ariel Sharon's little stroll.
But
there is a kind of chicken egg problem. Before there can be a Second
(or First) Coming, the Temple must be rebuilt. But before the Temple
can be rebuilt, Jews must undergo a purification ritual that consists
of a special blend of herbs and spices and the ashes of a ''red
heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never
came a yoke.'' (Numbers 19)
So on
one side we have Jews waiting for a red heifer to rebuild the Temple,
which must happen before the Messiah can return. On the other side
we have Christians waiting for the Jews to rebuild the Temple so
that Christ will come again and they can be raptured up to Heaven
during the seven years of strife, followed by the 1000 years of
peace, followed by Armageddon, followed by the New Jerusalem.
This
is where Texas cattleman Clyde Lott enters the picture. Long story
short, Mr. Lott was reading his Bible one day and came across the
reference to the red heifer ashes purification ritual. It occurred
to him that while red cattle may be rare in Israel, they were quite
common in the United States, notably a breed called the Red Angus.
Eventually, Mr. Lott made contact with some ultra-orthodox Israeli
Jews (out on Highway 61) and they decided to collaborate on breeding
a pure red heifer in Israel.
Now,
when we say a pure red heifer, we mean a pure red heifer. In 1997,
it was announced that a red heifer had been born. This immediately
convulsed the entire mid-East. Arabs feared that the Jews would
occupy the Temple Mount and violate the Al-Aqsa mosque. Ultra-orthodox
Jews were equally determined to make it so. A crisis was narrowly
averted when two white hairs appeared on the heifer's tail.
Will
science and religion combine to usher in the Second Coming? The
clonejesus.com project has some obvious weak points. But the red
heifer project is just a straightforward exercise in genetics. Sooner
or later they are bound to hit it lucky, with consequences that
would make the recent fighting in Palestine look tame.
Many
Jews believe that these attempts to hurry things along are the work
of the devil. Let's hope that events don't prove them right.
Copyright
© 2000 G.J. Lau. All Rights Reserved.
G.J. Lau is an American iconoclast.
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