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25 March - Dateline Jerusalem. "The End of the Way"
It's a sad day for the Jesus people. The leader of a small band of
religionists, Jesus by name, who vexed the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas,
was crucified today at Golgotha. His mother and a few disciples
were present.
What an end to a strange story. Nobody can say who this Jesus was
the son of. Mary, his mother, says the father was not Joseph, her
husband. And to make matters even more bizarre, this Jesus claims
to be the son of God.
As if that were not enough to portend the sad ending of this
enterprise, after three years of itinerant preaching, this Jesus
winds up with only twelve disciples. And one of them, Judas by
name, betrayed the whereabouts of Jesus to the authorities who
arrested him.
Only twelve followers in three years and one drop out? That's a
failure rate of better than eight percent. Not very promising.
Rumors that Jesus was a miracle-worker are scorned by the clergy of
Jerusalem. They maintain that even if any of the miracles were
genuine, they were done by the power of Satan.
No one is quite sure what to call this small band of followers.
Some have laughingly begun to call them The Way because Jesus kept
referring to himself as the way. He was once heard to say, "I am
the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the father [God]
except by me."
Yes, it's a sad end for these simple fishermen and the despised
tax-collector who followed Jesus. Simple-minded folk were they.
They'd have to believe in the resurrection of the dead to see a
future in this.
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