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Joseph of Arimathea

Hello. My name is Glen Kimball, and this is Joseph of Arimathea, the foster father of Christ. There is a real difference between the concept of myth and a legend. A myth is something that is totally based on a fantasy, something that never existed. A legend is based on something that was once true. The problem we have with myth and legends is that we have confused the two. We are a society that believes that if the story isn't totally accurate, that it must indeed be therefore totally false. And as a result, we have thrown out many of our precious historical facts, like babies with the proverbial bathwater, and much of our history has been lost. Such was the case in history with Joseph of Arimathea. And there have been many examples throughout history. And I'd like to give you a couple at this time. For example, the 13 colonies at the time of the revolution were predominantly against revolution. Most of us would believe that at the time of the revolution that we had massive support, and that there were only a few Benedict Arnold's in the crowd who didn't support our quest for freedom and religious rights and and democracy. The truth of the matter is, is that the majority of the people in the 13 colonies at the time of the revolution did not want to succeed from the influence of King George. They wanted to be loyal subjects of the king and wanted to continue. However, we have rewritten that history in our day to reflect the fact that somehow there was a universal acquiescence of support for the Revolutionary War, when in reality that was simply not true. That doesn't mean that the revolution of the United States of America, generated by the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, wasn't a good idea. It was a great idea. As a matter of fact, it has changed the entire world and our concepts of democracy and freedom have influenced all of mankind, not only in terms of their history, but in terms of their economy and in terms of the view of the rights of the common people. But the fact still remains that the 13 colonies were predominantly against seceding from the British influence and King George. Another example of where we have created a legend and a myth is in the discovery of America. We believe that Christopher Columbus discovered America, and we've had rumors about Leif Ericson being here in the 12th century, and other people who might have visited from Europe from time to time. But the truth of the matter is, is that there were many people who had visited the Americas over many centuries. King Offa, in the sixth century B.C., who was a biblical character in the Old Testament, had mined much of his gold out of Peru in the sixth century BC, and having lived in Peru myself, the rumors of the great King of are prevalent, and he went to Peru for one reason, and one reason only was because there was gold there, and he could make gold out of streams. Getting back to Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus had a map to discover the Americas, the map that he took on board his ship. According to Gunner Thompson, my good friend who wrote the book, the fires map was a map drawn by the friars who had been here preaching the gospel to the American Indians prior to the visits of Columbus. As a matter of fact, the startling reality was that if Christopher Columbus had landed 500 miles to the north instead of on the Isle of San Salvador, he could have attended Catholic mass the day he discovered America. He could have gone to church with the friars from Europe. That is a classic example of how we have created a legend had it evolved into a myth. Legend evolves into a myth many times, but legends are based on realities. Myths are pure fantasy. The same is true for Christianity at the time of Christ. There were many, many legends created based on real facts, figures, characters and players in the saga of the life of Jesus, apostles and his family. The reality is, is that we have, in our attempt to vindicate ourselves, buried many of them, and ignored many of the great characters in our history. What happens is that every generation burns the history from the one before, and as they begin to reconstruct the events from the past, what historians typically do is to write something that vindicates themself, and they ignore all of the rest of history. And that is exactly what has happened to Christ and His times, the tales of Jesus. That does not mean, however, that Jesus was a myth or that he wasn't. The Savior of the world, or that he was. That he didn't die on the cross and was resurrected. For it is my contention that there is evidence that all of those things are true. However, we do not have the majority of the biography of the most famous man who ever lived, which was Jesus Christ. That is missing from our history. From the time that Jesus was a very young man to the time of his final ministry, his biography is missing. And the reason it has slipped through the cracks is because those tales of his life during that period of time did not vindicate the resulting Christianity that emerged after the crucifixion.

One of the most genuine heroes in the life of Christ was his foster father, Joseph of Arimathea. When Joseph married the Virgin Mary, he had already been married once before and been left a widower with four children. He had had told two older daughters and a Simon and the younger son, James, and he married the Virgin Mary, and was older than Mary. And so by the time Christ was about 14 or 15 years old, Joseph died. And we have a record of that narrative in the first person by Jesus himself telling about his own father father's death, referring to Joseph, who was married to the Virgin Mary. Now, under Jewish law, what was required when a man died and left a widow was the next of kin, had to come in and take over the protectorship of the family. The next of kin in this particular case was Joseph of Arimathea, or Mary's uncle or Jesus's great uncle. There has been confusion for 2000 years over the two Josephs in the life of Christ. And so when we're talking about Saint Joseph in our day, we often think of Saint Joseph as being the spouse of the Virgin Mary, when in reality, we're talking about the events that were actually perpetrated by the great foster father of Christ, or Joseph of Arimathea. Many of the Saint Joseph legends come out of Great Britain where he is. He continues to be the patron saint of the British Isles today. The patron saint, Saint Joseph of Great Britain, is not Joseph who was married to the Virgin Mary, but rather Joseph of Arimathea, who became the foster father of Christ. And one of the reasons why the history of Christ is missing is because after the death of his father, who had been a surveyor, carpenter, or contractor during his earlier life and when Jesus fell under the protectorship of his great uncle, who was really a merchant predominantly specializing in the metal trade business, Jesus had an exposure to a completely different profession. It was an expedient to the resulting Christianity to describe Christ as the son of a merchant. It was much easier and simpler to tell the tale of him as a poor carpenter's son, which is the myth when the legend is that during his early youth he was in fact the foster son of the greatest merchant in those days, and perhaps the third wealthiest man on the planet at the time of Christ, the great Joseph of Arimathea. There are many names for Joseph of Arimathea. We call Joseph of Arimathea, and we tagged the Aramaic name on the back of his name because of the place where he held a palatial estate during the time of the adult life and ministry of Christ. Arimathea was a town to the west and to the north in southern Galilee, very much closer to the seashore than Jerusalem, very much north in Galilee, where most of the merchant traffic was headed from east to west. And this is very, very critical because Joseph of Arimathea being a merchant, it's 10:00, living close to a sea port, the greatest seaport in the world at the time of Christ was the sea port that Herod built on the shores of Palestine, of underwater concrete. This was the very first sea port built of underwater concrete, and in fact was the most modern seaport in the world at that time. There was no sea port to rival that in Rome. There was no seaport to rival it in India, or in China, or in any place else in the world, anywhere in the Mediterranean, or any place around the world entirely. In other words, Jerusalem had access to the most modern seaport for a very different reason. That and that was that they were involved in the merchant merchant traffic from east to west. We think in our myth of the Roman Empire that they conquered Palestine because they were a poor, conquered people of indigent slaves. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The interest Romans had in Jerusalem and in Palestine was the fact that this was a very wealthy country and had had obtained its wealth because of its merchant status between East and West. The Roman Empire was the first general government that recognized that when you go in and conquer a people, you don't kill the leaders and kill the merchant traffic and cannibalize the treasuries and leave the people. Poor people can't pay taxes if they do not have their businesses running. The Roman Empire was the first to understand that they they left the hierarchy of the. Assigned in place. They made them allies of Rome, and they encouraged merchant traffic from east to west and took taxes from that traffic east to west. Joseph of Arimathea had many names, obviously, Joseph of Arimathea referring just a moment ago to Arimathea being a city in the western part of Palestine, northern Galilee. But the one of the most predominant names that he was referred to in history was Joseph of Marymoor. Joseph of Marymoor reflected where he was born or he was born in America. Egypt. And his sister, the great Saint Anna, who was the mother of the Virgin Mary and the grandmother of Jesus, was born in England. Now Joseph of Arimathea was born in Egypt. And his sister is born in England. And yet these are people who are the children of poverty. Not so. The very fact of the cosmopolitan divergence of the birth of these two people in the lives of Christ indicates the very cosmopolitan nature of the family. They were wealthy, they were influential. They had property and influence and friends in many places around the Mediterranean. This is prima facie evidence of the fact that the family of Christ was indeed wealthy, was politically influential, and was in fact well known and well liked amongst many cultures and people. That is one thing that we that most of the succeeding Christian faiths have tried to hide, because it's very difficult to control all a story about Christ that would involve many different cultures, many different peoples, and in many different locations, political structures around the Mediterranean. At the time, it was much easier to make him a poor carpenter's son and set him in his impoverished home for his entire life. Somewhere in Nazareth, an obscure town north in Galilee. The cosmopolitan, traveling Christ was a very much more difficult person to control. The reality, however, the genuine source behind the legend was that Jesus was the heir to the throne of David, of coming from a very wealthy family who had influence in many different places around the world. Joseph of Arimathea had another name. We can obtain that name from the great rock n Oracle, who was who was a current member of the mans foundation, whose responsibility it is to translate the Aramaic Bible into English. As we know, most of us believe that the original Bible translation into English came from the language, the Greek language. The reality is, the oldest copies of the Bible were in fact written in Aramaic. And so Draco Erico has taken upon himself, and his foundation has taken upon themselves to translate the Bible from the original Aramaic text. The name of Joseph of Arimathea in the Aramaic text is Joseph of Arimathea. The name Ramos refers to the epistemology of the real word ras, or the god of the Egyptians. Ras or Ramas was a term that the Aramaic communities gave to Joseph of Arimathea out of respect for him. Now the Aramaic communities gave Joseph of Arimathea respect for two reasons. First of all, he was extremely wealthy. Wealth was an issue of respect for these people, and it is today in the Aramaic communities. If you are wealthy, that is a prima facie reason to give a person respect and continues to be in our day. The second reason was that he was very fair man, and had done and performed and trafficked much of his merchant wares into the Aramaic communities. The next name of Joseph of Arimathea was the Merchant of Alban, which is very much connected to Joseph of Arimathea. Because the Merchant of Bond refers to the fact that Joseph spent some time in the Alban Mountains, the most famous caricature or drawing of Joseph of Arimathea in history, outside stained glass windows in Great Britain is a caricature of him standing in full Roman regalia. The Albany Mountains of Persia lamenting what happened to his grand nephew Jesus. The Albany Mountains are Persia, the current location of Iran. Obviously, Joseph of Arimathea was well respected in the Albany Mountains during his time as a matter of fact, we have gotten word from some of the residents from the Albany Mountain range that are here, permanent residents in America today, that there are some serious records of the Merchant of Albany that remain in the Albany libraries in ancient Albany text, which will tell a story of the great merchant of Albany that we have yet to learn about. And we get the the name Merchant of Albany in our day, and we can directly track it into the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. We do not include the apocryphal Acts of Thomas into the Holy Bible, and principally because nobody knew who the players were, they didn't know who the Merchant of Albany was. They didn't know who the little flute girl was, and the little flute girl referring to Mary Magdalene. Because Jesus and Mary Magdalene were accomplished musicians who played the aulos, which was a double reeded double pipe flute of sorts. In fact, there are many who have suggested that Jesus was so accomplished. The music that he was the one that had invented the F-sharp scale. So the little flute girl mentioned in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas refers coincidentally to the Mary Magdalene figure. The little cup bearer. Once again, we have to go back to the bardic legends of of the metaphoric status of the Holy Grail, which was a metaphor for the bloodline of Christ. In other words, the person who bore the cup was in fact the one who bore the bloodline of Christ through the centuries. And so if you read the apocryphal Acts of Thomas and you read about the little cup bearer, you're talking about the daughter of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, who was taken with Mary Magdalene by Thomas into India for a post crucifixion ministry. And part of the reason why the little flute girl who was in reality the great Tamara in history, or the great Sarah Kali, or who is also often referred to as the Black Madonna in France. Not that she was black necessarily, as much as that she came from Vermont, of India, where that race was predominantly of a much darker complexion than than the Europeans of France. Tamara is a very, very significant character. And as she leaves India with Mary Magdalene after the death of Thomas, who was her protector, she becomes the patron saint of the Basque people and and spends a great deal of time and influence in France. We have to understand that the children of Christ had a great deal of influence, and we will mention those in another tape and in another story that another time.

Tamara has a has a terrific influence in our day and time. And certainly if you go back to the the statues that continue to exist in France today, you'll find that she's a very dark complected person of olive color and skin, very dark hair, as was her mother, Mary Magdalene, Mary Magdalene. You have to understand that when she was left at the crucifixion site as a widow under Jewish law, the next of kin was to protect her as well. The next of kin of Christ was his lookalike brother, who was often called the Didymus of Christ, or the Twin of Christ, when he wasn't really the literal twin of Christ, but he was the lookalike of Christ. She was placed under the protectorship of Thomas, and that's why when he performs his post crucifixion ministry in in India, that her. She is mentioned prominently in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. However, she also appears in France after the death of Thomas and also before the death of Thomas in the great Exodus of the faithful, along with Joseph of Arimathea, as they escaped Jerusalem from the Sadducees and the Romans. In the in the 36 AD, Joseph of Arimathea has other titles as well. One of the other titles of Joseph of Arimathea was known as the Courier. Noblesse de courier meant noble provider. Cicero of the first century said that it was harder to be noblest curio than to be a Roman senator, and Joseph of Arimathea was in fact named personally by Tiberius Caesar to the great important post of noblest curio, because he was the one who sold metal to the entire Roman Empire, which was of critical value. Noblest curio was made him the Dale Carnegie of his day, and perhaps the third wealthiest man on the planet, behind Tiberius Caesar and the Emperor of China.

Joseph of Arimathea was obviously a man of great wealth. There are those who doubt that Joseph of Arimathea ever did any merchant traffic in the Mediterranean. Well, we have evidence to the contrary. We notice that in Pompeii, which is very close to Naples, the great Mount Vesuvius erupted in 70 AD and buried that entire city and isolated it and and crystallized it into to a city from, from 70 AD, where we can inspect now with utter clarity and assurance, what the society was like in 70, 80. Many of the archeologists that are currently working in Pompeii as excavating the ruins are not there just to study volcanic behavior, but are there to discover what life was like in the Roman Empire in 70 AD. One of the things that they have done is that they have taken the pottery and the metals that they have found underneath the ashes of Vesuvius, and to track their origins. The lead principally is of interest to us in our day, because the lead has been tracked to its original source. Anytime you mine a metal, it has a signature within the metal, and that signature are the impurities that are left within the metal. You can tell you can take any gold in the world and analyze its. And there is nothing that is 100% pure. You can analyze the impurities and tell from what specific mind the gold was taken from. And certainly you can do that with lead as well. We find out that the lead that comes out of Pompeii was mined from the Mendip mines, which are which were owned by Joseph of Arimathea. The Mendip mines were located on the 12 hides of Glastonbury. Each of these hides was like 160 acres large. And so Joseph of Arimathea owned just over a thousand acres there in England. And that's classic. We can read that. We can read the description of those sites in that particular event and gives this book in 1988 called The 12 Hides of Glastonbury. We can trace that back to being the actual letter of Joseph of Arimathea. So we have physical, tangible evidence of the merchant metal traffic of Joseph of Arimathea around the around the Mediterranean during those particular years. So Joseph of Arimathea was called noblest decurion by the Roman Empire. He was also several other things. He was a provincial Roman senator. And people say, whoa, hang on a moment. You mean the foster father of Christ was a provincial Roman senator? So Joseph of Arimathea was not only appointed as noblest curio for the Roman Empire, but given the lesser post of a provincial Roman senator as well, and also, by deduction, was made a citizen of Rome, which made his protectorship of Christ also a citizen of Rome. Jesus was a Roman citizen. The other title for Joseph of Arimathea was that he was a legislative member of the Sanhedrin. Most of us do not understand what the Sanhedrin was. The Sanhedrin was a body of 70 men. This organization was originally created by Moses at the time of the exodus from Egypt. He chose 70 men to govern the Israelites as they wandered the wilderness, and eventually that governmental structure extended into their occupancy of Jerusalem and Palestine after they went into the valley of Canaan. So the Sanhedrin was a body of men, a 70 men plus a chief high priest. But that's important, because the chief high priest, throughout the hundreds and hundreds of years of the existence of a Sanhedrin body, was really only appointed for one year at a time. However, at the time of Christ, Annas had already been. The chief high priest of the Sanhedrin for eight years, and his son in law had been occupying that post at the time of the crucifixion for several years. And there's a reason why this family of Annas occupied the chief high priest post of the Sanhedrin for so many years was because by the time of the conquest of the Roman Empire, the Sadducees, of which Annas and Caiaphas were the predominant members of the Sadducean community, the Sadducees became the political allies of Rome. Everybody else in Palestine hated Rome. With one exception. And that was the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the political allies. From they occupied about 8% of the population at the time of Christ. And the Sadducees were like the civil servants in Jerusalem at that time. They ran the jails, they ran the street cleaning. They ran the civil. They ran the tax collecting. They ran the civic construction projects. They they did everything for and on behalf of the Roman Empire enacted in their stead. That was the secret of Rome, was that there was select someone they trusted within the cultural community to act in their behalf. And in this particular case, the Sadducees were the political ally arm of Rome to perform the functions of Rome. Pontius Pilate was indeed the governor of Rome, but he didn't run the jails. Annas ran the jails. So did Herod can run the jails. And Pontius Pilate had a had a Roman militia there, but they were not the local city police force. That city police force was run by Annas, chosen by Annas. As a matter of fact, the chief officer in that guard that arrested Christ on the night of the crucifixion was the son of Caiaphas himself, the chief priest of the Sanhedrin. You can find that out in Evershine. Evershine and Farrar are probably the foremost historical documents of all time on the life of Christ, outside of the modern renditions of the Life and Death of Christ by Raymond E Brown of Harvard University. But we know that the Jews ran their own jails, collected the taxes for Rome, and these political allies for the Sadducees. The other one of the other significant populations within the Jewish community were the Pharisees. Now, Joseph of Arimathea was a Pharisee. They composed about 11 or 12% of the population. These Pharisees, if you could use a synonym for them. They were the rich, wealthy merchants. They hated Rome. They had no reason whatsoever to like Rome, because Rome did what Rome collected taxes, and the Pharisees hated to give money away. They did not like the Roman Empire, unlike their sadducean counterparts who were being paid by Rome to collect the taxes. That's how they generated their money. The Pharisees generated their money in motion. Traffic, which we know, for example, that the Sadducees, one of the ways that they garnered their money was they own things like the bazaars around the great temple of Herod. The. If we remember the incident when Christ wove the web and cast out the money changers from the temple. The reality is that those money changers were a little boosts that were owned and operated by Ennis. Ennis says that these booths were called the Bazaar of Ennis. And so when Christ threw out the money changers from the temple, the one person he offended of all people in the world was not the Roman Empire, but was in fact his sadducean associate Ennis, who was the head of the Sanhedrin, who was collecting the tax or collecting the the exchange of money at the site of the temple. That's one of the reasons why Ennis is considered today the actual perpetrator of the martyrdom of Christ himself. Certainly Christ defended him on that occasion, and someday we will do a tape on Ennis, the killer of Christ, and get the other reasons why Ennis was involved in the actual crucifixion and why he was to blame. He and his son in law, Caiaphas. Getting back to Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph Victor Bethea. We have to look at his age for a moment. Joseph of Arimathea was reported to have died around 63 AD. We know the Virgin Mary died approximately at 48 AD, which means that Joseph of Arimathea, her uncle, was really more her contemporary than a man who was a generation older than her. So if the Virgin Mary conceived and bore Jesus, and seven BC when she was about 16, we know that she was just in her early 70s when she died at the in 48 AD, and that when she when Joseph of Arimathea died in approximately 63 AD, that he was just in his 80s. Many of us have depicted or visualized because of the movie The Silver Chalice with Paul Newman, for example, that Joseph of Arimathea was a very, very old man by the time of the crucifixion. That is likely not the case. He was likely a contemporary in age with the Virgin Mary.

We need to set the stage for the era of time around the crucifixion. We have to understand that the Roman Empire had done something totally unique in the history of the entire world. They had emerged out of a society that was a republican society, not obviously referring to our our popular politics of our day. A Republican, meaning that they had representatives from the various factions and regions of Rome sitting in the Senate in Rome to help to decide policy and politics to govern the regional provinces. Now, that had been slightly modified by the actual declaration of Julius Caesar as Caesar and the dictator of the Roman Empire, but nonetheless the Roman Empire still was a more democratic society than any other society that had ever existed in the history of the world. The 100 years that surrounded Christ and his lifetime was the freest and most open society the world had ever known. To give you an illustration, you could, at the time of Christ, you could walk on a paved road all the way from Jerusalem to France, and use one set of documents and walk in peace all along that paved road. That tells you a little bit about the political environment. The Romans had discovered the magic of merchant traffic. They had learned that you, in order to perpetuate a wealthy society over many generations, that you had to take advantage of the assets of the cultures that you were overseeing at the time. Certainly we look to the Egyptians and their political ally of Cleopatra and Mark Antony and Octavian Caesar, the generation prior to Christ. They didn't go in and kill Cleopatra. They came in and made her an political ally of Rome. That brought in the great wealth of the traffic up and down the Nile River, which brought grain into the resources of the Roman Empire that were badly needed by the Roman armies and by the Roman people. You see, in Rome at the time of Christ, the majority of the population were slaves, and the citizens were largely indolent. There were 100,000 people living off the dole of the taxation of Rome at the time of Christ, and Thatrillionevenue to make them wealthy and to sustain their lives came from the merchant traffic and the efforts of the outlying communities that they had conquered. The Romans had a legion of. Of about 250,000 armed militia, which was the most well-trained army in the history of the world. It was not only a popular thing to become a member of the Roman army, but it was a practical thing as well. The militia or the individual soldier in the Roman army, had a lifespan that exceeded the common lifespan of the poor people in the streets. They not only lived longer because they were better fed and better paid, but they had a better medical system for the for the armies of Rome than they did for the common people in the streets. They used the practices of the Hippocratic medicine from the Greeks, things that we have just begun to use in our day. For example, when a person was wounded, they would staple those wounds closed rather than suturing them closed. The Romans had determined a long time ago that if you sinew or thread to sew a wound closed, that it was not as an ascetic as was a metal staple. So they were using staples to close the wounds of the injured people in the Roman Empire. The Roman militia. You have to understand that Roman policy had cracked the secret to the bank, and that was that. When you conquer a people, you leave their leaders intact, make them political allies, and you take taxes from the rich. And that is why Joseph of Arimathea was such an important character to Rome. Joseph of Arimathea was the greatest merchant in the Mediterranean at the time, named to the post and noblest curio, uniquely named to the post of noblest curio for the Roman Empire, and as such became a prominent figure in Rome. Tiberius Caesar knew who Joseph of Arimathea was personally. We know that, or he would not have named him to the post of nobles, to curio. We also know the impact of Joseph of Arimathea in the life of Tiberius Caesar, because after the crucifixion, something totally startling occurred. Something that we have buried, something that we have hidden for centuries. And that was right after the death of of Christ, Tiberius Caesar himself, because of his knowledge of Joseph of Arimathea and his grand nephew, Christ went to the floor of the Roman Senate and petitioned to make Jesus a God alongside Myers. Now you don't make a man a god if you don't know who he is, and if you don't respect him. We know Tiberius Caesar knew and respected Joseph of Arimathea and his family, because he had gone to the Roman Senate and petitioned to make him a God, which by the way, that petition was turned down. However, we find the records of that, and the Great decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons in 1782. We can also find very strong evidence and allusions to it in Foxe's Book of Martyrs that was written in the 1500s. One of the things that we do as human beings, we tend to do, is that we hide our sins, but we also hide our miracles, and as a result, we also hide some of our predominant history. So some of the most famous converts to Christianity at the site of the crucifixion were Tiberius Caesar. Pontius Pilate.

Who went into the streets after the crucifixion and met this resurrected Jesus and and had a conversation with that resurrected Jesus. That story is found in my second book, The Hidden Politics of the crucifixion, and the third most famous convert to Christianity and paradoxical convert to Christianity was the great Cassius Longinus, who was asked by Pontius Pilate when he was petitioned by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus for the body of Christ. Pontius Pilate sent Cassius Longinus to see if Christ was still alive. Cassius Longinus went to the cross in the company of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, and threw his sword into the side of Christ. The fluid that came out of the body of Christ from that spear was a clear liquid, which is characteristic of the water that comes from the peritoneum of the heart rather than blood flow. And some of that fluid got into the eyes of Cassius Longinus, and he was gradually going blind in that fluid in his eyes healed his eyesight, and he converted to Christianity and became a follower and a disciple of Joseph of Arimathea. After the crucifixion. Now you got to understand that in addition to Cassius Longinus was Cassius? Was that Cassius, who was standing on the Roman steps along with Brutus, and had thrust the knives into the back and the heart and killed Julius Caesar on the steps of the Roman Senate. So Cassius Longinus, Pontius Pilate, and Tiberius Caesar were three of the most paradoxical converts to Christianity and ethics at the time of the crucifixion in all history. And yet not one of those emerged into our Western version of Christianity. And yet they were probably the most interesting of all. So to set the stage at the time of the crucifixion and Joseph of Arimathea is involvement. We have to understand that Tiberius Caesar knew who Joseph of Arimathea was, had named him as a provincial Roman senator, had named him to the post of noblest curial. He was a Roman citizen, and therefore had a great deal of status and power with Pontius Pilate. No other person perhaps, could have requested the body of Jesus on the cross and retrieved it, except somewhat somebody who was obligated by his stature, namely Joseph of Arimathea. He had the right to go to Pontius Pilate and petition for the body of Christ. We know that Joseph of Arimathea had been at the cross at the time of the, when Cassius Longinus would launch the spirit of the side of Christ, because the rumors had it that he caught some of the blood and fluids from the body of Christ and the great cup, which was then termed the Holy Grail over the centuries. And that comfort chalice was taken by Joseph of Arimathea when he had to flee Jerusalem and the Exodus of the faithful. In 36 AD, he took that cup with him to England, and it became the object of veneration for generations and generations to come. We have to understand that the Romans were not the enemies of Joseph of Arimathea, who then were his enemies. The two principal enemies, and Joseph of Arimathea were two of the other members of the Sanhedrin. In fact, the leadership of the Sanhedrin, Annas, and Caiaphas. Annas was had been the chief high priest and had stepped aside to allow his son in law, after eight years, to become the chief high priest of the Sanhedrin, that that of Caiaphas, and after Caiaphas his sons became the chief high priest of the Sanhedrin, and once again the chief high priest in the Sanhedrin, had been perpetually a sadducee for for decades at the time of Christ. Because the Sadducees were the political allies of Rome, you could not make a Pharisee the head of the Sanhedrin and have maintained peace between Rome and Palestine. That was not possible because the Pharisees hated Rome. The Pharisees tolerated the Sadducees, but the Pharisees hated Rome because they were in fact the ones who collected the taxes. Joseph of Arimathea himself was not too fond of the Roman Empire's influence of his country. And had he had his desire, he would have, in fact have thrown the Romans out of Palestine and taken back over the control of Palestine by his own family, who were the heirs of the throne of David, deposed in the sixth century B.C.

to set up the stage for just a moment. We have to understand that in 600, or actually in 583 BC, the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel had filled the streets and cried to the people repentance and said that if you do not repent. The city will be destroyed.

Remember that that was the time when the Great Temple of Solomon was in full operation, and the people did not repent. And so Jeremiah took the believers with him and escaped Jerusalem prior to the conquest of the Babylonians, who, by the way, were not Romans and did not treat the people as the Romans did in their conquest in 63 BC. The Babylonians, when they came in and conquered Jerusalem, slaughtered everybody, and they would have especially slaughtered the royal family or the House of David, the throne of David at the time. But the throne of David were believers in Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel. And they escaped with Jeremiah out the back door, down into Egypt and into Ethiopia. And then that's where the biblical story of the escape of Jeremiah ends. And many scholars believe that he died in Ethiopia. And that's the reason why they believe that the Ark of the covenant is is still in Ethiopia. But the truth of the matter is, the story did not end there. Jeremiah took the faithful with him in a fleet of vessels and sailed it to the safest place in the world, which was in fact the British Isles at that time. Assignment headed back to Jerusalem. At the time, Joseph of Arimathea did not get back to the site of the crucifixion for the time of the arrest of Christ. He had gone there just after the arrest of Christ, probably from the distance of Aramathea.

We need to tell the tale of what of Joseph of Arimathea is involvement in the crucifixion. At this moment when Christ came into Jerusalem just a couple of days prior to his crucifixion. The people of Jerusalem, the Jews, were throwing palms before his donkey in tribute or respect. We call that the celebration of that. Today is Palm Sunday, where the Jews were celebrating his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We think that Christ was a reasonably unknown figure prior to this time, which is not true. Jesus was extremely well known amongst the Jews in Jerusalem, but had lived predominantly in Nazareth and had performed his ministries in his final years in Nazareth and in Edam, 15 miles to the south, among the Essenes. And by the way, it's worth noting at this moment that the Sadducees occupied 8% of the population and the Pharisees occupied about 11 or 12% of the population. And we forget who made up the bulk of the Jews at the time of Christ. And they were predominantly people like the Essenes and the common people. Jesus spent a great deal of time amongst the Edomites and amongst the the predecessors to the Gnostic movements and the Essenes.

Now we look at Joseph of Arimathea, who had emerged as being a person who had naturally garnered respect. He had garnered respect from the Aramaic community to the west or to the east. He had garnered respect from the mining communities in Western Europe that were not under the influence at the time, but who eventually fell under the Roman influence. He also gained tremendous respect in India, where there were many letters exchanged back and forth between the royal houses from India and Joseph of Arimathea. In fact, two of the letters written in the hand of Christ himself that survive into our day were letters of merchant correspondence between Jesus and the royal houses of India in the metal trade business. One of those letters survives prominently in the writings of Eusebius, the father of ecclesiastical history and the third century, who felt in his day that what Constantine had done in the Nicene Council was to eliminate far too many precious, precious documents, and it had eliminated many precious heroes, such as the great Joseph of Arimathea. So at the time of the crucifixion, what had really happened in in Jerusalem was that even though Joseph of Arimathea was well respected by the Roman Empire, that he had enemies and those enemies were within his own people. These were people who could trace their descendants from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Joseph of Arimathea was not present when Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane. He was either. We don't know whether he was in Arimathea, but we presume that he was, which was still a day's journey away from Jerusalem at the time when Joseph of Arimathea returned to Jerusalem, he was probably dressed in full Roman regalia, as depicted on the cover of this cassette. Joseph of Arimathea on the cover is dressed as the merchant of Alban, standing in the Albani Mountains, which were in Persia. But you'll notice that it is also very Roman in dress. Now Jesus dressed very differently than Joseph of Arimathea.

He dressed as a Nazarene. In fact, the prophecies had predicted that he would be a Nazarene. The Nazarenes grew long hair and wore simple clothing and a simple waist band around their waist, which from and their clothing was made of homespun. Jesus had the right to wear the royal robes of his family, which was the heir to the throne of David. There's a very, very interesting story of Christ's childhood, which is also in my first book, The Hidden Stories of the Childhood of Jesus, where Jesus and his mother went to a dye shop and she was going to a dye shop to dye her cloth to the colors of the royal house of David. Had she not been a royal family member, she would have had no need to dye her clothing except in some simple fashion. But she had often been a frequenter, a patron of the local dye shops, in order to dye her clothing as representative of the royal family, which she she was. And Jesus at that time, as a little boy, went into that room, as you recall from the story that his mother was trying to negotiate the deal for having her cloth dyed, and the little infant Jesus went into the back room and took all of the the homespun cloth that was sitting on the side and threw it all into the black vat of dye. And when the the innkeeper came in, or the or the, the shopkeeper came in and saw that Jesus had thrown all the clothing into the black dye vat, he went back to his mother and said to the Virgin Mary, hey, your son has cost me a great fortune. I'm going to have to replace this cloth because he's thrown it all into the black dye vat. And Mary, very angry at her son, who was very clever and had had, was well spoken and and she knew who he was. She knew he was the the Messiah to come. She went back in and said, hey, you're the you're the Messiah. You're somebody who should know better than this, and you've thrown this cloth into the black dye bed. And Jesus, very cleverly, as a very young child, went to the black dye vat and pulled the clothing out. And as the clothing came out a piece at a time, it came out dyed in the colors that it was supposed to be the reds and the greens and the blues, all the colors that were originally intended. And that was one of the miracles that was performed when he was just a very, very small child. But that's illustrative of the fact that Jesus could have worn the royal robes of his family, and probably should have worn the royal robes of his family had he not been. The Messiah who was predicted to be a Nazarene, have long hair, not cut his hair, and to have worn the simple robes of the the pre pre Essenes or the pre Gnostic movement. So he had political alliances. So when Jesus came into Jerusalem the day of the crucifixion, they were celebrating his triumphal entry. Jesus was a celebrated figure in northern Galilee. He had entourages of thousands of people who followed him everywhere he went. Part of the reason they followed him was because he was a very gifted speaker and well known and presumed to be the Messiah, but also they followed him because his family was very philanthropic and had given a third of their increase to the poor and needy, and the people followed him to be fed, oftentimes in throngs of thousands of people. So Jesus was well liked in Nazareth, but he was often ignored in Jerusalem. However, the day he came into Jerusalem prior to his crucifixion, they were celebrating his triumphal entry with the palms underneath the the feet of his donkey. Now you have to ask yourself one question. How did this group of people who were celebrating the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, turn on him in one day and call for his blood? What happened to change their heart? What caused them to rise into a mob who would call for his death? Well, we find out from the writings of Josephus of Arimathea. Joseph of Arimathea tells us what happened to change the hearts of the people we know. For example, in Joseph of Arimathea narrative that was written in his own hand, he said that there had been a theft from the temple a few days before the crucifixion. The artifact that was stolen was called the law. No one at this point in history knows exactly what that law was. It perhaps was a scroll, much like the Talmud is rolled on a scrolls today in our Jewish community, in the Orthodox Jewish community. But that was missing. This was a very important artifact. It was the history of their people. It was it represented their entire covenant with God. And someone had gone into the temple and stolen this artifact from the temple. When Jesus came into Jerusalem, he was immediately. Fronted by a number of arrogant members of the Sanhedrin, who were questioning on a number of different matters, and one of the responses that Jesus had made during that interrogatory process was the fact that he said, I can take the temple and and tear it down and build it in three days. That was obviously a metaphor for his death and crucifixion. But the leaders of the Sanhedrin at that time took it very literally. And that was complicated by the fact that someone had stolen the law from the temple. This artifact from the temple. We know that the person who likely stole that artifact from the temple was the daughter of Caiaphas. She had stolen that artifact from the temple to deliberately incite people against Christ. And she had gone to her dad and to Annas, her dad being Caiaphas and her her his father in law being Annas, and told them that, hey, look, the artifact is missing and we can blame this theft on the Christ. Well, what happened was, according to Joseph of Arimathea, was that they hired an investigator to bear witness against Christ in the theft of the artifact. This person they hired was, in fact the cousin of Caiaphas by the name of Judas Iscariot. Now, Judas Iscariot had been paid for a number of years by Caiaphas, and to watch over Christ and to tattletale on Christ from time to time. Jesus knew this very well throughout his life of the connection between Judas Iscariot and Caiaphas, and because Jesus knew the family, he knew that Judas Iscariot was the family of Caiaphas. This was no mystery. This was no secret. He had he had known it from the beginning. And what Caiaphas did was he paid him 30 pieces of silver to go out and to officially investigate the theft of the artifact from the temple. Obviously, the the result of that investigation was already predetermined by Annas and Caiaphas, because they had they had asked Judas Iscariot to witness against Christ and implicate him in that theft of the artifact from the temple. There were people who actually had found out that the daughter of Caiaphas had been implicated, and many of them had called for her blood, except also were Sadducees, and wanted to support Annas and Caiaphas in this effect. So they they supported the testimony of Judas Iscariot, who kissed Jesus on the cheek and implicated him in the theft of the article of the temple. That's also the reason why there were two thieves hanging on the side of the cross on either side of Christ, because these two men, Titus and Marcus, and they are they use different names in the narrative of Joseph of Arimathea. But these two people were also implicated in the theft. In other words, Jesus and Titus and Marcus were implicated in the theft of this artifact from the temple. And the reason why they picked Marcus and Titus at this moment as implicated in the theft, was because Jesus knew these two thieves and had befriended them over the years. He had met them at the time of his entry into Egypt, where the Titus and Marcus had saved the life of the Holy Family from the robbers on the road to into Egypt, at the time when they had to escape the wrath of Herod and the slaughter of the babies two years old and younger. So they knew that Jesus liked do, Marcus and Titus. They knew that they were friends, and they also knew that they were thieves. And so they implicated all three of them. And that's why they were martyred together, was because they were implicated in the theft of the artifact from the temple. In other words, after the artifact was discovered stolen, then Annas and Caiaphas had a reason to go to the public and say, hey, the guy, you just threw the palms under his donkey as he entered into Jerusalem was a thief. He was the one that stole our law from the temple. And the one thing you did not do to the Jews is mess with their temple and steal their artifacts. The one thing that caused the Jewish wars in subsequent years after the crucifixion was the fact that the Romans came through and messed with the temple of the Jews. Now you can conquer the Jews. You could even enslave their people. And they became willing subjects in a peaceful and a reasonably peaceful people who operated in in tandem with the Roman Empire and coexisted in peace. Except when you messed with their temple, you messed with the temple of the Jews. You messed. Them's fighting words, and that is why they rose against the Roman army and the Jewish wars. And beginning in 66 AD, is because there were the Caesar at the time had taken some of the artifacts from the temple. And so the governor of Judea and the Caesar had taken some of the artifacts of the temple, and they tried to put their own image of Caesar inside the temple, which is another thing you did not do. And so the thing that Jesus did or was implicated in doing was altering the artifacts in the temple. And those were fighting words for anyone living in Jerusalem at the time. That is what caused them to turn their hearts on Christ. That is what caused them to turn into a raging mob. Calling for his death was because the Jews had taken the word of Caiaphas, Ananus, and the witness of Judas Iscariot, that Jesus was implicated in the theft of the articles of the artifacts from the temple of Herod. And that story has been given to us by the foster father of Christ, the great Joseph of Arimathea. He left that so that it would explain the attitude of the Jews at the time of the crucifixion. Now let's follow Joseph of Arimathea for just a moment through the crucifixion scene. Joseph of Arimathea came into Jerusalem after Christ had already been hung on the cross, and the edict had been released. That he would be crucified. There was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could do after the deed had been done. The only thing he could do would be to gather his fellow friend and Pharisee, Nicodemus, and go and petition the body of Christ from Pontius Pilate. You must understand. Well, if we back up three years prior to that event, that it was Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who had gone to the floor of the the Sanhedrin as principal members of the Sanhedrin, and petitioned to have the words of Jesus accepted into Jewish law and custom. And the vote, three years prior to the death of Christ, on accepting Jesus's teachings into the Jewish customs and law, had been 40 to 31 to accept Jesus as a prophet, as a principal player in Jewish tradition and custom, it was that Joseph of Arimathea who had interceded for Jesus in the Sanhedrin that had gained respect for Jesus in Jerusalem originally, so Joseph of Arimathea petitioned the body of Christ, took his friend Nicodemus with him, and with the help of of Cassius Longinus, took the body down from the cross, gathered some of the blood in the Holy Grail. The storms were thundering and the lightning was cracking all around, and there was great disturbances and storms in the environment. They carried the body to his own tomb. They poured 100 pounds of spices over the body to help preserve it as a partial interment prior to their proper preparation of the body, which would be done in three days later by Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, daughter Sarah Carlyle and the Bethany sisters, Martha, etcetera, who came to the to the site of the tomb to properly prepare the body of Christ. And they found the stone rolled away and Jesus gone. But what happened to Joseph of Arimathea right after they had placed the body of Christ in the in the tomb? Well, they went back to the temple and were speaking in the temple. Now. By the time word got back to Caiaphas and R.A. that Joseph of Arimathea was in town, they were terrified because Joseph of Arimathea had the power behind him to reveal the truth and to alter the events of their wicked designs to crucify Christ. They thought, well, Joseph of Arimathea can play this resurrection game because they knew the prophecies. Annas and Caiaphas knew the prophecies that three days after the crucifixion that he was to rise from the dead, and they did not want Joseph of Arimathea to play the resurrection game on them. So they went out with their police force. Remember, the Sadducees ran the police force. They took their little police force out looking for Joseph of Arimathea. They found him with Nicodemus in the temple. What did they do? They arrested Joseph of Arimathea. They didn't arrest Nicodemus. They arrested Joseph of Arimathea, and they put him into a prison with no windows or doors, except one which was guarded under the police dictation of the militia run by Caiaphas Ananus. And there was only one key to that door, and that key was in the pocket of Caiaphas. They knew because there was no windows or doors, that Joseph of Arimathea would be safe and not be allowed to intervene, or to play some sort of resurrection trick on the population. And that Caiaphas and Annas therefore could go through and settle the people down and get back to business as normal, as running as political allies of Rome and running Jerusalem. The problem came when the Spirit of Christ went into that prison room where Joseph of Arimathea was located, and whisked him out of that room in a miraculous event and set him back in Arimathea and placed him in his chair and told him to stay there until he was sent for.

Now the stage is set for something really interesting. Caiaphas, N.A..

We're there.

The day Christ was resurrected from the tomb. Their police force were nowhere to be found. The ancient prophets were wandering the streets as resurrected beings, lamenting what the Jews had done to Jesus. And the principal culprits responsible were Caiaphas and Anas. They were implicated by these resurrected beings walking the streets of Jerusalem, telling the people that the Jews had killed the Messiah.

That wasn't real pleasant news for Caiaphas and Nanus. So they went back to the prison where they felt they had kept Joseph of Arimathea imprisoned. And they opened the door. And guess what they found? Nothing. Joseph of Arimathea wasn't there.

They sent out an investigative immediately to try and find out who was responsible. And where was Joseph of Arimathea? It wasn't very long. One of their messengers came back very quickly and said. Joseph of Arimathea is in Arimathea. That scared the living KGB out of Annas and Caiaphas. They said to themselves, Holy mackerel, we killed Jesus on the cross. We are the ones that called for his death. We're the ones that framed him with this theft of the artifact. We're the ones that paid Judas to witness against him. We're the ones that imprisoned Joseph of Arimathea, who was a brother of ours and a member of the the Sanhedrin, and well respected. In fact, he was so well respected. Most of the Sanhedrin called him father, and they had done this great thing. And they find out that Joseph of Arimathea had escaped from jail.

Well, they were upset. That would bother me too. They send a messenger to meet with Joseph of Arimathea. They were cowards. And they. The message that was sent to Joseph of Arimathea was come back to Jerusalem. We're sorry. Now we understand. We apologize for what we did to your grand nephew. Please come back and sit with us and forgive us. They really didn't want forgiveness. It was just political rhetoric. But they did this intentionally to try and lure Joseph of Arimathea back into Jerusalem. When that messenger met with Joseph of Arimathea, he realized that that was the signal for him to go back into Jerusalem and meet with the Sanhedrin, which he did. And he went back to Jerusalem and sat with Caiaphas and R.A., and Caiaphas and R.A. apologized and did all of these things. And Joseph of Arimathea was so overwhelmed by the events of the crucifixion, and he knew that this was a prophetic event that had just taken place, that he had witnessed, that he didn't even really condemn them to hard, because he knew that these things were were the results of prophecy. Now, that situation didn't last very long. The Sadducees knew. That the testimony of Joseph of Arimathea would eventually turn the hearts of the people against Caiaphas and Annas and their people. They knew that they weren't stupid, and as a result, they tried. Over the next 3 or 4 years, everything that they could do to get rid of Joseph of Arimathea.

They finally opted to take all of the remaining followers of Christ and GEtrillionID of them in exile. They took the Virgin Mary. They took Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead. They took the Bethany sisters. They took the great Salome, who had been the midwife at the birth of Christ, and the handmaiden of the Virgin Mary. All of her life they took Mary Magdalene and Cassius Longinus, who had been a convert to Christianity by that time, and they took them all and put them on a boat. Now remember, it was against Jewish law to kill somebody. You had to have someone else do it for you. They had Pontius Pilate kill Christ because they couldn't do it themselves under Jewish law. They put these people on a boat. They took away their sales, they took away the oars from the boat and they sent them adrift in the Mediterranean, thinking, well, we can't kill them, but they'll starve to death.

What they didn't understand was that Joseph of Arimathea was no stranger to the ocean vessels. He was able to rig a sail and sail to Ephesus, and eventually on to France, and eventually on to England, where he took the Virgin Mary in exile, and Lazarus and Cassius Longinus and the Bethany sisters to a place of great safety. The unique place that was protected by an isthmus of water where Claudius had not yet conquered England. We can talk about that at a later time, the conquest of England. But he escaped and took them with him and protected them. And from that posture he launched generations of legends which perpetuate into our day and generations of libraries. We must understand that Joseph of Arimathea, after the exodus of the faithful in 36 AD, emigrates to England, where he takes over the protectorship of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and Lazarus, and the Bethany sisters, and Cassius Longinus and Company. And England becomes the home away from home for the apostles. James, the older brother of Christ, remains in Jerusalem as the rest of the apostles travel the world in their ministries. After the crucifixion, however, each of them has a moment in history where they visit England, where they visit all of the faithful who had been exiled from Palestine at the time of the Exodus of the faithful, and therefore the homeland of the Virgin Mary and Joseph of Arimathea, becomes a sanctuary of peace for these Post-crucifixion apostles who are attempting to spread the gospel of of Christ throughout the known world. We must understand one last thing in terms of actual historical significance. Joseph of Arimathea had learned the secret of sailing the oceans. Diocletian, who was the Roman emperor at the time of Constantine, came out with an official edict whereby he gave the mathematics of shipping goods and services around the world and in fact travel around the world. He came out and suggested that a 1,200 pound load, as it was transported 300 miles, would double the cost of goods and services if it was taken over land over the roads that Rome built following the death of Christ. However, if those same goods and services were put on a boat, they could travel the entire length of the Mediterranean and in fact around the world for the cost that it would take to travel, to export, or to carry that same amount of merchandise 75 miles over dry ground. The secret of the ancient world was that you could travel 40 times farther in a day than you could by a camel, and that the cost of goods and services was much less expensive by boat. And so Joseph of Arimathea was very much connected to the sea. He was very much connected to the, the the merchant traffic of the oceans because of his business. And that is why the ministry of Christ was spread so prolifically around the known world after the crucifixion of Christ and in fact, during Christ's life. That is why Christ appears in so many places, such as India, where he spent two years in Nepal, perhaps some time in Tibet, which is the common tradition. Why he is seen and appears in places like for the Luba or the Apostolos in Central Africa. That's why he appears so prominently in the history of of England, where he built the church of Waddle, or a house of Waddle Wood for his the retirement home for his mother, and why he probably participated in the great Druid universities that were held in the open air amphitheaters or circular Stonehenge type arenas where the Druids would would educate their students on nine different topics of educational endeavor. In fact, those those educational institutions in England were so prominent that the center of education was moved to England during the time and even just before the time of Christ, where the the most royal family members of Rome sent their children to be educated at the Druid universities. In fact, Pontius Pilate himself was educated in the Druid universities, though he was born in Seville, Spain, and at the time of the crucifixion, when Jesus and Pontius Pilate are exchanging words back and forth to each other, amazingly, they used the drew the passwords to the Druid debates with each other, which reflects the fact that these two were. These two people had both attended the same educational institutions in England, and in fact had participated in the same type of debates prior to the crucifixion of Christ.

But to wrap up this thing, what happened to Joseph of Arimathea is that he had a son who was also called, paradoxically, Joseph. So the confusion of the Joseph's is perpetuated into the next generation. This this lineage of Christ becomes the lineage of the Grail. The Grail becomes a metaphor for the children and the family of Christ throughout the centuries, and eventually people such as King Arthur were in fact the literal descendants, descendants of Joseph of Arimathea and his family, being perhaps the ninth to 12th generation descendants of Joseph. In the fifth century AD, King Arthur was just is has been moved to the status of myth in our society, when in reality we should revert him back to being a legend, because the stories of King Arthur were real stories and he was in fact, the family of Christ.

We could talk about what happened throughout history and into the Middle Ages. We will do that at another time. But what I would like to suggest to you at this moment is to reflect back on the actual heroic status that Joseph of Arimathea played in the life of Christ. He was there at the crucifixion scene. He was there to to provide safety for the family of Christ and for the ultimate disciples of Christ. He was the one that who probably underwrote much of the post crucifixion ministry of the apostles. And as a matter of fact, it is suggested by many historians that the great reason why Constantine was so interested in Christianity in the third century was not only because of his epiphanic epiphany experience seeing the angelic vision in the battles on the on the plains of Spain. But was also because the church itself was well underwritten, and the monies that were perpetuated by the family of Joseph of Arimathea and the resulting heirs to the throne of David, were enough to bail out the financial coffers of the Roman Empire in the third century. So things were done for spiritual reasons and financial reasons. I want to suggest that we do not blame people or institutions in history for absconding with these histories. We should be grateful that we live in the time when Jesus Himself had said that we would live in a day when that which was hidden would ultimately be made manifest. That is our heritage, that is our tradition. And that day is today. The wife of Pontius Pilate, the wonderful and beautiful Claudia Procula had a vision the day before Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to the cross, that if he were to kill Christ, that a hundred generations of chaos would ensue. Well, if you attribute 20 years to each generation, a hundred generations from the time of Christ brings us to our day. Her vision was completed. The fulfillment of the prophecy of Christ, that in the end, that which was hidden would be made manifest as purely up to us. We can listen if we wish, we can search if we want. And as Jesus said in the second verse of the Gospel of Thomas, that it is our responsibility to seek until we find. But he adds that when we find that we will be disturbed. And he knew that. He knew that when we found that many of our plain and precious histories and biographies and characterizations and heroic events and indeed miracles, when we were to discover that they had been stolen from us and hidden from us and buried, that we would be upset. Now, many people have called this heresy. Well, heresy is not the proper word. Heresy was invented by the Jews in the third century BC to protect their hold on the Five Books of Moses. These books are not heresy. They are the oral traditions and written traditions of a very real people who had real events in their lives that surrounded the life and times of Christ, and it will not do to call them heresy any more, and it will not do to call them myth. Legend, perhaps because there are things within these documents which are not totally accurate. But the core events were accurate, they did take place, and they've been missing for a very long time. We have the privilege in the age of communication to begin that discovery all over again. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you well.