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Mid-July, and they finally arrived. That was one of the biggest problems Rupert Averill had with the merchandizing people, they didn’t understand marketing. He needed the 1000 Chinese manufactured bibles a good six months before Christmas or he’d have a hell of a time buying the advertising space in the religious magazines and papers. This whole deal was his baby from start to finish. Of all the marketing ideas he had ever come up with, this was the most ingenious and lucrative of all.
He had the movers stack the 25 boxes along the wall of his bedroom. There was a ton of work to do on the bibles before they were individually shipped out to the public. He opened one of the boxes and quickly counted the number of bibles enclosed, 40. At $200 per bible, that came to $8000 a box, or more than enough for his new Mercedes SLK 350.
The idea had been so simple; he wondered why no one had thought of it before. He was vacationing in Hawaii and decided to take the ferryboat out to the Arizona Memorial. While he took a break from the tour to have a smoke, he saw a uniformed veteran running American flags up the flagpole and then right down again. The guy ran at least fifty flags up the pole before Rupert asked him what he was doing. He answered that he was with the Veterans Association and ran the flags up and down the pole so that they legally could say that they flew over the Arizona Memorial. Rupert asked what they planned to charge, and the guy said, $100 each.
It was at that moment, Rupert had his epiphany. If they could get $100 for a flag, what could he get for a bible used for church services in the birthplace of Jesus Christ himself, Bethlehem?
The plan seemed foolproof. Purchase a thousand knockoff bibles from the Chinese, at ten bucks a book. Ship them to the Basilica of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, the traditional site of Jesus Christ’s birth. Remove each bible, and rub them in the dirt just outside the church to cover any legality issues, and finally, have a Vatican priest bless each one.
Of course the bibles weren’t officially used in the Catholic Christmas service on December 25th, and the advertisement didn’t mention that the priest worked in the Vatican for only six months, but those were minor details considered unimportant by Rupert. At $200 each, even with overhead, shipping, and $5000 for the priest, he would still clear $180,000.
Rupert removed a bible and rubbed it in his hands. A little dirt and water would make the bibles look dog-eared enough to make them think they were getting the real goods. He chuckled and threw it back in the box.
After preparing about a hundred bibles, Rupert had trouble staying awake. He shut off the bedroom light and flopped onto the bed fully clothed, exhausted from the excitement of the day. About an hour later, Rupert woke up when he heard a low hum emanating from somewhere in the room. He pushed back his irritating comb-over, and sat on the edge of the bed listening for the source of the noise. He first held the alarm clock to his ear and then listened carefully to his cell phone, sure that neither one were the cause of the annoying hum.
When he stood up, he saw a light pulsing from the stack of boxes against the wall. It looked like it came from one of the bottom back boxes. He cursed as he lifted four heavy boxes of bibles out of the way to get to the one that glowed.
He began to worry. What if the bibles were on fire? They were made in China so who knows what materials they used to manufacture the books. He sliced across the masking tape with a pen and opened two flaps.
Rupert fell back onto the hardwood floor as a brilliant flash of light flew out of the box, circled the area, and hovered in the middle of the dark bedroom. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief as the apparition formed into the shape of a man. He immediately recognized the specter from a picture that hung on his mother’s living room wall; it was … or at least it looked like … Jesus Christ.
Rupert gazed around the room looking for the source of the practical joke.
“Alright Jake, I know what you’re up to. Congratulations, you scared me. You can shut it off and come out now,” he said, looking for his grown son Jake, who was notorious for his practical jokes.
The spirit spoke.
“Do you know who I am, Rupert?”
Rupert chuckled.
“Yeah, you’re either some computer image projection Jake came up with, or a delayed nightmare from the calzone I had for lunch. C’mon Jake! Enough’s enough already!”
“Who do you think I am, Rupert?”
“Well to be perfectly honest, you look like Jesus Christ.”
“And yet you doubt what you see before you,” the Christ image said.
“Okay,” Rupert said. “Let’s just say this isn’t a joke my kids playing on me, and you’re the real deal. Why would you look like that? Aren’t you supposed to be from the Middle East?”
“I am how I am perceived,” it spoke. “If you perceive I am light skinned, then that is how I am. If you perceive I am dark skinned, then that is how I am.”
“Well I perceive you’re a fake,” Rupert said, and reached for the lamp switch.
The phantom glowed, and Rupert was violently pulled backward toward the floor. He flew upside down through a bright tunnel that narrowed the farther he traveled, until it stopped his progress altogether. A tremendous pressure pushed against every pore of his body oozing blood from his ears, nose, and eyes. When he screamed for it to stop, he magically materialized back in his bedroom, absent of the pain, and one again facing Jesus.
Rupert looked up at the hovering, translucent figure.
“What was that? What did you do to me? It felt like … like …”
“Like hell, Rupert? It was. Those that would refuse to hold sacred the birth of the Lord, and those that would profit from Christmas, will not enter my Father’s house. Make no profit from me, my Father, or his church, or that is your fate. Make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise or you will suffer the same fate as the merchants and moneychangers I drove from the temple. My whips of cords won’t be leather for you, Rupert. My whips will be eternal damnation.”
Rupert shook his head and laughed. “Make no profit? What about the televangelists? What’s the difference between what they do and what I’m doing?”
Jesus didn’t speak for several seconds, seemingly lost in thought, but then he finally spoke.
“I understand profit. I was a carpenter and needed income to survive, but I would not profit from religion. All monies made from God’s service must be used for the good of man.”
He began a parable. “Three young boys wished to enter a highly regarded school that taught my Father’s doctrine. Only two spaces were available and the priest had to decide among the three. One boy loudly declared his love for my Father, and explained at length his own great beliefs and knowledge of the church. He believed himself the holiest of the three and the most deserving. Instead, the priest chose the other boys who declared their loyalty in silence. Those that shout the loudest are not always the most deserving.
“Do you believe now, Rupert? Will you end your quest for ill gotten gains?”
Rupert again laughed.
“No I think I’ll go back to bed, and try not to have anymore nightmares.”
Jesus narrowed his eyes, and just before fading away, said, “So be it.”
Rupert did fall asleep again, but a few hours later, he woke and screamed when it felt like the bottom half of him was on fire. He watched in horror, as his body dissolved into a bright comet-like cloud that flew through the room, darting in and out of the 25 boxes of bibles. As it passed through each box, it grew smaller and smaller in size until it disappeared altogether.
Rupert’s son, Jake, was never able to explain his father’s disappearance, and after a few months, decided to market the Bethlehem bibles himself.
That Christmas, and for many more to follow, the 1000 owners of the bibles could turn to the gospel of John, 2:12-25, on page 1161, and read of Jesus driving the moneychangers and merchants out of the temple. If they looked closely at the illustration next to the verse, they could see a contemporary drawing of a man with a bad comb-over fleeing Jesus’ whip, while holding a stack of books.
Copyright 2007 J. J. White
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