Justin Time
A novel by Cory Parella
A biblical time travel adventure
When
history meets destiny
the adventure begins
Smashwords Edition
Copyright, 2012, Cory Parella
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Whether a special agent traveled back in time and captured an event on video, or a person from the past traveled forward in time to share their life experience, I thought this type of supernatural witness would be worth exploring.
In the age of video, the idea that historians use it to preserve and testify to the truth was fascinating enough to explore. What if its ramifications were used to prove the Bible correct in the face of accusation of a lack of credibility?
In the late 20th century, a producer named Steven Spielberg financed a project called The Shoah Foundation that recorded the testimonies of prisoners of World War II’s ethnic cleansing crimes, so that the world would never forget, the truth embedded in its soul. Of all of his success, this project will likely be his greatest contribution to the world when he passes.
The same tool is used here, this time interviewing real people whose lives are recorded in the Bible. Will this be enough to overcome doubt? Sadly, probably not in the mind of anyone determined to deny the truth when it stares them in the face.
Nonetheless, God welcomes questions. But a question I challenged myself with as a new Believer in 1998 is one I now challenge readers with: Are you willing to be wrong for the moment to have the truth forever? Is video a credible enough witness? For someone who has chosen to reject Christ, why would video be a credible witness? For those whom it would be credible, this is written. Imagine the Gospels chronicled on video by way of time travel. NonChristians may enjoy this book as a fantasy. Christians may embrace it as an historical drama.
Enjoy.
You are witnessing the actual crucifixion of Jesus. It is 33 A.D. Give or take. My own basis for Time is different than most of the world’s, for it is written on my heart by the Holy Spirit. The world of 2051, (when I live), still uses a Roman calendar, but it was fairly new during the time the events of the Bible occurred. Mankind just didn’t keep track of time the same way for its first five-thousand years of existence, so it’s easy to confused over things like carbon dating versus traditional Christianity.
Since I am one of the few people ever allowed to witness Creation as it happened, and capture it on video for the purpose of showing it to people in my own future, I know the Bible is dead-accurate.
The fact is most people can’t handle the truth. They can’t handle there being one God, and that there are eternal consequences for our actions on this side of the eternal divide. They can’t handle the reality that the War in eternity between Heaven and Hell is still going on, and all of humanity is living in the middle of it.
They can’t handle the truth when it’s spoken to them, they can’t handle it when it’s written down, and, for some, the videos I make aren’t enough. It is both the greatest tragedy and the greatest reality that the majority of the roughly 150,000 people who died every day go to hell.
They don’t go because they were bad people in the eyes of their friends and families. They don’t go because they had too much money or too little. And they don’t go because they committed some unpardonable sin.
Any correct interpretation of
the Gospel tells us there is no unpardonable sin, no matter what some men say.
They go simply because they refuse to believe in this one moment in time -- that Christ died for them, and after a couple days, was resurrected by the power of God.
To some, this moment in time was about a rogue Jewish rabbi who was found guilty of treason by the Romans and, as requested by the Sanhedrin, was put to death
To others, this moment was a great moment of defeat followed by the greatest moment of victory.
To God, it was all about Man being reconciled to Him.
The sound of the ropes weaving through the loops made by the Roman soldiers, as they positioned their prisoner near the hole dug for the large crucifix, pierced through the chilling wind of what would later become known as the Month of April.
There was talk in the Senate of redoing the calendar, so to say this was Year 1 or 33 B.C would be less than reliable.
The calendar reset under every new king.
But, using the calendar adopted by the English as the King James Bible was printed, and for the sake of those I am recording this for, this was 33, just before Noon.
Again, so many factors go into the way Time really works, I would highly advise you to trust me and not try to figure it out. As it is, I travel b the power of the Holy Spirit. And, as a leader of a team of time travelers, I’m here to tell you that as entertaining as H.G. Wells stories were, he was far from accurate. Same goes for the guys who wrote Back To The Future. Fun movies, but that’s not the way time travel works.
But we’ll come back to that later. Right now I want you to have a front row seat for the greatest moment in human history. Now, I’ve been here before, but it never gets old. Someone misplaced the original video file, so here I am rerecording it. And for those wondering if I’m going to bump into my other self, the answer is no. Again, there are factors in real time travel that most science fictions writers don’t know about. I won’t get into it now.
The dust and dirt being kicked around by the ensemble of onlookers and soldiers was choking, not to mention the tears and wailing heard as followers and family of this man watched helplessly as his destiny climaxed on these two large pieces of wood.
The fact is, it was hard to see. The weather was partly cloudy, and between the crowd and animals being ridden, kicking up so much dirt, the Roman soldiers struggled to do the their jobs.
Sadness filled the countryside. Everyone can feel it. The Roman guards, even the drunk ones, seemed to feel it. The day was awkward, the kind of day you would call in sick for, or watch the clock, praying for the end of the workday. When we interviewed some of the Pharisees who were there, they too admitted to feeling it.
It was the kind of day you received your most expensive debt notices on, the kind of day you always received bad news. It was the kind of day when your favorite team lost, when your girlfriend breaks up with you, when your boss informs you that you’re being let go. It was God’s sovereign choice for the moment of moments, when good would triumph eternally over evil.
As Jesus was raised and the bottom mount was guided into place, most people looked away, unable to look at what was left of his face.
It was true, as the image in my video camera testified, he has been beaten beyond recognition. (The events described in my 2200-year old Bible are unfolding in front of me, new, in the present, and sad. To feel the slushy dirt under my feet as I record the ambience and the faces of the crowd, brings the events described in the Gospels forefront. This is, or was, or is, the real deal.) As I look at Jesus, I’m almost afraid He’s going to look directly at me. To see his face right now is like seeing the wrath of God being taken out on mankind through the one man who doesn’t deserve it. It hurts to look at. My mind goes to my own son, and all the times I ever had to punish him. In this case, Jesus is taking the beating for all the centuries of bad choices humanity ever made. The fact is everyone single person here deserves to be on that cross instead of him. But were not.
On one side of the hill, which would later be called Calvary, Golgotha, as it was known, bluntly, the place of the skulls, was the High Priest of the Sanhedrin, Caiphas, whom many considered to be a big fat lump of arrogant lard, a man who considered himself the redeemer of the Jews.
He got off his mule and walked toward Jesus, proud that he had made his case of Jesus being a blasphemer.
In his interview with our team, he admitted his actions were more to make the peace between the Sanhedrin and Rome, giving up Jesus as the fall guy. He knew who Jesus was. The events of his childhood were common knowledge. The boy required little teaching in the temple, and seemed to have an instinctive understanding of the Scriptures.
His abilities were far from secret. But Caiphas feared what the Rome would do if the people proved to the Caesar that Jesus satisfied all the prophesies and challenged their authority.
Rome had made an investment in global rule. They considered it their god-given destiny, so to speak, and a rebuke needed to come in a significant show of force. They were not expecting a miracle-working prophet who touched the hearts of as many Gentiles as Jews, but it was clear to the Sanhedrin that Rome was willing to consider it.
Caiphas feared that such a scenario was a recipe for war.
Could Israel handle a war? And, as for his own agenda, he married into a family he did not want to, having children incapable of carrying on in his name, and was surrounded by politically blood-thirsty council members. As it was, he staved off many assassination attempts of Jesus over the last few years, because, at heart, he saw more good than harm in Jesus’ ministry. The fact is the Nazarene had laid low with a few exceptions. He aligned himself with no military leaders or rebels, and preached love and forgiveness in the face of any unjust acts committed by Roman soldiers or citizens.
He was amused when Jesus had embarrassed some of the council members. As far as Caiphas was concerned, they were arrogant punks and they deserved it. And, whenever he heard of a healing or an exorcism, he knew that the Romans would come to him for answers. He dreaded such conversations, for they would call into account his own position, which he had worked too hard and married an unappealing woman to obtain.
Caiphas believed that Jesus was capable of miracles. He believed Jesus was from God. Just one problem: God seemed to be leaving Caiphas out of the loop, and that drove him nuts. When Jesus was welcomed by the crowds of the Passover as the Messiah, a part of him wondered, ‘What if?’
Caiphas feared losing everything he worked for, and a pressing war with Rome. There had been too much blood. As he suggested during council meetings, it would be better for one man to die for all the people, than for many to die.
Just hours before he had ordered Jesus to be brought in for questioning, he was praying about how to handle this, and he had no idea that the voice that told him to order Jesus’ arrest that very night, and not wait, was the voice of Satan himself. The Enemy feared that if Jesus survived the Passover, he would be lauded by the people as their new King, and a thousand years of his reign would begin. (It was a good thing for mankind that though Satan knows the Word, his own perversion of the Scriptures often scrambles his perception of them, explaining why he commits so many blunders concerning prophesy. His pride prevents him from thinking rationally. After all, Chaos originated in his mind.)
Caiphas knew the people desperately wanted the miracle worker, the healer, the teacher, to present himself before Caesar and declare that the Jews were no longer subordinate to Rome. They wanted a king with divine authority to lead them in restoration of Israel as a global power.
After all, the news of Jesus birth, along with every story, rumor and personal witness - including one of Rome’s own Centurions, no less, made it into the court of the Emperor. They were weighing the idea. What if the gods had truly sent the prophetic king promised to the Jews? Did they have the manpower to stop a full-scale rebellion? Would Rome be forced to concede more than a quarter of its territory?
Had Satan not convinced Caiphas that he must act now, who knows what would have happened. The week has started off with most of the city hailing Jesus as their king.
...I know what would have happened. Humanity’s captivity to sin and death would have continued. Or maybe God would have done something else...never mind. I may be a time traveller by His power, but His thoughts are still way, way above mine, and, you know the verse...
Now, allow me to describe what’s going on around me.
The fact is I got this footage a few months ago, but we misplaced it in our archives and instead of going through piles of memory cards, it seemed easier, as the Holy Spirit allowed, to come back and record it again.
We are now standing below the hill where two crosses have been raised and a third just got mounted holding the Messiah.
The crowd of people is large, maybe four or five-hundred. (I don’t have a hard time blending in, wearing era-clothing. My recorder is transparent, and my face is as covered as most other people’s. It’s bitterly cold and windy today.) I’m having a hard time getting clean sound, and when Jesus speaks His last words, the words are hard to make out despite a new mic designed just for this. Only those standing right under His feet could hear Him enough to understand Him.
When the Gospels were being written, the guards who cast lots for His clothing were interviewed again and again. Our team got two of them on camera, but one of them had a panic attack and had to be returned to his native time before we could get anything useful out of him. We haven’t been able to locate another. Though we hope one of our teams in ‘our’ future comes up with something and slips us a note, that rarely happens and it hasn’t happened yet in regards to these guards. I think the guy become so aware of what happened, he abandoned his position in the Army and left the country. Just my opinion.
The crowd is a mix of commoners; Jews, Gentiles and people from different parts of the world in town for the Passover. In the days right after the Resurrection, I went back and interviewed a lot of these people, especially the witnesses that Peter, James and Mark (a.k.a. John) interviewed when the Gospels were being assembled. I must say, it’s one thing to read their personal accounts in the Bible. It’s another thing to watch their testimonies on video.
When I was young, I saw an archive of war survivors in the 20th century recorded by a filmmaker of Jewish lineage. It was breath taking. That stuck with me when the Holy Spirit empowered me to go back in time and interview Mary, John, the guards, and several of the other witnesses seen here now.
We’ll come back to that later. What happens next is too awesome a sight to detour with a tangent, so I’ll stay with the action.
Roman soldiers are on horseback commanding the ground troops. They look tense. They know this has to go smoothly, if possible, and they are really sharp this morning. Some reenactments portray them as being drunk. Not so. They had water and some wine on them, but they were trying to keep the peace with a packed city of religious zealots and they weren’t leaving anything to chance.
The Sanhedrin’s demands regarding Jesus really caught them off balance. Had the Jews approached Pilate at any other time, he might have rejected their request and held them in contempt of they attempted to murder Jesus. (Since Jesus’ death was the prophesied method of God’s supernatural redemption of the Sin of the World, and not the incidental result of political maneuvering, that would have backfired in an unthinkable manner.)
The one thing the English translation of the Gospel accounts really failed to deliver, (at least in my time), as they got passed from down through the centuries, is what was going on the day this happened. As I travel through time recording past and future events, context is crucial.
Despite the Gospel scribes best efforts, the context of what you’re seeing here on video is really lost. Also, when Jesus gives up His spirit in a battle cry, you’ll get to see something so amazing – I never get enough of it – Christ inheriting His throne as the King of Kings and commanding the army of Angels to search and destroy Enemy forces, forcing the gates of Hell back to where they were the day before Adam sinned.
Remember - there is a bigger picture here. The War in Heaven is ongoing, and this moment in time is God’s victory over sin, evil and death on behalf of His creation.
Jerusalem was – make that, is, hosting a religious event called Passover, loosely based on the supernatural described in Exodus. I would relate it in diversity to the Olympics. It has long since been as changed and plundered in spirituality as Christmas was by the time my generation celebrated it, with some visitors coming to participate without a full realization as to why.
There are well over a million people, from every nation, in Jerusalem to experience it. Some are here to worship, and some are here to see all the side shows. Some are merchants here to cash in on the overpriced petting zoo in the inner court where Jews come to sacrifice animals in exchange for the covering of their sins, per the law of Moses. Some are here to try to catch a glimpse of Jesus the prophet, having heard of his healing power all over the country. To some, God’s miracles are nothing more than entertainment.
Jerusalem is 5,000 people at capacity. So, imagine the buzz when Jesus and His disciples, who had already been warned to stay out of the city or face severe penalties, showed up, did a high-profile teaching on the Temple grounds on the most important day of the Passover, and displayed miraculous power for all to see.
The Romans are on guard, were spread throughout the city. There had been several healing moments that weren’t recorded in the Gospels; this one is worth mentioning to make my point.
Jesus was eating, (He was always eating), and a short distance away, somehow, somebody brought in this woman, late 30’s, and waving her arms wildly, and somehow the group bringing her in got tangled up with a Roman guard’s horse and spooked it. The guard fell, sprained his arm, and his partner got kicked by the horse. It looked like a riot might break out because of this. Jesus caught a glimpse of the commotion, and ever-so-gently looked in the direction of the woman and says, “Leave her.” The horse immediately calmed down and the woman returned to a state of normalcy. The guards were dazed, and climbed to their feet, as a few more guards joined them, preparing for the worst.
A voice in the crowd shouts that Jesus is ‘over there’, as if they needed to be healed. The guard’s sprain is healed, and whatever damage the horse did to the other guard was healed as well. That guard looked more dazed than hurt. But here’s what I want you to understand.
Jesus healed, literally hundreds of people every day, in the plain sight of the Sanhedrin and every other local official. For nearly four years, Jesus healed so many people, that it became matter-of-fact. So when the Sanhedrin demanded that He show them a sign, it was more to get Him to submit to their authority than to prove He could do it.
Some accepted these miracles as proof that He was Lord, and some reverted back to what they personally went through in their own studies to become rabbis and court guards and whatnot. Did this fit? Was this man ready to be a king as David was? Would he end the Roman rule over Israel and restore Judah to being a world superpower?
Though the Scriptures concerning a suffering Christ were still in plain sight, the teachings had turned a blind eye toward them because the supernatural plan defied the logic of Jewish ideology, and surely didn’t fit into the political agendas of the leaders of the day.
And then some politicians (remember that the Sanhedrin was more a political organization than one of faith), those in even higher power couldn’t get their minds off of the fact that the Romans were being won over by Jesus’ miracles. Witnessing the lame walk and the blind receive their sight, and those with skin illnesses, the most common problem of that era, (the leper population was huge), went a long way to what was essentially a show-me nation. For 19th century Americans and later, Missouri was the show-me state. Well, Rome was the show-me nation. And Jesus provided plenty of physical evidence.
And whatever he healed seemed to be permanent.
Our team has interviewed many descendants of this era, whose extraordinary abilities when it comes to sight and physical strengths, were derived from their ancestors being healed by the Messiah. And when Jesus healed, He didn’t just address the surface problem, He healed whatever was causing it. His power would fix their DNA.
In regards to His teaching, on a scholarly level, Jesus stood out versus all the other non Roman teachers of the day by preaching love and forgiveness in the face of the most vile acts. In contrast, most Israeli rebels tried to incite riots and attacks on Roman soldiers. They plotted assassinations of Roman Senators. They tried to poison soldiers who quartered in homes. The Romans had to assume the worst, for the Jews claimed a monopoly on their God, and the Gentiles were futile to change their fate in Hades. Jews had Abraham, and everyone else had no one. This was an ongoing racism. If I had to compare it to a conflict the readers of 20th and 21st century can relate to, think The Cold War.
Jesus presented a paradox to the Jews.
And, before I keep going using the term “Jew”, I need to put the word itself into context, because it has changed a lot since Jesus walked the earth, much less a thousand-plus years later when the Bible was canonized.
When the Bible speaks of “the Jews”, it is not speaking of every single jewish person in the world. Whereas, when Hitler ordered the ethnic cleansing of “the jews” and other micro-economically segregated groups, he was including everyone; men, women and children.
The Bible uses the term Jew as a political categorization. For the purpose of this journal, when you see the word “Jew”, please read it as “Israeli politician”. This term is generally not intended to mean God-fearing men, women, and children with Israeli lineage, (that is, descendants of the house of Jacob), who were there, but who were not directly involved in the events described.
And, not all of the Jews rejected Jesus. The fact is Jesus had won over about half the Sanhedrin.
As for Jesus qualifications as the Christ...
If Jesus was the prophet the Holy Spirit speak about through Moses and David, these guys would all have to submit to him…the bastard son of Joseph of Nazareth.
(Pardon me, instead of me paraphrasing this, let me just show you a quick clip of an interview I did of a Pharisee after Jesus rose from the dead. No - wait.)
And, at the risk of sounding repetitive, we’ll come back to all that too.
The Romans were watching out for anything suspicious, and when the Jewish High Council, called the Sanhedrin, caught the Romans completely off guard that night by demanding that the Procouncil hear their case against one of their more rouge Rabbis, (who from their viewpoint had questionable credibility), with the prerequisite that he be found guilty and killed.
The Romans kept trying to avoid shedding blood, for every time they did, it led to more casualties, more guards being lost to injury or death, and civil unrest equaled fewer taxes to Rome.
Caesar had summoned Pilate a few times, this last visit warning him in so-many-words, the next blood that spills would be his. Though Pilate hated Judea, it was his responsibility to keep the peace, and as far as Caesar was concerned, he would keep the peace, collect the taxes and promote loyalty to Rome - or else. The investment in the soldiers who conquered that region would not be in vain, and their campaigns to press into Africa were ongoing. There were also rumors of a distant land literally a world away, and if they controlled the entire continent, they could explore it.
So, the last thing the Romans wanted to do was be put in a position whereby the only way to avoid shedding a lot of blood was to shed a little blood.
The interviews our team did with Caiphas was shocking, years after this day. Again, I’ll come back to that later. The Bible paints the guy out to be the embodiment of ignorance. He was, essentially, a product of his generation.
By looking in the eyes of many of the soldiers on duty that morning, knowing what they knew about who Jesus claimed to be, they hoped He didn’t stay on the cross long, or somehow, by some divine force, the nails would fail to hold Him.
Of course, a few guards didn’t take anything they’ve heard seriously and had been making fun of him throughout the process.
The buzz among the Romans was that if Jesus wasn’t who some people said He was, if all His so-called miracles were somehow proven to be hoaxes, then they anticipated the Sanhedrin would stir up rebels, putting their fellow soldiers at risk. If He was, then at least the Romans could deal with just one leader, assuming Israel, so to speak, would unite behind Him and do whatever He said. They did know the myth that the Jews had put their hope in, that a king would show up and rule the world.
But nobody saw this coming.
As people mill around the crosses, there were distant sounds of weeping, and sounds of the creaking of wood with live weight being hoisted on it to a mounted position, in the middle of the other two. The wind was brutally cold as Noon approached. The moon seemed to drift in front of the sun, and what little light was finding its way through the clouds was about to be interrupted by an eclipse. My recorder would later show the Hand of God pushing it into place.
Be aware that I wear two watches, one I don’t control, and one from my own native time. The one I don’t control tells me the date and time of wherever and whenever I have arrived, controlled by the Holy Spirit. Note, just east of the Jordan River, there’s a one-hour time zone change. Saudi Arabia is an hour ahead of Israel. These are details that are critical in my work.
The other watch is from my own native time, in 2050. I’m 35 years old, married to a woman who is 28 in her own native time of 2150, and have two teenage kids, Hilary and Josiah. The Holy Spirit’s watch helps me with logistics in logging video, and if I am asked to intervene. The Enemy’s got his own agents traveling around and when they mess up, we have the authority to restore history to its rightful place under Free Will.
My watch reminds me to eat and sleep. You get into the moment, so to speak, and you can forget.
There was a film made about 50 years ago that did a pretty good job of recreating Galgotha as it was when Jesus was crucified.
As my transparent camera passes from one face to another, I’m able to use a hand-held device covered under my sleeve to place markers that will be used to for narration in the edit lab so we can identify people later.
Our team, Special Archives, is made up of thousands of people, most of whom don’t travel through time, supporting the work of the dozens of us who do.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is leaning on John as Jesus’ body was raised up on the Cross. She’s tried to stave off the pain of losing her son, with the foreknowledge that the sin of the world would be taken as far from us as the east is from the west.
Her tears are both delight and agony. The pain is almost over. (Watching Jesus get beaten to a pulp was heart-breaking.)
History always seems to describe Mary as some kind of old, mildly-attractive woman. She was 47 and strikingly beautiful for an era when make-up wasn’t a daily ritual for the women of Israel.
Mary Magdalene, who stands near her, was not a prostitute.
Her father was wealthy and her mother was an alcoholic. Her mother gave her a lot of money and sent her out in the hopes that she would find a husband, like a woman traveling with her own dowry. Needless to say, she didn’t find the right guy. She did, however, get mixed up with the wrong crowd, and as a result, demons took up residency in her until she found herself in Nazareth, which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. She stopped searching for a husband, and tried to blend in as one of the village women. She was a skillful young woman, and fixed up an abandoned hut.
One day, she heard women talking about how the bastard eldest son of Joseph the carpenter had turned water into wine at a wedding, and now the Rabbis were brainstorming how to handle the gossip as it spread. Her heart pounded at the idea, could this be the Messiah she heard the men talk about as they gathered in the marketplace, walking to and from Temple?
Years passed. John the Baptist was stirring up the people and she went out to see what was going on. She saw Jesus get baptized by John, and a dove formed above Him from the the water, and then flew away. The she heard a distinct Voice speak from Heaven, “This is My Son, whom I love Listen to Him.”
She felt a tug on her heart and followed it.
From that day on, she was determined to never leave His presence. She followed Him at a distance until she ran into Mary at Peter the fisherman’s house. She pleaded with Mary to allow her to walk at her side, saying quite bluntly, I believe, whomever your son is, is sent by God. The two became friends. Mary had finally found a man worthy of her dowry, though the relationship was never romantic.
Jesus had a powerful presence about Him that made it clear He was spoken for. (It was hard for his mother this to explain to matchmakers when he was a teenager, but they quickly picked up on it, and never approached his parents again.)
John was a mere 15 years old when he began following Christ. Here, after just three years, he seemed to age like an American President, looking a lot older than his 18 years. Jesus other siblings were there as well, including his sister. Though the Gospels do not record them, He had four younger half-brothers and two younger half-sisters.
They had no claim to the throne of Israel; one incident a century into my future breached that subject, and we were asked to research it. You can read the interview about it in the last chapter of this journal.
Some records describe as many as eight siblings, but I’ve never seen them; and I’ve been following the Lord’s life on earth for over fifteen years now.
There were many other people there that day, but, what happens next is more important to talk about so we’ll move on. (And if this footage gets misplaced as the last memory card did, I’ll be back...)
Now, before you can see what I am about to show you, you need to understand my camera was designed by the Holy Spirit. In a moment, I’m going to push a button and you’re going to see the spiritual warfare happening on both sides of this event. Don’t panic. The demons are very, very scary-looking, and the army of God is beyond-words-awesome, beautiful and some word that describes victorious and full of grace, all at the same time.
On the left you see the demonic army ready to march through humanity and into Heaven. On the right, Angels stand ready for the Commander-In-Chief, the King, to give the order to attack.
You need to understand that the War of Heaven is continues from before Creation and exists on a plane of time that is not in sync with human time. The rebellion of the Enemy is as fresh as the day he was cast out of Heaven. The Enemy still believes he can win, and the demons who follow him remain as determined as the moment their wills turned against God’s. To these beings, the thousands of years of human history is not a lot; much like humans measure dog years, and that comparison grossly understates the scope of eternal time versus human time.
This moment, the death of Jesus, has been long considered the most important moment in human history. You’ve probably seen this or read about it in history books or the Bible. Most people have never seen what happens to His Spirit and Soul after Jesus died.
The King claimed His throne and waged war against His enemies. (It is so cool to watch!)
Alright: keep an eye on Christ’s Spirit as He says, “It is finished.” He’s gonna let out a loud shout.
Jesus let out a loud cry.
Though to on-lookers it sounds like a release of pain, to the Enemy forces visible to Justin in the spiritual realm, and the Angels awaiting orders from the Commander In Chief, this shout is a declaration of victory and attack.
Angels rejoice and demons quickly react with cackling-to-dread as the Messiah’s Spirit emerges from His dead body and claims the Authority over the living and the dead, in the physical form of a warrior of light. As lyrics to 20th century Christian hymns would state, the train of His robe fills the Heavens.
Too cool, eh?
At this moment, as prophesied, there is an earthquake. Bodies resurrected from local tombs and the Roman guards were spooked.
The eclipse is in full effect. The remaining onlookers run away, not sure what to make of it. At first, the image of seeing people panic in the face of mummies, ripping bandages off their fully-restored skin, is scary, but, the more I watch this footage, it’s kind of funny. Many of these same onlookers were mourners of those resurrected, and were now faced with the reality that loved-ones weren’t dead anymore. Some who ran were widows and children being chased by their husbands and fathers, given new life. (I liked that.)
Jesus’ every movement was a most effective weapon against Enemy forces. Though the demons tried to fight or retreat, their physical form was like chaff when the Light of Jesus touched them.
I captured all this on video, adjusting the camera slightly. The demons marching from the gates of Hell stopped taunting and cheering for the death of Jesus, and fell eerily silent. Jesus motioned toward the Enemy with the much-anticipated order to attack, and legions of His Angels darted toward the Gates of Hell, slaughtering demons and causing them to retreat quickly.
(This rumbling caused an earthquake, an as a result hundreds of bodies were resurrected.)
God’s Army of Angels stood ready for battle. (Up until now, the Light of Jesus had been fighting the battle alone.)
King Jesus motioned to the demonic army and gave an all-too-eager army of Angels. Still, some of the demons tried to stand and fight, but the Angels tore through them like chaff. Satan fled like a coward as far back into the darkness of Hell as he could get.
Jesus soared through Hell, freeing all the souls of humanity since the Fall. Jesus found Death, who was himself dying.
The Angel who will be the head of my estate in Heaven, Galbrath, has lowered himself in mid-flight to carry us so we could keep up. Brace yourself.
The mere presence of the glorified, radiant Christ caused Death to retreat into the very bottom of Hell where Lucifer was hiding.
Death and the other minions, having just gone from the verge of victory to a pretty nasty defeat, became angry at Satan and appeared to try to turn on him, the demons falling and assembling at the bottom of the abyss like flies and poop.
Despite his embarrassing defeat, Satan’s appearance still bore some traits of the second-in-command to God he once was.
“What?” Satan argued, “Let ‘em go,” in his usual tone.
“I didn’t like most of those people anyway. Now, quit giving me dirty looks and start thinking about the future. Every soul born from now on must put their faith in Jesus or they wind up here. Based on Man’s track record for faithfulness and sin, we’ll have this place repopulated in no time. Fresh meat, anyone?”
In Heaven, the souls that had been in captivity for so long, were visible, led by Angels into Heaven, greeted by Adam, Enoch, and other Heavenly creatures.
The gates of Heaven reopened. God and Man are reconciled. Before I was able to witness this with my own eyes, the song lyrics of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, did not mean much to me. Now, when I sing this in my own church fellowship, I get emotional, every time. “Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!”
Like many people standing for The Star-Spangled Banner at an American sporting event, it takes on new meaning for a soldier who has experienced war. When you have lived it, it holds deep meaning for you. For, me, to have seen Jesus physically go into Hell and release the prisoners is a sight that I can only describe using the footage I took.
The Book of Life, bearing the names of all of humanity since the Fall, was seen, glowing with updates.
The impression of ink changed from a softly written, pending ink, to one written in Christ’s Blood, permanently. From where we were, we got a glimpse of God’s next city, made for us to coexist with Angels, Zion.
The sounds of the Heavenly host and the three beautiful choir beings repeatedly saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who Was, and Is, and Is to Come,” as they greeted the newcomers.
Galbrath returned us to the tomb where Jesus’ body was being laid.
It’s 3:42 P.M. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were carrying Jesus’ body into Joseph’s tomb.
They’ll set it on the burial slab. Let’s go inside. Don’t worry. We’re invisible - just don’t touch anything (and don’t ask me why that condition exists -- and don’t ask me why walking here doesn’t count as ‘touching anything’.)
Both men worked through the tears in their eyes. As they quickly wrapped up, Nicodemus was staring at the dead body of Jesus. He took a long look at Jesus and fell to his knees, weeping over Christ’s head. Joseph noted the Roman guards posture of ‘hurry up’ and implored him to take his grief outside, glancing back at the Roman guards who had been watching them from the entrance. Nicodemus got up and, wiping his nose, followed Joseph out of the tomb.
The sky is somber, the Father of one heart with the men.
As the guards watch Joseph and Nicodemus exit the tomb, pausing to look into it one more time, the Roman Captain orders six soldiers to roll an enormous round cut slab of stone in front of the opening, and sealed it.
The Captain pulls an ink source from his waist pouch and impressed it onto his ring hand, then stamping this onto the stone slab. The royal seal, signifying Rome’s attempt to seal the tomb, is firmly branded on the stone entrance. The seal represents the authority of Rome. To interfere with it is a capital offense.
The Captain turned to his next-in-command and said, “Tell Pilate we have done as ordered.”
The guards will build a little post here, make dinner and get drunk. We’ll skip ahead to the good stuff. Drunk and sleepy Roman guards vs. the risen Christ. My money’s on Christ.
That buzz you felt when we flickered through time is your body’s way of adapting to the time change. When people fly across the country, they often feel ‘jet lag’. This is similar to that, but faster.
It is around 3 a.m., as most of the Roman guards sleep. One remained awake, but barely.
Now, from here on, I have seen most of this before, so you’ll hear me describe it as if it has already happened. (Technically, it has.)
The groggy Roman guard witnessed a man appear on the tomb, along with several others dressed in white. Why the Lord never seemed to dressed His Angels in anything but white, I’ll never know, but they were all in white. (The color spectrum in Heaven is infinitely wider than on Earth.)
His reaction was to wipe his eyes, and alert his fellow soldiers. As he did that, he realized the men on the tomb were looking right at him. Another guard managed to wake up, see the ‘men’ standing on the tomb, and yelled at them.
“Who are you?!”the guard yelped, his voice filtered by sleep phlegm.
The man on top of the tomb flashed brighter than the sun. This was Jesus, now glorified. Handsome, eh? I know, an understatement. (I’ll also add, before His glorification, Jesus didn’t have the face of a movie star. He wasn’t unattractive, but He didn’t stand out.)
The men on the tomb casually slipped through the walls of the rock and after a few seconds, as the other soldiers were waking up, there was a violent earthquake. The Roman Seal was ripped apart. The slab rolled, seemingly by itself, completely away from the entrance. The Roman guards were now shaking in fear. (I’m got a video a close-up of this.)
Back inside the tomb, Jesus’ Spirit laid back into His body, giving it life again. The Angels (the ‘men’), were all smiling. Jesus calmly walked to the entrance of the tomb and stood in it, visible to all the Roman guards.
His radiance had forced them all on the ground, as dead men.
Remember, in Scripture it is observed that they were so overwhelmed by the presence of God, they could not stand. “The unjust cannot stand in the presence of the Righteous.”
Jesus walked out of the tomb, walked past the guards, and toward nearby Jerusalem.
He was right outside of the city. I recognized Mount of Olives and heard the sounds of the first Easter morning. I never noticed this before, but the sounds of the forrest are so quiet, even the animals seemed to be aware of what was going on, listening.
As I recorded Jesus walking through the very place where He was arrested three days before, His eyes turned to focus casually on us.
Jesus asked me plainly, “You get all that?”
I nodded with a nervous, stiff neck, in awe of the moment I just recorded.
As I watched Jesus walk around the forest, He grabbed fruit off trees and ate it. The Lord was always eating. Even during healings and teachings, He snacked all the time.
He was in incredibly good shape.
The soldiers all tried to get up, and as they were able to walk, they saw the Angels, the slab moved, the tomb wide open and became afraid. They each shouted and ran away. The Angels responded with thin smiles.
Just outside Jerusalem, Mary and Mary had begun their trek toward the tomb. (We still have footage of this.) Their eyes were heavy from a lack of sleep. Who could sleep?
Magdalene asked, “How are we ever going to roll that stone away? I hope that last tremor didn’t make things worse.”
Back at the tomb, one Angel remained on the tomb as the guards had all fled. I recorded all this with multiple angles, fixed inside my garment.
As Mary and Mary approach, Jesus was playfully hiding nearby, watching them as they get close to the tomb.
Considering how much heartbreak the women had suffered, He comes across almost as a prankster.
I got a close up of the expression in Jesus’ face. He couldn’t wait to surprise them, and He looked deeply moved that they had come here to care for Him. Little did they know the burial herbs they carried would not be used...
The Angel standing in front of the tomb looked at the women. The Angel looked at Jesus, as if asking how to greet them. From Jesus and the Angel’s point of view, the scene was quite funny, like the prelude to a surprise party. Jesus gave a subtle ‘no’ shake of the head, and the Angels disappeared-reappeared around the corner from the tomb’s opening.
As the women got closer, a feeling of panic overcame them. Mary Magdalene sprinted to the tomb, His mother became catatonic; an older, less-physically healthy woman might have had a heart attack.
She stopped in her tracks, dropping the bags containing burial herbs. Jesus winced at the sound of the thud, and almost seemed to feel bad about putting them emotionally through all of this.
Mary entered the tomb, and quickly emerged, screaming to Mary (mother of Jesus).
Magdalene screamed at the top of her lungs and the bottom of her grief, “Somebody’s taken him!”
Mary (mother of Jesus) looked around, and saw the campfire where the Roman guards had made camp - deserted, yet still smoking.
Her mind had clearly started spinning with possible scenarios, too many it seemed to start panicking just yet.
A mix of the desire to believe and the reigning disbelief churned in her spirit. She flashed back to the Angel who foretold His birth; the prophets whose blessings over His circumcision foretold the end of the Roman Empire; the miracles she witness her son do...she had even seen Him raise Lazarus from the dead after several days! Why was it so hard to believe He is alive right now?
The world had been turned up side down.
Jesus gave an affirmative nod to the Angels to reveal themselves. Appearing atop the stone that had covered the tomb’s entrance, the Angels addressed the women.
One Angel, with Jesus’ approval, asked, “Woman, why are you crying? Both women were startled by his words. “Don’t be afraid. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here.”
The women remained stoic, as if they didn’t understand him.
He acknowledged their disbelief and reiterated, “See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'”
Trembling and terrified, both women retreated back up the road.
As the women made their way a hundred yards or so, I emerged from nearby bushes and motioned to Jesus to ask a question.
“Um, Lord, why’y playing with ‘em?” I asked.
“My ways are not your ways,” He replied, smirking.
The other Angel asked me, “You know what happens next, right?”
I nodded. “What are we waiting for?”
“They’ll be coming in a few minutes,” Jesus said, issuing orders, “and Rocky’s not in the best shape. After I reveal myself to them, we’ll go to the next place. My Spirit will take you where you need to go.”
I nodded that I understood.
“Who’s Rocky?” I asked, taken aback by the reference.
“Your native tongue calls him Peter.”
“Peter - Petro...got it,” I replied. Eighteen years on the job and I still feel like the new guy.
The Angel asked, “Lord -”
Jesus motioned subtly with his hand, affecting me. I’m not sure what I did, but for a moment, I seemed to be visible. “Did I touch something other than the ground?”
“Don’t worry about it, “Jesus replied. “They can’t see you now. But stay out of the way.”
Young John was sprinting toward the tomb, and Peter, breathing heavily, trailed him by a few seconds. The women, running, sniffling back tears and huffing, followed. They all passed by me, and I adjusted my frame to capture the moment as best I could...the previous footage was a little too shaky and out of focus.
In my native time, the President I served, Jim Wakefield, watched this video, from among the NSA Special Archives video library. He had tears in his eyes. I would compare the technology’s ‘real-time‘ capabilities to the DVR of 2010; not a perfect comparison, but minus a lecture on physics and forty years of technology you’re yet to experience, that’s the best I can do.
Peter emerged from the tomb, awestruck. He saw the abandoned Roman camp, and the broken seal on the tomb’s slab. Dumbfounded, he managed to say, “I don’t believe it. Where’s the regiment?” he asked, his voice rising an octave with irritation, as if demanding to know why the Roman guard would abandon their post.
John looks angry, assuming someone stole the body, likely the Pharisees. He looks at Peter as if to ask, ‘what should they do?’ Peter has no answers, slumbering back onto the road,
back to his home, trying to process the reality of the empty tomb and the vacated soldiers’ camp.
When the men had left, Mary went into the tomb and saw the Angels sitting on the burial slab.
With tremendous compassion, the Angel asked, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they have put him,” Mary Magdalene managed to say quite eloquently.
Jesus was right behind her, just outside the tomb, munching on bread, His face slightly hidden by the hood of His shawl.
“Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Mary stepped out of the tomb and answered him, not recognizing him. I stood nearby, recording all of this.
“Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him and I will get Him.” Mary is looking into the tomb down as she speaks.
Jesus put her out of her misery, pulling His hood down, revealing his face. “Mary!”
Magdalene’s head does a dramatic 180 toward Jesus. “Rabboni!” her voice shouted, echoing off the surrounding stones.
She leaned toward Him, rushing to hug him, but He abruptly stopped her. Jesus said, extending his hands and fingertips slightly, also revealing His wounds, “Don’t touch Me, for I have not returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'”
Magdalene left, this time wiping the tears from her eyes. I captured the whole scene on video, wiping tears from my eyes as well.
Back home, the President was on his knees, praising God as he watched this video, not wiping the tears from his own eyes.
Jesus walked back inside and motioned for me to follow Him.
Jesus said, “Come on in. How much memory do you have left?”
“About four hours,” I replied.
“Plenty. C’mere. Use the tripod. Let’s get some pictures together.
Jesus and I posed together in various places in and around the tomb. He is very playful about His wounds. From looking at the photographs and videos, one would assume we are brothers. Scripture says, “I no longer call you My Disciples, but My brothers, My friends.”
As if finished, Jesus said, “Log those with the others and meet Me in the Upper Room. My Two Witnesses send their gratitude for your service.”
“Where to next, Lord?” I asked.
“Friends and family,” He said, smiling.
Jesus casually waved, smiled and disappeared by the same power He empowers me to travel through time with. I gave my equipment one more look, took one more look around, at where He was, absorbing what had just happened -- again, so to speak, and surrendered my destination to the Holy Spirit. The overcast sky that dominated the weekend had been broken by piercing sunlight.
Allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Justin Naby. By the power of the Holy Spirit, I can travel through time, recording history on video for the generation that experiences Judgment Day.
To summarize my ministry, take the Bible as historical fact, and add a team of time travelers to it with video recorders, and you get folklore, a cross between Santa Claus and James Bond. I’m here because of a question I asked in a prayer. What would people choose differently if they knew God’s plan for them? If anything?
For those who would choose Heaven over Hell in the Last Week (which according to my intel, we do not live in), we gather evidence of the truth for those who want their faith strengthened.
Though Man has made progress in his own time travel efforts, mine is a spiritual gift soley derived from the Father.
To my wife, friends and family, I’m simply Justin Naby, dad, husband and son. Ironically, my last name means prophet in Hebrew...my parents didn’t know that when they named me.
Our team is feared by terrorists and human traffickers worldwide. We intervene in their evil acts and invite them to follow Christ, resulting in the erasure of many tragedies. To the rest of the world of 2051 and later, I am known as Justin Time.
Throughout Jerusalem in the months before the Day of Pentecost, delegates of government and religious officials roamed through the city and visited the Synagogue.
Most, if not all, had questions about Jesus that Roman and Jewish officials were unsure or inconsistent about how to answer.
A doctor named Luke, also an artist, mapographer and, for the sake of the Gospel, an historian, had heard that many scribes and historians had been sent from many countries in search of verification of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
Was is true this man had been crucified and then came back to life?
Caiphas’ office was often crowded with fact-seekers.
Several disciples, that is, those studying under the Teachers of the Law, were carefully selected and assigned to answer questions without revealing too much.
One man commissioned by a merchant and former Roman official, to go on a fact-finding mission was a doctor named Luke. He had friends in the Roman Legion, and was able to talk to many soldiers, including the men who were involved in Jesus’ last day. Their stories led him to John Mark and Peter, and the three men avidly compared notes. Luke would eventually meet Paul at Troas, and join him on parts of his missions.
In Caiphas’ office, a young man named Saul from Tarsus, a longtime disciple of the Sanhedrin; one whose learning had taken such a priority in his life that he was the subject of humor among the rabbis and the matchmakers for his lack of a wife, stood before Caiphas.
The two were discussing Saul’s future.
Caiphas truly believed he was battling a cult, dealing with those trying to hold onto the legacy of the deceased, and use it to their advantage. He had seen this happen many times before.
Jesus had failed to satisfy many of the anticipated prerequisites expected of the Messiah through the eyes of the Sanhedrin, and since he refused to submit to their authority, they truly believed he was a danger to the people; what if God struck the nation of Israel with a plague as He had done in years past? The law was very clear: false prophets were to be put to death.
The New Testament would describe the “jealousy” of the Pharisees when Jesus would demonstrate His abilities. But this was not the case, as I would later learn from an interview with Caiphas. He was adamant that he was not jealous of Jesus, but wanted to understand him. He couldn’t get a straight answer out of anyone of the council, and after his outburst on the last day of the Passover, declaring that he was the ultimate source of eternal life on Earth mandated a formal face to face talk. Unfortunately, Caiphas admitted, the guards nearly beat him to death before he could begin to question Jesus. And, motivated by political grudges, his council behaved poorly. He added that had Jesus performed any sign for him, especially that night, he would have let him go and more. He might have vouched for him to the Romans.