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Humans speak today of "finding God" for the simple and obvious reason that God can be difficult to spot.  The Virgin Mary appears often enough, but coyly.  On one recent tour of North America, she manifested herself, not just on Diana Duyser's $28,000 toasted cheese sandwich (old news), but as a simulacrum on the glass facade of office buildings from Florida to Massachusetts to California, and in the bark of a black locust tree in Connecticut, and as rust stains on a giant oil tank in Ohio, and even as skillet burns on a tortilla shell in New Mexico – causing subsequent traffic jams as the faithful flocked to see her.  (I'm not blaming Mary, that's just her way, she's shy.  Besides, the traffic jams would be far worse if she showed herself in the all-together.)

If it's Jesus you want to see, don't worry, he'll be back, he promised, and it won't be on a tortilla shell.  Caveat: when you see him, you may not recognise him.  Don't be fooled by those pictures in Christian bookstores of a handsome, longhaired, dewy-eyed European male; or by James Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's S&M extravaganza.  Jesus Christ looks no more like those fellows than the real Moses at age 120 looked like Charlton Heston.  (Okay, okay, bad comparison:  Moses at age 120 actually did resemble Charlton Heston, but Jesus Christ does not look anything like James Caviezel.)

So what does Jesus look like, you ask?  Well, Belial or Beelzebub could give you an accurate description – the Son of God goes way back with all three of us – but you won't get a straight answer from my pals.  Belial will just grunt, or shrug his shoulders and say, "Who cares?"  Beelzebub, always the smart aleck, will say that "Jesus of Nazareth and his stepfather, Joseph of Nazareth, are dead ringers"; or that "Jesus looks just like that fellow who showed up on the Shroud of Turin"; or that "Jesus and shortstop Zoilo ('Zorro') Versalles are long-lost Twins."

If you say, "No, I mean, what does Jesus look like right now, in Heaven, as the Son of God?" he'll ask you first to tell him what the holy Ghost looks like; and when you say, "I imagine him in the form of a white dove," he'll say, "Fine, fine. Now imagine a second one:  Jesus looks just like him, without the feathers – like a holy Ghost, plucked!" He will then chuckle, and drain down the rest of his beer.

Since returning to Heaven in 31 CE, Jesus has shown his true face to mortal men only three times.  The first revelation was to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus in 36 CE.  The second was to Saint John in 65 CE, when he was writing the book of Revelation.  The third manifestation came in April 1995, to born-again Christians around the world, or at least to those who had Internet access:  The Hubble Space Telescope relayed a picture, authenticated by NASA, of the so-called Eagle Nebula, 7000 light years from Earth.  In that photograph from space, amongst a swirling cloud of gas some six trillion miles long, Jesus revealed his countenance to Christian believers; but he concealed his countenance from skeptical Hindus and Buddhists and Rastafarians, who could never get the Gestalt just right.

The Eagle Nebula:

A Hubble telescope zoom:

Extreme closeup:

(For more information, visit http://www.direct.ca/trinity/eagle.html or http://www.biblebelievers.org/bnjan96.htm or http://www.hublespacephotos.com/16full.html)

But since my readers have demanded to know the answer, here is the plain, unvarnished truth:  Jesus looks very much like a 30-year-old Osama Bin-Laden (i.e., before that incident in 1997, when Osama got punched in the nose by a recoil from his own rifle butt).  Slight difference in dress, granted – but if Osama had gotten his nose restored, his face would again have been virtually indistinguishable from that of Jesus of Nazareth.  Even their whispery voices would be hard to tell apart, were it not that Jesus spoke Aramaic and Hebrew while Bin-Laden spoke Arabic and English.

I'm not suggesting that Jesus and Osama are on the same side.  Osama was a resentnik who would forgive only those who share his creed, and he took vengeance on everyone else with a relentless ferocity out of all proportion to anything his victims ever did wrong.  Does that sound like Jesus? 

Okay, yes, maybe it does, but Jesus and Osama are different in other ways, such as their birth dates and fingerprints and shoe size.  What’s weird is just the striking physical resemblance.  In fact, in April 1995 when various Arabic news media reported on NASA's photographs of the Eagle Nebula, thousands of Muslims saw the face of Jesus Christ – but mistook it for a photograph of Osama Bin-Laden.

Speaking of which:  the other day, when I did a Google search, I accidentally hit on a fake photo-shopped shoulder-to-shoulder snapshot of Osama Bin-Laden with Bert of Sesame Street (www.bertisevil.tv/ pages/bert038.htm).  It gave me quite a shock, to see that, and I'll tell you why:  when that picture first flashed on my screen, I thought for a second that I had died and gone to Heaven, and was looking straight into the eyes of Paul the apostle, with Jesus at his side; but it was only Bert and Osama, after all.

 – L.

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