JourneyOnline
TOMB EMPTY. BODY GONE.
That is all the Twitter message said. Then longer SMS messages began to fly.
What’s happening? :-(. BTW guards gone 2.
The photos appeared first on Facebook. Grainy mobile phone picture taken in the half light of dawn.
Somebody started a Facebook page Where is Jesus? Within hours it had hundreds of friends.
The guy had simply disappeared, so had the security guards. The tomb was empty, but the grave clothes were still there.
Then the blogosphere exploded.
Some thought an earthquake had hit the cemetery, but no SMS earthquake alert had gone out that morning.
At www.sanhedrin.com, there was outrage at the story, and more calls for followers of the Nazarene to be rounded up and held without trail at a detention camp on Cyprus.
Amid all the flaming, few noticed a post by Nico the Nocturnal which made the case for him as the long awaited Messiah.
At www.saducee.com the debate about the resurrection of the dead was revived.
Zac at www.taxman.com told of being called out of a tree to talk to the guy. Weird stuff, but the blogosphere is like that. You never know what’s true and what’s not.
A couple of Persian bloggers at www.astrology.edu reporting having visited the guy and his family over thirty years before, shortly after he was born, and that there was something special about him then.
In fact, they said, Herod’s spooks were nosing around and, after finding their website had been hacked and their email was under surveillance, the Persians shot back to Baghdad, which in those days was a much safer place than Bethlehem or Jerusalem.
It was like the day that Herod executed John the Baptist. RomeONN, the imperial online news network, crashed at lunch time as people from around the world logged on for the latest.
At the Procurator’s office, Pilate’s spin doctors put out a statement saying it was nothing to do with the Roman Government, which maintained a strict policy of separation between church and state.
Pilate refused yet another invitation to be interviewed on the VII.XXX Report as he always did. “Our enemies talking to our friends”, he’d once been overheard to say of the Report.
However, some of the great and powerful did take notice. In Rome, Rupert the Great, who had started out as a scribe in an obscure Greek colony south of the Equator, but was now a Roman citizen, rubbed his hands together. “It’s just the greatest story ever told,” he said, and made an immediate bid to buy The Jerusalem Post.
That night Channel VII news in Palestine ran a phone poll of viewers on the question: Is Jesus of Nazareth alive?
If you think Jesus is alive, send an email to us journey@ucaqld.com.au.
In your message, tell us why you think Jesus is alive, and watch our website for updates.
John Harrison
Photo: John Harrison, Lecturer in Communication & Public Relations at University of Queensland, provides a social networking angle on Easter
