You are completely right; – he answered having read the question about the password meaning in Holmes’s eyes. – This is only a sign to the password. The password itself is on the shoulder of this fellow dressed as Gutsul – this is the self-given name of the Western Ukrainians.
After these words count invited his guests to his library, switched on his computer and they saw Bible texts catalogue. Count had Bibles on Russian, in English and on French. He searched through the English one for the word “axe” with special search-system. He chose one verse, printed it and solemnly read it with his low slightly cracked voice:
“Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew, 3:10)”.
How do you think, why did I choose very this verse between all other including the word “axe”? – He applied to his guests and continued without getting a response.
John the Baptiser’s relics that are hold in the Saint-Pantheleimons monastery in Greece on the Mount Aphon are especially respected today. This verse was a warning to him from above for his unrighteous mission, which he unthinkingly followed trying to make Christ follow the way paved by another thoughtless prophet Isaiah eight hundred years before. By the way, Isaiah’s death was even more terrible than John’s one. Judaic tsar Manasia ordered to saw him with a wooden saw. But before it happened, Isaiah had written his death pact similar to one that John The Baptiser unthinkingly proclaimed a short time before his death:
“Will the axe boast against him who hews with it? Will the saw exalt itself above him who wields it? As if a rod could sway him who lifts it, or a staff him who is not wood! (Isaiah, 10:15)”
You may ask why was the prophet, so respected in the Christianity, so cruelly punished. It’s a long talk and I can’t explain you all what I’ve understood now. All I can precisely say is that told the Great Russian writer Lev Tolstoy. The modern historically formed Christianity is far from the real teaching of Christ. And it’s because of “selfless” doings of the apostles and first of all of ex-Pharisee Saul who had “magically” turned into the apostle Paul.
Have you ever thought, Holmes, why in that story when Saul was on his way to Damask somebody called himself “Christ” behaved himself not as any Christian should?
Pardon, count, I have rather superficial knowledge of “the apostles’ deeds” but your question isn’t used to be discussed. If Saul himself assured that he had seen Christ… And what was a contradiction between doings of this “somebody” and Christian moral?
But look, Holmes! True Christ cured ills and cripples but Saul was blinded, though temporarily. Agree that God and his missioners can manage without such “side” effects!
True Christ has never compelled to follow him neither by the force, nor by the fear, nor by the “blackmail”. However, Saul was frightened and confused when he submitted to one, who had called him for service. In other words, he didn’t choose to follow Christ consciously and this is another proof that he became a victim of some delusion.
Even in the episode of banishment of merchants from the cathedral when Christ, if to believe the Gospels, used the rude strength, nobody was injured, nobody was in terror, and nobody’s will was replaced by the will opposite to his psyche.
True Christ frightened nobody, injured nobody and made nobody defective, blackmailed nobody (and especially blackmailed not by the words, but by his reticences as well), compelled or perverted nobody’s will[42] and he didn’t create any ambiguous situations, so no one can accuse him or God of such deeds!
But who was that “somebody” whom Saul saw on his way to Damask?
I consider the two incompatible moralities to appear in true Christ’s activity and in the activity of “somebody” who showed himself to Saul. Holmes, agree that such a conversion to “Christianity”, which Saul went through, would not have taken place, if true Christ had called him for a service.
It’s so unusual to me, count, that I really don’t know what to say. I’m just an ordinary man, not a theologian. Why don’t you go to theologians?
Are you serious, Holmes? For hat purpose should one ask theologians about such things? For God’s sake, they live not on the truth but on its perversion. I talk to you as to an average man – average thinking man of the beginning of the third millennium.
Count, how do you think, how much thinking people asking questions that can puzzle the professional theologians can one find today – in the beginning of the third millennium?
Pfanfaltz silenced reflecting upon something and excused himself. He went to his library and retuned with newspapers copies.
Here, Holmes, listen:
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock’n’roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me”.
And some more:
“I’m not against the Lord, Christ or religion. I don’t say that we are higher or better. I believe in God, but not as in an old man on the skies. I believe that all what did Christ, Muhammad, Buddha preached was right, but their interpreters did many mistakes”[43].
Count, who did say it?
This is the interview of youth’s idol of the sixties, John Lennon, which he gave to Maureen Cleave, a reporter of the London’s paper “Evening Standard” in 1966.
How surprising for simple “rock musician” and even for a popular one! I should say, I’ve never heard something of a kind in England; but even if I had heard it, it would hardly have attracted me without your unusual commentaries to the episode with Saul. However, Lennon was murdered. Were these words a cause, I wonder?
I don’t know it. After his death the command came apart. One of them, as I remember, Harris studied Hinduism and, if to believe the press, was hardly ill. It’s a consequence of a worldview crisis, as I see it, or may be of those tasks, which were entrusted to them passing over their minds.
I’m surprised not by this, count. But how you manage to trace all of this and, moreover, to have your own opinion on the questions seemed to go without saying?
It’s considered, that in my age people use to sink into dotage. Russians call it “sink into a childhood”. May be it’s so, but very in childish age one is free of delusions and mistakes of youth and middle ages. So the systemic limits on psyche we discussed earlier could be overcome in the easiest way and thus the possibilities to get some new knowledge appear, of course if the senile brains haven’t completely depredated yet. Unfortunately it’s really hard to save the childish perception until the declining years living in our defective civilization, but… – here the teller paused and cheerfully smiled to his guests. – May be I’m the very rare specimen who “has fallen into childhood” just in proper time?
The count was far more than eighty, but he looked hale and hearty enough, his speech was connected and he thoroughly chose the words of the foreign language trying to express his thoughts very precisely and neatly. Some his thoughts seemed to be far from sensible but each time this feeling went away because of a vivid shine of his eyes strengthened by well-composed speech and a little reticence. Simply speaking, he made a wonderful impression upon a listener, may be even some kind of hypnotism. All this Holmes decided later, when he and Renier were far from “Askania-Nova”; and now Holmes attentively listened to count’s story.
So, gentlemen, I am sure that the acts of terrorism in New York and Washington were hold in the “John the Baptiser’s Decapitation” not occasionally. Everybody should pay his checks: the circle has been enclosed. The Acrisius and his grandson Perseus myth algorithm, which first part was the seemed to be harmless photo in “Trud”, has finished sixteen years later with the bloody final that anyone could see. The west civilization considering itself to be a Christian one is a biblical civilization per se; however, it is started not from the crucifixion of Christ as the church canons and the official history assure the people, but from the act of “John the Baptiser’s Decapitation”[44].On September 11, 2001, the time of this civilization has ended. The epoch of Pisces has lasted for two millennia; it is followed, as one knows, by the epoch of Aquarius. Pisces (looking as fishes) is a symbol of the biblical civilization and we found such a symbol – “the dead fish” – on the third “Post Historical Picnic”. What does it mean? Just the fall of the biblical civilization. For an ordinary western man, who fights back all unpleasant “mystics”, it’s hard to believe in it. But if one don’t believe and don’t think about it, I would not like to say, there will be other signs, and unfortunately also tragic. Gentlemen, I see in your eyes that you are waiting for some clear explanations of my version or some proofs.