Saturday, September 15, 2001 Home > World > Article News National World Opinion Entertainment Column 8 a.m. Edition Text Index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sport Sports News Rugby Heaven RealFooty -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Biz/Tech Biz-Tech News Money Manager Trading Room I.T. News Icon -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Extra Letters Editorial Web Diary News Review Spectrum Travel Multimedia -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sydney Weather TV Guide Visiting Weekends Away -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Market Shopping Jobs Property Buy/Sell Cars Auctions I.T. Jobs Classifieds -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Services Advertise - print - online Delivery - paper - e-mail - handheld Subculture -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help Audio/video - WORLD First get your relic of Jesus ... then find a virgin Cloning Hitler ... Gregory Peck in The Boys from Brazil. By Steve Gushee in West Palm Beach A fringe group that calls itself Christian has taken the movie The Boys from Brazil to new and bizarre heights. They want to clone Jesus. The strange outfit is called The Second Coming Project. It has a Web site (www.clonejesus.com) that explains its plot. The group has no known relationship with any reputable Christian organisation. It is simply another of the innumerable quasi-religious groups that play on the fears and hopes of the naive. They want to force the Second Coming of Jesus. The plan is to take a DNA sample of Jesus from one of the relics of his body they claim can be found in churches throughout the world. Take a cell from a relic of the Suffering Servant, put it into an unfertilised human egg and create a zygote of Jesus. Place that in the womb of a young woman, a virgin of course, and, there you have it - a baby Jesus. They will not successfully clone Jesus, of course. But they might swindle some folk of their money or their faith. The whole idea is a pathetic replay of the 1978 horror movie The Boys from Brazil. In the film, Gregory Peck, as Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, cloned several copies of Adolf Hitler to launch a new Third Reich. The Second Coming Project wants to launch a new age, but its mix of theology and reproductive sciences is terribly skewed. Its backers say they want Jesus to return to save the world from sin. Yet all churches teach that that has been accomplished and need not be done again. Scripture insists that, by the death of Jesus, the world has been redeemed. The Bible is adamant that we are not to know the time or the season of his return, much less make it happen. The arrogance that anyone can recreate God's agent on Earth is a kind of blasphemy that rivals that of the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis. Finally, the earthly remains of Jesus, if any, are worthless for cloning. The church teaches that Jesus ascended bodily into heaven, saying that if he did not leave, the Holy Spirit could not come to enliven the church. The relics of his life are pious reminders of his presence but hardly little pieces of DNA from the son of God. It's a clever scam, but it's all for naught, in any event. If they brought Jesus back, this perverse generation would crucify him again. Cox Newspapers [go to top] In this section Mystery grows as Afghan guerilla leader is replaced Justice's absence keenly felt on anniversary of massacre Mugabe may have second thoughts on land promise New Tory leader faces his first test Millennium blunder that led to abortions Chinese look to swap bullets for needles Second patient given an artificial heart First get your relic of Jesus ... then find a virgin Mobile deal enables partners to keep tabs on phoney lovers Forget the gulag, Siberian hills are now alive with holidaymakers Trekkers take their Sherpas home The changing face of big-time crime Under cover in war against animal abuse How chillis use chemical charm to decide who's coming to dinner -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Site Guide | Archive | Feedback | Privacy Policy Copyright © 2001. All rights reserved.