The Tournament of Messiahs

By Charles Spellmann

God has placed spiritual leaders, messiahs, on the planets where humans live. God arranges for several of these spiritual leaders to come together on a young planet to present their beliefs for the people. This event was inspired when God and his close advisor angels were discussing the spiritual leaders from different planets. Jesus is one of the presenters. Several characters from book 1 (including Mary) are part of the audience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665559218

Book preview

2022 Charles Spellmann. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/10/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5922-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5920-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5921-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022908565

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

1 What Next?

2 Satan Eavesdrops

3 Never Give Up!

4 Lab Report

5 Stoning

6 Tournament of Messiahs

7 The Tournament of Messiahs

8 Return to Earth

9 The Planning

10 A Vacation?

11 Lish

12 Gennesaret

13 Noname

14 Davu

15 Laven

16 The Sprint Arrives

17 A Smile

18 Calm Yourself!

19 Save the World!

20 The Sprint arrives

21 The Sater Arrives

22 On Stage

23 Bodi

24 The Tournament Continues

25 The Second Day

26 The Play Offs

27 The Next Messiah

28 The Parable of Marna

29 Return to Bigor

30 Is a Plan Necessary?

31 Figure It Out!

32 Draw a Line!

33 Messiah Conflict

34 The Commercial Side of Things

35 The Prayer

36 Back in the Lab

37 The Lines Are Drawn

38 Conflict

39 The Tournament

40 The Presentation of Lavel

41 More New Beginnings

42 Lab Report

49133.png

1

WHAT NEXT?

T he laboratory stretched out in all directions, filled with desks and lab tables and computers and other equipment helpful in the planning and implementation of God’s human projects! Busy technicians studied materials at their tables and conferred with one another. The activity was more intense than usual because the staff had been assigned a new project!

Was it another Messiah Placement? The rumors among God’s staff was a surprising negative! This was to be something different!

Almost every one had assumed that the projects were going well enough to satisfy God. Maybe, someone mused, the last placement, number seventeen, had been such an improvement in outcome that God was now ready to stop trying new things. Placing armed guards with the Messiah had been an exciting strategy! The staff was eager for a verification that their hard work had been worthwhile! But then, no doubt, God would insist that they fine tune the experimental design even more for the next Messiah Placement!

How God loved those humans! But would He ever be satisfied with the outcomes of these messianic rescues of the human race? The technicians were Angels, trusted and competent beings who had once walked on God’s worlds. They were chosen by God to reside with him as His helpers after their human deaths. Not that God needed their intellect, or other talents, but he loved humans! He loved interacting with them, challenging their minds with new tasks! He often found that their ideas were good, and used them to flesh out his own plans for mankind!

Humans were God’s creation, and his hobby as well. How good could he make them? More importantly, could they learn to survive and get along with one another on their own world?

God would never be happy with humans until they understood his definition of love and implemented its practice! Understanding what God wanted, and using that information as a recipe for one’s behavior, to truly make an effort to love others, was much easier talked about than done! That was obvious, but until a human was willing to fully embrace love of others, then God would not be satisfied!

But then the verdict was announced: God was still not satisfied with the Messiah project! The most recent messianic intervention had been an improvement, true, but God still wanted the outcome to be better! Some said that God’s weakness for the human race was so great that he would never be happy until the creatures treated one another as well as he would treat them. That was the problem, someone said! God invested too much of himself in his creation, unrealistically believing that the humans could learn to be like him!

It will never work, someone quipped. He wants humans to be loving—and never have reason to harm anyone---even if they and their families are threatened!

He wants an impossible outcome! someone said, and a murmuring of agreement echoed through the room.

God, the creator of human life in the universe, was still in the process of shaping a race of people who would satisfy his standards of cooperative and responsible living! It had seemed like such an easy project in the beginning. Now it had become clear to all that the task was far from simple. After each messianic trial turned into a disappointment, if not a calamity, he asked the directors of operations if they had any new insights into the problems with humans. The data was examined, the records analyzed, and the accounts of the undercover observers—on site recorders--considered.

The reason for the failure of the humans to prosper on the planets where they had been placed inevitably came down to the crucial inability—or unwillingness-- to get along with one another for any length of time! They turned selfish and mean and violent, and it was sickening to observe how cruelly they treated other humans!

And there was Satan!

It was known that a major obstacle to humans’ relationships was caused by God’s enemy, an evil force often referred to as Satan! This entity seemed to always be present and caused- the humans to be less than what God intended! In fact, this devil often made humans into immoral beings without a conscience, unworthy of being called God’s Children!

But God never gave up!

One of his advisors said, The humans are tough! They may spend most of their time surviving their environment! But unfortunately much of their energy is expended figuring out how to deal with other humans!

Ahl, one of God’s most trusted advisors, said thoughtfully, It occurred to me that we are overlooking something important about these humans.

Everyone stopped and listened. We place a Messiah on a planet where the population in a certain geographic locale has been awaiting His arrival for many years. And He has a positive impact after He appears! Very strong and lasting effect! He paused as if trying to gather his thoughts into some coherence; he had never expressed this idea before!

The Messiah and his followers have a positive effect on the morals and behaviors of the local population. Of course, in time it is spread to other lands and their people.

And your point is…? someone asked.

On the other side of a planet, far away from our Messiah’s ministry, other humans reside. How do those populations handle the difficult questions of life? They have no holy instructions about how to get along with one another! Nobody sent them a Messiah with orders to love one another!

Another said, Yes, but they do manage to adjust reasonably well! At least they do well enough to survive! Staying alive seems to be an endless game of who can be toughest and claim the most! His expression was one of sour distaste. They are too selfish!"

Wouldn’t you be selfish if you believed that was necessary for the survival of you and your family?!

God was the architect of advanced life, the ultimate creator of harmony and love and respect among and between the races he had created. But, he had soon found that to place humans on these new and untamed planets with only the ability to love, simply was not enough! Love and caring for other humans proved to be inadequate to tame a wild planet, overcome the hardships of the environment, fight off animal predators, persevere through hard climate changes, adjust cooperatively when famine appeared and deal effectively with other natural challenges! They had to be tough to survive on a new planet, and when toughness was added to their genetic makeup, bad things inevitably happened!

Like greed and hatred and wars and killings and other acts of destruction!

Which greatly saddened the Creator!

But God loved the humans. He thought of them as his children. He wanted his people to get along with one another, and even more, to love one another. But so far he had not been successful in achieving this goal on any large scale for any length of time!

The lab director patiently waited for God’s verdict. He was almost sure he knew what it would be. It was always the same: find a way to integrate into the human species a more effective antidote to the aggression and toughness so necessary for survival on a dangerous planet!

Yes, they had to be tough, even mean at times, to stay alive! But at the same time, love their neighbor! The staff had advised God to give it up! It’s an impossible goal!

Sir, the lab director said, We have sent messiahs to seventeen different worlds, and their teachings helped. But not enough. We have tried different messiahs with different kinds of teachings. For example, the fifteenth messiah—Jesus was his name- had a fresh message of how humans could get along. But it wasn’t enough! Got him killed. And a lot of other people as well. He still has his followers on Earth, but they are a minority and often in conflict with one another!

And? God waited, knowing that the lab director was leading up to another idea.

You recall the seventeenth messiah? Homus was his name. We sent armed guards for his protection, to give him a better chance of staying alive long enough to spread his teachings! He did well, but once the guards left, the situation went back to the same old way. He had a longer teaching time and reached more people; we were all very excited about that improvement! But, like the other teachers, he was eventually killed by the natives he came to help! Not much else good happened after that. He paused thoughtfully, said, "Maybe we should have left the guards in place longer!

We have also tried the rational approach, the lab director continued. As you recall, that style of living led to less aggression by the humans—they seemed more thoughtful and less prone to rash behavior. He shrugged. But they lacked the fervor and devotion that we value. Without those deep feelings of guilt and love the humans were …well…rational, true, but they didn’t show the depth of emotional commitment necessary for…well, killing marauders who attacked them and their families!

I want them to love one another in the same way I love them! God stubbornly intoned.

Ahl said, I have always believed the humans would be fine if it weren’t for Satan! He does his best to poison every planet!

Everyone nodded. They understood the quality of God’s love for his children, deeply admired it, in fact. But was it possible to instill such a lofty concept in humans? And in so doing not render them passive and helpless? And unable to deal with the evil of Satan!

There was a pause as if the director was, in his own mind, organizing his memory of the different approaches they had made in their work toward creating a sustainable and acceptable human race.

And then we tried the paranoid slant. We engineered humans to be so mistrustful of those outside their clan—or country—that they became convinced that you—God-- wanted the outsiders dead! And that you would reward them in the afterlife if they gave up their own lives to get rid of the infidels. The director shook his head in dismay. I never liked that one very much.

God grimaced and waited for the lab director to come to his point.

"We know how devoted you are to the human species. They can be loveable and display many quite admirable qualities. They can also be pitifully mean,

selfish, and stupid! But we haven’t implanted in them a philosophy, a code of conduct—at least not one with any lasting power—which would keep them from destructive behaviors!"

What could be better than the one we give them? asked Ahl. Loving one another! Forgiveness! Giving to those who have not! If only we could program them so that they had no choice but to carry out those instructions…But you said you cannot do that without taking away their autonomy, their ability to make their own choices. And what is the value of creating a population of mindless robots?!

Boring! someone said.

They mulled over the problem. Finally God said, Have we tried any other philosophies of human life? Other than the one we send with a messiah. Maybe the theology we have implanted In these messiahs is simply not effective enough by itself.

The belief in one Creator and his commandment to love one another, and forgive others, and share with the needy, had simply not consistently worked well for most of the humans. They were too emotional, and that invited irrational and destructive thoughts and impulses! Training the human mind to rationally assess and control destructive impulses had been insufficient; there was less irrational behavior, but also less emotion. And without love and caring, what was mankind worth? You had to have emotions to fuel the humans into action, but too often the result was a deadly collision between competing interests and personal preferences! And fear!

No doubt for many humans God’s bedrock commandment of love had worked well, for there were many serene, caring, forgiving, and helpful people on all the worlds God and his team had touched! These good and loving individuals were thankfully recognized for these qualities! But in the overall scheme of things, the results had been disappointing! There was still no proof that any one approach was workable, especially on a large scale for any length of time. Even those people who had committed to God’s command to love others often ended up being tortured and punished for adopting those very qualities!

There was a long silence as God and his assistants mulled over the situation. Suddenly one of the workers, a somewhat serious looking woman with a sharp glint in her eyes, spoke up. Her face was alight with the excitement of her idea!

Hmmm. I know! Myra exclaimed. Let’s do this on the next planet! We’ll have a competition! A Messiah competition!

There was silence. What was she talking about?

We have always placed the messiah on one part of the planet and even laid the preparatory ground work for his arrival. We orchestrated announcements by wise people to prepare the population to some day expect a visitation by a Messiah, the Son of God, who will show people the way to be happy and please God. Myra gazed around the room and saw that she had the attention of everyone!

We brought in messiahs, announced by a star, and then waited to see what would happen! Well, did you ever stop to consider what is going on in lands on the other sides of the planets? They haven’t heard of a Messiah from God! But, humans being what they are, she nodded appreciatively toward God, they nevertheless construct their own ideas of how to cooperate with one another in order to survive a dangerous world.

She looked around at the others and said, If God’s directions about the best way to live one’s life are not available to the people who are struggling to survive in other places on the planet, what are they doing? How are they making it?

The others were showing curiosity about where this was going. Myra continued, "Humans are programmed to adapt and survive a hostile environment. We plant Messiahs, Super Teachers, to help the humans love one another because that makes things go better!

Have we ever paid much attention to what the other peoples do for guidance, the ones in other parts of a world? Where they have never heard of God’s teachings and have no expectation that a Messiah will some day appear with the answers! She paused for effect, then asked: How do they know what to do? How do they know the best ways to get along with others? The staff waited for her to continue.

God, and she nodded toward the Grand Creator, made all humans with enough intelligence to figure out that they have to cooperate with one another if they are to survive a hostile environment. So, over time, these different tribes create myths, stories of their own ideas of gods—someone with wisdom and authority—and power! These shared beliefs bring some order to their social groups. Some of the more creative peoples even place in writing the detailed teachings of the god figure! That makes it more believable . And easier to remember.

Someone called out, So how effective have these alternative messiahs been? Are the people in these other lands any better or worse than those to whom we send a Real Messiah?

Good question! several workers called out. Their curiosity had been aroused. God smiled; he liked this kind of critical thinking.

Myra continued, So my idea is that on the next planet we have a competition! What if the teachers of several moral approaches, those which evolved in different places on a planet, engage in a contest? And the audience can judge which set of religious teachings made the most sense for them!

Everyone looked toward God, eager to see the reaction of the Creator!

A Tournament of Messiahs, said God, a smile appearing on his face. He had designed all humans and he had often been curious about what kinds of moralistic concepts evolved when he did not provide a messiah with an explicit set of how to live a successful life instructions. So devoted was God to love and forgiveness and other moral teachings, that he had never bothered to closely examine what other humans, the societies which had been deprived of those commands, had done for moral guidance!

Myra continued. We could bring together proponents of the various gods from other parts of the planet! They could make a presentation of how their beliefs work to improve their quality of life!

We’ll have to get the word out to a lot of people! someone said.

And we’ll have to figure out a judging system!

What would motivate interest in the contest?

And then what? someone else asked, bringing a silence to the excited murmuring of the workers. Do we take the best parts of these philosophies and mix them together into a super recipe for living? Or choose a grand winner and eliminate the rest?

No one had a clear idea. God probably knew what was going to happen but didn’t want to spoil the creative excitement of his workers. Or did he? Maybe he didn’t want to know before hand.

Make up a good experimental design, including getting the word out to the people, God said, and we’ll see what comes of that.

Myra’s colleagues showed appreciation to her for the idea. They were excited about the novelty of the approach, and intrigued by the possible outcome.

Do you think we will see the same ideas we already tried, or something new and different? mused one.

Hmmm. I don’t know, but if you mix different ingredients together, you could get something new and better.

Or worse, someone quipped.

It’s a gamble, but then how many sure things do we deal with?

Everyone was intrigued with the concept. The more they thought of what might emerge from such a situation, the more excited they became. God’s own beloved philosophy of love and forgiveness could be put on display for all to see! And then it could be contrasted with those other survival strategies which inevitably came into existence when a population of humans needed moral guidelines for their group behavior. It was never easy living with others!

Maybe a hybrid theology? One that takes the best of each? Myra said happily, and grinned at her coworkers. That is what I would like to see happen!

Set it up, said God. See how many different philosophies you can identify, those which worked reasonably well on a world, and we’ll start with the next planet!

The lab director nodded, smiled, and said, This should be most interesting!

And transforming! added God with a smile. He had not felt so excited in a long time. God, being a great creator, knew of course that he could simply make everything just right on a planet, provide the best and most sensible habits and thoughts and behaviors in humans, and never have to risk the lives of messiahs in an attempt to improve the morals of the people. But if he made humans into perfect wind up toys, with no challenges, no dangers, no opportunities to better themselves through their own intelligence and creativity and courage—how boring!

And he could never forget the power of the Satan, God’s counterpart in the universe, who would like nothing better than to infect all of a world’s population with hatred and failure and death!

It had been a long time ago when God first made humans. He loved them and had insured the best for them through his power. However, after awhile, God had second thoughts. God knew which beliefs and practices were effective, and if the humans would only embrace them then they would live happily together! All they needed was a good teacher!

But it wasn’t so easy after all! If he made the humans strong and willful and resilient and aggressive, then they were able to survive a challenging environment. But then they often became greedy, and did not want to share, or be caring of others, qualities necessary for the healthy adjustment of any group of people. They often turned their frustrations and fears toward other humans. In fact, God witnessed not only how difficult it was for humans to love one another, but he saw that cruelty and greed and stupidity existed to an extent he had not envisioned. And he did not like it at all! Should he take away the free will of humans?

No.

Teach them a better way!

Take the report to the lab, God said, and Myra, still grinning, did so.

49133.png

2

SATAN EAVESDROPS

S omewhere in the universe Satan listened to the conversation in God’s lab. One of Wizl’s assistants had secretly opened a line to Satan’s wave length. Jib had never agreed with God’s plans to improve the plights of humans! Those silly people just did not deserve that chance! If he—or someone—could help make those experiments fail, then the sooner God would give up on humans and go on to something else!

Something worthwhile!

Jib scowled; he had never liked God’s approach to humans! The sooner God gave up on this plan and went on to something more productive, the better off everyone would be! He shook his head in angry despair; love would never bring peace to humans—no matter on which planet they were placed, or who the messiah was!

In the first place, God was too optimistic! He seemed to believe that if people learned to love other humans, then all would be well!

Well, Satan certainly knew better than that! In fact, he believed that humans were receptive to the idea that other people were not trustworthy! And humans could easily be pushed to the point where they hated their fellow beings and would even kill them!

Satan mused over the discussion in God’s lab. What if a few of God’s messiahs—those miserable blabbery silly people-- came together and told their beliefs to the people….and…what if Satan placed his own messiah, someone who would preach what the devil wanted…now that could be interesting!

And the crowd would like Satan’s messiah best, for basically humans were selfish and hateful and untrustworthy!

Satan grinned, slapped the table in front of him, and laughed loudly!

This would be fun!

49133.png

3

NEVER GIVE UP!

A zimil cursed, looked around the room one more time, and his bleary eyes reddened, releasing tears to drip on his chest. He moaned! A sharp pain traveled up his leg, then turned into a dull throbbing that was more intense than any he had ever experienced! He wasn’t getting any better, he realized! It was worse! He groaned even louder, an anguished protest ! His strength was rapidly ebbing. And he was close to giving up! How easy it would be to roll over, shut down his mind, and just die!

He had tried so hard to complete his mission! And now it would be impossible! If only he had not suffered the leg wound!

The pain was unbearable and tears, seemingly larger than ever, welled from his eyes! Azimil was done! It was time to quit! Shut off his brain and just die!

An image niggled at the edge of his consciousness; suddenly an image of Mila appeared! Mila, his beloved mate! Her face exuded strength! Her eyes showed great concern but not despair! The image of Mila’s face tentatively smiled at Azimil, a clear message which said she expected him to come home again!

She quietly said, "Don’t give up! Never give