Dear Dirty America

What if Jesus, after he returned to earth, could only muster up about 5000 Twitter followers? What if there was a media blackout on His arrival, and he was blackballed by CNN and every other major news network? What if the messiah’s message just wasn’t getting through to the world’s mass population of overstimulated peoples?

Well, supposedly it’s true. That is the story I was told when I watched a video called “The Messiah’s Arrival in Jerusalem“. A man named Raymond Elwood, who worked for a goodwill group in Chicago (that may or may not have had ties to local gangs), was targeted by corrupt cops and city officials, and eventually ended up in Jerusalem to be endowed with the spirit of God, which was actually caught on video. This event transformed Elwood into the Son of God. Jesus Christ. Or, Lord RayEl, as he’s called this time around. That all happened during the summer of 2011 and is currently playing out today.

So, what we’ve got here is the returned Christ, largely unacknowledged and having to compete with a saturated market of YouTube videos, self-published books, and digital music mashups, who has turned to his unlimited inner reserve of pure rage and unbridled power to get the world’s attention.

RayEl warned us multiple times, and after each warning a noteworthy natural disaster took place.

Record breaking storms producing hundreds of top-shelf tornadoes that obliterated towns throughout the Midwest, with the intent to tear up the homes and lives of the Western hemisphere’s unrepentant Bible Belt Christians. Massive storms also ripped through New York City. A CNN anchor, female and too attractive, said at the time, “Have you ever seen such a storm over Manhattan?”

Well, no, and did you ever hear of Jesus Christ coming back to earth and struggling to get enough Twitter followers to start a buzz?

After the spring storms came record heat waves that overcooked most of the nation’s heartland and destroyed the crops, strained and toppled power grids, and sparked wildfires, most notably in Colorado. There was a massive sun flare. And then the biggest hurricanes we’ve ever seen rolled through. Even the men and women in the space station marveled at the width of Sandy. Through all of this, Lord RayEl admonished us, or rather, he sent out a series of warning tweets. But who saw them? I didn’t.

Once, he even tried to be hip by tweeting the music video from a band called 30 Second To Mars. The song? “This Is War”. Personally, I’ve never taken that band seriously, and I don’t know anybody who has. It wouldn’t have resonated as an ominous sign had I seen it.

And still, despite the warnings, and despite the prophesied carnage coming true, the returned Christ could drum up no more than 5000-some Twitter followers, and a meager Facebook audience. His public relations team, who pretend they’re part of the Knights Templar, just can’t seem to get RayEl’s message out there. Not that they’re doing a terrible job. RayEl’s YouTube videos have garnered a few hundred thousand hits,which is more attention than I’ve been capable of commanding through blogging.

At the official RayEl website, anybody can donate to the cause. That might help him buy more advertising and get his message out there. Then again, if the returned Jesus is powerful enough to cause an earthquake in Washington DC, he could have easily used that power to communicate with the people of the world and properly ask them to repent before brewing up storms and cranking up the sun.

But for Christ? Come on. I watched the video above, and the most striking part for me was that I’d never heard the message, so after two years of promotion and bringing down God’s wrath upon the unrepentant heads of small-town Christians, I was disturbed by the utter communication failure of what would otherwise be an impressive man (Son of Man & God), and his Templar Knights.

“How do you expect me or anybody else to repent,” I kept shouting at my computer screen, “if I haven’t even heard your fucking message? How would I know you’re here?”

All signs point to this world careening toward a bitter ending, or maybe it will just be bitter for the human race, and not the actual globe, but if Christ comes back, I’ll want to be sure of it, and not have to, by chance, discover the news through a mis-titled video that chides me for ignoring His warnings.

But still, the Protestant seeds that were deeply planted into my childhood psyche will always harbor some fear in missing Christ’s message, or God’s message, and suffering the ultimate penalty of eternal horror and agony. Which means, despite the scoffing at the video above, another tiny (but not insignificant) voice pipes up in my mind, “But remember, if Jesus did come back, there’s a chance he’d use the common communication medium of our modern world, and completely fail at it.” It’s not like he was heavily broadcast the first time he landed on earth.

Which would explain the poor showing of RayEl’s Twitter and Facebook campaigns. Even though the spirit of Christ has always been good at one-liners — “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last” or “blessed are the peacemakers” — they are not the right one-liners needed to make a Twitter account go viral. Not anymore. There’s a whole other level of wisdom online these days. Unless he could get a retweet from the plumped Kim Kardashian or the embarrassingly popular Justin Bieber, I don’t think Jesus, real or fake, would have much of a shot at getting an audience.

“Like” Dear Dirty America on Facebook