TANATA:

TANATA has learned from an unidentified female caller “from upstate New York” that Dan Brown, best-selling author, “has not plotted or written a single viable word of any of his novels.”

“It has been novels by committee,” she said.

The caller said that she had read our tongue-in-cheek essay about Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code” and other previous novels possibly being ghostwritten, and called to say, “Bingo.” We raised the point that we were sort of working on a piece about the elaborate websites devoted to “The Da Vinci Code” and the codes in the dust jackets, which we suspect were not Brown’s work, so who’s were they? Again, the caller said, “Bingo.”

The caller did not say how she got our number, which is not provided on this site … I don’t think. Shoot, if someone wants someone’s phone number badly enough, not to mention their favorite flavor of ice cream, and if they’re willing to pay whomever, Equifax, or Big Brother’s Dirt Farm or Zoominfo, they can get it.

The caller referred us to the Wikipedia biography online, Brown’s “lightweight” educational background and previous projects — “children’s tapes” — and the very odd marital relationship with Blythe, which we had never looked into. She also said that we should go to the Exeter website, a private school where Brown’s father taught, and read the piece about the fund being set up in honor of Richard Brown, Dan’s father. So, we did. She made reference to “Bush family ties” … and my first thought was … the Hinckleys all over again! We read the piece at the Exeter site, the reference is there, but we haven’t corroborated any of this. We don’t know if this caller is blowing smoke or pranking us or what, but it was unusual enough to take note of.

And, since we aren’t legitimate media, alternative news, as they say, we figured we’ll fire it onto the old TANATAscope so youse guys could read about it. Isn’t guerilla communications technology fun?

We do intend to follow up, and we’re in the process even now trying to track down Brown’s number, or that of a publicist, or some spokesperson at Doubleday, but good luck, right? We’d also like to talk to the guy or gal who designed the book covers not only in America but internationally and see who has made the decisions on including codes in those, particularly those which are supposed to give a heads up on books to come. If this is not a campaign, being orchestrated, what else could it be, if the covers all have codes … and if Brown isn’t creating them?

We have to presume that Brown, who says he is good in mathematics, but doesn’t know why (even though his father happens to be a … MATHEMATICIAN!), did not sit down and come up with all of these little code games on his website and those found on sites promoting the novel. I’d like to know who has designed the sites, too. Who pays to keep them up.

Of course, all of the stuff we’ve been working on pertaining to John Mark, and our allegations that not only is the code a coverup, and part of a campaign, but one that reaches back to the days of Jesus … if not before. I’ve never been satisfied with any of the explanations re Solomon and Queen of Sheba, and how all of that plays into this ooky, spooky stuff and the novel to come. Oh, what a tangled web we weave … when first we practice to bash Jesus, we say …

… who is looking pretty good, considering if your opponent lies in a debate and gets caught … the debate is OVER.

More to come, as we gain some facts. Until then, we don’t know whether this caller is credible … or the lady next door, who has been winking at me lately. Kidding. Seriously, everything we have done thus far on Brown and the code/coverup has been speculative, although we stand by our biblical scholarship with regard to John Mark … and how he was most likely painted out of the dry-plaster fresco in Milan, for reasons which we detail in previous posts.

So, is there any truth to any of this? We haven’t got a clue. But it feels about right. Who sits on a novel that the world is anticipating — or so they tell us — with baited breath, when all you have to do is type ‘the end’ and turn it over to an editor. Except, perhaps, in Brown’s case, he may just stand back and watch all the alchemists as they hover over their manuscript … like a cauldron of brew. Ha ha ha ha ha.

—rcg

by Randall Carter Gray

As we await Dan Brown’s next guaranteed to be best-selling novel (nearly two years late), which this time will do a number on the Hebrew portion of our Bibles, we predict, we’ve been wondering what the holdup is with Not The Solomon Key, a working title which reportedly has been dropped. It could actually be coming up with a title for Brown’s fifth book, which will deal with the wholesomely kooky hi-jinks associated with Freemasonry.

Or, perhaps Lucifer, that stickler, just won’t let go of those galley proofs.

If a title is the problem, we have a couple of suggestions. How about: “Where In The World Is John?” or “The Disciple Whom Jesus Forgot” or “The Ghostwritten Code” or “Lady Sheba’s Lover” or “The Ethiopian Messiah That Never Was” or “My Goat-Footed Gal” or “Men In Aprons” or “Is That An Obelisk, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?”

None of those? Well, some of those are rather esoterically vague. We will come back to them and tell you how we came up with them, later on in the series Christian Heroes and Villains if you care to read about it. How about “Will The Real John And Mary Please Stand Up” or “Look Out! That Floating Hand With No Arm Has A Knife … Code” or “Passover At High Noon”?

You like “The Ghostwritten Code”? We do, too.

Also while we’re waiting for what could be called “Is Nothing Sacred, Part Deux,” which we believe like the first four of Brown’s books may also be gang ghostwritten, we’d thought we’d kick around the nature of secrets and clubs which kids who are up to no good will often form. Remember those?

When you were a little kid, did you ever have a circumstance in which you found yourself being told by someone older and “wiser”: “Hey, you want to be in our club? But if you join, you can’t tell anybody what we’re doing … or you get beat up”? Or a situation where someone, someone older, past the age of discretion, meaning 14 or 15, wanted to pull down your pants … and did, and then said after it was all over, with fear on his or her face said, “You can’t tell anyone, okay? It’ll just be our little secret.”

Things that seem pleasurable followed by those words … are paradoxical … and disorienting. They twist you. Make you feel guilty without really knowing why … or without trying to know why. This is the silent trauma that children experience when an adult figure, or perceived adult, sexually violates a child … which often resulting in mental illness due to unprocessed shame and guilt. Things that are bad for you usually lead to someone having to keep a secret. We know this having majored in psychology and having had a lifelong interest in human evil … and what it is.

Secrets are kept secrets for a reason. Because letting the cat out of the bag undoes the scheme that the big schemer behind the whole thing has cooked up. Secret clubs and groups, which by their very nature have contempt for other average folks, outsiders, are nefarious by nature, not to be trusted, suspicious. Weird.

It would take a lot to get me to put on an apron and say a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and do all these secret handshakes and rituals. I wouldn’t do it. I’d look at someone and laugh and say, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Whaddya think I am, some kind of fruitcake?”

Also, while we’ve been waiting, we’ve been wondering how many people does it take to write and write fairly readably well … outright blood-curdling blasphemy?

How many heretics does it take to screw in a best-selling novel?

And who funds blockbuster films … that bash the Redeemer of mankind, unless they don’t think he is … and don’t, not because they have a death wish, but because they think they have a really, really good reason not to, some alternative information, some secret inside knowledge, which these secretive wizened people claim to have, which allows them to sleep at night? Suckers.

The truth trumps that nonsense all day long … and dishonest people obviously don’t know that, so they keep signing up and joining, even if they say, “If you tell anybody, we’ll have to beat you up.”

Having said all of those things … we believe Dan Brown has had and still has ghost writers. A whole upper room full of them. In fact, he might not be writing a single word of what is being put out under his name. Just a hunch. But we think we have some reasons to be suspicious.

Consider the following quotes by the golden boy of fiction at the moment — and maybe from here on — which appeared in a self-promoting flyer in Bookpage, with softball questions (Words in parentheses are mine):

“My interest in secret societies is the product of many experiences, some I can discuss, others I cannot. (Oooo.) Certainly my research of organizations like NSA, the Vatican, NRO, and Opus Dei continues to fuel my intrigue. (Why? Been there, done that.) At a more fundamental level, though, my interest sparks from growing up in New England, surrounded by the clandestine clubs of Ivy League universities (Of course it does, dahling), the Masonic lodges of our Founding Fathers, and the hidden hallways of early government power. (Oooo.) New England has a long tradition of elite private clubs (That would explain the leather patches on the elbows of his sports jackets), fraternities, and secrecy. On that theme, the next Robert Langdon novel is set deep within the oldest fraternity in history … the enigmatic brotherhood of the Masons.”

Maybe we’re being to hard on the former actor. But we think this guy is spooky, and, therefore, not too bright. Elitists don’t have to be bright, which explains the presidency. And so they can afford to be spooky. They are easy prey for elitist spooks, who lure you into their private clubs … pull down your pants or suck the blood out of you. Consider these quoted remarks from the same article, generated presumably as an ad by Doubleday:

“I first learned of Da Vinci’s (that would be … Leonardo’s, Dan. Otherwise what you’re calling him is “Of Vinci,” instead of by his name) affiliation with the Priory of Sion when I was studying art history at the University of Seville” (There is no proof Leonardo was affiliated with any such organization), Brown says in a telephone interview from his home in New Hampshire. “One day, the professor showed us a slide of ‘The Last Supper’ and began to outline all the strange anomalies in the painting (Keen! What a great reason for a hatchet job on Jesus, except it was been repainted, as we will suggest and adequately defend, we think, in part two, or will it be three? Anyway …). My awareness of Opus Dei came through an entirely different route and much later in my life. After studying the Vatican to write Angels & Demons, I became interested in the secrecy of the Vatican and some of the unseen hierarchy. Through that, I also became interested in Opus Dei and met some of the people in it.” (Did you? Good, Dan, that’s the way research works.) “One of the aspects that I try very hard to incorporate in my books is that of learning” (Hmm. You mean, teaching?), he says. “When you finish the book — like it or not — you’ve learned a ton. (A ton? You mean like a totally humongous amount, Dan?)

“I had to do an enormous amount of research [for this book]. My wife is an art historian and a Da Vinci fanatic (Wow! … why?). So I had a leg up on a lot of this, but it involved numerous trips to Europe, study at the Louvre, some in-depth study about the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei and about the art of Da Vinci” (You mean, Leonardo … again).

“For some reason, I was a good math student” (Intelligence?), Brown says, explaining his involvement with codes and symbols. “And language came easily. Cryptology and symbology are really fusions of math and language. My father is a well-known mathematician. I grew up around codes and ciphers. In The Da Vinci Code, there’s a flashback where Sophie recalls her grandfather creating this treasure hunt through the house for a birthday present. That’s what my father did for us. …

“I am fascinated with the gray area between right and wrong and good and evil. Every novel I’ve written so far has explored that gray area.” He reveals that his next novel will deal with “the oldest and largest secret society on earth” and with “the secret history of our nation’s capital.” (Hasn’t National Treasure been done? “Let’s do it again, the boss says to”).

Brown concedes that turning Christianity’s most fiercely held beliefs into fictional fodder may spark some controversy. But he says it’s a risk worth taking (He says he’s a Christian, which we become not to take risks, I think). “I worked very, very hard to make the book fair to all parties (You lying twit). Yes,it’s explosive. I think there will be people for whom this book will be — well, ‘offensive,’ may be too strong a
word. But it will probably raise some eyebrows.”

Christian heretics, people who claim to be Christians, but who are opposed to Christianity and Jesus, are liars, in our view, and have a tendency to make up spiritual things pertaining to Jesus. I don’t think it’s because they’re retards, either (not entirely), but because they have these secrets … and they think they’re right in what they know about Jesus. They know things, or they think they do, which we don’t, and they don’t want us to know. (Like Rome thinks it killed the right sacrificial lamb.)

Why? Why would anyone be so bold if the enemies of God, who are crafty but themselves deceived, aren’t behind such a scheme? All of this garbage smacks of a movement, an organized campaign, as evidenced by heresies of the past, some of which just rolled on like waves, perpetuated by weirdoes, like the bogus Prester John sagas, spread out from the 11th century to the 17th.

The people who tell the initiates these secrets must have said, “Okay, now don’t tell anybody. The only way that anyone gets told any of this stuff, is if they join the club, too,” which usually involves inappropriate behavior; it must, why hide it, otherwise? Once you’re in and way in, they tell you in so many words … “If you tell anyone, we’ll have to kill you.” How good is such knowledge, if it is held back from other people who might be helped by it? How good is it and how good is the organization that would kill you … if you spoke about it? Not too damn good, in my book.

Also, it has been suspiciously disingenuous of the church in Rome to have cried crocodile tears, very apparently, in its reaction to The Da Vinci Code, when the truth, very apparently, it seems to me, is that Brown’s book only supplements the heresy of which the church of Rome is itself guilty and has been for years.

I’ve always had a problem with the religious institution which killed Jesus wanting to be in charge of the church of Jesus … and doing such a dreadfully awful job — cases in point being the inquisitions, et al., looking away while priests are diddling boys, corruption, secrecy, and the whole grandeur thing, when Jesus was a Jew, poor as a church mouse, with no place to lay his head, who taught humility and forgiveness and austere living.

Could you get the message of Jesus anymore wrong than they have?

What do you want to bet that this followup book to The Da Vinci Code, which was supposed to be out in 2006 and then 2007, is going through revisions by a committee? When a writer is done … he let’s a book go, because he can’t write it any better. He doesn’t string it out, go past deadline, because he doesn’t want to. You want to be done with a writing project, to write that last sentence. The end.

Dan Brown isn’t smart enough to have written so elaborately the things he claims to have written. And he has moved in some creepy, evil circles in New England … and creepy, evil people can’t think, obviously … not well enough to save themselves, for starters.

It takes a lot of dumb Gnostics to screw in a light bulb. They have to know the light … be the light …

I’ll bet you that Brown’s next novel is a disguised promotion for more of the stuff that he himself has grown up with, Freemasonry being one, his affections for which … are secret, to him and the club of ghostwriters to which we believe he belongs.

What Sort of Person Would Intentionally Write False Scriptural Material … and Why?

With the help of some very good sites pertaining to the New Testament “canon,” i.e., the books accepted as legitimate works pertaining to doctrine and actual events, written honestly and for the purpose of advancing the truth about Jesus and his unique and exclusive capability as a 100 percent divine son of God, able to redeem you and me, we’re going to begin a series called Christian Heroes and Villains.

It’s important to know whose telling the truth and who isn’t about Jesus: and we keep finding people opposed to Jesus caught up in all sorts of lies, such as this Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code nonsense, which we believe he had help in writing. As a matter of fact, The Da Vinci Code novel may have been written by committee. We’ve have some inside info on that, by the way. It is a rumor, if that’s what it is, which is beginning to build.

As the name of our series implies, there are sheep and there are wolves in sheep’s clothing. The sheep are those whom Jesus can attract with his words of truth, the wolves in sheep’s clothing are a different breed altogether. First of all, they ain’t sheep, but they want people to think that they’re sheep. We’ve had some people like that working around here. You have some people like that working around you wherever you are.

But we’re not calling names.

What we are doing, as best we can, is trying to educate people about deception, pathological liars, heretics, wolves in sheep’s clothing. And, we invoke the words of Jesus and what he said about how to tell a true person from a phony: by their fruit. And that’s how you should judge me and anyone who writes for TANATA, if we ever write anything that doesn’t absolutely ring with truth, if we can’t back up what we say … then you ought to call us on it. I mean it. If we’re blowing smoke in your opinion on this whole idea of an African writer of the Bible being hidden because of a racist agenda which is bigger than all of us, in my opinion, then you ought to say to yourself, this guy’s full of baloney, and surf away and never come back to this site.

But we can back up everything we say about John Mark … and the apparently organized, very organized effort to obscure his contributions to Christianity. We don’t know what the full agenda or plan is, but we know that if someone has gone to an awful lot of trouble to hide someone from folks who could have been helped personally by knowing who this hidden person is, well, you’re a fool not to at least draw some conclusions.

We’re not trying to be provocative and to call attention to ourselves and this website just for the sake of doing that, we just think people ought to have the truth. And if we think we have it, we’re going to say so. And if people won’t listen to us, we may have to put on a gorilla suit and jump up and down … and then settle down and lay it on you when we have your attention. Fair enough? Why do we do that? Because there are so many messages today vying for our attention, that they truth can get lost … if you don’t have a gimmick. But don’t write us off for saying that … wait until you see and read what we have to say. If you can’t buy it, write us and say so … and then move on.

So, back to true and false scripture, heroes and villains, and what would cause a person to sit down and knowingly write false material, especially if it is meant to discredit Jesus? Some people have no fear of God — I don’t mean quaking in your boots, but recognizing that he is sovereign and he exists, and he can get his will accomplished, whether we want it to be that way or not. Click on this link and take a look at this chart. You don’t have to understand it all at once, but take a look at the left-hand column and see the various writings from top to bottom, and then look across the top of this chart.

The initials or abbreviations across the top are those so-called “early Christian fathers” who determined very early only what was legitimately divinely inspired, true, no-nonsense teaching in written form … and that which was not valid or legitimate, divinely inspired teaching in written form. The notion that there has ever been any question or debate as to whether someone was writing what they knew to be the truth, the idea that someone would say that Jesus said this or Jesus said that, when he didn’t, just boggles my mind. The idea that people in a position to influence people have said to themselves, Okay I know Jesus didn’t really say this, or that one of the disciples or apostles didn’t really say or do this, but I’m going to say they did anyway, tells me something weird is going on; it tells me that there are motivations behind such deceit as that, and I want to know what it is.

So, we have these early church fathers, writing from the late first century to about the early third century A.D., who put their heads together, and said, “Okay, now, this is the real thing … I can buy this” or they said, “Who wrote this load of nonsense? Throw it out!” Thank goodness the Lord was leading them, as I believe he was.

I don’t know about you, but I detest a liar who has hurting people in mind, a deceiver, someone who will lie about Jesus, or say or do something intentionally false for the purpose of affecting someone’s salvation, or making someone else look bad who really wants to help folks. We wrestle with those sorts of people all the time — wolves in sheep’s clothing. Having a degree in psychology, I feel somewhat qualified to weigh in on what causes a person to be pathologically deceitful. That’s why we have named our website TANATA, because we exist or want to for the purpose of exposing wolves who are wearing sheep’s clothing — heretics, people who misrepresent the truth about Jesus, for whatever reason they do it. And, as we have tried to show and get people to take a look at, sometimes with very extreme measures (we admittedly do some wacky things on this website), but we do it in love, there are people out there lying about Jesus … or either they are just dumb as mud. We admit that we are often intentionally provocative and strange, and mysterious, to draw you in as the reader … because everybody loves a mystery … and it’s fun trying to figure mysteries out. But once we have you, we’re going to tell you the truth about Jesus as we see it. And if we don’t, you can say so.

To our credit here at TANATA, though it has not been pleasant, we have dismissed a lot of sources of writing here lately, a lot different, talented writers, either because they got to where they didn’t like me … or they weren’t serious about walking with Jesus. We aren’t perfect. But we will never, ever, ever lie to you about Jesus and what we believe is true and what we believe is something you ought to consider for the benefit of your salvation. (We will tell a white lie, for self preservation purposes, or to keep from hurting someone’s feelings; for instance, when and if our better half has on a new dress and wants to be complimented … even if we don’t like it, we’ve learned not to say anything but something good. If she likes it, that’s what counts. We’ve gotten in trouble telling the blunt truth. So, we will tell a white lie to help ourselves, to keep the peace, but that isn’t lying, is it?) And if we don’t know the answer to something, we’ll say we don’t know.

But if we think we know the truth, 100 percent, we’re not going to pull any punches: we’re going to say what we believe is the truth, and you can tune us out or not visit this site, if you want to. What is a very, very weird thing about the Internet is that there are anti-Christian websites that intentionally put up misinformation, false material, just to throw me and you off.

By the way, I really did have a dream about Muhammad Ali, meeting him. Does that mean anything mystical or mysterious? Is it meaningful? Only if I get to meet him and get the Champ to help me tell the truth about an African man, a brilliant man, a poet like Ali was and is, who has been hidden from us … but for what reason? White supremacists scare me, because they’re Nazis, and white boys had to go and fight them right alongside people of color, Jewish people … because a white supremacist is dangerous, because such a man is opposed to God and equality and fairness, justice, and that, in my opinion, cannot ever be tolerated. I don’t care what color you are. God bless. This ought to be a meaningful series. Tell your friends, link to us, and pray for us as we pray for the genuine body of Jesus.

By the way, lastly, special thanks to Karen Love and the good folks at NNPA.org, the Black Press of America, for cutting me some slack and recognizing that the bind I got put in was not of my doing. I don’t know what people are thinking sometimes; I swear, and I mean this, the devil will invade your thoughts, or can, and good people sometimes won’t even know it. I’ve lost some good friends, lately, younger people, some of them I called brothers.

— rcg

May 14, 2008

Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali Enterprises LLC
P.O. Box 160
Berrien Springs, MI 49103
U.S.A.
Ali.com

Dear Champ:

I have a special request or favor to ask of you, something I’d like you to consider. First of all, congratulations on the upcoming anniversary of your decisive May 25, 1965 defeat of Sonny Liston. And Happy Father’s Day next month! It was a great treat to receive email from you as a member of your mailing list. Anyone who is old enough to remember your emergence onto the world stage and followed your illustrious career knows that you were much more than a unique boxer from Louisville, Kentucky who did well for himself, coming up through the ranks of the Golden Gloves, going onto the Olympics and continuing with your first defeat of Liston in 1964.

Like no one else in the history of human civilization has any public figure, in any arena, captivated and inspired a worldwide audience in the way you did, and as you still do.

And while your detractors, many of whom motivated by racial hatred and war, have fallen silent and irrelevant, you have remained a virtual pillar in and out of the ring, never buckling, never losing your cool and earning the respect of a global population, even those who didn’t like you, for being an unwavering man of sensible convictions and deep religious faith. And where are they now who condemned you, who tried to enlist you, who jailed you?

In addition to maintaining your personal poise, you let them beat up on you, because you had no choice … and then you came back and proved just how special you are, by stepping back into the ring, after everyone had taken their shots, and picking up where you had left off — where they had forced you to leave off.

With every moment of athletic brilliance, every summoned bit of courage, strength and will, most notably displayed in your stunning and unexpected defeat of George Foreman in Zaire, you struck blows for the little guy, like me (who was drafted and forced to serve) against a corrupt and still corrupt, most assuredly corrupt global war-for-profit movement, for whose present-day instigators punishment steadily, unquestionably approaches, uninterrupted like the ticking of a clock.

A lot of people would have wilted, caved, never achieved their potential in the face of such enormous often reckless opposition. A mere athlete might have won a few fights, or scored some more points, but you were not merely an athlete, but a statesman, with a sense of responsibility to those who looked up to you … who did and still do, even now to remind themselves and to be certain of which side did the right thing. And you danced and wrote poetry … while you were doing it. My goodness! … that was sweet. Weren’t those good times? Great times?

But the racists have not gone away, nor have the warmongers. Indeed, we see now in a new era that they have regrouped, reloaded … even as they reveal themselves to be, as we always suspected, one in the same — evil, with a singular, one-world objective, motivated now on the soil once occupied by your earliest ancestors and mine to cleanse the land of its people so that they might bore underground into the vast lake of oil, which they crave, like Nimrod drew up the pitch he used for mortar to build his the Tower of Babel.

I did not serve in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam era, but in Africa, in Egypt and Ethiopia, where evil concentrates its energies today, its human minions being deceived and fooled to believe that man can somehow artificially create a substitute utopia, a cheap copy of what God has promised us he will deliver. How naive can one or so many people be … to believe that a powerful “angel of light” must be God because he is not a man of color? The deliverer will be a man of color, because he will be comprised of all races, including white, the race to which I belong.

The campaign that has brought about the deception of the racists, who have bought the lie that men of color, black men, are deficient by nature, by natural selection, when the paradoxical opposite is true, is a lengthy ongoing campaign, which even now is being played out, in blockbuster, best-selling fashion, by way of an “intriguing code,” which is nothing more than subterfuge to hide the coverup evident in a painting and in the Holy Scriptures, meant to obscure the contributions to mankind by a learned, scholarly African man, who wrote two gospels and the book of Revelation, among other things … and maybe more.

The man of whom I speak, an historical figure from ancient times, whose story has never been told. Consequently, Africans, the black men, women and children who might have been inspired by this person, have lacked his inspiration to rise above and do what he has done.

His name was John. His nickname was “the Hammer,” or Mark or Marcus.

He must have been a lot like you, Champ, because he intimidated Paul, who had once killed believers, while people like John “the Hammer” were doing all they could to remain alive and keep other believers alive. After being bashed by Paul, the Hammer shows up on his doorstep, with two other men, whom Paul reluctantly and wiltingly is forced to call “pillars” … “superapostles.”

John “the Hammer,” the African scholar and poet, who outran Peter easily to the empty tomb, and who was an imposing figure standing in Paul’s doorway, returning after departing on important business of his own, must have been a lot like you, Champ. When we first see him, he is a young man, sensitive and scrawny, grieving the recent death of his father, along with his mother, whose name was Mary. They were refugees, having had to flee Cyrene, what is known today as Libya, because of racial and religious persecution. They arrived in Jerusalem at precisely the time that Jesus was beginning his ministry.

John Mark was a scribe, a scholar, and very likely a priest — with some clout, but not enough to save the life of his friend, an innocent man. It the home of John Mark and Mary, and only their home, where Jesus was welcome. This is the John and Mary who stood and received instructions to encourage one another, as Jesus, a black sheep, hung dying on a cross above them.

They have wanted us to believe that it was John, a fisherman’s son, and Mary, Jesus’ mother, who stood at the cross of Jesus. But that has never made any sense, and, indeed, our scholarship shows that John, the son of Zebedee, probably was already Mary’s nephew, Jesus’ cousin. Why would he have also been chosen to be her son? He wasn’t.

John Mark and his mother Mary have been hidden from us … for the same reason that Jesus was crucified. And for the same reason that Simon of Cyrene was forced to help Jesus carry his cross.

Champ, will you help us tell the truth about this African scholar and hero, “the Hammer,” whose elimination from that ruined painting on a wall in Milan, Italy is the only reason why there is anything called “the Da Vinci Code” and why there has needed to be? Racists are profiting off of the lies associated with this so-called “code,” which they continue to tell to hide from us the accomplishments of the African John Mark, who wrote in Latin and Greek, as well as Hebrew. And what these racists, who have deceived us for so long are doing with their money as Africa falls prey to a new breed of goose-stepping racists we can only painfully imagine.

Who knows how many black children, how many children of color, how many children of all races might have been inspired by the determination of John Mark, “the Hammer,” as they have been inspired by you … if they had only had the chance to know he ever existed and wrote most of the New Testament … which the white man, the most insecure, brutal ones, has had the audacity to call his own.

God bless you, Champ. Will you meet with us … and help us? We pray that you will.

Most respectfully,
Randall Carter Gray
and TANATA staff

A deceiver, a person who has deceived you or me, is not necessarily a person who is smarter than either you or me, but rather someone who is not intelligent enough to know that there is a better way.

We’re not talking about deceit or dishonesty which might arise in the most superficial of circumstances, such as fibbing to your mother that absolutely you love the color of the new chartreuse sweater with patches on the elbows that she has bought you for your birthday, or denying that your mate has gained a few pounds in a way that has made it uncomfortable for them to walk in an old pair of jeans; we’re not talking about deceit in the manner used to hide something from someone, such as a favorite piece of jewelry given to us by a former flame that is best not seen by a significant other, or even telling a white lie about our whereabouts when it might seem to a loved one to have been more of a threat to yourself or your relationship with this person than might rightly be determined by this person, your questioner, at three o’ clock in the morning (assuming that there is indeed an innocent explanation).

We’re talking about the hiding of truth when the actual intent behind this obscuring activity is overt, is offensive rather than defensive, when the act of deceit is meant for the purpose of keeping another person or people off guard and unaware when their unawareness will be most definitely hurtful to the person who is being deceived, even if they never catch on … especially if they don’t.

People of color, women, the poor, the less educated, disabled people have been made to feel that they are less than everyone else, when they aren’t. It would have helped such folks to know that the African scholar John Mark and his mother Mary were “the disciples whom Jesus loved,” the true John and Mary at the foot of Jesus’ cross, they being people of color, Jews, people who were persecuted then as they would be now … for no damn good reason.

The manner of deception we’re talking about is when the needs and desires of the deceiver are selfish … and shows more regard for the deceiver’s well-being than for the well-being of the person who is being deceived. It is this degree of deception that lies at the heart of what has motivated the obscuring for nearly 2,000 years of these two people (via tamperings and alterations of all four gospel accounts) who, if the truth had ever been known about them, would have given encouragement to people who happen to have been members of the same race as these two people, or viewed as deficient in some other way, when in God’s eyes … there is no such perception of deficiency. In fact, paradoxically, as the Beatitudes say, “Blessed are the poor, the humble, the meek, the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the disabled, the peacemakers who can’t catch a break … for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Who said that?

Mary Magdalene?

Who?

It sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it … to hide people, historical figures, because of the color of their skin, so that other people of the same color skin would not have a source of encouragement to believe that they were people as good as people who have a lighter outer covering?

Is that what the struggle has been between good and evil, is that what has been at its core … racism? Is race the wedge that evil has used to put enmity between the first two human beings who ever lived … whose skin color was so different? It sounds like a tragic play. It sounds like the conflict between the Moor and his white bride Desdemona as the evil and scheming Iago was able to achieve it by whispering lies into Othello’s ear that his bride’s love was not genuine and she was therefore not to be trusted because they were outwardly so different.

Is this how evil has sabotaged God’s creation … by instilling the thinking from the very beginning that love was not strong enough to overcome outward appearances? That love, in reality, could not sustain itself? Have all we needed after all … is love? And has creation been set against itself by making love seem implausible, completely unachievable between men and women, or people of the same sex, even of the same flesh and blood?

Is it evil not to love for any reason? Is love’s absence the very definition of evil?

As we come to the end of human history, the choice that will determine who goes forward into a matterless, immaterial spiritual world of continuing life will be whether or not we have love and have it abundantly so that we will look out for one another and so that we can all be members of one big family.

Good versus evil. Love versus hate. The needs of the one versus the needs of the many brought together as one.

Ironically, it is those who are trying to make an artificial heaven on earth, all things into one entity, to become one, without the love of all, who have been and who are causing all the problems and keeping God’s plan for that from becoming a reality.

John, baby, you had it right! … after all. If we don’t have love, if love is not what we need most of all, above all things, there is no practical way for life to exist.

A lot of goofy cliche things come to mind to say at this point, but we’ll save them for later. We’ve always been compelled to make jokes, to make light of things, because to get too serious, to appear that one has something meaningful to say has always gotten us in trouble.

The desire and the ability to laugh to find good humor in a loveless world is how any of us is going to get out of this alive.

So did you hear the one about the Moor and the white lady with a big “D” sewn on her blouse who went into a bar …? Or the black man and the white man?

My wife woke up this morning trying to do everything she could to convince herself that she was unlovable and that, therefore, I didn’t love her … and all because I had a rotten day yesterday for our anniversary and didn’t feel like following through on our plans to go to dinner. Well … I went out and got Chinese! I woke up in a good mood, or trying to be. She woke up not altogether sure why she was angry or why it was that we were having a fight … or if we had been fighting. It just seemed to her that we ought to be so she woke up ready for round two.

“We ended this fight last night, remember?” I said. “I brought you Chinese in bed and organic dark chocolate, two big bars of it … for our anniversary, with a rain check on dinner.”

“Oh,” she said.

I have so spoiled her with being extra, overly over-the-top good to her, with everything wrapped and fireworks going off … that anything reasonable is … eh, is that the best you could do? Well, hell, it was my anniversary too, you know?

So (and this was funny) she went into the next room, like she would if she was going to put on her make-up, thought about it, shook herself off, and came back out and started the morning again. She was so convinced when she woke up that there ought to be a fight, even though she didn’t know why, that she had started fighting again, picking up where she thought we had left off … when it was I, A-HA!, who had remembered! It was I who was being the peacemaker and being decent and willing to start the day as a new day, with no grudges. And I went to bed drinking whisky, for crying out loud. What Bob Dylan says is true, “A lot of people think that drinking whisky will kill you … I don’t think it will.”

We are being flooded with questions about what it is that we know about “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and how it is that we know it, and when we came to know it.

We have also been accused of being crazy, deluded, liars, gold diggers … even evil.

Maybe we are all of these things.

Maybe we are none. Who really knows anyone anymore these days?

If people have not been receptive to our observations, resistant toward or not respectful of our conclusions and findings regarding the hiding of Mary and John, as we have ascertained the obscuring of these two historic figures as fact, as we have broken down how this deception could have been perpetrated in the first place, and for what reason and by whom, which has only validated that what we have is true … these non-receptive have not been receptive for one of several reasons, as we’ve thought about it, as we have imagined how people are likely to receive the information that we have to tell, and how they are likely to react to the level of deceit in our reality — yours and mine — that we are alleging exists, it is for a range of fascinating reasons …

it is for a range of fascinating reasons … that people have concluded heretofore or at this moment that surely we must be all wet and just plain wrong, that we must have ulterior motives for saying what it is that we are saying, because no one should rightly be able to know this, what it is that we believe we know, unless there is something fishy going on.

As we have said, we were in Egypt and Ethiopia … at the right places, at the right times.

People naturally think other people whom they don’t know are all wet to begin with. It’s a defense mechanism to protect us, me and you; it is good for us to have a healthy lack of trust, up to a certain point, because people can deceive us and they can hurt us by deceiving us; they can overtly hurt us by overtly deceiving us. It takes a lot of being around someone to gain enough awareness about this person to know if he or she can be trusted, trusted to go beyond themselves in expressing concern for the significant other. It is the mark of a truly mature person who looks outside of himself or herself to the needs of others. This too is a gift, a divine gift, lest any of us should boast.

In other words, the degree of deceit, the wide measure of it, the historical scope and importance of the deceit that we are alleging must have taken place transcends reason.

It is deceit that we are alleging which is of such a profound breadth pertaining to the hidden biblical figures and who has done what to whom to maintain the deception we are alleging, so much so that seems it would be unknowable. How could we know what we know about deception that is almost 2,000 years old … and maybe older and longer than that?

We couldn’t know, some people will conclude, because the information is not knowable, ultimately. We couldn’t know because no one else has known what it is we claim we know up to this point in time. We couldn’t know because it would turn reality, what we know about reality and the Bible, the New Testament, Christianity and Judaism, Islam, what have you, upside down.

We already see upside down, don’t we, until our brains take the upside down images on our retinas and flips them?

There will be people who don’t want for us to be right in what it is that we say that we know — for reasons they may not understand, racist-oriented, xenophobic reasons. There will be those who will say, if what we say is true (and we are convinced that it is, because the source of our information is of a super credible nature) who will think that it is we who are up to no good, that we are deceptive, that we have some unfair advantage to gain by fooling someone or everyone about what it is that we say that we know.

There are some people who will be threatened intellectually and scholarly because we are saying that we know what they do not know and have not known. People will reject what we have to say because they didn’t think of it first. And, because, no one for thousands of years has thought it or come to this conclusion.

But, you see, we didn’t come to this conclusion all by ourselves, as we continue to reiterate. We got to a certain point in our quest … and then we had to travel … and then it was given to us.

If you disbelieve us, then prove us wrong. If we are hyping this, then our information should be false. If you can prove us wrong, then we are lying, we are fools, or both. And maybe, evil itself for suggesting something that should have been knowable, but has not been. If we are wrong … and we know that we are wrong, that we are being deceptive, but we persist in spinning our web of deceit … we are evil. It is evil which or who knowingly does wrong for advantage, without fear of punishment.

It is both evil and stupid.

By us suggesting that we know what it is we know, this would seem to put us in a special category, where people, normal, average, everyday people, which we are, happen to believe that we more special than everyone else. We are probably dumber and more inadequate than you.

It is not the case that we are special. The true wisdom dwells elsewhere. We just happened to be at the right place, at the right time … and to have made connections, developed assets, as it were, in our intelligence days, which have eventually paid off — assets going back some 35 years to our years in Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia.

Some people will say we want to become wealthy with the information that we have, that even if we are correct in what we say, we still just want to make money and run, get off of what it is that we say that we know as much as we can. And, they will say, if we have this motive, which is not a pure motive, then what it is that we claim to know cannot be true — that we can not really know it, but we are merely saying that we know it to make a buck.

Would we gain the world … only to lose our souls by telling what it is that we claim to know … and having it be false?

What does it profit a man if he gains all the riches he could ever want … but sacrifices his soul in the process of attaining those things? For those of us who believe we have souls … this is a prime consideration.

We prefer peace over wealth … for we have known times of great turmoil, as you no doubt have. We put a high premium on our peace. And peace can be attained … without it costing you or me a penny.

Peace is free … if you know where to get it.

We have no ulterior motives. We wish to hurt no one with the information which we have. We wish to gain no unfair advantage. We don’t wish to get rich from having this information. We are not deluded by having information that no one else has … because we ourselves did not generate this information — only partly did we work for this information and knowledge. Once we reached a certain level in our efforts, over a period of time, drips and drabs of information have been made available to us, to keep us interested.

But we only now have the whole puzzle. Others have it, too. Many others. People about whom you or I know nothing, and probably will never know … not until we are in heaven and all things have been revealed to us.

There is so much more to reality than meets the eye.

Things often are not at all what they seem.

There are forces at work in and around you and me that we do not see, that we cannot fathom. Well, who can know that? you might ask. When we say that we see a red ball … do we see a red ball, or rather a ball which is every color but red, with red being the rejected color which is being reflected back to us? If there is gravity, how does condensation occur, how is it that water rises, to form clouds, to cause more rain to fall? Rising water is a good trick. Snow is another wondrous event, which comes not from frozen drops of water … but from sparks of energy which suddenly occur in a cold mist, forming crystals.

These are knowable things that many of us rarely think about. There are sources of wisdom and knowledge which know that which seems unknowable, which will share wisdom and knowledge with us … as soon as we have poured ourselves out … and admitted over and over that we know nothing apart from the one source of all wisdom and knowledge.

There is one, only one, source of ultimate knowledge.

Are we being deceptive, are we deluded, do we have ulterior motives, do we wish to gain for ourselves at the expense of others, or just gain for ourselves, the truth be damned, are we just flat out lying because we like the attention, even if in gaining it we will ultimately be called crazy, deluded or liar? And sacrifice our souls for having gained advantages dishonestly?

Do we have an ax to grind? Do we wish to harm anyone with what it is that we say that we know?

We have nothing to gain … but everything to lose, if one wishes to look at it that way, honestly. We have nothing to gain by telling what it is that we know. So why do we tell it?

Is it because we have much to lose by not telling it?

We have been told, to go along with this information about Mary and John, that there is plenty, sufficient protection for all of those who know what it is that we just happen to have been fortunate enough to come to know. In other words, there are those who don’t want us, obviously, to share this time transcendent knowledge, which boggles our minds right along with yours. There are enemies of the truth.

We were in the right place at the right time at one of the most ancient sites, if not the most ancient site, in all the world. And it was given to us as a gift. A one in a million shot, like winning the lottery …

But we win nothing. So why are we telling what it is we know … if we can be called crazy, liar, mercenary, evil in the process of sharing it?

If you were given a pearl of great price … would you hide it … or display it for everyone else to enjoy?

For next time … what do you know of the story of Prester John? Let us leave you with these last thoughts on deceit and deceivers.

A deceiver, a person who has deceived you or me, is not necessarily a person who is smarter than either you or me, but rather it is invariably someone who is not intelligent enough to know that there is a better way.

We’re not talking about deceit or dishonesty which might arise in the most superficial of circumstances, such as fibbing to your mother that absolutely you love the color of the new chartreuse sweater with patches on the elbows that she has bought you for your birthday, or denying that your mate has gained a few pounds in a way that has made it uncomfortable for them to walk in an old pair of jeans; we’re not talking about deceit in the manner used to hide something from someone, such as a favorite piece of jewelry given to us by a former flame that is best not seen by a significant other, or even telling a white lie about our whereabouts when it might seem to a loved one to have been more of a threat to you or your relationship than might rightly be determined by your questioner at three o’ clock in the morning (assuming that there is indeed an innocent explanation). This isn’t the manner of “innocent deceit” to which we’re addressing ourselves.

We’re talking about the hiding of truth when the actual intent behind this obscuring activity is overt, is offensive rather than defensive, when the act of deceit is meant to gain advantage, when it is hatched for the purpose of keeping another person or people off guard and unaware when their unawareness will be most definitely hurtful to the person who is being deceived, even if they never catch on.

People of African descent may say that they are no worse off for not having known that an African man wrote most of the New Testament. And that it was he and his mother Mary who were the John and Mary at the foot of Jesus’ cross. If it is neither here nor there that we knew or didn’t know the truth, why have we not known it? We have not known it, as we will prove, because there have been profound, broad and very complicated efforts made so that people who are most obviously of African descent will not know (All our earliest ancestors came from Africa, science is increasingly making us aware — white, black, red, yellow it doesn’t matter, green, polka dotted, well. … In other words, as the best songwriters write … We’re all brothers and sisters. Dealing with that, embracing that, loving that … is what gets us in, you know? Which means all racists … are out. How do we know? It came with the bundle). Imagine how people of color would have been aided, helped, encouraged and found pride in knowing that one of their own was Jesus most beloved friend … and a brilliant man who wrote most of the New Testament, even putting Paul in his place?

When the needs and desires of the deceiver are selfish … and shows more regard for the deceiver’s well-being or wants and needs, inordinately more, than for the well-being of the person who is being deceived … that’s what we’re talking about. That kind of deceit is evil. It is knowingly, willfully being deceitful that makes deceit the profoundly destructive thing that it is for the deceived and the deceiver. Deceivers are most easily deceived. Those who do not deceive, who do not wish to deceive for the purpose of succeeding, are given this approach to life as a divine gift. If you’re an honest person, to a fault, it is a gift.

Deceit to hide the gaining of an unfair advantage over another person for whom the deceiver ought to be concerned and protective but apparently is not is what we’re talking about. Let us offer several examples, next time, as we proceed to discuss the obscuring of these two people, two historical figures, the obscuring of whom has only been detrimental, that is, it has been a deceitful obscuring effort intended for the obscurers to gain unfair advantage over those who are innocently unaware that they are being deceived: These two people, a mother and a son, as we have said, are named Mary and John. By hiding these two people, a whole lot of other people, a whole race of other people, have been placed in an unfair and an unhealthy circumstance.

In other words, information has been hidden from them which would have been advantageous for them to have for the purpose of making a judgment and a decision on behalf of themselves and their families to their personal benefit. What conclusions can we draw from that … as we look on down the road? What conclusions can we draw that efforts have been made to keep people from color from knowing that they are more superior than they realize? What does it say about us white folks? (I’m white, but not all of me. None of us are all white, as we’ve said. My claim to fame, to color, is my Cherokee heritage. I’m learning to make Native American flutes, by the way, but the work is slow. It has been, because it is as fun throwing a knife, at a target, as it is carving with one. Come visit us in Tennessee … and we’ll show you.)

— rcg