St. John, the Beloved Desciple, has been Reincarnated… as a Comedian!

I have no clue what I was doing, save to say that I was browsing the internet, when a Google ad caught my eye. Now I’ve seen plenty of strange religious Google ads in my day, but this one stood out. It was a link claiming that John the apostle who rested his head on Christ during the last supper, the beloved desciple, author of several NT books, has been reincarnated… as a comedian… who performs in a Renaissance style swordfighting routine.

Is this one ofChrist’s apostles?

I couldn’t resist checking this one out. The site is called “John of Old, John of New.” The story it tells is really something. Could this actually be the reincarnation of one of Christ’s most prominent servants? In the site’s own words, John (yes ths is his real name) C. Davis tells his story:

Raised in Rehoboth Beach Delaware, John was always different from those around him, including his family. He excelled in areas of art – at age nineteen John was invited to a Renaissance Festival and was captivated by the experience, which led to a twenty-year career as a performer in his comedy / sword-fighting show, Hack and Slash. After the attacks of Sept.11, 2001, John has spent several months every year traveling abroad, entertaining the troops. To date he has perfomed in fifteen countries at over eighty bases.
In 1993 John began having some rather extraordinary experiences; each experience led him to the next until he met a psychic reader named Sharon Prince Wothke. Never having had a ‘reading’ before, John entered into it with some skepticism. Sharon’s face erupted into a smile and declared that he had “walked with Jesus” – the oddity was that John knew he had.

Since that initial reading a total of twelve other psychics have told John the same news – one even came up to him at a crowded convention, grabbed his arm and told him, “They’re telling me to tell you that you were John the Beloved.” After so many ‘psychics’ had told him of his past life John decided he needed more proof and sought out a past life regression therapist and had a regression. The experience was life-changing.

Not knowing much of the Bible, John recalled the day of meeting Jeshua (Jesus) for the first time. He experienced Jeshua’s love without fear and then was shown the seperateness we all experience. John also witnessed the whipping and crucifixion of Jeshua, later reading that John the Beloved was the only Apostle to actually witness these events.

But when John began having his own psychic experiences, witnessing healings, and seeing apparitions, he knew that he needed to tell his stories and share what he had learned.

That’s a really interesting story, but it raises a few questions. And if I could meet John, here’s what I’d ask:

1.) Somewhere in the epistles it is written “for God suffereth a man to live but once, and then there is judgement.” Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that this verse only means that reincarnation is an exception to the general rule of things, why were you reincarnated as opposed to any other historical figure?
2.) Why were you reincarnated here, and now?
3.) Have any of the other apostles been reincarnated? If not, will they?
4.) Why did you have to rely on psychics to tell you of your origin? Why didn’t God reveal it to you?
5.) Why haven’t you become very famous? The apostles in the first century quickly developed vast followings and performed miracles publicly, why haven’t you been so active?
6.) The Church is horribly divided. Since you were so close to Jesus, and to God, why don’t you give us answers to the divisive issues? How close are we to the End? What about the age of the earth and the nature of creation? How should we handle homosexuality? Who should we vote for?

I could probably think of more, but you get the idea. I don’t know what to make of this guy, but the again he doesn’t give much info for an evaluation to be based on. I think there’s a good chance he actually believes himself to be John reborn, but is he?

No, I don’t think so. I think the questions I’ve asked above show my reasons for doubting him. He just doesn’t fit the description of what I’d expect to see in a modern day apostle. For one, the whole reincarnation thing doesn’t exactly fit with the Bible well. Maybe the Bible doesn’t technically rule out reincarnation completely, but I think it’s doubtful that it happens. And for one apostle to be reincarnated without the others being so as well, seems odd.

Then there’s the whole, “he’s not doing anything the other apostles did” thing. Where are his big, public miracles? Why doesn’t he have a following or even a church? His life just doesn’t seem to jive with the Biblical account of the 12.

The clincher though, is of course his biography. It completely goes against the grain of the Bible’s account of all the apostles and prophets. For every one of them they gained their authority by divine revelation. God gives them a vision, or a dream or a sign or something! This guy gets vague messages from some occult loonies and that’s how he learns of his position?! That doesn’t seem kosher! And when he’s told that he “walked with Jesus” that could’ve meant anything! Just think of how many lives Jesus touched. He could have been one of the 5,000 that was fed by the fish and bread. How does he know he’s John?

He knows because of the most accurate way of learning about your distant spiritual past… hypnotic regression! Was that ironic enough for ya? C’mon! This guy hasn’t even tried to make his case for apostlehood sound realistic!

And what’s with the Jeshua nonsense? Yeshua, I can deal with. I’ve heard that despite speaking Aramaic that Christ’s contemporaries gave names in Hebrew. But, Hebrew has no letter ‘J,’ so calling Jesus “Jeshua” thus doesn’t make any sense. I would expect greater accuracy from one of the man’s contemporaries.

I’ve never been one of those Harry Potter hating, occultophobic type Christians, but, uh, isn’t consulting fortune tellers and mystical stuff like that against the Bible? What makes John think that anything they say at all would be true, let alone hold insight into God’s plan for him?

How does he justify this discrepency between his Holy Book and his actual beliefs? Does he even know about it? If he doesn’t know even basic aspects of his Bible, can any religious message he gives be trusted?

I hope, for his own sake that this guy actually thinks he’s John reincarnated. But what do I think? Is he really an apostle reborn? I doubt it. His story just doesn’t fit with the Bible or with common sense expectations of what an apostle would be like.