Mark Twain once said, "Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul."

There are two particular religious groups of people that have become very difficult to criticize; the Jews and Islam. If you say anything unflattering about the Jews, automatically you become an anti-Semite and mysteriously a party to the holocaust. If you say anything unflattering towards Islam you make yourself a target for terrorism. However, it is politically correct to criticize Christians. No group seems to be officially offended by that. Historically speaking the bashing of Christians has been going on since the time of Christ. When the Jewish temple was demolished under Caligula and the gold and silver from the temple was used to build the coliseum in Rome, the ones who were martyred in the coliseum were Christians who had nothing to do with the rebellion or insurrection in Judea. Christians weren’t even the original targets for Rome. If you aren’t laughing yet, you don’t have a dark sense of humor.

If the Jews were secretly famous for one thing it was for the ability to make alliances with Rome. That is a historical reality.

The last couple of month’s classes, including those in September, give you the details. Guys like Apion and Josephus the traitor, somehow turned the tables on the Christians when Rome erupted in the Jewish Wars and successfully shifted whatever blame there was onto the Christians. Nobody has apologized for that over the centuries. Christians really don’t expect an apology. Jesus said to turn the other cheek and the advice wasn’t perfectly accepted, but it worked on several levels. The Christians didn’t have sitting advisory councils in Rome at the time like the Jews did. Josephus sat in on those councils, even after the Jews were banned in Jerusalem and the Christians were being led to slaughter. Apion was a nobody-Jew who lectured on Homer in Alexandria until he turned on his own people and lived the rest of his life in Rome on advisory councils through the epoch of the Jewish wars. The Jews have been complaining for centuries that the Christians have pointed a blaming-finger at them for the death of Christ. It is amazing the Christianity survived the first century with the help of the Jews.

I was sitting next to a very well dressed Jewish man a couple of years ago, while I was eating. We got into a friendly conversation that quickly turned sour. I like having friendly conversations. When he asked me what I did for a living I told him that I wrote about Judaic-Christian history. He asked me the titles of the books that I had written. When I told him that I had written “The Hidden Politics of the Crucifixion” his eyes became angry and he turned to me and said, “Isn’t there something better you can do with your life than that?” For an instant I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. Deep inside, I was still in a friendly mode. For the first time in my life I felt the guilt and anger of the Jews. The macho part of me thought of all the reasons to be defensive. However, this kid and I were strangers and none of the reasons for being defensive worked in my head. How could I want to blame this kid for something that was neither one of our faults? The “blame thing” wasn’t working in my head. Neither of us had a reason to be enemies.

About that time he was in fighting mode. I sensed that it was much more difficult to be angry than to be pleasant. There was nothing I could say that would make it all better.

There just happened to be two Jewish men sitting on the other side of me. They turned to the single gentleman and said, “The problem isn’t in blaming Jews for the death of Jesus. The problem was with cultures like the Nazis and Islam who wanted to kill all the Jews.” Before I knew it these three men were arguing among themselves so vehemently that I just stood up and walked away. They were doing a fine job at being angry with each other. As I walked away I remember looking over my shoulder and wondering who was to blame for the argument amidst strangers. The thought crossed my mind that I would much rather accompany all three men and pray with them in their synagogue to the God of our collective fathers.

I have prayed in a mosque with the same hope. I wondered what my Jewish acquaintances would have thought of that. There is always a good reason to pray with others, regardless of how they do it. How did the world get so “screwed up” worrying about how someone else prays or continue a grudge from two thousand years ago? Maybe the solution to the problems in our world is to require everyone to pray in someone else’s church. Maybe if we took the time to pray with others in their holy places we could begin to see the world as God, who hears and answers the prayers of all His children.

In recent days it has become politically unwise to openly criticize Islam. The Pope got himself in trouble by mentioning the conflict. There was a theatrical play in Germany that was closed down because it showed the beheaded Jesus, Buddha and Mohamed. It was a play about the death of faith. Nobody cared the image of a beheaded Buddha, and certainly beheading Jesus wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the owners of the theater didn’t want to be bombed by some crazy Islamic faction crying “Jihad” because of a mere reference to Mohamed.

I appeared as a guest on a recent radio show which was supposed to be about Terrorism. The host did everything in his power to divert me from talking about Islam. Later I found out that he feared that I would be the target for assassination. I appreciated the host’s concern. However, if I wanted a safe 9 to 5 job I wouldn’t be doing what I am now. It takes conviction to be the first to stand up for peace, not the kind of peace that criticizes everyone else in the process. The kind of peace we need is the kind for which our fathers shed their blood. If all the world needs is my blood, it would be a small price to pay, a very small price indeed. If the only way to tell the truth is to put your blood on the line, then don’t protect me from the truth.

God in his wisdom placed the two most agitated religious groups on the planet next door to each other. What are the odds of that? The heavens really must have a sense of humor, or know exactly what they are doing.

Frankly, I have good friends who are members of both faiths. I have spent my life attempting to teach the world about the origins of both religions, especially how they relate to Jesus from within their respective faith. I haven’t always been euphemistic or kind. This truth doesn’t need to be candy coated. However, I have tried to be fair. I have had people drop from my email list because they didn’t want me to speak candidly about the history of one group or another. Then we wonder how the story of Jesus shrank over the centuries into nothing more than a few quotes Jesus said recorded in the Bible. If the world has its way, Jesus will disappear from history altogether. That is something I can not tolerate, no matter the cost.

The common man isn’t to blame! I remember one time in Bolivia when they were holding an anti-American demonstration in the town square of La Paz the capitol city. They were shouting, “Yankee go home!” and waving hate signs of all kinds. The children were singing a little song which said, “Gringos kill babies with umbrellas”. I walked right through the middle of the demonstration and something very strange happened. The people kept coming up to me and wanting to shake my hand or say, “Hi”. We sat down next to the children and learned their song and sang it with them. It was just a song, after all. They would squeal with delight at the end of each chorus. We would chase them around and tickle them when we caught them.

When I was in Egypt two years ago we couldn’t hardly walk the streets there were so many people who wanted to touch us and talk to us in their broken English. One afternoon the princess brought me a chair and I sat all alone in the middle of the square and just let the people come and touch me and speak to me. The crowd was enormous and diverse. There was a lot of love conveyed between us on a common-man level.

The princess held a banquet for all her extremely rich and powerful friends on her barge on the Nile River. There was a list of who’s who from Libya, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and others. I sat next to the former Miss Universe from Lebanon and a famous Egyptian actress on the other side. Little did I know that right in the middle of all the festivities the princess arose and asked me to speak? Nobody had warned me that I would be asked to address the crowd. However, I arose and said in English that the West had robed the voice of history from the Middle East and taken many precious monuments and artifacts to line their museums and private homes. I said that the day had come for them to tell their stories to the world in their own voice, with their own production crews. The room erupted in applause. I was amazed that anyone cared what I said and sat down. Everyone wanted to shake my hand when we left. Little did they know how strongly I felt about what I had said? The story of the fathers is best told by their children.

The next night the princess took me to a restaurant with well-dressed Moslems sitting everywhere. The entertainment for the night was a musical group who sang the most beautiful Arabic songs I had ever heard. I couldn’t understand everything that the songs said, but the emotion was tremendous. The rhythm was strange and the instrumentation was different, but the pain and passion was familiar. When the tempo picked up there were some dancers. Sure enough, out of all the people in the audience the dancers came to my table and grabbed me by the hand and dragged me to the stage. I am no stranger to dance and the tears from the music were running down my cheeks. I danced with them with all respect and as serious as a man can be. The room erupted again with applause. The next day the princess took me on a carriage ride through the streets of Cairo just the two of us. The people came up to the carriage and were showing their love for the princess. She then turned to me and told me the story of her two near death experiences when she was ill. She told me that in both of them she had met Jesus and that she had promised him that she would find a way to make his Egyptian history known. I wish that someday I could help her. Her story was beautiful and filled with love and emotion. I clearly understood why God must love this great princess.

I took my aged mother to Sturgis a couple of years ago. That is the site of the most prestigious gathering of motorcycles in the country. There were hundreds of thousands of bikers from all over. There was over two hundred miles of biker traffic headed into Sturgis the day we went. Mother is a very pious woman, more like an angel than like any human I have ever met. She waited in the car for a couple of hours while I went into the festival to get some T shirts for my riding buddies. When I came out mother had already made friends and was riding on the back of a Harley Motorcycle around the parking lot. Mother could make friends in the middle of a tank battle…with both sides. I have often thought that the solution to the Middle East conflict would be to send them a good dose of “mother”. It would be “Chicken Soup” for the soul. When Betty Eadie spoke the prayers of a mother being the strongest prayers in the world, I think of my mother. You can feel her praying for you no matter where you are. I try not to make her worry about things because the next thing I feel is a prayer from my mother to God. It is a real sensation, like the instant the aspirin kicks in for a bad headache.

What I have said in the classes contains the overall message taught to me by mother at her knee. I have been willing all my life to state the truth without fear of political correctness. It would make a great deal more sense to avoid the “hot issues”. Certainly, I would walk the streets with greater safety if I kept my mouth shut. That will not happen.

My son was offered a great deal of money the other day to quit working for me and to go to work for an Israeli-based government information agency. My son Chase is much like me and refused. Years ago I was offered a great deal of money to do quit what I was doing. I had a call the other day from someone who wanted to know the name of the group who had offered me and my son money to quit. I told him it was none of his business. I am certain that offended the caller. I am sorry for that. However, the details of being “bought off” aren’t the issue here. The issue is the story of Jesus that has been lost. Everyone wants to know about a conspiracy. I couldn’t care less. The conspiracy isn’t the story of Jesus.

Others have said that they are “book people” and don’t like the audio format for the classes. I wish I could please everyone, but that isn’t possible. This is the format we have chosen that will reach the most people and fit into the schedules of everyone. If the truth were known to you all the idea for an audio class came to me from a group of blind people. I realized I could accomplish their request and make the class accessible to the sited with the same idea. I don’t know about you, but some of the greatest moments of understanding I have ever had in my life were in my car while traveling. You can take this class while traveling. I can think of hundreds of times when I would be driving down the road all alone with tears streaming down my eyes and talking out loud to God and listening to what he was telling my heart.

My son and I sit on the porch three or four times a week talking about the classes we are writing. I told him the other day that people all over the world would love a ticket to our “porch talks” that sometimes last for hours on end. We have learned to share between father and son in a way I could never share with my father. I am sure my father would have loved to have had those kinds of talks with me. I know I would have loved it too. These porch talks are the basis of the classes. Both of us are unafraid of being offended. We aren’t afraid of offending each other and speak candidly. We expect that people will be shocked when they find out how little they know. Everyone thinks they know a lot. That is what makes us feel secure. It is frightening to think that the majority of what has happened in history is still missing. It is comforting to think that there is someone in our universities that knows what happen in history. It boarders on offensive to realize that they most often do not know what they are talking about. Most of them are students who have graduated into teachers. It is an inbred incestual process that breads historical deformity compounded over time. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America. For heaven’s sakes there were people here when he arrived. The story of evolution is so fraught with missing pieces that the story is far from being told. Science has proven genetically that Cro Magnon Man and Neanderthal Man are not our biological ancestors and so the missing link is still missing. Both science and religion need to open their doors or the truth will never be known. Neither can do it alone, though science insists that it is still the “big brother”. This “big brother” we have created is a real Frankenstein of our own creation pieced together with dead men’s bones. Religion isn’t the parent who told us only fables. Papa and Mama knew what they were talking about, better than we are willing to countenance. We need to grow up and listen to the past. That is the reason for the class. The cherished beliefs of our ancestors contain secrets that science alone will never find unless they go back to the source. Right in the middle of the whole story stands Jesus. Perhaps not the Jesus in our movies and portrayed in our limited Western religions, but the powerful Jesus who connected the creation of the world to the end of times.

Take the time to go to the link below and learn how to download classes. If you like the classes sent to you on CD’s, which most people do, then make sure to go to http://www.ancientmanuscripts.com/kk/product_info.php?products_id=47 and where it says do you want a hard copy, be sure to click “yes”. It will save you time and you will get CD’s in the mail each month, instead of having to download. However, for the rest of you, take the time to see the new tutorial for the downloads. This takes it a step at a time and makes it easy. http://www.kimballcollege.com/kk/download_classes_help.htm.

You have to remember that in the future everyone will be getting information in this fashion, just like the avalanche of Cell Phone usage. You might as well take the time to learn. People will be carrying I Pods in the future, like they now carry cell phones. Business will run via I Pods and your information for home, work and school will come via an I Pod.

When I was young so was television. There were three stations available and one television in our home. Now most people have televisions in every room of the house and they have hundreds of channels. This will be the same with I Pods and this downloadable material. It is a good thing. We will be a generation who knows more than any who have ever lived because of this technology. We can resist it all we want, but it won’t make it go away. Frankly it is our way of being able to control what kind of content we hear.

I also would like to say that we will be the most informed religious generation in history. To date our class is the only one that helps a person to make the transition between the religion of our fathers and the discoveries of today. Most of the world has gotten lost in the transitional seams. That could spell disaster to the world. The heaven’s will not allow that to continue unabated. They require a voice in our world. Our class is the key to the rescue of ourselves and our children from technological atheism. It is like a disease that is killing our souls. We ask why someone would shoot innocent people and then commit suicide almost every week of the year. The reason is that all hope is lost in their minds and morality plays absolutely no role, thanks to those who tear religious symbols from our monuments. I know there are many of you who still wonder if there is a God and if we could explain the miraculous events in history with the science of today. The answer is clearly no. We think we know everything because we have invented science to answer our doubts and so that we can control our progress. That is a good thing in general, but it is a weapon of mass destruction if we ignore the rest of the story. The entire reason the huge story of Jesus is missing from Western understanding is that it can neither be told, nor understood, without also telling the story of the miracles. The story of miracles is the story of the intervention of heaven on earth. Even the so called “faithful” have shied away from the tales of the miraculous because it is impossible to explain via science and earthly logic. When you are done taking the classes from me you will clearly understand the miraculous nature of Jesus and have the textual evidence for the untold story of the miracles. If you don’t take the class then I can’t help you. You become a victim of a system which constantly spills doubt all over you 24/7.

In recent days I have had many who have told me that they have never witnessed a miracle in their lives. There are two reasons. I liken them to a football game. The quarterback will not throw you the ball if you are seated in the stadium. You have to be one of the players on the field. Secondly, you have to be ready when God hands you the ball. You can’t say to God I have my own play in my mind. God requires you to run the play He calls. When you have attended all the practices, know how to play the game, and are willing to run the play God asks, then expect the miracle; not before. The classes are part of the practice. If you are too busy to practice, then don’t expect to be asked to play on game day. It is that simple. The classes are designed to have a winning strategy over atheistic agendas. You may feel comfortable for now, but when the war starts there are no atheists in the foxhole. A foxhole may be all you have left. When you are left without the intellectual and physical comforts you enjoy now, what preparations will you have made? More importantly what do you tell your children when they are left to the serious questions you didn’t have when you were growing up? Isn’t that reason enough to take the class? How many of you have written and told me that you have reconnected with your kids with the class? The kids like it better than you do. They are more hungry for the truth than you are.

Glenn Kimball's websites: ancientmanuscripts.com and ancientamerican.com