The narrative tells us that holy fire from Yahweh comes down from heaven
every years, enters the tomb, and then mysteriously lights all the candles
that the thousands of people gathered for the event are holding. As one
onlooker who wholeheartedly believes this to be a miracle and who attends
every year put it, the candles light WITH NO APPARENT CAUSE. I had an
Xian friend among the several guest at my house who said, "I can't wait
to see you explain this one away." I must admit, if the events that were
described were about to happen, I would be hard pressed to explain it,
aside from invoking special effects, which would seem unlikely for a
documentary. Fire from the sky that magically lights thousands of
candles, wew! I was squirming a little in my seat.
Well, as it turned out, I not only didn't have to explain a mighty
miracle, but I ended up rolling in the floor (literally) with laughter at
my friend and the thousands of idiots gathered who believed they had seen
a miracle. Let me tell you what happened, which, needless to say, wasn't
anything like what was promised.
The tension mounted, the time was at hand. A hush fell over the crowd.
Now, the tomb wasn't to remain open during this event, only the patriarch
was allowed in the tomb! He entered the tomb. The camera came out for
the wide shot (exposing the sky). The patriarch emerged from the tomb,
with a lit torch. No fire from the sky, nothing. As the commentator
noted "Only the patriarch knows if God actually lit the torch." Well,
excuse me if that insults my intelligence, I think I can guess in a quite
educated manner that God did not indeed light the torch. Anyway, to
continue, now I waited for the magical lighting of the candles. The
patriarch walked to the crowd, and proceeded to light candles, one by
one, that people at the front of the crowd held. These people in turn
lit the candles of those behind them, who in turn lit the candles behind
them. This continued until everyone's candle was lit. Now, excuse me if
these candles didn't appear to me to be lit with "no apparent cause."
The lighting of one candle off of another is far from magical, it is
common sense! I can't believe that the woman at the beginning had been
so ignorant, no, STUPID to have said this, considering she had seen this
event many times before.
People cheered, some were crying and praising Jesus. It was a sight, to
see modern day people behave so foolishly. To add to the idiocy, the
people in the crowd would pass their hand (VERY quickly) through the
flame of the candle, claiming that God wouldn't allow it to hurt them!!
Jeezus, I used to jump through the camp fire when I was a kid, any idiot
knows that you can QUICKLY pass your hand or whole body through a
fire and it won't hurt you. Consequently, not one single person was
HOLDING their hand STILL above the flame, which you would think one would be
able to do if they truly had divine protection from the flame. They all
considered this a miracle in itself, including my friend, for whom I had
to pass my hand through a flame to show him that it wasn't a miracle, only
a fact of nature.
My friend refused to admit the fraud. He said "Well, you can't prove
that God didn't light that flame in the tomb." No, I can't, because they
conveniently shut the door so nobody could see in! It reeks of fraud to
me however, and the crowd reeked of gullibility and stupidity. How I
wish somebody would sneak a hidden camera in the tomb next year, it would
be great to expose this "miracle" for the mass fraud that it is.
The Learning Channel usually shows programs like this several times a
week. I HIGHLY recommend that everyone see it, it is funny as hell.
I taped most of it.
Tod Billings