Is God, depicted here by Michelangelo Bunarroti, no different from Allah?
By C. Michael Forsyth
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A centuries-old controversy has finally been settled. Contrary to what your preacher may have told you, God and Allah are one and the same, according to a top FBI expert who has confirmed that they share the same fingerprints!
“We examined a fingerprint found in the ruins of the King Belshazzar’s palace, where the Bible tells us God’s hand wrote on the wall,” explained Roger Temworthy, who analyzed more than 40,000 sets of fingerprints as a consultant to the FBI over his 30-year career.
“We compared that to a latent print recovered from the famous Black Stone of Mecca, which, according to Islam, Allah placed in the Garden of Eden at the time of Adam.
“The fingerprints match precisely — every loop, whorl and arch is the same. I would put the odds of these prints not belonging to the same individual at approximately one in 75 trillion.”
The question of whether the two deities are the same has been hotly debated by theologians for more than a thousand years. Some Bible experts say it’s “obvious” that they are. Others vehemently insist that they’re not.
“To say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is beyond naïve — it’s blasphemous,” railed a prominent Texas biblical scholar recently.
So many preachers have argued that case from the pulpit that a recent poll showed 79 percent of evangelical Christians believe that God and Allah are not the same. But the new evidence proves that they’re dead wrong.
“Fingerprints don’t lie,” declared the Reverend Herbert J. Furmane, one of 26 ministers from four denominations who recruited Temworthy for the investigation. “We wanted this question resolved once and for all, and now it has been — beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
Temworthy, who retired six years ago, admits he was a skeptical when the ministers first approached him.
“When they phoned me up and told me what they had in mind, at first I thought it was a prank call,” he recalls. “But after two hours on the phone they had me hooked. I was intrigued by the technical challenges. And as a devout Catholic who hasn’t miss Mass since 1984, I was eager to learn the truth myself.”
The “writing on the wall” Bible story is a familiar one. According to the Book of Daniel, one night the arrogant Babylonian king was holding a drunken feast, using sacred gold and silver vessels looted from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Much to the revelers’ dismay, a giant hand suddenly materialized and wrote a cryptic message on the wall.
King Belshazzar was so petrified that “his knees knocked together.” (Dan. 5:1-6)
King Belshazzar freaks out when God’s finger writes on his palace wall, in familiar Bible tale.
The prophet Daniel warned King Belshazzar that the words meant that God had judged him and his days as a ruler were numbered. Sure enough, that very night the tyrant was slain.
The discovery of remnants of the wall in what is now Iraq’s Babil Province, made by a team of French archaeologists in 1973, made the fingerprint study possible.
“The key was the final period at the end of the sentence,” revealed Temworthy. “It formed a perfect print of the right index finger. And the fact that it was the size of my head made it very easy to examine.”
The Black Stone, also known as the Kaaba Stone, is housed in the center of the Grand Mosque of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The shrine is visited by millions of Muslim pilgrims every year, and believers often stop to kiss the mysterious stone, as the Prophet Mohammed is said to have done.
MYSTERIOUS Black Stone, believed to have been placed on Earth by Allah Himself, is housed in sacred shrine in Mecca.
“The Saudis are, understandably, very protective of the stone,” said Temworthy. “But after two years of begging, pleading and writing, we received permission from the Saudi government to take a look at the stone, discreetly.”
Initially, the jet-black stone showed no evidence of bearing any prints. But when the expert applied a chemical similar to ninhydrid to its surface, the relic began to give up its secrets.
“The friction ridge impressions of an index and middle finger slowly began to appear,” recalled Temworthy. “It was like watching a miracle unfold. The prints were remarkably distinct. It was awe-inspiring to think they had been left countless thousands of years ago at the dawn of time.”
Temworthy displayed a slide of the look-alike prints for a side by side comparison.
Each person’s fingerprints are unique, experts say
“On God’s print, to the left, you see a peacock’s eye whorl next to this tented arch — and on Allah’s print to the right you see exactly the same pattern,” explained the expert, whose field is known as dactyloscopy.
For the most part, religious leaders from around the world are greeting the results joyfully.
“This is wondrous news,” declared the Reverend Jonathan Blavelock, an Anglican clergyman in London. “It means that all the conflicts between Christians, Moslems and Jews over the centuries have all been one big misunderstanding.”
A few ministers have refused to embrace the discovery, citing the .0000000000075 percent chance of a false positive.
And one adamantly rejected the possibility that the Supreme Being of the Bible and of the Koran could be identical.
“I don’t care what the facts say,” exclaimed a leading Baptist preacher in Mobile, Alabama. “Faith is stronger than any fact.”
But so far, the vast majority of Christian and Jewish ministers appear to be accepting the truth — and even hardcore Islamo-facist fanatics are keeping an open mind.
An Al Qaeda spokesman said, “If our experts confirm these findings — and I’m not saying they will, mind you — we may have to reconsider this whole Jihad.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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UNRELENTING HORROR: The opening of C. Michael Forsyth’s novel has been called “the scariest 10 pages ever written.” To hear Chapter One FREE click below.
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WE'RE THE GOVERNMENT AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP: Judy (Radha Mitchell) is taken under wing by Uncle Sam
By C. Michael Forsyth
Generally, I’m not enthusiastic about remakes. Unlike many horror and sci-fi fans, I don’t thrill to news that a “re-imagining” is in the works of gems that were perfectly executed the first go-around, like “Nightmare on Elm Street” or “Total Recall.” Self-cannibalization is sickening to behold, so when I observe my own culture indulging in the act, I take a dim view of it. Did we really need “Halloween 2,” the sequel to the remake of a film that inspired nine sequels and spawned 147 knock-offs. (Okay, I confess I made that last number up, but you get the idea.) Did we really need to revisit “Friday the 13th,” a franchise that had already generated TWELVE films? Even that term “franchise,” when applied to an art form, betrays a grotesquely cynical and philistine attitude. But what really gets my goat is that this is an industry which prizes youth — a 40-year-old trying to launch a career as a TV writer is considered over the hill. No, executives are looking for “fresh” talent and ideas. Ha! I read that one of these young lions pitched the fresh idea of “ ‘Die Hard’ in an office building” — being so young and fresh that he’d never seen the original! You just know that somewhere a Hollywood bigwig is asking, “Is it too soon to remake the 1993 ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ movie?”
That having been said, I loved “The Crazies“!
There are cases where there has been an amazing leap forward in technology (as with “King Kong“) or where the original was deeply flawed, or where society has changed so much that a remake can be justified. “The Crazies,” a remake of George Romero’s low-budget, Nixon-versus-hippie-era picture of 1973, falls into the last two categories. That little-known film featured stilted dialogue, poor pacing, and was made at a time when the thought that the federal government might not always be a force for good was a relatively new and alarming idea.
The updated “Crazies,” now on DVD, is a scary, crisply directed, action-packed thriller, that — divorced from the now-antiquated political discussion — consistently delivers the goods.
The plot in a nutshell: A military plane carrying a genetically engineered virus crashes in a swamp near a small Iowa town. Designed to throw enemy cities into chaos, the “Trixie virus” slowly drives the townsfolk mad, transforming them one by one into crazed killing machines. To contain the epidemic, the government cordons off the town and sends in droves of gas-masked storm troopers to round up both the sick and uninfected citizens, whisking them away to an unknown fate. The intrepid Sheriff David Dutten (ably played by Timothy Olyphant) leads a small band of survivors, including his pregnant wife Judy, as they try against all odds to escape the town without falling victim to the zombie-like plague victims or the marauding army goons.
Director Breck Eisner creates a creepy atmosphere, starting with an early scene in which the town drunk interrupts a friendly community baseball game by marching onto the field toting a rifle. The film boasts some thrilling set-pieces, such as the Sheriff’s encounter with a runaway bone-cutting saw. In one of most nail-biting scenes in my recent memory, a character lies helpless, strapped to a gurney, while a madman lurches toward her, plunging a pitchfork into the chest of one fellow patient after another.
I like that, unlike many such flicks where the law enforcement officials are fatally slow on the uptake, the Sheriff quickly figures out what’s up. He makes all the right moves, beginning with shutting off the water that’s the source of the contamination (to no avail, needless to say).
I’ve always favored horror films that feature multiple menaces, as is the case here. The heroes must contend with not only the crazies and the trigger-happy soldiers, but also the threat from within. They must constantly ask whether their fellow survivors are becoming unglued due to the extreme situation — or because the disease has made its way into their brains. In some instances, all three threats are operating simultaneously, most memorably when a car wash is transformed into a hellhole of panic and mayhem.
Some will argue that “28 Days Later” trod the same ground, because those monsters, too, were not technically zombies but victims of a “rage virus.” But, apart from their accelerated speed, they behaved exactly like the shambling revenants of “Night of the Living Dead.” Here, interestingly, the infected talk and retain a good deal of their personalities, albeit dangerously altered — such as a trio of good ol’ boy hunters who take to hunting humans with guns after they lose their minds. The director’s choice in opting for makeup inspired by real diseases like rabies as opposed to the traditional rotting-corpse look also sets “The Crazies” apart from an ordinary zombie movie and lends the film realism.
Sure, we’ve been down this road before. So often, indeed, that it’s now a given that in the event of a plague, the government will round people up and put them in concentration camps. (Hey, some in the Sarah Palin crowd think Uncle Sam won’t even wait for a plague!) The 2008 movie “Quarantine,” in which the quasi-zombie outbreak takes place in an tenement, amped up the terror-level by introducing a more claustrophobic setting.
But “The Crazies” is a genuinely frightening, well-made movie any horror fan would be out of their mind to miss.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth. All rights reserved
GROOVY, MAN: Original 1973 version of "The Crazies" might really have been in need of an update.
George Romero would definitely approve of C. Michael Forsyth's novel.
FREEZE, BLOODSUCKER! Freedom fighter Elvis (Willem Dafoe) gets the drop on vampire scientist Edward (Ethan Hawke).
By C. Michael Forsyth
The strangest nightmare I ever had was an astonishingly vivid dream at age 13 in which vampires were taking over my native Manhattan. I woke up screaming and returned to sleep with difficulty. But here’s the weird part: when I awoke again, I was in the New Jersey woods and a trio of strangers were hovering over me. When I asked who they were, they reminded me that they were with “the Resistance.” In short order, we were heading across the George Washington Bridge, armed with crossbows, on a “reconnaissance mission” into New York. After some misadventures, I woke again in my bed, to the pleasing face of my mother (without fangs).
Since that time, I’ve always awakened in the non-vampire reality, knock wood. But I was intrigued by the notion of writing a novel in which vampires had taken over the world. I was a bit disappointed to soon learn that I’d been beaten to the punch by the original “Last Man on Earth.” Yet I remain fascinated by the idea.
“Daybreakers,” now on DVD, adopts that very premise. Set in the year 2019, it depicts a future in which vampires have finally achieved world domination. The bad news, for them, is they’ve succeeded only too well – there are almost no humans left to prey upon and the blood supply is rapidly running out. The movie has only a few scary moments. Most memorably, the vampire protagonist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) and his brother are set upon by one of the “subsiders,” C.H.U.D.-like wretches that have transformed into bat-winged, pointy-eared monstrosities as a result of blood-starvation.
But the film works best as social satire, presenting a cleverly thought-out dystopia, a kind of 1984 or Brave New World with vampires. Everything follows logically from the idea that our society is the essentially the same, but populated by vampires. There are nifty inventions such as shuttered, high-tech cars that employ cameras and computer technology to allow vamps to drive in daylight. A bloodsucking pharmaceutical giant is now literally a bloodsucking pharmaceutical giant, warehousing unconscious humans in vast bays, hooked up to tubes that drain their blood for sale.
The reliable Sam Neill, a terrific movie hero in “Jurassic Park,” is equally effective as the loathsome head honcho of the pharmaceutical company. Former child actor Hawke, who seems gaunter and more intense with every role, is compelling as a reluctant vampire who pines for his lost humanity. A drug-company hematologist, he is racing to develop synthetic blood before the entire population is converted to subsiders, then wiped out by famine.
Yes, there is a Resistance. And yes, as with just about every such saga from “Red Dawn” to “V,” there’s an element of World-War II nostalgia to it. But there’s a twist. It turns out that one of the leaders, played by William Dafoe, has a remarkable trait that may offer a solution to the vampire dilemma before society collapses.
WATCH the trailer for the terrifying novel Hour of the Beast by clicking on the link below
C. Michael Forsyth is the author of "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini in The Adventure of the Spook House,""The Blood of Titans," "Hour of the Beast" and "The Identity Thief." He is a Yale graduate and former senior writer for The Weekly World News
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