Jailbreaking Christ: Unlocking Christ From His Chapter & Verse Prison

By Eugene L Ulrich

Epic discoveries in the twentieth century led physicists into a creation story suggesting that the four forces and twelve building blocks of nature actually flow from a body that was broken at the beginning of time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manuscripts LLC
• Release date: Jan 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798885043731

Eugene L Ulrich

Eugene Ulrich is an amateur telescope maker, astronomer, and a passionate disciple of Christ. He writes about his lifelong addiction to exploring the meaning of life, especially the interface between Christ and the Cosmos. Raised by Mennonite missionary parents in Costa Rica and sporting only an 8th-grade formal education, Ulrich lives in a love/hate relationship with the orthodoxies within science and religion. He is happily married to his childhood sweetheart of 32 years and boasts 9 kids and 9 grandkids. Ulrich's passion is to expose a deep connection between what Christ says about himself and what scientists say about the Universe. You can find out more about his writings and research at jbchrist.com.

Book preview

Amazon_Ebook_Cover.jpg

Jailbreaking Christ

Jailbreaking Christ

By Eugene L. Ulrich

Copyright © 2023 Eugene L. Ulrich

All rights reserved.

Jailbreaking Christ

ISBN

979-8-88504-373-1 Ebook

979-8-88926-018-9 Paperback

979-8-88504-372-4 Hardcover

Table of Contents

Epigraph

Preface

Introduction

Clanking Chains, Steel Doors & Heavy Locks

Chapter 1. Guardians of the Galaxy

Chapter 2. Rome’s Second Tomb

Chapter 3. No Father—No Son

Chapter 4. Destroyed by the Deacon’s Wife

Chapter 5. Andean Lady 1,600 BC

Chapter 6. Jesus and the Canaanites

Chapter 7. Jesus & Suffering

Chapter 8. The Rising Emerald

Chapter 9. No Time for His-Story

Unlocking Christ from His Chapter & Verse Prison

Chapter 10. A Polished View of the Universe

Chapter 11. Why Build Telescopes?

Chapter 12. God Said—Bang It Was!

Chapter 13. Slain from the Foundation of the World

Chapter 14. The Conscious Universe

Chapter 15. Repentance, Atonement & Forgiveness

Chapter 16. The Last Supper

Chapter 17. This Chapter Is for Sinners Only

Chapter 18. Dad’s Funeral Sermon

Acknowledgments

Notes

Endnotes

Epigraph

… take eat, this is my body, broken for you…

—Jesus Christ

Preface

One late night, twenty-five years ago, while deep in the clutches of the church’s iron grip, this parable leaked through my fingers onto a forbidden computer screen.

I didn’t know what it meant back then. It just felt like something that had to come off my chest and onto paper.

Now, a quarter of a century later, it strikes me that this parable was preparing me for the long journey ahead, leading to this book you hold in your hands.

* * *

I crawled forward on all fours, my head scraping the rock above, my stomach dragging the cold damp stone.

I shivered as my hand grasped an edge ahead of me. Is my trail coming to an end again? I wondered.

Flattening my chest a bit more, I was able to pull my face up to the edge. A shaft of light startled me. It was dim, but after thirteen hours in total darkness, it was a blinding light.

I strained to see the extremities of the cavernous precipice I had encountered. I could not quite locate where the light was coming from, but it seemed like it was to my lower left.

Suddenly, I gasped as I beheld the bottom in the dim light. I never was much afraid of heights, but under my cramped conditions, it was sickening. At least three hundred feet lay between me and a stream at the bottom.

Why did this trail end so abruptly with no warning? I wondered as I stretched a little farther to see the face of the edge I was grasping. In my desperation, it seemed smooth as glass, an impossibility to descend, yet some strange premonition kept making itself known.

In spite of the tragic ending to a very promising trail, I felt a tinge of promise, a feeling so faint I would lose it if I concentrated on why it was even around. Nevertheless, it was a background for my basic mood at the moment.

I laid my cheek on my hand as I drifted into a pensive reverie. One experience after another marking this particular trail made its way through my mind.

Almost all of these were so compelling they seemed to point on so deliberately, yet here it stopped. Maybe there was some purposeful design in this particular trail to trap a roving soul.

But again, the way marks seemed too compelling to entertain that long. I reflected again on the object of my search. I felt a powerful sense of belonging to her—my wife, my love. Everything I ever wanted and more was near when we were together.

I could not be happier as when in her presence; my emotions, my conscience, my feelings, and my intellect were all indistinguishable as I basked in her presence. The feeling was not one of everything being understood but rather of a conscious infinity on its way and all is well.

It often seemed too good to be true, but I knew nothing could be more certain. But there came a day when I woke up and she was gone.

Desperately, I tried to recall where she had come from and what about her could help me identify her presence if I ever saw her again among the thronging crowds.

I remember the sudden clarity overtaking me as I recalled her love for the mountains and all they stood for. I remember how convinced I was of the utter futility of searching for her among the world’s crowds since the mountains and the sky were her realm.

I recall the tearing conflict in my heart when I decided to leave the comfort of civilization and head for the mountains to search for my beloved.

My parents, my friends—almost all of them saw nothing in this girl of my dreams, and much less did they see any sense in losing myself to the mountains in search of her. Yet I would have rather died than to remain with them without my beloved.

The day I left was dreary and cold, dampening somewhat my ambitions. The dreary morning helped me see how I would never be happy in this valley without her, yet the cold also impressed me with the possibility of never finding her warm presence.

In this mood, I headed up the mountain trail. After several hours of traveling up the incline, I sensed the ambient atmosphere was sharpening my ability to recollect the feelings when in her presence.

The tall, jagged cliffs against a celestial blue sky, the crystal pure air I inhaled, and the wonderful sense of heights all worked to create in me a mood reminiscent of her presence.

Suddenly, I halted. I was walking along a narrow ledge halfway up a solid cliff, having no idea where I was going, when ahead of me, I saw a solid wall of rock ending my trail.

Coming close to it, I saw that a complicated set of jagged edges protruded from the open face of it. Something about those jagged edges intrigued me; almost like the notes in a song, they waved up and down in an orderly fashion, two rows of them about seven feet apart.

Not knowing if they led to a continuation of the trail, I grasped the first little fist-sized ledge above my head and placed my left foot on the first of the lower ones.

Continuing in this fashion, I made some progress, although slow. Finally, much to my relief, I saw the narrow ledge again, giving me a trail to walk on.

Shortly after, the trail curved gently to my right, and as I walked along, I noticed that, looking to my right, I could see those jagged edges I had dealt with head-on.

I was stunned by the design; a definite symphonic pattern was evident. A powerful feeling swept through me as I realized this pattern was not a random accident, and I decided that, not knowing what to make of it, I would at least try to remember the pattern, so I drew a copy of the design on a flat piece of stone and stuck it in my pocket.

Frequently after this, I would come upon such rocks across my path, and each time, they had a pattern of ledges that seemed specifically designed to make the path traversable, yet how could I ever know if it was purposeful?

One thing I noticed was that, although they all had that appealing symphony to their pattern, no two were alike, causing me to doubt their purposeful placement, and I concluded it was only luck.

However, I would always feel a compulsion to record their pattern on my flat stone.

Traveling on for quite some distance, I again sensed the surroundings as resonant with my fond memories of her.

The air was getting clearer, the sky bluer, and the cliffs more and more suggestive of some of the most profound moments with her. Yet at times, I would be caught in despair as I realized that, according to the thinking standards back in the valley, I was wasting my time since obviously I had not found her.

It would always come clear to me, though, that the mere roaming among these cliffs brought me much closer to experiencing her presence than the cozy lifestyle of the fog-ridden valley, and experiencing her presence was all I ever wanted.

Rounding a curve on the ledge, I gasped at the scenery. A beautiful U-shaped wall was directly ahead of me, completely bringing an end to the ledge I was traveling on.

The beauty of that solid blue wall filled me with such a sense of awe that, for a long time, I stood there gazing at it, forgetting it was the end of a meaningful trail.

The U-shaped wall was extremely tall, taller than any cliffs I had ever seen. It stood there silhouetted against a slightly brighter blue sky. I felt convinced that much meaning lay in that wall, though I had no idea what it might be.

Suddenly, I became aware that the shadows were lengthening, bringing an end to my first day among the mountains. The truth of my situation dawned upon me: my trail and my day were both ending, leaving me completely in the dark among the cliffs. And what good was all this beautiful scenery in the dark, and what good a trail if no destiny, no lover?

A cold shudder came over me as, once more, I scanned the blue wall in the twilight. I noticed something different about the bottom of the wall where the trail ended; it was not getting dark there as fast as elsewhere, but then it dawned on me that it was somehow lit with a soft luminescence.

My fears vanished as I sensed again something very familiar, though nameless in that soft radiance.

I briskly walked the remaining distance to the end of the trail, coming up to a region on the wall where it was glowing. I could not make out where the light was coming from.

I withdrew my hand from my pocket to feel this beautiful wall and what was my astonishment when my hand felt nothing. The truth dawned on me that maybe this is not the end of my trail after all. I mustered all the faith I could and took a step forward into this wall of pale blue light.

How coincidental, I thought, that I came to this light right when my day ended. Again, the whole thing filled me with a wonderful sense of meaning even if I could not explain it in the language of the valley.

Now that I was in the folds of this wonderful light, I decided to sit down and rest. I needed to recollect my experiences of the first day searching for my lover; most of all, I needed to be assured I was on the right trail.

I reached into my pocket and withdrew my flat stone with its record of the many boulders that came across my path. Staring at this stone, I became aware that the light I was sitting in was softly pulsating in a rhythmic way. I gazed at all the diagrams I had drawn on my flat stone of the patterns on the face of those rocks. Something was strangely familiar about it.

I was not sure if it was the rhythm in the pulsing light or the unique pattern that had automatically emerged after recording those jagged edges in sequence on my stone, or perhaps it was both. Still, the whole thing was creating a warmth in my bosom I had not felt since I lost my lover.

What was it? I wondered, as I tapped my foot in rhythm with the pulsing light. What about this whole thing seems so familiar in such a strange way?

I scanned the pattern on my stone once more till it burst on me with frightening accuracy; the rhythm in the light and the pattern on the stone was the exact symphony of the last song my lover and I had sung together. I could not recall a single word, but the music and rhythm were exactly the same.

The song expressed a desire for comradeship with something far, far away, or else far in the infinite past. Or maybe it was something in the deepest reaches of reality—something worth the anguish of a thousand universes like ours, but only the music and desire were intact in my memory.

The effect convinced me I was on the right trail, but I could never come close to finding a way to describe this whole thing in the language of the valley.

So, I decided that, though it was already nighttime, I would pursue this pulsating luminescence now that I had confidence of being on the right trail.

For all I knew, my lover was not far off. Really, sometimes it felt as if she was all around me. This light was more able than anything else to create in me that sense of cosmic meaning I felt when in her presence.

With a decided step, I continued on farther into the blue light. The going was easy, and my heart was light with joy and meaning.

After a while, I became somewhat perplexed at the uniformity of this light. To me, it seemed it should soon lead into something, but everything continued the same till my face suddenly smashed into solid rock. The soft, blue luminescence had ended, and I was in great pain.

I stayed there in anguish for a long time until I recollected how filled with design and meaning my trail had been up to this moment. Surely, I reasoned, all this meaning cannot end in a painful rendezvous with a cold rock wall. There has to be meaning to even this experience.

With renewed hope, I slid my hand across the dark, cold wall searching for any aperture, and then I felt it, a small hole just big enough to slide through.

The only reason I would even consider going through the hole was the powerful meaning that had followed my trail up till then. If I had come to this place right after leaving the valley, I would never have considered it.

Slowly and painfully, I made my way through the hole. It opened up a little after that but was still small enough that I had to go on my hands and knees. Now it was completely dark, in fact, darker than anything I had ever known.

* * *

Turning my head and laying my cheek on my hands, I realized that recollecting these meaningful experiences was making me more stubborn in my search for her. I stretched forward again and peered down into those three hundred feet of dim light to the bottom.

How utterly impossible for this trail to go on, and yet how impossible for it to end after all these meaningful clues.

I wondered, Is it possible that this light is coming from above? I stretched forward a little more, and then I turned cold, my heart stopped. There, across the chasm, about fifty feet above me on a spacious ledge bathed in beautiful blue light was my lover, clothed in radiant hues that surpassed anything I ever experienced.

My heart found its way, and it raced wildly as I found myself gazing into her beautiful eyes. I was flooded with an overwhelming sense of meaning. Surely there is a way I