The Messiah’s Trek (2nd book of series) continues the quasi-historical novel. It begins a year before Jesus’ conception and ends when he is twelve years old. From events of the story, readers learn about the people, places, history, and customs of ancient Palestine, and Judea. For many centuries of recorded Biblical history, the Old Testament had told of men and women who prophesied the coming of the Jew’s most revered Messiah. A Rabbinical student named Nico (known as Nicodemus in the New Testament) has accepted it as his life’s work to deliver the long-promised Messiah to the Jewish people. He envisioned the scheme and strategy for bringing his dream to reality. In The Messiah’s Path, Nico had recruited Simeon (see Luke 2:25-35) as his mentor, partner, friend, and financial backer. Together they reviewed Old Testament prophecies and devised a basic plan to invoke the key ones during the advent of their Messiah Child. Having traveled the Silk Road, seeking wisdom to later teach the Messiah Child, Nico seeks a woman to conceive and deliver the promised Messiah via virgin birth. Using hypnotic techniques, learned during his travels to Mesopotamia, Nico brings the ‘Angel Gabriel’ to each of three virgins, one after another. Each conceives, ignorant of Nico’s ruse, believing her pregnancy a miracle of the Divine. The first virgin is Simeon’s daughter, Rachael, who is Nico’s chosen bride. She receives the ‘Angel Gabriel’ on her wedding night. She then sleeps alone until assured of her pregnancy. Once a local holy woman confirms, she takes Nico to her bed, and then blames him for her subsequent miscarriage. As punishment, she shuns him for years. The second Gabriel virgin, daughter of a large landowner for whom Nico worked after Rachael’s miscarriage, births a girl child on schedule during the second heavenly event. Sadly, the historical testament declares girls ineligible to become the Messiah. The third Gabriel virgin, Mari Alma, seeks a husband as soon as she knows she is pregnant. Nico investigates many widowers; a contrived raffle produces his choice. While still protesting, Josep marries Mari Alma, who births Jeshu during the third heavenly event, the Star of Bethlehem, as foretold by the Magi. To lend a spiritual setting to the birth, Nico covertly calls the Temple’s student choir, posing as angels, to surround shepherds tending their flocks and sing of the Messiah’s blessed birth. Not having heard from the Magi (Kings of the Orient in Matt. 2:10) since he and Simeon visited with them six years earlier, Nico mounts a racing camel and rides 700 miles to Bagdad; he demands the Magi honor their promise to visit the ‘Messiah Child’ and bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Hearing of Herod’s command to kill the infant boys of Palestine, Nico flees with the ‘Messiah family’ to Egypt and lives there for two years. After Herod’s death, Nico leads them to Nazareth in Galilee. Village elders appoint him as their Rabbi. Using his powers of persuasion and diplomacy, Nico saves the townsfolk from slavery by Roman soldiers who are razing the town of Sepphoris just four miles away. A decade later, Nico observes Jeshu’s encounter with the Temple priests. Months later, he encounters Jeshu and Wild Jon (John the Baptist), living in a fisherman’s cabin overlooking the Sea of Galilee, befriended by the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew, future disciples of Jesus. Around a log fire on a remote beach, Jeshu expounds on his envisioned future and his plans to trek where Senior Priest Nicodemus has earlier blazed the path for him to travel.
