Boy, I’ll tell you, I must have been busier than I thought, because apparently I missed the Second Coming of Christ. It would seem unlikely that even I would miss something as big as this. If nothing else, you’d think I’d notice the proceeding Rapture and the seven-year Tribulation. But maybe it’s going on right now and nobody noticed. Come to think of it, hasn’t George W. Bush been in office for almost seven years now?

According to a religious leader named José Luis de Jesús Miranda, it seems like Jesus has come back to stake his claim on Earth. How does he know this? Because he is Jesus, of course!

I’m not making this up. You may have heard something about de Jesús before, most notably his claims of being the “antichrist,” and he and his followers sport 666 tattoos to hammer this point in. While “man who claims to be the antichrist” makes a great headline, there’s of course a lot more to the story than meets the eye, and the truth may be more or less sinister than you originally imagined.

I first got an in-depth look at de Jesús after catching an episode of Primetime, which investigated his organization, teachings, and followers alongside a story of a half-brother and sister dating and a mother being sexually attracted to her estranged son. And the piece about de Jesús is still the most disturbing

He runs a ministry called Growing In Grace International Ministry, Inc., which has attracted as many as over a million followers, many of whom will hand over expensive gifts or money. One couple gave him around two million dollars.

Perhaps his followers are so devoted because de Jesús’s teachings are rather appealing when compared to contemporary Christianity. He claims that angels came to him in a vision and asked him to be the next Jesus. He teaches that the Devil and Hell were destroyed when Jesus died on the cross, and because of that, there is no longer any sin. That’s right: no one can do wrong by God because there is no more sin. No wonder he’s so popular! With the original salvation rules, you at least had to believe in something and live a certain way, but this sequel is even better, because you don’t have to do a damn thing and you’re saved! What a religion!

So if he’s Jesus, how can he be the antichrist? The reasons for this are two-fold. The philosophical reason, as de Jesús explains it, is because there is no sin, there is no need for the original teachings of Jesus. Since de Jesús’s teachings run against those of Jesus of Nazareth, he considers himself the antichrist. The other reason, similar to Anton LeVay and his Church of Satan, is to provide shock value and a level of mockery of established religions.

Ironically, de Jesús teaches that organized religion is bad, especially the Catholic Church, but that shouldn’t come as any big surprise. Yes, he has his own organized following, and he hates organized religion. Try not to think about that one too much.

There are a number of things about this man and his mission that make me nervous. I’m actually not too concerned about the fact that he’s milking people for millions of dollars. You’re always going to have gullible people who are willing to give someone millions of dollars to make them feel better about themselves. It happens everywhere from the Christian church to McDonald’s, and while I can’t say it’s an entirely bad thing, it’s hard to practice these things in moderation, and it’s easy to get swindled by them.

One the most controversial things is his “super raza.” These are the children in his ministry, the ones that have de Jesús’s truth hammered into them until they can’t possibly question it and are therefore “pure.” The children interviewed on Primetime were nonchalantly confirming that Jesus is alive and well, drinking and smoking at the kitchen table, and no one finds this strange at all.

This isn’t the worst part of it. You sort of expect religious organizations to get the kids prepped early, because their inexperienced little brains are much easier to manipulate, and once the marks have been left, they don’t come off very easily. I still subconsciously base my religious outlooks on the Christianity I was taught, so I can understand this. And while the children running around Growing in Grace aren’t nearly as messed up as the micro-psychos Westboro Baptist Church is cultivating (though without the boogieman of Satan, who knows how those kids will turn out), de Jesús has decided to give them the unfortunate name of super raza, a name he knows won’t take well with the general public, but seems to believe can’t be changed, even though he’s Jesus (but then again, Christians believe God is powerless when it comes to the post-mortis salvation of sinners).

If you haven’t figured it out, “super raza” translates to “super race.” If visions of Nazis don’t dance in your head, you aren’t American.

What also bothers me about de Jesús is he doesn’t strike me as a particularly smart man. He’s got charisma shooting out the wazoo, which in this business is more important that intelligence, but he clearly hasn’t bother to prepare answers for the tough (or even the not-so-tough) questions skeptics are going to throw his way.

For example, when Primetime interviewed de Jesús, the interviewer asked him how he can justify keeping all of the expensive gifts he is given when Jesus of Nazareth insisted on helping the poor. He responds by saying he doesn’t want to insult the people who gave him the gifts, something the original Jesus wouldn’t give a donkey’s butt about.

The best part was de Jesús goes on to say that Jesus wasn’t really poor. The reporter immediately fired back the Jesus was a carpenter, and any idiot who was ever told a Bible story knows Jesus wasn’t exactly counting gold coins on the backs of high-priced prostitutes. After being hit with this information, de Jesús explains that may people think he was poor, but indicates that Jesus was craftier than that. Or maybe smarter, we can’t be sure, because de Jesús just points to his head and gives a smug nod. He concludes his thought by saying Jesus turned water into wine, which should justify his reasoning to all but the most jaded cynics, like me, who replied, “Yeah, because he couldn’t afford to buy his own booze.”

When he’s pressed in a corner about how his followers can possibly believe what he tells them, he arrogantly replies “So you tell the millions of followers I have that and this guy is a liar. You know what are they going to say? Is that I prefer his lies than what religion gave me.” That’s right: he doesn’t care if he’s right or not, because people prefer his lies to the lies of other religions. Well, at least he’s somewhat honest.

What frightens me the most is de Jesús’s future plans. He wishes to set up shop in Miami because “Miami is the bridge for all nations. That's where Hispanics are, and then eventually I'm going to find a lot of beautiful English-speaking people who will want to believe in me and I'm going to have millions of them."

It may not seem odd that a religious leader wants to expand his influence, but I get a more sinister vibe from this statement. Now, I don’t buy most of what comes out of a psycho-Christian conspiracy theorist’s mouth, but I know enough about the ideas surrounding Revelations, specifically the idea that the world will be united into a one world government by a charismatic leader who is actually the antichrist. José Luis de Jesús Miranda is a charismatic leader who wants to expand his influence, and just so happens to call himself the antichrist. If your Christian buddies (assuming you have any) suddenly disappear, leaving only their clothes behind, and de Jesús becomes the leader of the world, please feel free to join me as I kiss God’s ass.

No doubt millions of practitioners of “normal” religions are condemning de Jesús as another Charles Manson, David Koresh, or Marshall Applewhite, and there is mounting concern over the influence he has on his followers. If he can make them hand over millions of dollars, what else can he make them do? Personally, I doubt de Jesús has these sort of aggressive end goals in mind. I liken him to more of a Ted Haggard or Pat Robertson, the sort that likes being in the limelight and having control, but has no intentions of causing much more trouble than maybe parting the fool with his gold or ruffling a few feathers. To be honest, I think I’d like hanging out with de Jesús far more than anyone of the people I’ve mentioned in this paragraph. Compared to them, de Jesús seems pretty harmless, but we’ll have to wait and see.

But if we’d be honest with ourselves, we would realize that de Jesús is actually a lot like another guy who came in, told everyone their religious outlook was now out-of-date, and received so much scorn from those who didn’t believe him, he was eventually executed. Unless you’re so clouded by years of Christian conditioning, you’ll realize this man was Jesus of Nazareth.

Don’t worry, I was like you, listening to those Bible stories and wondering why the religious leaders of Jesus’s day were being so mean and stupid. It wasn’t until I started thinking about modern religious leaders with off-the-wall ideas and how the religious leaders of Jesus’s time probably thought the same thing we’re thinking about people like de Jesús: another whack-job wanting power by corrupting our sacred scriptures.

What gets me is no one ever seems to remember that the Jews who accused Jesus of being a blasphemer were being good Jews, or at least in that respect. These were the laws that God set aside centuries ago. In the context of Christian beliefs, how were they to know that God suddenly decided to change the rules? God’s pretty good at that, I know.

So as hard as it is to accept, as far was the law was concerned, Jesus was a sinner and a heretic. He preached against the Word of God the people were taught and he directly violated some of the Mosaic code from time to time, like when he saved the adulterer from being stoned to death, which was the punishment ordained by God for that sort of thing. Can you really blame the religious authorities for treating Jesus like a criminal? As far as they knew, he was, and to some, still is.

So de Jesús could very well be the Second Coming, but like all religious matters, healthy doses of skepticism are required (or, in my opinion, complete skepticism). Most Christians don’t even bother responding too much outside of throwing out Mathew 24:5, which states “For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.”

So here we are again: has Jesus really come back, or is Luis de Jesús Miranda just another conman staring at the sweat riches of the religiously starved and gullible? In my cynical opinion, I’m going with the latter, but my core beliefs tell me nothing is for certain when it comes to religious matters, and I’m only open to accepting any ideas as truth if God himself finally does what a responsible supreme deity should do and appear before the world and explain the rules in clear, coherent sentences. And he ain’t talkin’.