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Judgement Day before the year 2056, He'll have $43,000 waiting for Him. |
by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com
The Bible is one of the most demanding and challenging books to read and fully understand, but one of its crucial points that comes across crystal clear is this: the Christian God don't care too much for money, 'cause money can't buy Him love. There's all that stuff in there about how the love of money is the root of all evil, and how you should render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and how much easier it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's enough to make Bill Gates renounce his Satanic ways and turn Microsoft over to the Salvation Army.
Consider, then, the strange case of the last will and testament of Ernest Digweed. A former teacher who lived in Portsmouth, England, Digweed spent his final years as a reclusive religious fanatic. When he died in 1976 at the age of 81, with his body encircled by crucifixes inside a tent in his living room, he left behind one of the most bizarre wills ever written. He bequeathed his entire estate of 26,406 pounds (about $43,000) to Jesus Christ, in the event of the Second Coming.
It is unclear exactly why Digweed decided to do this, or how he thought Christ would benefit from getting his money. After all, when Jesus gets back, His busy agenda of battling the Antichrist and sorting out the Final Judgment is probably going to preclude Him from doing much shopping. But it's the thought that counts, and Digweed was scrupulously precise in spelling out how he wanted his estate to be disposed of.
His will indicated that his monetary assets were to be placed in investments for a period of 80 years following his death, and withdrawn prematurely only in the event of a single contingency:
"If, during those 80 years," Digweed's will stipulates, "the Lord Jesus Christ shall come to reign on Earth then the Public Trustee, upon obtaining proof which shall satisfy him of His identity, shall pay to the Lord Jesus Christ all the property which he holds on behalf of my estate."
And what's to happen should the Messiah fail to return within the allotted time frame? Digweed provided the following resolution: "If at the expiration of the said 80 years the Lord Jesus Christ has not come, then the Public Trustee shall pay to the Crown all the property which he holds on behalf of my estate."
So you might think Digweed's cash is all sown up from here to Kingdom Come, or the year 2056, whichever comes first. But it's not quite that simple. For one thing, distant relatives of Digweed's contested his will a few years after his death, and were awarded a large, undisclosed amount of the estate. Now those are some folks who are gonna have some explaining to do on the Day of Reckoning.
Further diminishing the pot of loot awaiting Jesus, Digweed's will specified that after a period of 21 years, the dividends from his invested estate were to be paid to the British treasury. In September 1997, these earnings were duly rendered unto the Crown, and thus the phrase "Jesus Saves" can no longer be applied to funds set aside in an interest-bearing bank account. Bummer.
Yet regardless of the net sum involved, droves of Jesus-wannabes have been predictably ascending from the woodwork for years now, making Digweed's death a living hell for the British Public Trust Office. The executors have accumulated a mountainous pile of money-hungry entreaties from persons who claim to be Christ. So far, none of their contentions has proven satisfactory.
"Clearly Mr. Digweed, in making his will, was very serious," said Public Trustee Julia Lomas. "I would also say that most of those who actually make a claim are acting genuinely."
That's a very charitable, "judge not" kind of attitude, but let's get real. One of the applicants for the inheritance was a door-to-door salesman who argued that he must be worthy of the cash, because when people saw him on their doorstep, they cried out, "Jesus Christ, not you again!" Haw haw haw.
In the end, we can only guess why a religious wacko would leave all his money to Jesus. Maybe because Jesus was the only person in Digweed's life of any real importance to him. Maybe it was a calculated gesture meant to demonstrate a point -- a modern-day parable to make people confront the meaninglessness of money in the face of God's judgment. Or maybe the guy was just nuts.
But there's also a longshot possibility that Digweed actually knew Jesus a bit more intimately than most people. Jesuit scholar Ugo Vanni and Vatican historian Giovanni Magnani have recently stirred up controversy with their revisionist accounts of Jesus' financial status while He lived in Galilee. Contrary to the view of Jesus as a simple man of humble means, they have suggested that He actually belonged to "a relatively well-off" middle-class family. Magnani points out that the Hebrew word used to describe the occupation of Jesus and Joseph, usually interpreted as "carpenter," more accurately denotes a higher profession such as surveyor or architect. Despite His exhortations against filthy lucre, it seems that Jesus may have personally enjoyed a comfortable standard of living.
Does this mean maybe Jesus really would appreciate a nice gift allowance of walking-around money upon His earthly revisitation? I'll leave that perilous question to the theologians, because all I know for sure is this: man does not live by bread alone, but a little extra dough never hurt anybody.
Sources: Electronic Telegraph; The Times (London)
© Copyright 1997 ParaScope, Inc.
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