A fragment of a Lost Gospel, recovered from the banks of the Quinnipiac and translated into English from Ugaritic in the Year of Our Lord the Two Thousand and Sixth:
“Brothers and sisters, I bring glad tidings — the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh. I [name illegible], a humble lamb in the flock of God, am witness to great signs and portents. Yea, this season of planting, at the place of augury known in the gentile tongue as ‘New Haven,’ an apostolic chorus sprang up out of the living clay of the earth, chanting the holy benediction, ‘I agree with Adam.’ Verily, Yale University, once a temple of the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and over long centuries defiled by godlessness and crass materialism, all too briefly reclaimed its lost majesty, as Disciples of the Lord, clad in purest yellow, trumpeted the arrival of the anointed one.
“Brothers and sisters, doubt not that Adam is the child of prophecy who will lead us to salvation; for you may have only heard of Him with your ears, but I have seen Him with my eyes. Etched across His chest in letters of fire that ever burned but did not consume his T-shirt, was the sacred inscription ‘I am Adam.’ Recall, good Christians, the literal meaning of ‘Yahweh,’ the proper name of God, ‘I am what am.’ Without question, it was none other than the Son of Man who walked our city streets. And just as suddenly, He was gone, called back to sit at the right hand of the Father.
“The time of His preaching at New Haven may have been fleeting, but rejoice; He has been among us before, and then as now, left assurances that He will return. Adam in His most recent incarnation was Adam Meredith ’08, a sophomore chemistry major from rural Pennsylvania, a land overflowing with milk and honey that is home to a Bethlehem and (count them) two distinct Nazareth Townships. In His prior fleshly sojourn — that is, during the previous ‘I agree with Adam’ week A.D. 2000 — Adam was Adam Stickle, a sophomore health and human development major at Pennsylvania State University.
“What wonders are the Lord’s: Two sophomores named Adam, two concentrations in science, two connections to rural Pennsylvania, two virtually identical statements of faith, two sets of yellow t-shirts proclaiming agreement with the chosen one. Are these accidents or fingerprints that God has intentionally left behind on His works for detection by the faithful? As the Psalmist might have put it, the fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no Adam.’
“Indeed, if I may quote the Book of Ecclesiastes, ‘There is nothing new beneath the sun.’ The first coming of Adam at Penn State in 2000 was heralded several months earlier by a reborn John the Baptist, a sophomore (of course) at the University of Arizona named Dave Goffeney, who was the focus of his very own ‘I agree with Dave’ week. (Naturally is Adam descended from Dave, for was it not foretold that the Savior will be of the line of David?) The earthly ministry of Dave, in turn, was rooted in the teachings in the mythic past (1998) of the great lawgiver Tom Rickstren of the Humboldt State University Campus Crusade for Christ in California.
“Proclaiming an ‘I agree with Tom’ week, which he aptly described as a ‘supernatural experience,’ the prophet donned an ‘I am Tom’ shirt, no doubt in keeping with the revelation of God that he received atop Mount Shasta, California, known in all the lands as a mountain of mystery and terror. The Tablets of Tom are the Law of the Campus Crusade for Christ International, consisting in Four Commandments: ‘1) God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. 2) Man is sinful and separated from God. 3) Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. 4) We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.’
“Behold, Adam comes not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it: He believes ‘There is a God who loves us.’ He believes ‘that every person … thinks and behaves in a way hostile to God, and this hostility separates us from Him.’ He believes that Jesus Christ ‘rose back to life, defeating death and making it possible for humanity to be reconciled back to God.’ And He believes that it’s ‘up to us whether or not we accept this gift of reconciliation through Jesus.’ It is a wicked and faithless man who would attribute the almost perfect resemblance between Adam’s creed and the CCCI’s Old Dispensation to dumb chance. As Jesus tells us in Luke 16:17, ‘It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for one little stroke to drop out of the Law.’
“Brothers and sisters, let none forget that God is a god of wrath as well as love. As it is written, ‘I the Lord your God am a jealous god.’ Those who reject the Word of Jesus Christ and His good friend Adam can do so only out of deliberate wickedness; and they will be fittingly punished, for God is just.
“On the Day of Judgment, the heretics, Jews, all other various and sundry pagans and homosexuals, abortionists, aborted fetuses, witches, warlocks, and unbaptized infants will be cast down into the Lake of Fire where they will burn in depthless agony and unspeakable pain until oblivion come. Thus proclaimeth the God of Love. …”
Here the text cuts off abruptly. Go in peace, happy Easter, and may Adam bless us everyone.
Daniel Koffler is a senior in Calhoun College. His column has appeared on alternate Wednesdays.