Café

The Hardest Sermons You’ll Ever Have To Preach
Reviewed by Hans Kristensen
Little Black Books: Science and God
Reviewed by Andrew Laird
Making the Most of the Cross
Reviewed by Lesley Hicks
Higher Ground
Reviewed by Andrew Laird

On Channel 7 Sunday Night: Jesus of Kingaroy

7:00pm Friday, 16th September 2011

Millions of Australians will meet a man who says he is Jesus on Channel 7 on Sunday Night. The reporter for the "Sunday Night" programme will be David Millikan who gives Eternity readers a heads up.

Jesus of Kingaroy

By David Millikan

I have been writing and broadcasting about cults and new religious movements for the last 25 years. During that time I have met more than 10 people who claimed to be Jesus Christ. About 5 years ago I organised two of them to meet, in the hope that they would see the absurdity of what they were saying. They talked for two hours and afterwards thanked me, for each could see more clearly that they were the true Jesus. Both also warned me that the other was mad. I had to agree with them.

And then there is Alan John Miller, the 47 year old real estate developer and computer wiz who says that he is Jesus. What makes him different is that he is not mad. On first meeting he is a friendly, generous, easy-smiling man who has followers joining him at his centre outside of Kingaroy in Queensland. Earlier this year I attended a seminar Miller held in the Murgon town hall. There were people there from Japan, Russia, Switzerland, the UK, USA and Germany. For two days, he held the group entranced. At one point he wrote in large letters on the white board: “I’M JESUS, DEAL WITH IT”. He told me it began about 10 years ago: “I started having violent memories of my earlier life. It was horrific visions of my crucifixion.”

Miller has the first characteristic necessary in leaders like this. He believes every word he is saying. You cannot attract followers if you have the slightest shadow of doubt. So in this sense he is not a con man who goes to bed at night delighting in his subterfuge. He says he is the same Jesus who lived 2011 years ago. Since his “first death” he spent the time making his way through an elaborate series of heavenly levels until he achieved oneness with God. Miller was happy to talk to me about the people he met in the afterlife. “I was good friends with Plato, we had lots of talks. He has changed his mind on a lot of things.” He knew Napoleon, and Mahatma Ghandi, who Miller claims has changed his mind about sex. Apparently he is now all for it. He was buddies with Elvis, Socrates, Saint Augustine, and his cousin John the Baptist.

At one level, Miller is a curiosity who is fascinating to watch. We live in a pluralist democracy in Australia so we have no right to constrain his right to tell the world that he is Jesus. But there is always a problem with people like Miller. He will consume you. You can never match the ferocity of his self -belief. The closer you come to his fire, the more you will be burnt.

There is a strange dance between gurus and their followers. He needs their money, time and absolute obedience. They need him to be who he says he is. Outside the group, AJ Miller is nobody. He is a knockabout Aussie bloke who no one can take seriously. Within the group, he is a colossus. To his followers, his words burn with the light of divine truth. To the rest of us, his endless DVDs are nothing more than prolix ravings.

Miller is surrounded by people who have walked out of marriages and businesses. They have forsaken all to follow Jesus. Neuroscientist Dr Louise Faber left the Queensland University Brain Institute to buy a property next to AJ in O’Dea Road, outside Kingaroy. I asked her if she believed Miller was Jesus. She said: “Oh yes, I know he is.” On the same road, the ebullient Peter Heibloem has a property. Heibloem runs Alpha Dynamics, which he claims is the oldest registered self -help program in Australia. You have to pay big dollars to attend a Heibloem seminar. He told me repeatedly that Miller was Jesus, and that he knew of at least two occasions when he had seen him perform miracles of healing. On the same road is David Ward, convinced by Miller that he was Cornelius, the Roman Centurion in charge of Jesus’ crucifixion.

And then there is Mary Luck. According to AJ, Mary was with him in the first century; they had a child together and since then Mary has been with him as they climbed through the spiritual realms to achieve oneness with God. AJ was the first to reincarnate in 1962 and Mary followed 13 years later. Mary is a beautiful but sad figure. She has been “recovering” memories of her former life and now believes that she was Mary Magdalene. She has bought the entire package, and now she and AJ are inseparable. She is untroubled that Miller has had at least two other Mary Magdalenes before her – a 20-year old he left his wife and two sons for, and then a girl in Barbados.

All gurus create a distinctive culture around them. Miller lives in a world of emotional intensity. His followers break easily into tears. They practice beating pillows, for which baseball bats and pillows are supplied. Mary is first among them. She fights back tears when she recalls her memories of Jesus being crucified: “This was the annihilation of the man I loved most. I saw him tortured to death. I was there, and it’s like it is happening again.” Mary recalls being raped by one of Jesus’ disciples, and the baby dying of starvation and neglect. She relives the 7 years she spent in a brothel in Jerusalem. It is all returning in excruciating detail. She said: “I now understand why I have had trouble with sex in this life. She has written about this in a blog she calls “God and my vagina”. When she heard that my program was going to air on Channel 7 she wrote: “I rest easy in the knowledge that our intentions are pure, and we are honest people who speak up for truth. I will simply be humble to the storm ahead“.

There was a moment in the life of Jesus (i.e. the one in the Bible) when things became so difficult that many of his disciples walked away. It says in John’s Gospel: “Jesus turned to the twelve and said: ‘Are you also going to leave?” Simon Peter replied: ‘To whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

I fear there are the faithful few who will do the same today, and follow “this other Jesus” to the end.

See David Milliken’s report on AJ Miller on Channel Seven’s “Sunday Night” program, 18 September 6.30pm.