| Cathleen Falsani

Sometimes Jesus calls, sometimes Ted sends e-mail

Jesus stopped calling me a couple of years ago.

He used to ring me up at the office several times a week.

And then the calls just stopped and I didn’t hear from Jesus again, or at least not from the North Side guy whose real name was Richard (not Roeper), who insisted he was Jesus and preferred to be called by his Hebrew name, Y’Shua.

Then last week, Jesus resurfaced.

In my Microsoft Outlook inbox.

Jesus spammed me. Actually, an earnest if misguided fellow from Arizona who calls himself Ted Jesus Christ God spammed me.

In his lengthy note — 20,718 words to be exact — Ted Jesus Christ God explains that he will be disseminating holy writ via the Internet, because, “he is Ted and he is Jesus and he is Christ and he is God.”

Ted Jesus Christ God, whose real given name is indeed Ted, says he was raised in a Christian family in California, and went to a Christian high school and a Christian college before taking up computers and founding a well-known Silicone Valley software company.

While anchored off the coast of San Diego a number of years back, Ted had a series of “loud spiritual events” and visions and it was revealed to Ted that Ted is indeed the Second Coming of Christ, Ted said. They even look alike, Ted insisted, and has posted pictures of Tedself and the original Jesus on his Web site.

Ted Jesus Christ God or ‘”TJCG” as he also likes to refer to himself, knows his constitutional rights.

“TJCG is INSISTING that HE can claim to be anybody that HE BELIEVES THAT HE IS and HE has CLAIMED and PROCLAIMED and LEGALLY DECLARED to be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and God and MORE and it is that HE is PROTECTED under the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” he wrote.

God bless America.

Among many, many, many other theological proclamations Ted Jesus Christ makes in his e-mail to me is his belief that Satan is attacking his ministry by hacking into his Web site, www.ted jesuschristgod.org.

God is also anti-spam, he wants you to know. “Ted Jesus Christ God does NOT SPAM and this is NOT SPAM because this complies with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003,” he wrote.

And don’t try to block his e-mails, either, because he’s God and he’ll sue you for $7,000 a pop.

“Why this much money? … How much value can you put on an email that if not received causes a person to get ETERNAL DEATH and be LOST?” he wrote.

You’ve been warned.

Ted Jesus Christ God and Jesus Richard are hardly the first folks to claim to be the new-and-improved Messiah.

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon has at least suggested that he might be the true Messiah, creator of the universe, sent to reestablish the Garden of Eden on Earth, or something along those lines.

A Russian lady known to thousands of followers as Maria Devi Christos declared herself the Messiah and said the world would end on Nov. 14, 1993.

A few years before that, a former professional British soccer player and onetime BBC television personality named David Icke proclaimed that he, too, was the Son of God and that Doomsday was imminent.

And then there was David Koresh.

Not to imply that all people who believe themselves to be the second coming of Christ, or the Messiah, or the real Jesus Christ Superstar, are sociopaths. Not I. But it does seem that delusions of divinity are a regular feature in the psychotic hit parade.

“Ted is NOT a threat to Ted or any body else on World Earth and is able to function and take care of HIMSELF and is NOT going to assault or kill anybody while alive on World Earth and this physically with HIS own two hands or with any implements or getting others to do this for HIM that are humans and on World Earth!” Ted Jesus Christ God wrote.

Good to know.

Speaking of the Messiah . . . Quit while you’re ahead, Mel.

Mr. Gibson, who is poised to make about $300 million from his controversial film depicting the torture and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, told a radio reporter in New York City earlier this week that his next project will be a dramatization of Hanukkah.

Mostly.

Gibson told WABC radio talk-show host Sean Hannity on Tuesday that he’d like to make a film based on the Jewish rebellion led by Judah Maccabee 200 years before Jesus was born.

As the story goes, Judah Maccabee and his brothers had just recaptured Jerusalem and its holy temple from the Greco-Syrians. And, as part of the reconsecration of the temple, the Maccabees relit the temple’s lamp, but had enough oil to last only one day.

Then the miracle that is commemorated each year during Hannukah happened: the oil lasted for eight days.

“The Maccabees family stood up, and they made war. They stuck by their guns and they came out winning,” Gibson told Hannity. “It’s like a Western.”

Boy, at this point I have to wonder if Gibson doesn’t simply enjoy antagonizing the Jewish community. A Western? Such sensitivity.

Funny, though, as one critic derisively called Gibson’s latest film, “The Passion of the Christ” — which was filmed in Italy with a largely Italian crew and cast — a “spaghetti crucifixion.”

I suppose a Western would be the logical next step.

After that, what could he do for an encore?

Well, Ted’s got an interesting story.