The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 121 - What If The Magi Kept Adam’s Library And Followed A Star From China?

• Paul

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A forgotten Syriac text claims the Magi told their own story—and it doesn’t fit neatly into our Christmas cards. We open the vault on Revelations of the Magi, exploring how a star from “beyond the world,” Adam’s written mysteries, and a guarded cave of treasures might knit the nativity to the earliest layers of Christian memory. Along the way we weigh dating clues from Syriac grammar, trace why the West lost track of these traditions, and map the surprising influence this narrative had on Armenian and Eastern Christian storytelling.

What captivated us most is the text’s voice: a pre‑Nicene, high Christology that sings rather than argues. The Son is called light, voice, image, will, and Word—language that echoes Philo and the Apostolic Fathers without later creedal formulations. Then the narrative turns daring: the gifts may have been prepared long before Bethlehem, held in trust in a hidden cave, ready for the star. That reframes the journey as liturgy. The Magi don’t improvise at a manger; they complete a centuries‑long act of worship with gold, frankincense, and myrrh that confess kingship, divinity, and death.

We also follow the text’s bold prophecies: God will appear in a human body, poor and lowly, bearing the sign of the cross, and killed. From Israel’s cross‑shaped camp to Ezekiel’s táv mark to Revelation’s sealed foreheads, the cross moves from symbol to destiny. This isn’t a tale about exotic travellers; it’s a theological map where a star leads straight to the Passion. Join us as we test the sources, compare traditions, and let an Eastern voice stretch our imagination about the nativity’s scope and depth.

If this journey expands your sense of Advent, share it with a friend, leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss what’s next. What detail challenged you most—and why?

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

SPEAKER_00:

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ Center Cosmic Civilization. While we are exploring the Magi during this season of Advent and Candlemass. And this time, what we want to do is look at a book that was published a long time ago. We'll find out how long in a moment from PJ, who is with me here from the Global Church History Project. And it's called Revelations of the Magi. It purports to be a book essentially by the Magi themselves, or at least some of them, explaining the backstory to the journey of the Magi, and how is it that they knew not only you know that to look for a star, but the exact specific meaning of the star. Like they knew that this meant the birth of the divine messiah, and that his birth has relevance to the whole world. How did they know that? Well, this book gives the whole backstory, and it claims to be that the book they've written themselves about this, and it details how they first encounter the star, and then how the star guides them first to Jerusalem, then to Bethlehem, then what happens when they come and meet the baby Jesus. And it I'm warning you this I'm kind of giving a trigger warning. Like those who are regular listeners to the Christ centered cosmic civilization are kind of thicker skinned than most when it comes to mythological and fantastical tales. But this this is gonna stretch you, I think, more than some of our episodes, anyway. But so that's a that's a spoiler in a way, but I'm hoping it's wetting your appetite for all that we're gonna get into for at least two episodes. It's gonna take us, I'm sure. And I'll read quotations out from this so that you hear these amazing things from their own words, and then then they they journey back to to the the the point where their journey began, and we hear about what happens then, and then there's even a small kind of epilogue involving one of the apostles. Okay, so the book's called Revelations of the Magi, and before we even begin to read what's in it, we need to know. Here's my questions that I think we need to know. What is it? How old is it? Why isn't it better known to us in the Western world say, and was it ever well known at all?

SPEAKER_01:

So it is yeah, it's an account that includes the uh the Magi's own thoughts. It has a bit of an intro bit where it talked about the Magi in the third person, and then by chapter three, it's first person. So that this person does give an intro about his own thoughts about the Magi and that sort of thing. So there's like more than one hand, but we used to seeing that in the scripture where we've got like uh Moses says something and then an editor, probably Joshua, is like that's still true even today, sort of thing. So we're kind of used to that, but that's the kind of how yeah, that's how it is. It's like the you've got more than one sort of hand in it, and then so then when is the latest hand in it? Like, where is that possible to know? When was it sort of finished, the whole text? And it kind of is like we can get a latest possible date because in the 5th century AD, people start to refer to the Holy Spirit in Syriac as male, and before that, the spirit was always referred to as female, or in the feminine pronouns, and throughout the revelation of the Magi, the spirit is feminine, so that means it's basically fourth century at the latest is when it kind of all gets finished. But as we thought, there's so there's a latest stage of it, but there's bits of it that seem earlier, so there's you know, and there's bits of it that's like someone talking about the Magi in the third person, then there's other bits where it's them talking in the first person. So, you know, there's bits that are earlier than others, and there there are people who have argued that the earliest bits can be like second century.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. So it's second century, at least parts of it go back to that. So that would be sort of consistent with it originating with at least some of the Magi themselves. So it's old, that's what it is. Why why isn't it better known to us? And was it ever a well-known book? Has anybody ever really read it before in history? Was it well known? And why don't maybe answer that first? Was it ever well known?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it does seem like you can see some quite famous people quote it. It's in this Chronicle of Zucknin, but it's in some other things people, especially Syriacs and Armenians, have sort of quoted from it and adapted it. And then also you get a lot of different nations will have had their own definitive account of the stories of the three wise men, and a lot of them seem to derive a lot of content from this. This is probably the oldest sort of account, and so loads of the others seem to be based on it in one way or another, but then they'll have their own traditions and they often go for that. But this does seem to establish what a lot of later people sort of believe about the Magi.

SPEAKER_00:

So it probably was a very well-known book, maybe in the second century, third century, and so on going on, particularly in a Syria a Syriac Christianity. And so, really, in the re in the in the lands that are most associated with the Magi, this book is best known in a way, although we'll get into where where do they all come from perhaps in future episodes. Why is it not well known for us? Why is it because there are old books from that period like The Didic and early church writings that are well known, and something like The Shepherd of Hermas, that's a very unusual book, and it's not an easy, so it's not it's not just that only easy books are preserved down to us, because that I find the Shepherd of Hermas quite a quite a challenging read. Like it's not an easy book to to grasp. I found this easier to read than that, to be honest. So why isn't it better well known known to us?

SPEAKER_01:

I think it was well, partly anything Syriac tended to be more popularized in the West, beginning in the early modern period, because like Islam had cut off huge segments of the Christian world from other parts of it. So European Christianity was kind of isolated from Arabic, Syriac, Chinese, Indian Christianity, and that began to change again in the early modern period. So like the Chronicle of Zucknin was sort of known throughout the early modern period, but then quite recently, people have just isolated this bit that was sort of in it, and then they've also found other witnesses to it, and that's all helped to make make them think, oh, right, and so because they were looking at it more specifically, they found things like that. It's like, oh right, this section isn't part of the broader chronicle of Zucknin. This guy's just sort of put it in because of that, the femininity of the spirit. That shows it's an earlier text there, because Zucknin's from like the 8th century or 8th or 9th. So it's obviously earlier than that, because all this language is much earlier, it's early church language. So then they thought again and thought, right, so it's worth investigating this as its own thing. So it had for a while been just looked at just as part of this broader book, and then they're like, actually, it's its own thing that this guy just stuck in in the middle of his narrative, so it's worth studying on its own, and that's and it's actually quite uh although I don't want to do down the Chronicle of Zucknin, you know, but it's like particularly interesting this bit, so it's like worth singular study.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so yeah, the Islam does create this enormous problem in Christianity, like preventing, like dividing Christianity. It's like this huge chasm. This this uh these political entities of Islam create a chasm between sort of Asian Christianity and European Christianity in a way, and a lot of our literature became was unknown to each other, so that's a good explanation. Now let's get into the book itself. It begins with something I found really strange. It begins with the names of twelve magi, and they have unusual names like Zaha Wandad, Hormizd, Auschap, Arshak, things like that, Merodak. How come there are twelve and who are they? What's going on here?

SPEAKER_01:

So that was a point of consternation for a lot of um early church people trying to figure out different accounts, because there are other accounts of the Magi, like we were talking about. Most of the others talk about three, and that's because there are prophecies you get in the Old Testament where it says, you know, you get a king from Saber, one from Sheba, and one from Tarshish, and they're going to offer gold frankincense to myrrh to the Messiah. So, and people were like, Well, obviously, that looks like the Magi then. So that, but yeah, you've got three in those prophecies, and then twelve in this story, but then there are often different numbers even in prophecies. So people know that one of the kings giving presents, but you also get in Micah 5, everyone knows that's about Jesus' birth, and it does say there seven shepherds and eight leaders of the people will come.

SPEAKER_00:

So that would give us fifteen.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And so that's actually reconcilable, and this is something a lot of these church fathers in the fifth century that are dealing with these two, where you've got is it three or is it twelve?

SPEAKER_00:

Or fifteen. Oh well, twelve plus three. Yeah, twelve plus three. Okay, go on.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's their solution that you've got, because it mentions in the revelation of the major that you've got kings and sons of kings, so then they're like, right, so you've got three kings, and then you've got twelve sons of kings.

SPEAKER_00:

So like three emperors, and then to then these kings, each of them has four kings, perhaps. Is it what is it as neat as that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I guess so. It is, yeah, that they and then you get, you know, very it's a very meaningful numbers once you start thinking about that. That you've got three ruling and then twelve that get sent out, and then you're thinking about the Trinity and the Apostles.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh wow, of course, the four living creatures as well around the throne. Oh, yeah, there's loads of biblical patterns there. Now, what uh the other the next thing that impacted me is that it claims that they come from the ocean that's the great sea beyond the world. Well, what ocean do they have in mind there? It like what is that about?

SPEAKER_01:

So it does seem, and the translator notes this in the footnotes, the world uh the word world gets used in different ways. It seems to describe different planets where there's totally different species on it, but it also refers to sort of civilizations that you do have, and at the time, civilizations were quite neat civilization states. You had you know the Roman Empire, you had the Chinese Empire, uh the Ethiopian Empire, whereas now these are like broken down to smaller nation states. But at the time you have this idea where you had like worlds, and so Luke refers to the Roman Empire as the world. Um, wouldn't he? He's always being up the Romans, yeah. But he's not the only one. It's quite common to for Romans who have especially patriotic ones, just to refer to the M the Roman Empire as the world, and so that idea that civilizations are worlds in their own, and we say this, we say the Western world, the Islamic world, the you know, all of this, we continue using words that way. So sometimes it uses that. So what is this ocean then? So it seems well, because Shia has struck a lot of people as sounding similar to ser, or what like the Chinese get called series.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah, so this is they they're coming from China, and that means that it's the Pacific Ocean.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, beyond the world, it's kind of meaning beyond the Roman Empire, because the Roman Empire uh bordered the Indian Ocean, but it's like saying now there's an ocean even further east.

SPEAKER_00:

Ah, so okay, so this is they're really uh from the east, and it even says here they come from east of the land of Nod and Adam lived there. So it's like indicating that Adam sort of headed out to basically China and lived there. Complicate well, that's a whole nother thing. We'll leave that for now. So these are the people. There's there's these like the implied there's three kind of great empires, the locations of which we'll actually come to in future episodes when we zoom in on the individual magi more three great empires that have delegated four sons from each of these great empires, and they are they congregate at a location, and we'll come to that in a moment. But as part of the backstory to the Magi, we get this fascinating part at the beginning about Adam, and it goes, it says the story of the Magi really goes back to Adam, who was cast out of paradise, and the the kind of story of what happened to Adam and why he got thrown out of paradise, and all of that is part of this story, and the idea is Adam hands uh on to Seth, not Cain, of course, he'd be terrible at preserving sacred mysteries, but Seth he hands on to him all the information that he got about paradise and him getting thrown out of paradise, what the living gods like, and the lessons learned about make sure you don't disobey the Lord again. And that but it specifically says this that Seth or Adam writes this down in book form, in a written form, and that corresponds to Genesis. Tells us that there's like the written account, uh that Genesis claims to have the written account of Adams. So Adam, the even the Bible does acknowledge that Adam wrote books recording like creation of the world and the fallen things, and here in this revelation of the Magi, Revelation, it says that these written books from Adam and Seth are handed down, and Seth is the one who takes these books and hands them down, and they're passed down until Noah, and then Noah keeps them and bring and I'll quote now for this. Is the first of the quotations, so get get ready for this. Because it's and this is why I gave you trigger warnings if you're listening. This is this first quotation is just gonna give uh give you a sample of what of what the roller coaster is that we're gonna enjoy in this. Listen, this Noah took the books of commandments with him in the ark. When he left the ark, Noah also gave commands to the people after him. They talked about his great acts, they spoke of the hidden mysteries in the books of Seth. These books were about the Father's Majesty and all the secrets. The books, the secrets, and the words were handed down. This tradition reached our fathers, they learned and happily accepted them, they passed them down to us, we also lovingly and fearfully guarded the secrets, the words and the mysteries of the books, and these books of hidden mysteries were placed on the mountain of victories. This mountain is in the east of Shia, our country. They were kept in a cave. The cave of the treasures of the mysteries of the life of silence. Okay, that's the quotation. So in it, we've got books then from Adam and Seth, who passed down, Noah had them, took them on the ark, he passes them down, they are kept on something called the mountain of victories in the cave of treasures of the mysteries. What do you make of this, PJ? What is this? Where is the what what about this idea of the books being handed down all that way and then being preserved in the cave of treasures?

SPEAKER_01:

So the idea that Seth is this sort of origin of like secret, or maybe not secret, but important knowledge, is a lot of it's really big coming from Genesis, where there's one reading that a lot of early Christians like where it says Seth was the first to invoke the name Jehovah. And so, in order for him to do that, he has to be incredibly wise, you know, to like does he figure it out or is he is it revealed to him? Is it you know how is that? But you also get like the name when Jesus explains the name Jehovah, he's like, It means I am the god of these people who you who would be dead, but they're alive in me, sort of thing. So for Seth, that's obviously important because of Abel. But so that's a but sort of a bit of a backstory there. The thing, why are they so interested in Seth? Why is this but he he's a huge deal in the early church, so the people are always trying to figure out you know, if this is Sethian knowledge, and you know, he gets mentioned a lot, and it's mostly because of that, because like you just it's such a stupendous thing to be the first person to invoke the name Jehovah that this has this person has to be a huge deal.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so the his books are like whatever knowledge he's got, he preserves it in written form, that's handed down. Noah has the books on the ark after the ark, he hands them on, and they end up being kept in where were do we know where the mountain of victories and the cave of treasures of mysteries is?

SPEAKER_01:

There's uh a lot of fascination with this, and one of the interesting things there's a book called The Cave of Treasures, and it's like a history of this cave, but it doesn't seem to be derived from this book, it's like an independent witness to the existence of such a cave. There's like lots of differences between it, like it's definitely not derived from this. So that's just really fascinating. That this is like something people know about, just in general, in sort of Eastern Christianity, they know that there's this cave of mysteries that uh Adam and Eve were involved with.

SPEAKER_00:

That is amazing. It's a bit like in the book of Exodus when Moses just says, Oh, I was looking after sheep on the on God's mountain, the mountain of God. And you're like, Well, hang on, what do you mean? The mountain of God. How does everyone does everyone know this is the mountain of God? It's as if it's like everyone knows that one, it's the mountain of God. And then similarly, then in A in Asia, there was the mountain of victories, and then upon it there was the cave of the treasures of mysteries, the cave of treasures. And as you say, uh the uh there are independent testimonies about this thing, but the location of it that's been lost to us, has it? Or do people speculate?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh well, people obviously will speculate once you have something that interesting. So obviously, if it's in this book, it does seem like they're placing it firmly within China. But there's other things obviously, I think Armenians often wonder if it's the in Armenia and because you get Arorat, you know, that you get that mountain. Arrorat's a contender. Yeah. So and then maybe Horeb, because you think you've yeah, you've got this mountain of God, and then you've got a cave that Moses knows to look for.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. Yeah, there is a cave there, and then Elijah, and uh, yeah, and there's only okay, so we don't really know where the mountain of victories is or the cave treasures. That's lost to us, but to ancients, they seem to at least know of its existence, even and I imagine that they kept it secret with its location, because that was seems to be part of the deal that they had to preserve these books, and there were other things in the cave that were to be preserved. So I imagine you couldn't have like tourists or just you know, or robbers coming to find it. So probably the location of it was always a to a very closely guarded secret. Okay, so let's go on because it says that this that the Magi, or at least the ancestors, were told this, and I'm quoting. Now, this what we notice here is that it's a kind of very high Christology, and that what is passed down from Seth, remember, he's the first to call on the name of the Lord. What Seth seems to have is a very high Christology, we would say. So his view of the Son of the Father or the Logos or all these ancient titles of the second person of the Trinity, it seems to be an extremely high view of God the Son, and that ever or like if it the cave of the treasures of hidden mysteries, the hidden mysteries really are all about Jesus, God the Son. So listen this it says, Command your sons and your sons must command their sons. This is what Seth has put in his book, passing down the knowledge. Command your sons, and your sons must command their sons. Keep doing this until the mystery of the star appears to your generations. This star will shine from the great majesty, it will be a light like a star. It will light up all creation. It is the great mystery of the Son of the Great Majesty. He is the Father's voice, he is the child of the Father's hidden thought, he is the light of the ray of his glory, he is the will and image of the Father's hidden self. He is the all-creating word of the Father's thought, he is the source of life that never fails, he is the all-governing word, he does the will of the one who sent him. He is an image with no form or likeness among existing things. Know this. When this endless light shines forth for you and appears as a star, you will be able to see him. Go eagerly with joy and love and with care. Take his pure gifts with you. Your fathers place them in the cave of treasures of hidden mysteries, on the mountain of victories. Go to where his light, the star, leads you. Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So I think an interesting thing with that, as you say, incredibly high Christology, and when you look at the Apostolic Fathers from the first and second centuries, they have these sort of litanies of like names and things of Jesus. This is, I think this is one of the passages that makes them think, oh, this is like seems second century. It does seem very much in line with the sort of things we might even see with Philo, like um before the birth of Jesus, but this obviously has to be afterwards because of the uh well, no, I mean Seth. But in terms of the yeah, the the revelation of the Magi as a book, that the it's very and that but you don't get the sort of substance language which uh inevitably gets big after Nicaea.

SPEAKER_00:

So as we talked before, you it does seem early because there's none of that one substance with the father stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and even like Saint Oregon the scholar, he introduces a lot of that language. So for there to be like none of it, that's why it is kind of like, oh, is it second century? Because it seems to be it's not like it's refuting any Oregonista or Nicene ideas or on board with it, or you know, it's just like it's giving a Trinitarian picture like we see in scripture without all the sort of baggage of the Aryan or the modalist or any of those sorts of arguments. So that does seem to, in a sense, put it quite early. So it's it's an important passage.

SPEAKER_00:

And the the way it, as you say, the way it speaks about God the Son, it is very like Philo. Like it doesn't use the formulas that we that come later, and it has much greater range of titles and imagery as you get in the first and second century. And only later does it all just become much more mono, and it's just father, son, and spirit language. But when you go early, they then they just use all the language that the Bible has to describe the Trinity, but particularly God the Son. So that's very that I find this particularly interesting that this very, very early text and certainly an early tradition, has this extremely high Christology and it and very clear on the deity of this word, image, son, you know, all of that. But notice also that the pure gifts, the gifts that they end up taking with them to Jesus, the gold, the frankincense, and myrrh, it says that the far the ancestors have placed them in the cave of treasures of hidden mysteries on the mountain of victories, so that the gold, the frankincense, and myrrh were prepared maybe back at the time of Noah or something. What do you make of that?

SPEAKER_01:

There's a lot of thought about what had been you know, what starts off right at the beginning of the Bible and then what sort of gets fulfilled. And there's this idea that uh the 30 pieces of silver, there's another Syriac book from around the same time called The History of the Thirty Pieces of Silver, which tracks them, like, and how they how whenever they pop up in scripture, like they're the pieces of silver they get for selling Joseph into slavery, and they and I I forget the exact same set of like the payment to Balaam, I think, is like what it just like keeps going over and over.

SPEAKER_00:

And nobody wants it's like that, like one of those horror stories of a coin and it just keeps coming back, and it's like all these bad things are done with these pieces of silver, and then no one you can't get rid of them, they'll come back again.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of that sort of thought, and then like the wood. You get this in the golden legend, even so this like continues a lot afterwards, but like the you get wood from the tree of life, and that gets used to make the cross, and that's I think that's more or less factual, though.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, that that is there's so much about the tree all the way through from the beginning of the Bible, right through. And so is it um here then this idea then that the gifts that actually are gonna be given to the baby because Eve, of course, she thinks she's given birth to the god man, she says that at the beginning of Genesis 4. Oh, I've given birth to the Yahweh man, the Jehovah man. So they're very conscious of the birth, they're looking forward to this birth of the divine messiah, and the idea that they would like in effect have a baby shower for him long before he's born, and then they keep saying, Oh, well, we've got these amazing gifts that reveal his true nature and mission. Just keep let's keep them until he is born, and then and then they've been waiting to give these gifts to him, possibly from the time of Adam and Eve and Seth. Maybe it's not until Noah that they kind of really start to think through well, what exactly are we gonna give him? But it's the pot in the cave of mysteries, the cave of treasures. Let's say let's end with one more quotation in this episode, because we've got we've got a way to go in this book yet. But the next here's another quotation, and it says this and this is this is passed down to them, remember. This is the legends passed down, or the the the secrets that are passed down from Seth and through Noah. It says that they you will see a great and amazing sign. God will appear in a human body. He will be ordinary, poor, simple, frail, and lowly. Even the sign of the cross will appear on him. You will go to him with love and joy, take your gifts, you will worship the child, he will be despised, poor, and killed. What an extraordinary set of secret mysteries that was passed down about God appearing in a human body. What do you make of that?

SPEAKER_01:

It is interesting, isn't it? And you think about the difference between Herod and then his son, who like killed Jesus, as these these kings who should have worshipped Jesus, and they claim they're gonna worship Jesus in in Matthew, but they don't. But and then these kings, these wise men who are actually wise in in that sense, and they Yeah, it's interesting to see that parallel, it's like you're going to love him, they're gonna kill him, and that's clear from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00:

And this uh idea that there's that they are catechised from ancient times, possibly from the time of Adam and Seth, into the idea that the true God will die. Now, what a different theological and philosophical tradition that let met let gave compared to, you know, say a neoplatonic nonsense, where that uh in that tradition they've invented a God who cannot be killed. And then that here all these ancients were kind of being getting ready to expect that when God is born, he will die, he will suffer and die, and he'll be poor and despised and lowly. And then this thing about the sign of the cross, it's hard to imagine. What I wonder what they made of that. What did that they must have thought? What what is it? Because you'll remember in the book of Numbers, the entire church community is laid out in the s uh a in the in a sign of a cross.

SPEAKER_01:

And in Ezekiel, all believers have the sign of the cross on their forehead.

SPEAKER_00:

That's the uh do you want to explain that a little bit? Yeah, because Ezekiel 9, yeah, when the angel marks with a sign, and what is that sign? It's a particular Hebrew letter, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, like tau or tav, you know, the letter T basically, and it's the same as our letter T. It looks like a cross in Paleo Hebrew, so that's the Hebrew of Moses and the prophets, and then later on they sort of borrow a bit from Aramaic and they so it's a bit easier to write, but then it doesn't look like a T anymore, so that like ruins it if you if you look at it in a box type Hebrew, which is what they use today. But if you look at Paleo Hebrew, and that's designed for like um you know, writing inscriptions and things, things that last forever, and you know, that's and not just like you know this.

SPEAKER_00:

If you notice in your translation here, in Ezekiel 9 verse 4, it says the it said to him, Go through the middle of Jerusalem and put the sign on the foreheads of those who are groaning, grieving for all the iniquities. Then your the footnote The sign the Hebrew here is the letter tau, the last of the Hebrew alphabet we might think of X. Yeah, he does say it, it looks like X or a cross, and a similar sign is placed on the heads of the 144,000 in Revelation 7. So there you go.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, and then yeah, that that's the last letter. You get the Alpha and the Omega and all of that. That the first and the last letter. But that the last letter of the Hebrew the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is the letter T and it is the cross.

SPEAKER_00:

It is the cross. So expect to see God in a human body possibly already signed with the sign of the cross, the end, the end letter upon him, because he is the end, and he will meet at an end, and it and he will be dead, he will be killed. And they are so when they come to worship him, they come in the full knowledge that they're worshiping the one who is born to die.