Second Coming the novel is based on this short story by Jim Wills

Invitation Rejected

Once a week, I go down to the monastery at Qumran to trade grain for pottery jars. I say go down because, although it is only twelve miles from Jerusalem to the shores of the Dead Sea, the road drops 4,000 feet.
    My trip was routine. I completed my business with the quartermaster and started back to Jerusalem. I stopped my cart for a moment to enjoy the stark beauty of the Dead Sea. The hills of Moab on the opposite shore seemed to dance as heat waves shimmered off the water.
    Someone shouted my name. I turned. Running toward me was the assistant to the Guardian, spiritual leader of the monastery.
    “Don’t leave yet!” the assistant panted, trying to catch his breath. “The Guardian wants you to witness the examination of the novice candidate, Jesus of Nazareth.”
    “It’s late and I have to make that long climb up to Jerusalem before nightfall.”
    “If you don’t witness, the Guardian will blame me. He’ll say I didn’t try hard enough and cut my rations and make me carry those big jars with the scrolls up to the caves and I always break one and...” His face was flushed.
    Jesus and the Guardian were already in the watchtower. The room was stifling. Only the buzzing flies stirred the air. I said, “Why me?”
    “I need someone who’s impartial.”
    Jesus blurted, “You’re throwing me out, aren’t you?”
    “You must leave immediately,” the Guardian said as he started for the door.
    I was anxious to get on my way, but I wanted to see this fellow get fair treatment. “Why can’t he stay?”
    “You are here only to witness.”
    “You wanted an impartial witness. Tell him why he can’t stay.”
    The Guardian went to the window overlooking the road that ran alongside the Dead Sea and spoke with his back to us. “Jesus has a kinsman named John whom we threw out six months ago because he insisted that anyone could enter the Kingdom of God through repentance and baptism.”
    “It’s not fair to judge Jesus by his kinsman’s beliefs. Let him speak for himself.”
    The Guardian gazed at the Dead Sea again, lost in thought. Finally, he said to Jesus, “What do you believe?”
    “I believe Isaiah 11:11-12, ‘In that day the Lord will recover the remnant of his people…and gather the outcasts of Israel.’ I believe as you do that a person is either a Child of Light or a Child of Darkness from before the beginning. I believe the Children of Light are the chosen remnant who gather at Qumran.”
    “Ah-ha! Now, I know you cannot stay!” the Guardian growled.
    I protested, “This man sincerely believes he is one of the remnant. You have no cause to dismiss him.”
    The Guardian swatted the air. “You are as pesky as these flies, and I am losing patience with you. However, there is one final test I can apply. Candidates must have a mystical experience known to us as The Calling. No one who has had the experience and revealed what happened has been turned away.”
    Jesus said, “I had such an experience. One night, about three years ago, I was neither asleep nor awake when I imagined someone called me to come outside and join him.”
    “Imagined?” I said.
    “The call came from within me. Stranger still, I imagined the person calling me was a rug merchant who passed through Nazareth that day.”
    “He who comes in the name of the Lord,” I said.
    “Yes. I felt the call again. This time I knew it was Jehovah and that I must go immediately or it would be too late.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I put on my tunic and set the latch behind me.”
    “Why?”
    “I did not intend to return.”
    “And was the Lord there to greet you, Jesus?” the Guardian smirked.
    “There was no one but me. I heard a dog barking. Then I returned to the house and woke my mother to get in.”
    “You’re lying. You never left the house.” the Guardian snapped.
    “I am not lying!”
    “Okay. I believe you are telling the truth. And it is exactly for that reason you cannot stay.”
    “You said he could stay if he told what happened.”
    “I regret that I asked you to witness.”
    “Jesus deserves an explanation and, quite frankly, so do I.”
    The Guardian sighed. “What I am about to reveal breaks a solemn vow of secrecy.”
    The Guardian took a piece of limestone from the pocket of his robe and drew a hexagram on the wooden floor of the watchtower. First, he drew a triangle with three equal sides. On top of it, he drew a second triangle pointing in the opposite direction.
    “This is the true symbol of existence as revealed by our great Teacher of Righteousness. But to understand its meaning, you must separate the triangles.”
    The Guardian drew the two opposing triangles side by side. “Two opposite worlds always in balance with each other and within themselves. The Sons of Light begin scattered and end gathered. With the Sons of Darkness, the process is reversed.”
   Jesus said, “The last shall be first, and the first last. Balance is divine justice.”
   “Now, will you let him stay?”
   The Guardian went to the door. “He is different from us. I thought you were smart, but you don’t get it, do you?”
    I invited Jesus to join me on my cart for the return to Jerusalem. As we rode in silence, I turned the Guardian’s revelation over in my mind.
   Finally, I understood. Then I did something I regret to this day. I looked at Jesus, “Do you understand why the Guardian rejected you?”
    He was forlorn.
    “It was because you are the remnant,” I said.
    “All the monks at Qumran are of the gathering.”
    “No one at Qumran gathers. Scattering starts as one—Adam—and gathering ends as one—you, Jesus. You are different from the rest of us.”
    “But I want to gather everyone into the Kingdom of God.”
    “Many are called but few are chosen.”
    “Few? I would issue a call no one could answer.”
    “That’s the good news. The bad news is that you have to die before this can come to pass.”
    His shoulders slumped. “Why must I die before I can issue The Call?”
    “Up to now, when a person experienced The Calling, it was Jehovah, an abstraction, that he or she experienced through ‘he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ From now on, you, a real person, will be the one experienced. But first you must be fully gathered, that is, you must die.”

Six months later, I was in Jericho on business. I had completed a deal to buy dates to sell in Jerusalem when my supplier asked, “Have you been out to hear the latest ‘messiah,’ Jesus of Nazareth?”
    “At the Jordan?”
    “He’s making everyone nervous.”
    I was curious. When I reached the river, I noticed a group of people gathered around Jesus, but the forlorn creature I met at Qumran had disappeared. In his place was a charismatic Jesus whose self-confidence would have surpassed even Caesar’s.
    I listened intently as an elderly man said, “Rabbi, I am Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin. Tell me, if you can, what must a person do to enter the Kingdom of God?”
    “You must follow me.”
    A tall woman said, “I follow you and I have not entered the Kingdom of God.”
    “You do not follow me. You pay me lip service. When I say follow me, I mean follow into me. Become me. Give up all right to yourself.”
    The tall woman said, “Are you saying we must die?”
    Jesus said, “No. I am not talking about phyical death. I mean death of your self, death of your separate identity.”
    “Then I would be nobody,” A large, red-bearded man laughed and patted his belly. The crowd laughed with him.
    Jesus smiled slightly and said, “You wouldn’t be nobody. You’d be me.”
    The tall woman said, “Are you crazy? What you say is impossible.”
    “What is humanly impossible is possible for the Children of Light.”
    Nicodemus said, “Rabbi, I don’t believe I have seen this Kingdom of God on a map. Is it in the sky, or perhaps, beneath the earth?”
    “The Kingdom of God is within.”
    “Ah, within. And you can only get there by forsaking yourself? I find you amusing, Rabbi. Perhaps you missed your calling. You should be entertaining the court of King Herod.”
    Red Beard said, “This man is no rabbi. He is a trickster. He plays word games to confuse us.”
    “The person who does not gather with me scatters.”
    Nicodemus said, “Stop with the riddles. Tell us directly, is it possible for anyone to enter the Kingdom of God?”
   “Do not concern yourself with others, Nicodemus. Follow me when I call, and you will enter the Kingdom of God.”
   Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples, said, “Master, we gave up everything when you called us, and we have not entered the Kingdom of God.”
    “The call you receive from me before I go to the Father means nothing. The only call that matters is the one you receive from me after I go to the Father.”
    The tall woman said, “When will you call us?”
    “No one knows when the Son of Man will come for you. Be ready at all times.”
    A man who identified himself as a merchant said, “What if I can’t come when you call? I have obligations—a family, a business…”
    Jesus said, “The person who hesitates is lost.”
    Nicodemus said, “That’s pretty harsh, Rabbi. Can’t you soften it a bit. After all, allowances must be made.”
   Jesus did not back down. “The person who tries to preserve this life will lose it, and the person who gives up all possessions, including self, for my sake, will find life.”
    Another man, a priest, said, “You cannot call me while I’m performing my duty at the Temple.”
    “Your duty is to follow me.”
    The priest turned to the crowd. “This carpenter’s son puts service to himself above service to God.”
    Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”
    “He blasphemes! You are all witnesses.”
    Nicodemus said, “This is serious, Rabbi. The punishment for blasphemy is death.”
    Jesus looked at me with a knowing smile and stooped to draw a hexagram in the dust, then pointed to the center shared by both triangles.
    “After my death I will stand at the center of existence so that, on the day and hour my Father has ordained, I can call you to forsake yourself and literally become me. You will experience the urge to come to me and merge into me for only a moment. There is no second chance. The person who hesitates longer than a few heartbeats forever loses the opportunity to enter the Kingdom of God.”
    Three months later he was crucified and then the rumor started that he had “risen” from the dead. Only for me it wasn’t a rumor because I myself experienced his call. It came from deep within me when I least expected it just as he predicted. Did I hesitate? You know I did.

Read how the novel expands the concept of balance to include the entire universe…

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