5. In the Fullness of Time: Jesus Arrives
Some things arrive on their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever.
—GAIL GODWIN
It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Weeks into our investigation, we located Steve’s first wife, Gabrielle. It was more difficult than we expected. She was living in a small rural suburb of St. Louis.
“So far everyone we’ve met who had a relationship with Steve had a bad experience with him,” said Kyle as he devoured his fourth White Castle slider. This was our first time at this restaurant chain, given that none exist in Southern California. We interviewed Gabrielle for nearly two hours and were now debriefing our conversation over our second order of sliders and fries.
“I’m starting to understand why Steve might have felt a sense of urgency to do something to Tammy,” I replied, trying not to get cheese on my notepad.
Gabrielle and Steve met in high school, and she became pregnant with their daughter, Jillian, shortly after they began dating. They married after graduation, but their relationship was violent for the four years they were together.
Toward the end, Steve repeatedly abused Gabrielle until she fled the state with Jillian.
Gabrielle hired an attorney to help her collect child support from Steve, but Steve traveled to Missouri and showed up on her front porch, unannounced. He looked like he had been drinking and told her she would be wise to stop asking for money. He threatened to kill Gabrielle and Jillian if they ever contacted him again. She never did.
“Do you think he would actually have killed his own child?” I asked Gabrielle.
“I’m not sure exactly what to think, but I didn’t want to test him. I can tell you this: Steve absolutely did not want any more children. He’s never visited Jillian in all the years we’ve been here.” Gabrielle fidgeted nervously as she answered our questions. “He told me he wished Jillian had never been born,” she whispered.
Twelve-year-old Jillian was watching a video in the next room.
“Yeah, his dislike of kids explains a lot,” said Kyle as he finished the last fry and began to clear the table. “Including the timing of all this.”
Gabrielle’s statement added to our understanding of the fuse that burned toward Tammy’s disappearance. I began sketching a new timeline on my notepad. This additional chronology would help explain why Tammy disappeared when she did and why Steve may have been involved. I drew a few question marks on either side of a crime scene:
“Okay, we know Tammy disappeared at a particular point in time,” I said. “We also know she vanished when she was living in our city with Steve . . .”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” interrupted Kyle.
“Yes, but there’s a reason why it happened in our city when it did—why it didn’t happen earlier or later—and the fuse leading up to her disappearance will show us why this was the case.” I then drew another timeline with a bomb and a fuse. For larger, more readable sizes for this entire series of images, refer to case note.
“On the day Tammy vanished, we suspect a ‘bomb’ exploded,” I said as I drew the long fuse and added additional elements. “And now we know some of the events that ignited that fuse . . .”
Kyle waited for me to finish the sketch, reminding me along the way of everything we had learned so far. “It’s not hard to understand what happened here . . .” he said once we were finished.
“Given the allegations of abuse leading up to May 2000, combined with everything else we’ve learned, it’s reasonable to conclude Steve is responsible for Tammy’s disappearance.” Finished with this portion of the drawing, I put down my pen, cleared the empty bags and wrappers from our table, and reviewed my notes. We were alone in this part of the restaurant, so I continued to sketch the fuse.
Kyle pointed to the drawing of the barrel and the chemicals. “Now we also know why we never found her body.”
“True.” I sifted through my notes. “So far all the evidence points to Steve and explains what motivated him, but this fuse can also explain the timing of the ‘explosion.’ ”
I resketched another timeline as Kyle tapped his fingers on the table. “Can’t you just tell me what you’re after here?”
“Do I really need to answer that?” My new drawing featured Steve and Tammy with their moving boxes.
“We wouldn’t be investigating this case if it had occurred outside our jurisdiction. But have you ever stopped to think about why it happened in our town? It happened here because Steve moved closer to a new job at an auto shop that had just opened. That shop didn’t even exist in our city until January 2000 . . .” I quickly sketched the auto shop and highlighted the timeline following its opening:
“. . . that’s the whole reason he and Tammy moved here to begin with.” I now highlighted the timeline from Tammy and Steve’s arrival in our town:
“This is our ‘red zone.’ ” I drew a rectangle on the timeline where the two highlighted areas overlapped. “If this crime was going to happen in our city, it would have to happen after Steve and Tammy moved here”:
“That’s a very broad span of time, though,” said Kyle.
“Yes, but now let’s add what we know about the way we suspect Steve disposed of Tammy’s body.” I quickly added a sketch of Steve, Ted, and the plastic barrel.
Kyle could already see where I was headed. “Steve needed a barrel that would hold corrosive chemicals . . .”
“That’s right,” I replied, drawing the additional facts. “Ted would not have been able to give the barrel to Steve if Ted’s boss hadn’t first given it to Ted . . .” I highlighted the timeline around the date Ted first got the barrel and the date he gave it to Steve:
Next, I added a new “red zone”:
“This smaller red zone represents the time in which this crime was most likely to happen,” I said. “ After Steve had access to the barrel.”
“ And the chemicals,” added Kyle.
I updated the drawing to include the opening of the chemical store in our town, along with the date Steve bought the chemicals and the new “red zone”:
“The zone is shrinking.” Kyle sifted his weight in his chair. “But where is all this going?”
“Almost done,” I replied. “So far we’ve described only the events and factors that set the beginning of the red zone, but another event determined the end limit of this zone.” I drew three sketches of Tammy, one with a baby crib and one in which she was obviously pregnant. I then highlighted the timeline as I did before, drawing from right to left, rather than from left to right. “Tammy’s pregnancy set a timer on the fuse. It’s the reason why the crime occurred when it did. If Steve wanted to get rid of her before she gave birth, he would have to do it before November of 2000 . . .”
“And if he wanted to do it before she started to show, he’d have to kill her before June, right?” Kyle pointed to my sketch of Tammy as a pregnant woman.
“Yes, and if he wanted to do it before she could even tell anyone, he would have to act even earlier.”
“So you think Steve didn’t want anyone to even know about the pregnancy?” asked Kyle.
“I don’t think Steve knew that Tammy told Brianna, and if he killed her after it was public knowledge, people who knew how he felt about kids might suspect him for her disappearance—even more than they already did.”
I highlighted the updated “red zone”:
“Steve’s set of circumstances created a unique red zone. It’s much smaller and more specific, and it just happens to be the time in which Tammy disappeared.”
“That this crime occurred in our city — when it did—makes sense given Steve’s unique fuse.” I referred back to the original timeline and added a few details. “So far everything—including the timing of this crime—points to Steve as our person of interest.”
THE DIVINE TIMING OF JESUS
“If I didn’t know better, I would say you’re putting in overtime on a case.” Susie recognized the nature of my timeline drawings, but she knew this set of sketches was different. Our dining room table was cluttered with mythology and history books, and our new Bible sat open at the edge of my drawings. I had been summarizing all I learned about the spiritual, cultural, and prophetic fuses that led up the Common Era.
“It’s pretty clear from history that humans have been thinking about God and have imagined him in a number of mythological forms, and I showed you the fifteen general similarities among many of these ancient deities, right?”
“Yes, I remember.”
I showed her the first sketch. “Let’s place the major mythologies on a timeline, including the dates people started—and stopped —worshiping them. Let’s start with Osiris.”
“Osiris worship begins about 3300 BCE and ends around 250 CE,” I said as I highlighted this period of time on the timeline. I used tracing paper overlays to build a series of sketches that highlighted the time span in which each ancient deity was worshiped.
“Look at this collection of deities.” My drawing was now half filled with icons of each mythology and long rectangles to highlight their history. “Serapis is the last one I’ve illustrated.”
“Each of these mythologies shares a number of similarities with Jesus . . .”
“Does that make you skeptical?” asked Susie. “Do you think Jesus was just copied from these ancient stories?”
“No, the similarities are too broad, and they’re the kind of thing you would expect people to include if they were thinking about the nature of God.” I pointed to the drawing. “In fact, I’m starting to be the opposite of skeptical. Doesn’t it make sense that humans would recognize some true things about God over time and that God would eventually meet those expectations?”
“I never thought of it like that.” Susie pointed to my stack of sketches and resource materials. “So what’s the drawing for?” she asked.
“Well, look at these overlapping time spans for each mythology. If the true God wanted to interact with humans by meeting the divine expectations of the greatest number of people possible, he would arrive at a time in which all these expectations and mythological deities overlap. It’s a lot like the fuse timelines in my cases. This overlap is what I call the red zone.”
Susie picked up the illustration and examined the dates. “So you’re saying that if God appeared between 350 BCE and 250 CE, all these groups of religious believers would still have been active?”
“That’s right, and they would have similar expectations of God, as well.”
“That’s interesting, but that’s a six-hundred-year time span.” Now she looked skeptical. “That seems kinda broad, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but I’m not done.” I retrieved the drawing, laid a piece of tracing paper on it, and started sketching a second timeline. “Let’s now add what I call the cultural fuse. One empire eventually conquered the entire region and set the table for something interesting.”
“By about 146 BCE, Rome had conquered most of the known world—certainly the entire region around the Mediterranean. They adopted the Etruscan alphabet and the Greek language, providing a common way to communicate throughout the empire. They also built an amazing system of roads that would allow people to travel throughout the region.”
“When Augustus came into power, the Romans created a postal service system called cursus publicus and provided a continuous common government until the fall of the empire centuries later.”
“One more thing,” I said as I drew the last aspect of the cultural fuse. “Augustus also initiated peace in the region, called the Pax Romana, and it lasted for over two hundred years.”
“Do you see the new red zone?” I asked. “There is now an area of overlap that takes advantage of humanity’s common expectations of God and also leverages the opportunity the Roman Empire provided to spread the news of God’s arrival.”
“The red zone is still over two hundred years long . . .”
“Yes, but there’s one more fuse,” I added as I quickly threw another layer of tracing paper over the drawings. “The Jewish prophets predicted the coming of a person of interest—the Messiah—and one of them provided a range of dates.”
I drew an image of Daniel on the tracing paper. “Daniel said the Messiah would come after an edict to rebuild Jerusalem and before the destruction of the temple”:
“Now let’s look at where all the time spans from the spiritual, cultural, and prophetic fuses overlap.”
“Wow . . .” Susie seemed to be as impressed as I was when I first discovered this tiny window of opportunity.
“Exactly,” I responded. “There’s a small window that just happens to mark the same place where our calendar changed forever. That explosive moment when BCE turned into CE—it happened right here, in this red zone, and now I think we know why.”
A RED ZONE IN OUR CALENDAR
What happened in this tiny “red zone”? Was it a political event? An edict of government? An act of war? The result of a natural tragedy or catastrophe? Or instead, was it possible that the explosive appearance of a single person of interest might be responsible for disrupting our human calendar?
The three-stranded fuse that burned toward the Common Era seemed to make Jesus’s arrival inevitable. He met our human expectations, matched the Jewish predictions, and arrived at precisely the right time in the history of the Roman Empire to be shared with the entire known world.
A New Testament writer, the apostle Paul, wrote, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4–5 ESV).
What did Paul mean when he described Jesus’s arrival as coming in the “fullness of time”? Did God send Jesus at just the right moment in history? The fuse certainly seemed to agree.
But every explosion, whether a criminal act or an important historical event, has both a fuse and some fallout, and I still had more to investigate. If Jesus truly mattered, the fallout of history would be cluttered with evidence.