Tim Freke - The Gospel of the Second Coming

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy are internationally respected scholars who have authored six books together, including the international bestseller The Jesus Mysteries, which was a Book of the Year in the prestigious Daily Telegraph (UK). Their other books include Jesus and the Lost Goddess, which was cited by Dan Brown as an inspiration for The Da Vinci Code; and The Laughing Jesus, which was critically heralded as one of the most important books that has emerged in this infant millennium. Timothy runs seminars exploring the experience of Gnosis in the USA, Europe, and South Africa.

For more information, see www.timothyfreke.com.

ALSO BY TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER GANDY

JESUS AND THE LOST GODDESS:
The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians

THE JESUS MYSTERIES:
Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?

THE LAUGHING JESUS:
Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom

LUCID LIVING: a book you can read
in an hour that will turn your world inside out

HAY HOUSE TITLES OF RELATED INTEREST

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE UNIVERSE, by Gary R. Renard

THE DIVINE MATRIX THE GOD CODE
both books by Gregg Braden

FATHER GOD MOTHER GODboth books by Sylvia Browne

I WANT TO SEE JESUS IN A NEW LIGHT, by Ron Roth, Ph.D.

THE JESUS CODE, by John Randolph Price

The Hay House titles above are available at your local
bookstore, or may be ordered by visiting:

Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com

Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au

Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk

Hay House South Africa: www.hayhouse.co.za

Hay House India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Copyright 2007 by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy

Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast: www.raincoast.com Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Cover design: Amy Rose Grigoriou

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The authors of this book do not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the authors is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the authors and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Freke, Timothy.

The gospel of the Second Coming / Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4019-1838-5 (hardcover)ISBN 978-1-4019-1839-2 (tradepaper) 1. Gnosticism. 2. Spiritual lifeGnosticism. 3. Jesus ChristGnostic interpretations.

I. Gandy, Peter. II. Title.

BT1390. F73 2007

299.932dc22

2006100716

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-1838-5
Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-4019-1839-2

10 09 08 07 4 3 2 1
1st edition, October 2007

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

BY PROFESSOR FAYE KINNIT,
IMMACULATA COLLEGE OF FEMINIST THEOLOGY, TEXAS

I n the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus famously declares: All that is hidden will be revealed. This prophecy would certainly seem to have been fulfilled when it comes to the history of Christianity itself. In the last few decades, the discovery and publication of a flood of early Christian texts, popularly known as Gnostic gospels, has forced scholars to completely revise their understanding of the origins and meaning of Christianity.

In 1977 James M. Robinson and his team published The Nag Hammadi Library, which contained a collection of Gnostic texts discovered in Egypt in 1945. More recently, in 2006, Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst published the Gospel of Judas. Such heretical texts were suppressed by the Vatican in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., but it has long been suspected by conspiracy theorists that copies were secretly retained in the Vatican Library.

This idea has found little favor with serious academics. In 2005, however, an archivist at the Vatican Library, known for legal reasons as V, made contact with revisionist historians Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy and offered some startling information. V had been so impressed by Freke and Gandys groundbreaking work on the Gnostic origins of Christianity that he decided he was morally obliged to inform them that the library had not only possessed a copy of the Gospel of Judas for centuries but also housed many other Gnostic manuscripts that endorsed their controversial ideas.

At their initial meeting, Freke and Gandy asked V to provide concrete evidence that the Vatican was in possession of unpublished Gnostic texts. Although initially reluctant, V eventually responded by presenting them with a facsimile copy of an ancient work entitled The Gospel of the Second Coming. It is this manuscript thats being presented to the public for the first time in this book.

Like so many Gnostic writings, this text is largely incomprehensible. Nevertheless, it has disturbing ramifications which will shock academics and Christians alike. Not only does it make the extraordinary claim that the long-awaited Second Coming of Christ has already happened, it also confirms the lurid speculation about Jesuss intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene.

The manuscript begins with an unintelligible inscription that scholars havent yet deciphered. Freke and Gandy speculate that it may be a magic spell to be intoned before embarking on the study of the text as a charm against the possibility of demonic delusion. They may be right about this, because to understand the Gnostics we need to go beyond our habitual ways of seeing and look at things from a different direction.

It is an honor and a privilege to peer-review the work of Freke and Gandy and to offer my assistance in bringing this remarkable discovery to the attention of the public. The Gospel of the Second Coming is an incredible find, in the true sense of that overused word, which will do for Christianity what Animal Farm did for Communism!