The first thing that strikes you about seeing Jesus Christ is not his heavenly glow, nor his calm demeanour.
It isn't his flaxen good looks, his wise teachings, or even his peach-coloured tee, certainly not an option during those cotton-poor biblical times. It is his broad Australian accent.
Yes, the second coming of Jesus Christ occurred on these sand-whipped shores.
Back in 2003, Jesus was plain old Alan John Miller, or AJ to his friends, a forty-year-old with an army-issue short back and sides haircut and no real understanding of who he truly was.
This was "just before I allowed the full memory of my life in the first century and in the spirit world." By the following year, he had remembered he was, in fact, Jesus Christ and resumed his spiritual teachings.
Let's step back a little.
Jesus Christ was born again in March 1963, in Loxton, South Australia. Loxton is a small town of less than 4,000 residents on the south side of the Murray River. It is known for its pioneer settlement museum, an annual athletics carnival with sizeable cash prices, and for being the second birthplace of Jesus Christ.
His parents, not aware yet they'd birthed a deity, named him Alan, after his father.
Miller has two sons, Caleb and Tristan, from a marriage which ended in 1997. "Soon after, I began to remember the details of my life on earth and in the spirit world for the past 2000 years."
That's some serious divorce fallout! Miller claims memories of who he is came when he was a child. "If you ever get the opportunity to talk to my parents, Joseph and Mary from my first century life, and Maxine and Alan from this life ..." begins one such claim.
But he was unable to consciously understand these early inklings "until more intense experiences started in 1997, and then intensified in 2004."
"I began the process of progressing towards God in the same manner as I did in the first century."
Back then, Jesus roamed from village to village presenting his teachings to huge crowds gathered to hear the good word. These days it is markedly more easy to get in touch with Jesus. He operates the Divine Truth website, which houses his lessons, advertises "future events" (seems the forthcoming Armageddon is TBA), and even offers up a FAQ section.
There is also a photo of Jesus strumming an acoustic guitar in distressed denim jeans, for what it's worth.
Obviously curious about sharing an island with the second coming, I shot him an email with a few questions of my own, but not before heeding the dense legalities in the "Legal Issues About Contacting Us" section.
For a wandering prophet, JC has his business tight, with an ABN and ACN, as well as a 'Trading Address' in Kingaroy, QLD, where he lives. There is also an intellectual property disclaimer, a provision policy, and bold, capitalised font warning that any donations to Divine Truth are NOT REFUNDABLE.
Although my email elicited a speedy reply ("Hi Nathan", it began cheerily, "Jesus here"), it would appear Jesus is quite busy these days. He agreed to answer questions, but stressed this would take between four to six weeks, as he had a backlog of essential tasks, one of which was hopefully a time management course.
I pushed back, but Jesus was firm with his time frame, instead organising for someone in his office to send me videos and teachings pertaining to most of my queries. It would appear my questions weren't the most original, and others had asked similar things in the past.
Think about what you would ask a man claiming to be the resurrection, and you'd be in the ballpark. It would also appear Jesus has an office, and an extremely thorough and helpful assistant named Lena.
He also has a wife, named Mary. Mary was in her late twenties when she first encountered Jesus giving a talk in her parents' living room. It was late 2007, and according to her bio "I was a somewhat cynical world traveller, disappointed with the lack of love and peace in the world, dissatisfied with spirituality and even with God." In other words, not the easiest mark.
"To say I have been reluctant to remember who I am and embrace the role of teaching others about God and the Divine Truth is probably an understatement", she admits. Still, Jesus is no ordinary prophet, and he soon pried the dormant memories from her.
"When I met Jesus again the realisations and emotions that followed were profound and dramatic", she recounts. Mary Suzanne Luck became Mary Magdalene, and the family was
complete. Jesus claims she was "actually married to me in the first century, and was pregnant with our daughter when I died."
Hang on, Jesus had a daughter? Way to bury the lede, Jesus!
By far the most useful video Lena sent me, offered to followers via YouTube, was the answer to my most obvious question: Do you care if people believe you are Jesus?
He laughs at his question. "No, not at all."
"It does not matter if a person believes I'm Jesus or not. What I would love for them to do is to listen to the teachings and to develop their own relationship with God; to experiment with the teachings, basically.
"I do not feel they need to have a relationship with me in order to do that", he continues.
"I do not feel they need to believe that I am Jesus in order to do that. There is no necessity on any person that knows me to automatically accept that I am Jesus."
That's a relief.
"Very few of the people who actually know me do accept that I am Jesus, at this point in time", he admits. His powers of persuasion appear less-than-Jesus-like, but he isn't worried.
"Now in the future, as time goes on and I get closer and closer to, and at one with God hopefully [they'll believe]. Once I become at one with God, maybe it will be a lot easier for some of those people to believe that I am Jesus."
Elsewhere, he describes this process of becoming one with God, reasoning that last time it took roughly thirteen years from the time he embraced his role as the Messiah to achieve this. Doing some quick mathematics, it would seem that JC is on track to again achieve oneness by 2017. (Spoiler alert!)
"Of course if a person does not believe I'm Jesus, then they don't accept who I am, and it's very difficult for me to have an open relationship with a person who does not accept me as I am." There's always a rub.
He continues explaining that a fulfilling relationship with God can exist separately to a belief that a guy living in QLD is the resurrected Jesus. However, this lack of belief will only take you so far, as he explains later in the same video.
"In the end, I act like I'm Jesus, I respond to the name, and I'm completely myself with all people", he reasons, "and sooner or later people will find it difficult to either not accept me as Jesus or they'll probably find that they don't want to spend any time with me.
"So in terms of having a personal relationship with me, most people will probably at some point if they wish to have a personal relationship have to come to accept that I am Jesus at some point through some emotional process that they might need to go through."
Through some emotional process! He shrugs sheepishly at this last point, as if it is both obvious and inevitable and as if he isn't about to drop the following bomb.
"Once I become at one with God, it will be a little different."
Again, there's always a rub. "Because once a person is at one with God, God's love is working through that individual and if you deny a person who's become at one with God, then in a lot of ways you are also going to be denying God as well, because God is working through the individual. Now, once we do that, it's going to be very difficult [for one] to maintain a relationship with God as well.
"At some point in the future you'll have to resolve the truth of it, sooner or later."