My contention is, you know, when I was making it, it was [music] like, you’re making this film and the idea was that we’re all responsible for this, that his sacrifice was for all mankind.

Does the [music] Ethiopian Bible even mention Jesus? They asked.

And the short answer to that question is yes.

Mel Gibson has suggested that the true story of Jesus can’t be confined to the physical world.

that to really understand who Christ was, you have to move beyond time, beyond heaven and earth, into realms most people have never even imagined.

What almost no one realizes is that this vision already exists, not in Hollywood, not in Rome.

It has been preserved for centuries within the Ethiopian Bible, one of the oldest living Christian traditions on Earth.

Hidden inside its pages is a description of Jesus so vivid, so powerful, and so radically different from the image most of us grew up with that it was quietly pushed aside by Western Christianity.

This is not the gentle figure of Renaissance paintings.

This is a cosmic Christ, radiant, overwhelming, and terrifying in his authority.

And if Mel Gibson’s own words are any clue, the world may finally be on the brink of seeing Jesus as he was originally described.

In Gibson’s view, the resurrection was never meant to be a simple scene.

It was a cosmic rupture, an event that reshaped not only humanity, but the very structure of reality itself.

But here’s what almost no one talks about.

The vision Gibson called radical, the one Hollywood considers too extreme, too strange to touch, was written down long ago, not by a modern filmmaker, not by church leaders in Rome or scholars in Europe.

It was recorded more than 1,700 years ago by monks living high in the mountains of Ethiopia.

Within one of the world’s oldest Christian traditions survives a portrayal of Jesus Christ that is astonishingly detailed, deeply powerful, and completely unlike the version most people were taught as children.

A Christ so overwhelming in presence that Western Christianity spent centuries suppressing the text, keeping it hidden from view.

A Christ whose hair shines like wool lit by the sun, whose [clears throat] eyes burn like fire within crystal.

Not a soft illustration from Sunday school, but a being of cosmic magnitude, radiant and terrifying, existing far beyond ordinary human understanding.

His face blazes with a brilliance greater than a thousand sons.

A presence so vast that angels fall silent before him, and reality itself bends around his form.

This is not the pale, gentle figure made famous in Renaissance art.

This vision is far older, far more intense, and far harder to ignore.

It was recorded centuries before the book of Revelation was ever written.

A portrait of Christ that was bold, overwhelming, and impossible to domesticate.

And if Mel Gibson’s upcoming film draws even a trace of inspiration from these ancient descriptions, it could permanently reshape how the world understands Jesus.

Today, you’re about to uncover why this version of Christ was considered too dangerous to share, and what it means for everything you thought you knew about faith, divinity, and the most influential figure in human history.

Most Christians in the West grow up reading a Bible with a fixed number of books.

66 for Protestants, 73 for Catholics.

They’re taught that this is the complete word of God.

Nothing left out, nothing concealed.

But journey to the ancient highlands of Ethiopia, where monasteries are carved into sheer cliff faces, reachable only by ropes and bare hands, and you encounter a very different reality.

There, the Bible tells another story.

The Ethiopian Bible contains as many as 81 books, and some traditions recognize up to [clears throat] 88.

That isn’t a small variation.

It represents entire books of scripture, complete texts found nowhere else in the world.

These writings were preserved in JZ, an ancient sacred language that became a Christian literary tradition before Latin or Greek ever did.

While Europe descended into the turmoil of the dark ages, empires collapsing, Rome falling, libraries burning, knowledge disappearing, Ethiopian monks were doing the opposite.

high in remote monasteries.

They were painstakingly copying these manuscripts by hand, letter by letter, century after century, ensuring nothing was lost.

Among these additional texts are some of the most controversial and powerful documents in religious history.

The book of Anoch, the book of Jubilees, the Ascension of Isaiah, the books of the Mcabes.

These were not fringe writings.

Early Christians read them, quoted them, and treated them as sacred until church councils later decided they were too dangerous for ordinary believers to see.

And within these preserved manuscripts lies a portrayal of Jesus Christ that would be almost unrecognizable to most Western Christians today.

In European art and Western tradition, Jesus is usually portrayed as calm, gentle, and comforting, a figure meant to reassure, and console.

pale skin, soft eyes, flowing brown hair.

He is the good shepherd, the friend of sinners, the one who turns the other cheek.

And while those qualities are undeniably part of the biblical story, the Ethiopian texts reveal something far deeper, something Western Christianity gradually softened or in some cases erased altogether.

In the Ethiopian scriptures, Christ is not merely kind and humble.

He is vast, cosmic, overwhelming.

He is a being of blazing light and divine fire whose authority causes angels to bow in silent awe.

He is both savior and judge, healer and warrior.

Light that comforts and light that blinds.

His appearance is described with astonishing precision.

Hair glowing like wool lit by the sun.

Eyes burning like fire set within crystal.

A face shining brighter than a thousand suns while still radiating infinite peace.

His voice does more than speak.

It echoes across realms, shaking mountains, splitting waters, and commanding obedience from angels and demons alike.

Around him, reality itself responds.

Time shifts.

Space bends.

The very fabric of existence vibrates in his presence.

This is not metaphor.

This is not poetic exaggeration meant for drama.

This is the original Christian vision of Christ carefully preserved in Ethiopia.

While much of the world was taught a gentler, more manageable version.

This is where Mel Gibson enters the story and why his connection to these ideas runs far deeper than most people realize.

In 2004, Gibson directed The Passion of the Christ, a film that didn’t just succeed, it detonated across global culture.

Shot in Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew to preserve authenticity.

It portrayed the final 12 hours of Jesus’s life with relentless intensity.

The scourging, the crown of thorns, the slow, agonizing journey to Calvary.

Against a modest budget, the film went on to earn more than $600 million worldwide, becoming the highest grossing R-rated film in American history for nearly two decades.

But to Gibson, the passion was never the full story.

He has said repeatedly that it only told the first half.

For more than 20 years, he has been developing a sequel, now officially titled The Resurrection of the Christ.

And the vision he’s described sounds strikingly similar to the cosmic portrayal preserved in Ethiopian scripture.

In a 2022 interview with the National Catholic Register, Gibson explained that the film would not follow a simple linear storyline.

Instead, it would weave the resurrection together with events across time, past, present, and entirely different realms.

He said the story had to begin with the fall of the angels.

And to do that, he explained, “You have to go somewhere else altogether, another realm.

” Then he added the words that stunned audiences.

You have to go to hell.

On the Joe Rogan experience, Gibson expanded on this idea.

He revealed that he was working from two scripts, one traditional and structured, the other something far stranger.

He described it as more like an acid trip, explaining, “You’re going into other realms.

You’re in hell.

You’re watching the angels fall.

Gibson has always described scripture as verifiable history.

He openly calls himself deeply Christian and says he trusts the Bible completely.

And yet the vision he’s outlining, Christ moving through multiple dimensions, confronting fallen angels, and breaking the barriers between heaven, earth, and hell, doesn’t come from the standard Western Bible.

It does however appear in extraordinary detail within the Ethiopian Bible.

The resurrection of the Christ is now confirmed as a two-part film scheduled for release through Lion’s Gate in 2027.

The plan is for the story to unfold in two parts.

Part one releasing on Good Friday and part two arriving 40 days later on Ascension Day.

With a reported budget of $100 million and production underway at Sinitter Studios in Rome, the project is being positioned as one of the most ambitious religious films ever attempted.

And if Mel Gibson stays true to the vision he has described, audiences won’t be meeting the familiar Western image of Jesus.

Instead, they’ll encounter a Christ that looks far closer to the Ethiopian tradition than anything Christianity has ever put on screen.

To understand why this Ethiopian vision of Christ matters so deeply, you first have to understand the book of Enoch and the unsettling prophecy it contains.

A prophecy that challenges every believer who has been told the Western Bible is complete and nothing more exists.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church existed long before the great councils that later standardized Western Christianity.

Its roots reach back to the 4th century under King Ainer of Axom, making Ethiopia one of the oldest Christian nations in the world, older than the Christianization of most of Europe.

When Islamic expansion swept across North Africa and the Middle East in the 7th century, Ethiopia became something extraordinary, a Christian stronghold, isolated and surrounded by Muslim territories, preserving traditions and texts that much of the rest of the world would eventually lose.

This isolation meant that Ethiopian Christianity evolved on its own.

It wasn’t present for the great councils.

It didn’t take part in the arguments, the power struggles, the book burnings, or the theological purges that reshaped Christianity elsewhere.

And because of that, Ethiopia preserved the Book of Enoch, a text written centuries before the birth of Christ, possibly as early as 300 B.

CE.

Throughout the Book of Enoch, a mysterious figure appears again and again.

He is called the Son of Man, the chosen one, the righteous judge.

The text describes a heavenly courtroom surrounded by rivers of fire.

Angels fall to their knees.

The wicked are condemned.

And at the center stands a being of blazing light passing judgment over all creation.

Chapter 46 of Enoch offers a striking description.

And there I saw one who had a head of days, and his head was white like wool.

and with him was another being whose appearance was like that of a man and his face was filled with grace like one of the holy angels.

Now compare that with Revelation 1:14 written by John of Patmos around 95 AD centuries later.

His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.

The similarities are too exact to ignore.

The language is too precise to be accidental.

What appears in Revelation may not be a new vision at all, but the echo of something far older.

Both texts describe feet like polished bronze refined in a furnace.

Both speak of a voice that sounds like rushing waters or rolling thunder.

Both describe a sword, an authoritative word, issuing from his mouth.

Both portray eyes of fire and a face blazing with overwhelming light.

Scholars agree that the book of Enoch was widely read during the second temple period.

It wasn’t obscure or fringe.

It was familiar to the world in which the New Testament was written.

In fact, the Epistle of Jude directly quotes Anoch in verses 14 and 15 almost word for word.

See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone.

This is not a casual reference.

Jude treats Enoch as authoritative scripture, a prophetic text worthy of standing alongside the Torah and the writings of the prophets.

Early church fathers such as Tatalian and Irenaeus quoted from Enoch and regarded it as genuine revelation.

And yet by the 4th century, as church councils moved to standardize the biblical cannon, the book of Enoch was quietly set aside.

Which leads to a question that should unsettle every believer.

If these visions were considered sacred scripture by the very authors and communities who shaped the New Testament, why were they later taken away from you? The physical descriptions of Christ found in the Ethiopian texts are striking on their own.

But hidden within these writings is something even more unsettling, something far more threatening to institutional authority.

They preserve forgotten teachings attributed directly to Jesus himself.

Texts like the Book of the Covenant and ancient Ethiopian lurggical writings record sayings of Christ that are virtually unknown in the Western world.

These aren’t small variations on familiar messages.

They present a fundamentally different understanding of salvation.

One that shifts responsibility and spiritual power inward, placing it within each human being rather than in external institutions.

In one passage, Jesus declares, “You are not children of dust, but children of light.

” Pause for a moment and consider the weight of that statement.

Traditional Western Christianity often emphasizes humanity’s fallen nature.

Sinful, broken, formed from dust and dependent on outside intervention for redemption.

Humans are seen as clay, base material in need of salvation, delivered from above.

The Ethiopian texts turn that idea upside down.

If humans are children of light, then the divine is not distant.

It is inherent, already alive within every soul.

Salvation in this view is not a gift handed down by priests or unlocked through ritual alone.

It is an inner awakening to what already exists.

This teaching appears again and again throughout Ethiopian scripture.

The kingdom of God is within you.

Christ says not as a metaphor but as a literal truth.

In these teachings, heaven is not a distant destination reached only after death.

It is an inner reality, something accessible through spiritual awakening in this life.

According to the Ethiopian texts, Christ’s mission was not to build an institution or establish religious power, but to awaken divine awareness within each individual.

These writings also contain prophetic warnings about how humanity would eventually distort sacred truth.

One passage says that in later times, people would create gods with their own hands and worship the products of their imagination instead of the spirit of truth itself.

History seems to confirm this with unsettling precision.

During the European Renaissance, artists reshaped the image of Christ into familiar cultural forms, pale, delicate, and distinctly European.

Over generations, these images replaced the radiant cosmic Christ described in the earliest texts.

When Jesus says, “You are the light of the world,” these writings suggest he wasn’t speaking symbolically.

He meant it literally.

Human souls, they teach, carry fragments of eternal light.

Christ’s incarnation was not meant to supply something humanity lacked, but to reveal what was already there.

to show people how to recognize and fully awaken the divine spark within themselves.

And now it becomes clear why these teachings were considered dangerous.

Among the Ethiopian writings, the Ascension of Isaiah stands out as one of the most theologically daring texts to survive from early Christianity and the one that most closely resembles the vision Mel Gibson has described for his film.

dating to the late 1st or early 2nd century.

This work is contemporary with and in some cases possibly earlier than parts of the New Testament itself.

The text takes the prophet Isaiah on an extraordinary journey through seven levels of heaven.

Each realm is distinct, filled with its own beings, its own closeness to the divine, and its own dimension of reality, far more complex than the simple three tier universe described in most biblical traditions.

Isaiah’s ascent begins in the physical world and unfolds step by step.

Along the way, he encounters celestial structures formed not of stone or wood, but of light and sound.

He passes through gates of living fire, walks upon floors of crystallized starlight, and witnesses architecture that exists as pure energy rather than matter.

The angels he encounters radiate a brilliance so intense that human eyes cannot withstand it.

Each order more awe inspiring than the one before.

In the first heaven, angels oversee the affairs of the earth.

In the second, the movements of the stars and celestial bodies are directed.

And in the third, Isaiah beholds paradise itself, including the tree of life.

By the time Isaiah reaches the sixth heaven, he can no longer stand.

He falls face down before beings whose splendor is overwhelming.

Yet, even their glory is only a reflection of something infinitely greater.

Then, in the seventh heaven, a realm no created being could survive by nature, Isaiah beholds the beloved one, a figure of radiant authority poised to enter human existence.

This is where the text becomes truly astonishing.

It describes Christ’s descent with remarkable detail.

He does not simply travel downward through the heavens.

Instead, he deliberately restrains his own divinity in order to engage with creation.

At each level of heaven, he reduces the intensity of his glory so the beings there can perceive him.

In the sixth heaven, he appears as a being of the sixth order.

in the fifth as one of the fifth order and so on.

His brilliance gradually dimming at every stage of descent.

Not because his power fades, but because he chooses to veil it.

By the time he appears in Bethlehem as a human child, even the angels of the lower realms see nothing more than an infant, completely unaware of the cosmic presence hidden within.

Only God the Father and the Spirit fully recognize who he truly is.

This is exactly the kind of story Mel Gibson has said he wants to tell.

A nonlinear journey across realms revealing the fall of angels, a descent into hell, and the collision of cosmic dimensions.

When Gibson told Joe Rogan that he wanted to show Christ moving through other realms, the ascension of Isaiah had already charted that path nearly 2,000 years ago.

In this framework, the crucifixion is not simply a human tragedy.

It is a cosmic rupture.

The very source of life experiences death, briefly reshaping the structure of reality itself.

And the resurrection is far more than a body returning to life.

It is the most powerful being in existence, reclaiming his full limitless glory after willingly confining that power within the boundaries of a human body.

The removal of these texts from the Western Bible wasn’t accidental.

It was a calculated act of institutional self-preservation.

In the 4th century, when the Roman Empire officially embraced Christianity under Emperor Constantine, everything changed.

What had once been a loose, decentralized movement made up of house churches and independent communities now had to become a single organized institution capable of supporting imperial power.

Diversity of belief had to be narrowed.

Independent voices had to be brought into line.

and texts that emphasized direct personal encounters with the divine suddenly became dangerous.

The ascension of Isaiah suggested that ordinary people could receive divine visions without priestly mediation.

The book of Enoch claimed revelation came through heavenly journeys, not through approved religious authorities.

Ethiopian teachings about the divine light within implied that salvation didn’t depend on church rituals or institutional sacraments.

If the spark of the divine already existed inside every person, then why would anyone need a priest to reach it? Why attend church if the kingdom of heaven is already within you? Why confess to a cleric if you can commune directly with the divine? And why pay for indulgences if salvation is about awakening, not earning? These were never just theological debates.

They were questions of authority, control, and power.

questions that directly affected wealth and influence.

The medieval church became one of the richest institutions in Europe precisely because it claimed exclusive control over access to salvation.

Tithes, indulgences, fees for baptisms, weddings, and funerals.

All of it depended on one belief that people needed the church to reach God.

By the 4th century, that belief was being enforced.

The book of Enoch was formally rejected at the council of Leodysia in 363 AD.

The ascension of Isaiah was labeled apocryphal.

Texts that spoke of inner divine light and personal spiritual awakening were slowly pushed aside.

Copies were destroyed or hidden.

[clears throat] Authors were denounced.

Teachings were silenced.

The message was unmistakable.

Salvation would move through approved channels.

And those channels led to Rome.

But far from the centers of power, thousands of miles away, Ethiopian monks made a different choice.

High in the mountains, in monasteries carved into cliffs, and reachable only by rope and bare hands, cut off from Mediterranean politics by deserts, rugged terrain, and eventually expanding Islamic territories.

They preserved the ancient texts.

They never attended the councils.

They never received the decrees.

They simply continued copying the scriptures they had always known.

Generation after generation, century after century, the work was slow and punishing.

Each manuscript took months.

Monks sat for hours in dim scriptoria lit only by oil lamps, carefully shaping every character of the ancient G script.

They made their own ink from minerals and plants.

They prepared parchment from animal skins.

The labor ruined their eyesight and bent their backs, but they endured it willingly because they believed they weren’t preserving forbidden books.

They were preserving divine revelation.

Proof of that devotion still exists today.

The Germa Gospels, radioarbon dated by Oxford University to between 330 and 660 A, are among the oldest illustrated Christian manuscripts known to survive.

They contain vivid full color scenes from the life of Christ.

Preserved in astonishing condition for more than500 years inside a remote monastery in Ethiopia’s Trey region.

These books have never left their home.

When conservation specialists arrived to help preserve them, they were forced to climb the sheer cliff face and set up their equipment in the monastery courtyard because the manuscripts were not allowed to be removed under any circumstances.

And this ancient vision of Christ is not locked in the past.

In Ethiopian churches today, it continues to live through art, worship, and liturgy.

Christ is known as Exxia, the Lord of the universe, both majestic and gentle, embodying fire and light, power and compassion at the same time.

Ethiopian icons depict him with dark skin and deep penetrating eyes, often surrounded by radiant halos of gold.

He is shown as both fully human and unmistakably cosmic, approachable yet overwhelming.

This balance of majesty and intimacy stands in sharp contrast to the simplified image common in the West.

In Western tradition, Jesus offers comfort first and challenge second.

In the Ethiopian vision, awe comes first.

Comfort follows only after you recognize who stands before you.

He is the word through whom galaxies were spoken into existence.

Only after acknowledging that reality can he be approached as friend and savior.

Today, modern scholars working alongside Ethiopian institutions are beginning to digitize these ancient gay manuscripts.

And what they’re uncovering is reshaping long-held assumptions.

The Garma Gospels bear witness to a Gaya’s translation of the Gospels that may be far older than previously believed.

They also reveal evidence of a sophisticated tradition of painting and manuscript production thriving in the Kingdom of Aum during late antiquity, creating illuminated texts of breathtaking beauty at a time when much of Europe lacked the means to produce anything comparable.

Within these manuscripts, Christ’s miracles are not presented merely as acts of kindness.

They are shown as restorations of cosmic order.

When he stills the storm, it isn’t simply control over the weather.

It is the wind recognizing its creator and falling silent.

When he walks on water, it isn’t a violation of natural law.

It is the water remembering the voice that called it into being and lifting him in reverence.

When he heals the sick, he isn’t only treating the body.

He is restoring damaged creation to its original divine design.

Christ is described as the living word, the vibration through which reality itself exists.

A concept articulated nearly 2,000 years ago that sounds strikingly similar to modern ideas about reality as energy, frequency, and vibration.

Light, sound, matter, [clears throat] and life itself flow through him, sustained by his presence from moment to moment.

And if that word were ever withdrawn, creation itself would simply cease to exist.

When the resurrection of the Christ finally arrives in theaters in 2027, audiences may encounter something truly unprecedented.

For more than 20 years, Mel Gibson has wrestled with how to portray the most profound event in Christian theology.

He has spoken openly about fallen angels, other realms, hell itself, and a story structure that refuses to follow conventional rules.

Whether Gibson intentionally drew from Ethiopian sources or reached similar conclusions through his own deep immersion in scripture, the convergence is striking.

The ascension of Isaiah describes Christ moving through seven heavens.

The book of Enoch portrays the son of man as a being of blazing light and divine judgment.

And the Ethiopian tradition understands the resurrection not [clears throat] as a single moment in history, but as a cosmic event that ripples through every dimension of reality.

These ideas waited in mountain monasteries for more than 17 centuries.

They survived the collapse of empires, the rise and fall of civilizations, Islamic expansion, European colonialism, and the deliberate efforts of powerful institutions to erase them.

They endured because of monks, anonymous, devoted men who sat in dimly lit rooms copying sacred texts by hand, believing what they preserved was too precious, too true, and too important to be allowed to disappear.

They never knew that centuries later a Hollywood filmmaker might echo their vision.

They never imagined scholars would rediscover their manuscripts and the world would begin to listen.

They simply copied.

They prayed and they trusted.

For nearly 1,700 years, a hidden vision of Christ has waited, powerful, radiant, and almost impossible to imagine.

The gentle Jesus of Renaissance art was always a revision.

The blazing Christ of Enoch, the cosmic descender of Isaiah, the living word who holds reality together.

That was the original.

And if one version of history can be buried so completely that billions never even know it existed, how many others remain hidden? What other truths are waiting in forgotten texts, lost traditions, and the spaces between what we’re told and what actually is? The story isn’t over.

Mel Gibson may soon bring part of it to the largest screen in the world, but the real revelation has been there all along.

carved into cliff faces, written on goat skin parchment, guarded by monks who never stopped believing that one day the world would be ready to see the Christ they had always known.

And perhaps that day has finally arrived.