The Messiah came.
He came to a backwater nation ¡ª Japan; to a backwater part of Japan ¡ª Kyushu; to a backwater part of Kyushu ¡ª the Shimabara Peninsula. The year by the Christian calendar was 1637. It was a week before Christmas.
The Messiah came. He walked on water. He healed the sick. He rallied the troops. Troops? Peasants mostly, oppressed, half-starved, ¡°rabble¡± in the eyes of real warriors ¡ª but here were those same real warriors stymied by that same ¡°rabble¡± ¡ª such was the zeal inspired in them by the 15-year-old boy thought to be, if not the Son of God, the ¡°heavenly child,¡± ¡°heaven¡¯s messenger.¡± Posterity knows him as Amakusa Shiro, from his birthplace, an islet in the Amakusa Sea off the Shimabara coast.
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