Jesus the Anti-Christ

In a tattoo parlor on trendy South Beach sat the daughter of the man who claims to be God.
Jo Ann De Jesus: "He's back. He's here to teach us that we should reign in life. That there is No sin.”
Jo Ann is one of several dozen members of a religious sect called Creciendo en Gracia -- Growing in Grace -- who were tattooed on their arms, ankles, even their necks with 666: the biblical sign of the anti-christ.

Watch this story here (the video starts at about 8 minutes into the show).

Why? Because their spiritual leader says he is the anti-Christ. Not the embodiment of evil, but rather the second coming.

Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda: "666. Anti-Christ means do not put your eyes on Jesus of Nazareth; put it on Jesus after the cross. That's me.” And, he says--the word "anti-Christ" is a bad translation of a word that actually means the new Christ -- "the 2nd coming."

Puerto Rican-born Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda founded the sect 20 years ago in a warehouse outside Miami. The charismatic 61-year-old de Jesus claims millions of followers, most in Latin America. His sect has hundreds of churches, cable TV stations and says it brought in $1.4 million in donations last year.

He also says there are more and more converts in United States.

He even claims: "I do greater things than Jesus of Nazareth. Much greater." He’s even gotten the tattoos that his followers are getting – 666 on each forearm.

De Jesus says those expecting the second coming of Christ on a cloud with angels have misinterpreted what Jesus himself said: "He says, you won't see me anymore! Because he will come in a different body. Which is me."

Professor Daniel Alvarez says de Jesus is dangerous because he believes he's God: “He's in their heads. He's inside the heads of these people. This kind of megalomaniacal moves are the ones that are very disturbing because it shows he does believe his own hype and he's capable of saying to his members go do 666 on your arm. I also believe he's capable of asking his church members to do even something more dramatic than that."

De Jesus laughs at the implication: “They are going to keep waiting for me to kill everybody.” This is a reference to the deaths of more than 900 cult followers in the so-called Jonestown massacre nearly 30 years ago.

De Jesus' followers say the idea of mass suicide is ridiculous: “If somebody tells us drink some koolaid and we'll go to heaven -- that's not true. We are already in heavenly places."

A Radical Stance

Apart from the normal news of the day, I found this story and it started quite a bit of discussion in the newsroom:

Some states, either through their courts or through their lawmakers, have outlawed homosexual marriage on the basis that it doesn't produce children. That's the idea that's been proposed in Washington state, and Gregory Gadow didn't like it one bit. So he's getting signatures asking for the same law to be applied to heterosexual couples: if you don't have children within three years, your marriage is annulled. If you're planning to get married and you're found to be infertile, you can't get a marriage license. Pretty radical stuff.

You Can't Smoke ANYWHERE Anymore!

Breaking news from the American Medical Association: Kids see smoking in the media.

Between TV and movies, each one of us has seen hundreds of examples of smoking. Now the AMA is saying those images of Cruella DeVille with her cigarette holder in her hand or Boss Hogg chompin' on his stogie actually encourage something like 400,000 kids every year to try smoking.

So what's the solution? The AMA says movies with smoking should be rated "R".

We discussed this in the newsroom -- and Greg & Steve even mentioned on the air -- that even having parents that smoke didn't affect the three of us: all of us have parents who smoke (either now or when we were little) and none of us smoke.

So what do you think -- do movie stars really have that much power over our children? Will taking smoking out of movies really help the situation?


Watch the video here (it starts at 9 minutes) and leave your thoughts!

Crazy News Night

It's been kind of a crazy day in the 9 Newsroom.

In Baton Rouge today, we rolled on accidents involving a motorcycle and a bicycle. There's no update yet on the conditions of the riders in either accident. We'll keep them in our prayers. (Thanks to photographer Nathan Dewberry for the picture.)


In national news, two separate incidents involving (we think) 5 dead bodies in both places. The news first came in that police had 5 bodies in a ship yard in Philadelphia. A few minutes later, a shooting at a Salt Lake City Mall.


On a lighter note -- you really should check out the video of the 70-year-old veteran investigative reporter almost getting beat up by the subject of one of his reports. This guy even starts throwing snowballs at people passing by! It's about 5 minutes into tonight's My 9 News at 9.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Well, I feel like we're finally getting into the Mardi Gras season, but that's mostly because we just did our first live shot for My 9 News at 9 from the Krewe of Artemis parade. Looked smooth, too!



Of course, we couldn't do the news tonight without touching on the funeral of Kaitlin Aydell. We know she's in a better place tonight, and hopefully the creep that killed her will be behind bars in the very near future for a very long time.

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A couple of interesting stories that we found tonight:

First, how about the college newspaper article that proclaimed "Rape Only Hurts When You Fight It"? Supposedly the guy writing the op-ed piece was trying to be funny, but I don't think rape was a good subject to try out your satyrical writing skills. I've tried finding a link to the article online, but I think the administration at Central Connecticut State University must've pulled the plug on that one as soon as they could.

In San Diego, another story of a strong-willed college student. He was skateboarding at San Diego State University, which apparently isn't allowed. He mouthed off to the police officers, and they didn't feel like taking what he was dishing out and tasered the guy on the spot. He says he only calmed down when they went for his crotch!

You can watch the stories yourself in the My 9 News at 9 video player here. They start at about 7 minutes into the video.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Hey there!

Welcome to the "Behind the 9" blog for My 9 News at 9.

This won't be your typical newsroom blog. We want to talk about the stories that interest you .. and get your feelings on what's in our newscast. So post your comments! And watch My 9 News at 9 on WBXH cable channel 16 -- you never know when we'll read your comments on the air!

- Greg Meriwether & Producer Joe Rawley