‘SURELY I AM
COMING SOON.’
The Bible’s penultimate verse, prophesying the return of
Jesus Christ, has always fascinated me. When is “soon”? And
who is “I”? For the past three years I’ve followed seven men
who claim to be the Second Coming of Christ (five are shown
here). By immersing myself in their revelations and spending
time with their disciples, I’ve tried to produce images that il-
lustrate the human longing for faith, meaning, and salvation.
Religion is somewhat mysterious to me, probably because I
wasn’t raised with it in Norway. But I’ve always enjoyed read-
ing Scripture, and over the past decade or so my interest in it
has grown. I’ve found myself coming back, again and again,
to that mysterious line—a promise that Christianity has been
waiting nearly 2,000 years to be fulfilled.
If Christ were to come back to complete his work today, I’ve
thought, what would he think of the world we’ve created? And
what would we think of him? With these thoughts tumbling
around in my head, I decided to start looking for messiahs.
I found them the way you find everything these days:
through Google. You might think there’d be more people who
claim to be Christ. But while many can be called prophets, gu-
rus, or spiritual leaders, only a few meet what I consider the
minimum criteria: consistent revelations, years of scriptural
records, a following of disciples.
Each of these men is unique. The communities that sur-
round them are too. For most people, belief in a higher power
is an abstract thing. But for these disciples—most of whom
seem highly intelligent; none appear to be brainwashed or
crazy—it’s tangible. They can touch their belief.
Wherever I went, I tried to keep an open mind and sub-
merge myself in their reality. One thing I was struck by is how
extremely consistent several of these messiahs are. The New
Testament is full of contradictions, but each of these men has
a narrative that sort of reconciles those inconsistencies. In
some ways they’re more coherent than the Scripture we have.
I know a lot of people will dismiss these men as fakers or lu-
natics. But I’ve always thought that a fundamental part of the
Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—involves
the coming of a messiah. Those faiths may disagree about
identity and timing, but I think they agree on the basic prem-
ise. So if one accepts that, why couldn’t it be one of these guys?
For me this project has been more about asking questions
than finding answers. I hope it will get people to do the same—
to think about belief and who has the power to define it. jStory and Photographs
by Jonas BendiksenAS TOLD TO JEREMY BERLIN