Jacob Helps Those Who Help Themselves

(Do not read until after you have seen the Lost season six
episode, Ab Aeterno. Written and originally published on
Wednesday, March 24, 2010.)


According to surveys, 8 out of 10 Americans believe that
the phrase, God helps those that help themselves, is in
the Bible. It's not.

What is in the Bible, specifically the passage from the
book of Luke that Richard's was open to when the Man In
Black takes it from him, a passage that matches our
numbers (4:23): Jesus said to them, "I know that you will
tell me the old saying: 'Doctor, heal yourself.' You want
to say, 'We heard about the things you did in Capernaum.
Do those things here in your own town!' " Then (in verse 24)
Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, a prophet is not
accepted in his hometown."

Before in the same chapter, Jesus is tempted in the desert
for forty days and goes without food; Luke 4:13 - After the
devil had tempted Jesus in every way, he left him to wait
until a better time. That sounds like the MIB telling
Richard that his offer to reunite Richard with his wife
always stands. Interesting, too, that later in Luke 4, we
get the story of how Jesus goes to Capernaum and forces an
evil spirit out of a man.

The main thing I take from this passage is that while
the people were expecting a Messiah for a long time (like
our Losties expecting rescue or Ben / Richard / John Locke
expecting a certain kind of Jacob), Jesus was not the type of
messiah they had been expecting. If Jacob is good and the MIB
is evil which is the way things are looking, then Jacob -
bringing people to the island, leaving them to help themselves
and most of them dying - is not the kind of messiah most would
expect him to be. In fact if we could do a body count, his might
be higher than that of my beloved Ben Linus. If Jacob was very
God-like in this episode, Richard was Christ-like, serving to
spread the word of Jacob on the island, working to convince
non-believers.

Or you could view Jacob as Christ-like and Richard as
Peter, the leader of the church, and therefore Christ's
representative on Earth. Christ asks Peter three times
if he loves Him and afterwards, Peter is in charge of
leading the church and advising new followers on right
and wrong. Richard was asked three times by Mr. Whitfield
if he spoke English. Jacob asked Richard three
times if he wished to drown, before Richard yelled
that he wanted to live, in a sense baptizing Richard -
just moments later, RIchard was given Eternal life.

By the way, in the scene where Richard is sold to Hanso,
when the Father introduces, Mr. Whitfield, I thought at
first he was going to say Mr. Widmore. Those names are
similar on purpose and perhaps it's not just a wink, wink
from the writers. Perhaps, over time, the name Whitfield
evolved into Widmore and he is a relative of Charles
Widmore. That would explain Widmore's lifelong interest
in the island, the Black Rock. Remember he
purchased the journal of the Black Rock's first mate
at an auction, in the season four episode, The Constant.

Interesting that the MIB offered Richard water, while Jacob
offered him wine. Where did Jacob get the wine? Can he turn
water into wine, too?

Parallels:
-In the season six opener, Flocke said to Richard: Good
to see you out of those chains. Tonight, the MIB to Richard:
Good to see you out of those chains.
-In Sundown, Dogen gives Sayid the same dagger and uses the
exact same phrasing (do not hesitate, do not let him say a
word) that the MIB does when telling Richard he must kill
the devil. And it doesn't work either time. Both Sayid and
Richard return from these failed missions with a message
or in Richard's case, a gift, a white rock.

I love the wink-wink play on the Black Rock slamming into
the statue, bringing Richard who rejects the MIB, and who
he later brings a white rock to as a present from Jacob.
Oh,Lost, I love how you flirt. There was also some winking
going on when the writers suggested these popular audience
theories only to (mostly) shoot them down:
-Losties are dead
-Losties are in hell
-The MIB is a genie trapped in a bottle

There was even a wink, wink in having Richardo from
Tenerife, the island in the Canary Islands that is
believed to be the uppermost peak of Atlantis. As we
all know, Atlantis sank to the bottom of the ocean
as does our island, or so it appears from the opening
sequence of the season six episode, LA X. The sinking
of Atlantis left only the highest mountains (Tenerife
being the peak) above sea level. The story of Atlantis
includes twins that were each given a portion of the
island to rule. Atlas was king of the entire island
and ocean. His twin, Gadeirus was given the fringes
of the island towards the Pillars of Hercules.

I've often thought the MIB could only assume the
shape / form of someone who was dead and who's body
was on the island. But now it appears, he just needs
to have something of theirs to assume their shape.
He had Isabella's necklace which he got off Richard's
neck. Richard reached for it when Smokey came to
visit him in the ship and it wasn't there. Talk about
a recon mission. Did you catch the butterfly on screen
at around the thirty-four minute mark of the show's
airing? We see the butterfly flying around the outside
of the Black Rock and then inside around Richard.
Can the MIB take the shape of a butterfly, too?
Why else is it in the shot? Was the MIB the horse Kate
saw in the season two episode, What Kate Did? And the
MIB being able to take shapes of people other than
those who have dead bodies on the island fits with him
taking the shape of little Ben's mother in
the season three episode, The Man Behind The Curtain.
Was he the butterfly spying on the scene inside the
Black Rock? Was he the boar eating human flesh inside
the Black Rock,knocking the piece of metal from Richard's
hand so that Richard would be left with nothing and
have to accept the MIB's offer?

I have a hard time thinking that a wooden ship even
with a ton of force could topple a huge Egyptian statue,
but at least we know how the statue got knocked down.
Back in the season one episode Exodus, part one, Arzt
suggested that the Black Rock was swept inland by a
tidal wave when the Losites first discovered it. I
still think the Black Rock was the ship out in the
ocean when we first met Jacob and the MIB on the beach.
Did Jacob create the storm? He said he brought the
ship to the island.

The key moment in this episode for me was when the MIB
says to Richard: My friend, you and I can talk all day
about what's right or wrong, but the question before
you remains the same. Do you ever want to see your
wife again? The MIB said it as if he'd had the
discussion of right or wrong with Jacob a million
times. He has or will offer similar deals to our
Losties:
Sayid gets to see Nadia
Sawyer wants off the Island (and would like to see
Juliet too, I'm sure, if he knew that could be part
of the deal)
Claire wants Aaron
Jin wants to be reunited with Sun and vice-versa.

ALL of the above IS happening in the Flash-Sideways.
I'm starting to wonder if the Flash-Sideways are not
just about what happened when the bomb went off and
when Jacob doesn't interfere, but it's what happens
if / when the MIB gets his way, gets off the island,
gets "uncorked". Things are going along too well (for
the most part) in the Flash-Sideways world so far.
It looks like Los Angeles, but Dorothy, something
tells me we're not Kansas anymore. Perhaps all the
glances into mirrors, all the looks of recognition
are because these Losites made a deal with the devil
to get their lives back or have them Jacob-free.

Which brings me back to what is the island. It's not
hell, wink-wink. It's not purgatory - because purgatory
is people on their way to heaven, and lets face it,
Ben Linus and Kate Austen aren't waiting to go through
those pearly gates. When Hurley said if Richard doesn't
stop the MIB, we all go to hell, that's because if the
MIB is let out, it tips the scale to evil and all is lost.
The island then is like an underworld, a cell where the fate
of the people on it hasn't been decided yet. If Jacob can
find ONE candidate to contain the evil on the island, to
replace him, then this restores the balance and our Losties
can be saved. If Jacob can't find the one candidate, evil is
released, the island destroyed (sank) and our Losties go to
hell (literally or figuratively, it doesn't matter.)

Now who is the one person. It would be interesting if after
all this time it ends up being Richard, but I think he really
is a messenger, more Peter than Christ. Jack is the obvious
choice. There was a possible clue or just another wink, wink
in last night's enhanced episode, Recon. We were told that
one of Zoe's gunmen were named Seamus. Seamus is Gaelic for
Jacob. Both mean the same thing: One who supplants / deceives
or is a, wait for it... substitute! (I just gave myself
chills.) And one more thing, my beloved, fellow Lost lovers:
Seamus in Gaelic = Jacob in Hebrew = James in English!
(I ask you again, how do you like them dimples?)

All that said, like doe a deer, a female deer, I still
say it comes back to Kate, the wild card, the one who
the MIB cannot manipulate, the one who like Mr. Eko seeks
no redemption for her sins. She's never felt any remorse
for killing her real father, Wayne. She also has
nothing (it appears) in the flash sideways. And unless
it's to raise Aaron who seems much safer with Grandma,
there's no reason for Island Kate to want to go back.
Kate who is in the Judas position on The Lost Supper
photographs; Kate who's name is marked out in the cave,
but not on the lighthouse wheel - perhaps because Jacob
has found a way to fool the MIB into crossing off her
name in the cave. Perhaps Jacob fooled the MIB into
not thinking of Kate as a possible candidate any longer,
because, she is the one.

Will we find out next week which Kwon is a candidate?
One thing is for certain, a shirtless Jin is in our
near future. Josh Holloway was lobbing for it, not
wanting to be the only shirtless Lostie this season.
Hey, Josh, next time, can you lobby for a shirtless
Ilana or Juliet? Like, maybe, when we see Jules in the
Flash-Sideways world? Wink, wink.

Until shirtless Jin,
- J