[BoyntonStu]

In her book Dracula Meets Jesus, Meg Smith presented a fictional account of Christ and Dracula as friends. At one point in the story, Jesus and Dracula are on a couch watching television, when Jesus turns to Dracula and asks, "Why don't you like crosses?" "What?" says Dracula: "Don't they give you the creeps ..?"

It has long been held that crosses physically destroy vampires. But as some vampirologists forget, and Smith's analogy illustrates, it was a cross that also physically destroyed Christ.

Since their deaths, of course, both Christ and Dracula have resurrected themselves and continue to live or exist in a "spiritual form" in society . Christ lives on through the church and "the blood of the New Testament" (Luke 22:20). Dracula's lifeblood, on the other hand, is literature and the cinema ...

In the Bram Stoker novel, Dracula is defeated not by a churchman, as one might expect; but by, of all people, a scientist.

According to The Vampire Encyclopedia, Matthew Bunson said Dr Abraham Van Helsing "is not a servant of the Church" but of good in general. "(He) leads the forces of light as a man of science, spirituality, and conscience," Bunson said. Significantly, the greatest enemies of Christ and his church have historically been science, spirituality and conscience .

Throughout his life it was said no mortal wound would kill Jesus; indeed, the Bible says "a bone of him shall not be broken" (John 19:36). Likewise, it has been said no mortal wounds can kill a vampire.

As we have seen, Jesus - like Dracula - met his physical death by the cross. But as any vampire hunter knows, the cross alone is often not enough to truly destroy a vampire.

So what did the Roman soldier guarding Christ on the cross do? He drove a stake or spear into Christ's side "until blood and water issued forth" (John 19:34). Nevertheless, as history reveals - and as any Buffy fan knows - driving a stake through a vampire's side is not sufficient to kill it.

"The Romans tried to kill him," JG Eccarius said in The Last Days Of Christ The Vampire. "Only they didn't know to drive a stake through his heart ..."

Hence, today, we find modern vampire hunters wearing t-shirts that read: Jesus lives .

Vampires never die !

*** now who is he closer to being. vampire? or messiah??