The Deliverer (27 page)

Joshua called Jehoa and Simon to his side. “Enter the house of the harlot and rescue the woman and everyone connected with her, just as you promised her.”

When I heard Joshua’s orders about Rahab, I lost all interest in seeing more of the wall falling down. I had to go with Jehoa and Simon. If Joshua followed through with the promise to give shelter to a harlot, I just knew it had to be good for my case. I’d have to look it up to be sure, but I was all but certain that in those thousands of laws God dictated to Moses while they wandered in the desert, there had to be one about stoning the harlot. I’d have paid more attention if I had known it was ever going to come up.

The men made their way through the fighting to Rahab’s house, finding her inside huddled together with her whole frightened family. When the men burst through the door, Rahab ran to Simon and Jehoa and bowed to them.

“You came to save us!”

“We gave you our promise.”

The men got the whole family out and rushed them to safety, giving them a place outside the camp of Israel for sanctuary.

Well, there it was; sanctuary for the harlot and her kin. God was all too willing to let Joshua make an exception for a habitual sinner. Rahab wasn’t a fallen woman who had fallen only once. She fell several times a week. She couldn’t plead the only-once-when-I-was-young-and-foolish-thought-he’d-marry-me-never-did-it-again defense. If God let her off the hook, how could He refuse to consider my case?

Meanwhile, Joshua’s army burned down the city and everything in it, except for the gold, silver, bronze, and iron vessels—they put all that aside to be placed into God’s treasury. Joshua didn’t see Achan stuff some of the gold and silver into a grain bag and then hide it beneath some rocks behind one of the burning houses, but God did.

Knowing you humans as I do, I can see you’re bothered that the attack on Jericho was so brutal. How could God, who describes Himself as abounding in mercy and love, call for the killing of every person in the city, giving them no chance to escape or repent or at least be taken prisoner? You can never understand why God released such destruction on the people He created, until you know what the people He created had become. Satan owned their souls, and you should be terrified when I tell you how he got them.

It began when the archangels whom God set over the nations of the earth were enticed by Satan to go down to the daughters of men. The fallen angels raped and pillaged humankind and brought forth the dreaded Nephilim race on the earth. God destroyed the Nephilim—most of them, anyway—and every living thing in the polluted gene pool of the earth when He unleashed Noah’s flood. I believe if God had thought about it for five minutes longer, He would have anticipated what could happen if He let the guilty angels remain alive, and He would have destroyed them right there and been done with it, no doubt saving Himself and humanity centuries of grief. Instead, He barred them from the third heaven, just as He did with Satan and the rest of us. They weren’t thrown out of heaven as we were; they just weren’t allowed back in. That left them with no place to go. It wasn’t long until the whole host of them appeared before Satan’s throne.

The rest of the rank-and-file demons, including me, hid in the shadows when the archangels kneeled before the one they had once served and known as Lucifer. Even on their knees they were huge, almost as big as Satan himself. We didn’t know why they were there, but if there was going to be a fight over territory, well, I for one wanted to be out of the line of fire. Satan’s sense of revenge at seeing them bow before him was unrestrained.

“How delightful to see you.” He mocked them with false hospitality. “I’m so glad you dropped in.” His eyes narrowed as his falsetto voice changed to an angry snarl.

“Now, get out.”

“Lucifer, master,” the one named Molech began. “We have no place else to go.”

Satan swelled up with pride like a helium balloon to hear Molech address him as master.

“And what is that to me? Do you think I’ve forgotten how you traitors refused to stand with me? How you did nothing when He cast me out? Now you turn to me for sanctuary? You disgust me.”

Molech’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing more as he lowered his head. I was so relieved. Maybe they would leave without any trouble.

That might have happened if the demons hiding in the shadows with me, the ones who never knew when to shut up, hadn’t begun to chatter among themselves so loudly anyone could have heard them.

“Yeah, who do they think they are?”

“Think they can just barge right in? Serves them right. Let them know what it’s like to be banished.”

“You tell them how it is, master.” They egged Satan on.

I started looking for the exit.

Satan rose to his feet and turned his back on the kneeling angels. They kept their heads bowed but began exchanging side glances between themselves. I scrunched down to see what might be transpiring in the unspoken language of their eyes. When I saw the narrow baleful slits that Molech’s eyes had become, I broke out in a rash right there on the spot. I spun around and tried my best to hush the heckling demons but to no avail. Was I really the only one who could see what was about to happen and how the archangels were beginning to stand up, some already tapping the handles of their swords?

I raced around to his front side to see if there was any trace of expression on Satan’s face that would indicate he had a grasp on what could happen if he rejected these monstrous angels. As I feared, there was none. Never in his life had Satan been able to weigh risk and consequence. I rushed to his side and whispered to him.

“Master?”

Never startle Satan. He jumped and just about knocked me over.

“Idiot! Never do that again.”

“Master, what will you do with them?” I nodded toward the angels who were beginning to whisper among themselves—not a good sign.

He looked at them as if wondering whether or not he could beat them in a fight. His fallen face said it all: not a chance. They were not rank and file like the rest of us who were forced to serve him. Seeing the wisdom in not testing their power, he dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

“Let them fend for themselves. They can’t stay here, not after the way they betrayed me.”

“Master, I know you’ve thought through the possible repercussions of sending them away.”

“Of course, I have.” He continued to stare at the wall before glancing my way. “But which specific repercussions do you mean?”

Brain, don’t fail me now!
The archangels were all standing up by now. I had only minutes to convince Satan of what he was about to unleash.

“Master, if they are not with you, they will be against you. Look at them.”

He turned his head slightly until he could see the troop of them as they formed a huddle, contemplating their next move.

“If you act right now, you can avoid a rebellion. They’re willing to serve you. They’re disoriented and haven’t tested their strength now that God has rejected them. You must move while they fear you, while they still think you’re more powerful than they are.”

“I am more powerful.”

“Of course you are,” I lied. “But just think what you can accomplish with an elite force like them; makes the rest of us look weak by comparison.”

I don’t know if I got through to him or if he finally noticed how really big they were, but just in time he swung about and walked toward them with outstretched arms.

“I’m nothing if I’m not magnanimous.”

“What did he say he is?” whispered one of my lesser brethren.

Magnanimous
wasn’t a word usually found in the working vocabulary of a demon.

“I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.” Satan sauntered to his throne and sat down, motioning for them to kneel again in front of him. “I’ve decided to overlook your offense and allow you to serve me.”

I held my breath as the archangels looked at him, looked at each other, and looked confused, and then, on Molech’s signal, one by one they kneeled down. I momentarily lost consciousness from holding my breath so long.

When I came to, the archangels were in counsel with Satan, who was laying out the plans to establish a new hierarchy of evil just below himself. He appointed Baal and Ashtera, the most powerful of the troop, as “gods” over the other demons.

“I will allow you to rule the entire land of Canaan,” he promised.

Then Satan gave them instructions as to how they were to lure the people into bizarre and exotic worship of themselves, which would be nothing more than worship of Satan by another name. The first pyramid scheme, if you will. The idea of worship from the humans they once brutalized in their lust was irresistible to the fallen princes.

“Feeble humanity will become your harlots.” Satan laughed and dispatched them to the earth.

In some ways I blame God for what happened next. He has to take the responsibility for the manufacturer’s default in how you people are made. In your hierarchy of needs, though you won’t find it on your man-made charts, is your need to connect with the supernatural through worship. God intended it to be a means for intimate and exclusive relationship with Him. It turned out to be a good idea gone bad because He didn’t install the proper safeguards. God failed to eliminate the seductive alternatives that were sure to come about by Satan’s lesser gods. He meant well, but He just didn’t think it through. If He were going to allow for the possibility that you fleshly creatures might choose to worship someone other than Him, then He should have cut you some slack on His intransigent command that you worship only Him or face His total and utter rejection of you. I’m not absolving you of your own stupidity by any means, but I mean, fair is fair.

“What do you think about them now, God?” Satan yelled from the rim of the second heaven where he watched the archangels seduce the people. He roared in satisfaction at perfect demonic possession occurring in the people, intoxicated with supernatural sensuality, slipping deeper and deeper into an inevitable and inescapable abyss.

The lesser demons celebrated with Satan as they lusted after the travesty taking place on the earth, but I couldn’t bear to watch. I slipped away to my perch and curled up with my tail tucked safely beneath me—my version of a fetal position. I didn’t want to think about the people at all. Why should I care that they were sentencing themselves to hell? Humanity certainly cared nothing about me. I did find myself feeling sorry for God, though.

“Don’t worry about them, God,” I cried out to Him. “It’s not all Your fault. They did it to themselves. Sure, You should have reined in that free will debacle long ago, but You meant well.”

I put my claws over my ears and tried to hum to drown out the sound as the converging carnival and orgy from the earth became louder and unavoidable. The men and even the women of Canaan reveled and cavorted in the ecstasy of the carnal prostitution of themselves with their gods until their minds became reprobate and they were neither desirous of nor able to repent of their choices. Satan laid out the welcome mat, but they themselves had willingly walked into an addiction from which there was no escape.

When Satan realized I wasn’t watching the show with the others, he came looking for me. It was a first and a shock to me since he always acted as if he didn’t know or care whether I was around or not. I hoped he hadn’t heard me talking to God.

“What’s
your
problem?” he demanded

“Me? Oh, nothing at all, sir. I don’t have a problem.”

“Good. Just remember this was all your idea.”

My idea? How could such degradation be my idea? I wasn’t capable of such a thing.
I said nothing, but my jaw must have dropped to my knees as Satan laughed at my dismay.

“You were the one with the idea to set the archangels up as gods and let them ravish the people.”

“But I … but I … but I,” were all the words I could put together. He couldn’t possibly have interpreted anything I said to be an endorsement of such mayhem.

“Don’t take it so hard. Sure, it was your idea, but it was God’s fault. Egomaniac that He is, He’s the one who put the desire in them to worship.”

Satan blew on his manicure and polished his nails on his cape as if he had nothing to do with the chaos. “Of course, He never once thought they’d be unfaithful to Him.” Then he raised his eyes and looked straight at me and jeered.

“Too bad for God that they found me to be a more exciting lover.” He laughed until his laughing turned into howls that curled my feathers. Satisfied that he had undone me completely, he went back to his ringside seat at the rim.

I knew it wasn’t my fault the people had fallen into such deadly desire, but I have to admit that I found myself thinking about what Satan said about it being God’s fault. I wanted to ask God, “What were You thinking?

“God, why did You make them yearn for the exhilaration of worship? Neither the angels nor mankind can handle the intimacy and power of worship. And why does it attract You as nothing else does? It’s almost as if You can’t resist them when they worship. When You saw Lucifer risk his place in paradise for worship, didn’t that tell You something? What did You think was going to happen with mere flesh and blood?”

God didn’t answer me—big surprise—but I kept thinking about it for a long time until I figured out what God must have intended. He planned for worship to emanate from people and bridge humanity to Himself. He knew once people tasted true worship, they would no longer merely love Him—they would fall
in
love with Him. I know because that’s how it was with us, the angels.

If you’ve ever experienced true worship, then you know a love affair with God consumes every part of your life. It’s even more delightful for you humans than it ever was for us angels. Ruah Ha Kadosh enters into your body, and it becomes His temple where He abides, and you become as one with God. Nothing like that ever happened with us.

God manifests His love for you, and you experience Him as holy, pure, beautiful, and powerful as He brings you into communion with Himself as in a marriage where you are the cherished bride of a loving groom. It’s the perfect love for which you were intended, for which we were intended. Yet, for all the things this union with God is like, there is one thing it is not. It is not erotic. But worship of a demon god is. Satan’s gods could never have lured humans into worship by love because they don’t have love, so they lured them by lust.