The Story of God (16 page)

Apparently what happened is that Jesus had killed all of Satan's followers with his mouth-sword and afterward had pitched the beasts into hell. Then after that, Satan and Swordmouth had faced off, ready to fight, but before they could, an angel had flown down, grabbed Satan and locked him up for the agreed-upon thousand years. (Rev 20:2) When Tanfoot Jesus saw this happening, he looked at God, confused. “We
had
him, Father. Why didn't you let that me kill him?” God shook his head, dismissive. “I have my reasons, Tanfoot Jesus.”

“But you hate Satan, why didn't you let that other me finish him off?”

“You wouldn't understand, Tanfoot.”

“What, did you make some sort of
deal
with him?”

“Do
not
ask such disrespectful questions, Tanfoot!”

“Is it because you need Satan? Because your whole creation is so much about
punishmen
t that you can't do without him?” Tanfoot said, in his high, trumpety voice.

“Silence, Tanfoot!!”

Baby Jesus, in Tanfoot's arms, was crying now, and glaring at God, as if he knew something. Which, of course, he didn't; he was a
baby.
The Elders and the eyeball-monsters had also noticed this flare-up and were looking at God and Tanfoot Jesus, uncertain.

“Are you so weak that you can't destroy Satan, Father, or are you so cruel that you choose to keep him around?”

God suddenly lunged at Tanfoot and grabbed him by the throat, starting to throttle him, exactly as he had throttled Moses so long before. Baby Jesus shrieked in terror and everyone else present looked on in shock as God started to squeeze the life out of his insubordinate son.

“How
dare
you doubt me, Tanfoot,” God whispered harshly. “I never should have made you. I don't need you, I don't need
anybody.
All you do is doubt me, all anyone has
ever
done is doubt me and I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'LL KILL YOU ALL,
EVERY LAST ONE OF
YOU!” Tanfoot's face turned red, he could barely speak, but he managed to croak out, “You're … evil.” Suddenly God felt a hard slam in the back of his legs. His grip loosened, his knees half-buckled, and he wobbily spun around to see Lamb Jesus breathing heavily, crazy eyes glaring at him, nostrils flaring.

This was not good, God realized; he'd created too many Jesuses and they were starting to team up against him! Wincing in pain, God looked at the Lamb, then at Tanfoot and the Baby. Should I kill them all right now? Turn some sickle-wielding angels on them and chop them to bits? It was a good idea, but there was a problem. God now understood that there was a bit of a “design flaw” in his system:
Nothing stayed dead.
Sure, you could “kill” things, but because of heaven and hell, everyone basically continued to exist, so what you were
actually
doing when you killed someone was creating an eternal enemy. God had enough of
those
already. He didn't need to make a bunch of Jesuses his enemies.

God slowly got up, looked at the three Jesuses, took a deep breath. He carefully sat back down on his throne. “I have spoken,” he intoned, hoping that his majestic tone would quickly rectify this embarrassing situation. “I really hate it when I blurt out the truth that way,” God thought to himself.

Things calmed down for a while. A thousand years of peace and tranquility occurred under Swordmouth Jesus' rule. By the end of this epoch, it was the year 3016. God was frankly amazed at how many robot-followers he had. Was that a good thing? He wasn't sure. Most of the humans who now lived on other planets had drifted away from him, so he wiped them out with meteor showers. There were also by now known alien civilizations in contact with earth, but because they didn't believe in him either,
God wiped them out too. “Earth is the
only
place I've ever cared about!” he yelled to no one in particular.

Swordmouth Jesus had done an excellent job on earth, but God's relationships with the other three Jesuses—Lamb, Tanfoot, and Baby (who, for some reason, remained a baby)—deteriorated further. They didn't approve of his plan, that was obvious. God sometimes saw them all conferring, looking at him. He was going to have to deal with all these Jesuses somehow, before they mutinied, which he knew they would do eventually. Could he manage to somehow send them to hell? Even if he could, and he wasn't sure about that, was it a good idea? Did he really want to hand a bunch of Jesuses over to Satan as potential allies?

If only those poor misguided humans who believed in what they called “reincarnation” were right. He could then kill the rebellious Jesuses and make them come back as worms or jellyfish. Obviously, however, these people were wrong. There was no such thing as reincarnation. God found it amusing that so many humans had been so utterly and completely mistaken about how life worked. “But to hell with all of them!
Literally!”
God clapped his hands together in delight as he thought this. He had a wonderful sense of humor—witty and quick—and he knew it.

When Satan was released after his thousand-year imprisonment, he proceeded to take over the world yet
again,
which was—yes, fine, what had been agreed upon—but God was
not
happy with
how
it happened: He'd expected Satan to come out of hell and kill a lot of people and (temporarily!) defeat Swordmouth Jesus. That would have been fine. But when Satan emerged from hell—“looking amazingly refreshed,” God fumed—instead of just killing and tormenting people,
he tricked them into loving him again.
Most of mankind, who had supposedly been so happy and content under Swordmouth Jesus' rule? Well, guess what, they pretty much instantaneously turned on him and ran back to Satan! (Rev. 20:7–8)

This was beyond infuriating to God. Swordmouth was his
good Jesus, the one he could count on. He'd done an outstanding job running earth for a thousand years (lots of beheadings!) and now people instantly threw him over for Satan?!

“Why would they overthrow Jesus?” God sputtered in rage. The burning hatred he felt for humans at that moment was overpowering. They were the most hideous, vile creatures he could even conceive of! “Made in my own image,” his mind taunted.

A climactic battle loomed between Swordmouth and Satan, and this one was for
real.
Whoever won
this
fight was going to be the final winner of all time! God knew that Swordmouth would win, obviously, but still, given who he was dealing with, he didn't want to take any chances. He dumped a bunch of fire down on Satan's army and burned them all up. Swordmouth then grabbed Satan and tossed him into the lake of fire, where he would remain for all eternity. (Rev. 20:9)

And that was that.

It felt almost anticlimactic. After all these many thousands of years, the story was finally over. God had triumphed and Satan had been defeated. Now it was time to judge mankind, punish the wicked, and reward the good. Everyone who had ever died was brought back to life; the bad were tossed back into hell (where they had just been, sure, but now it was final). (Rev 20:12–15) As for the good, God had decided that he didn't actually want them in heaven with him, so he turned earth itself into a kind of heaven. He dried up the oceans
(finally!)
(Rev. 21:1) and created a very lavish capital city, New Jerusalem, which was bedecked in gold, crystal, and jewels (Rev. 21:11)—very gaudy and extravagant and fabulous, exactly as God liked it. The good were allowed to live there forever, always happy, never ill.

It was slightly disconcerting to God that even now, at the very end of the story, there were still foul, unclean people left on earth. (Rev. 21:27) What were
they
doing there? Why weren't they in hell, where they belonged? Why were perverts and wizards
still
surrounding heaven on earth? (Rev. 22:15) Why were bad things so damned difficult to eradicate? “Because they came from you, Father,” Tanfoot Jesus would say; he was always saying bullshit like that by this time. “They are a part of you, and you cannot simply destroy them, you must learn to accept them.”

God had decided to send Tanfoot Jesus to the moon. Lamb
Jesus he had decided to slaughter and eat, while Baby Jesus he had decided to use as a kind of “hostage” in the event that Swordmouth Jesus ever turned on him. (Which there was no hint of, by the way; Swordmouth was his “go-to” Jesus.)

In any case, Tanfoot was wrong. Evil persisted not because it was a manifestation of God's nature—that idea was, honestly, completely discredited by this time. Evil came, as it always had, from two places: (1) Satan, who had turned out to be much more powerful than God thought he was, and (2) Humans, who had turned out to be even
worse
than God had thought they were. (“And I thought they were pretty bad from the start!”)

Like it or not, foul, impure things continued to exist on earth. It
did
annoy God, he would have preferred to wipe “bad” out—but it also made him extremely grateful that he hadn't allowed humans to come live in heaven. That would have been intolerable. To be completely honest, even “heaven on earth” was hard for God to stomach at times. He found himself wondering whether even the so-called good people who were living in New Jerusalem were all that good. Did they really love and respect him? Why should he assume they did when pretty much no one before them ever had?!

“I need to test them again, and I know
exactly
how to do it,” God proclaimed.

“I will put a tree of life in the middle of their city, ha!” (Rev. 22:2) When Tanfoot heard about this, he shook his head sadly and said, “Why are you putting a tree of life where people are going to live forever anyway, Father?” God despised Tanfoot by this time. He barely even acknowledged the question, he simply said, “You wouldn't understand, junior” and pushed past him. (“Soon you will be living on the moon!” he wanted to say, but didn't.)

Looking down, God watched his followers in New Jerusalem worshipping him and he should have felt good, he knew that. He had demanded that they have “God” tattooed on their foreheads and they had and it looked marvelous. All they did was worship
him all the time and that was splendid too. (Rev. 22:3–4) But certain things continued to weigh on God:

1. People were worshipping not only him, and while God was fine with ruthless, fearsome Swordmouth being worshipped, he was
not
happy to have Tanfoot, Lamb, and Baby Jesus worshipped as, more or less, his equals.

2. God couldn't help but worry a little bit about Satan. Why wouldn't he emerge from hell yet
again?
God knew he would, and this time he'd be leading a huge and vengeful army.

3. Even the so-called good humans in New Jerusalem? They'd all turn against him eventually, God knew it. There was something
bad
in humans and it was only a matter of time before even the good humans began to ask questions they shouldn't—do things they shouldn't
—think
things they shouldn't. “They'll probably cut down my tree of life,” God muttered to himself. “Or start having huge homosexual orgies. My creatures are obsessed with cock and always have been.”

4. Dealing with two and a half rebellious Jesuses was not going to be pleasant. They might even try to fight him, and they were formidable, especially that Lamb. In the end, God knew that he was fiercer and more ruthless, and he would kill them all … but it wouldn't necessarily be easy.

5. Even in God's beloved home, heaven, there were concerns. The sickle-wielding death angels now had nothing to do and were starting to lop each other to pieces. Even God's beloved eyeball-monsters weren't as endlessly pleasurable as he had anticipated they would be. “I thought flying eyeball monsters singing to me eternally would be wonderful, but it actually gets extremely annoying at times,” he thought to himself. “Sometimes I wonder if I understand myself very well.”

It bothered God a bit that even as he was concluding his magnificent communication with mankind (others in years to come would
claim
to be talking to him, but they would be afflicted with every kind of plague for these claims!) (Rev. 22:18), Jesus was
still
reassuring people that his words were “trustworthy and true.” (Rev. 22:6) It made him sound so insecure, God thought. Why, of course his words were trustworthy and true, why would that even need to be
stated?
The very final words of his book pissed God off. “I am coming soon,” Jesus announced. “Come, Lord Jesus,” John replied. (Rev. 22:20)

And God thought to himself: “What about ME?
I'm
the one who's coming soon! Why do you people not understand that? After all this and you don't even mention me?” God got angrier and angrier the more he thought about it. “I am sick to death of this whole damned thing,” he thought to himself. “Sick. To. Death.”

Before long, it would all fall apart. God would destroy New Jerusalem. All humans would end up in hell.

God would kill the groveling, useless Elders, snapping their necks like twigs. He would kill all the Jesuses, even, sadly, Swordmouth, who he felt was a long-term threat. In time, God would even kill his beloved eyeball-monsters. The human-shaped one would be the last to go, staring pleadingly into its creator's eyes as the life was squeezed out of it.

God would be totally alone again.

He would wipe out earth, then wipe out everything in a fit of rage, destroying the moon, the stars, all of it—hating it all, wanting it all gone,
forever.

Two things he would find he could not destroy: Water, dark and implacable, which somehow had flowed back into the darkness (almost as if it was not under his control), the sea monster Leviathan hidden in its depths, and hell, teeming with millions of souls who hated him, ruled by his arch-nemesis, Satan.