God: The Interview Page 13

them. They are always ramming the Gospel down everyone’s throat.

  ME: I know the type. Obnoxious to say the least!

  GOD: Aren’t they though! Like my Apostle Paul—wonderfully obnoxious. They are saved and they insist on everyone being as saved as they are—

  ME: But the others, these decent sensible citizens—they deprive you of moral right?

  GOD: There are so many of them that they are the very worst. They are so much the same as the world that Satan can say, “There you are! They are just like me. Making a good life for themselves with hardly a thought about God.” The committee can only agree and allow him to do terrible things while I am left lamenting.

  ME: Why don’t you just wipe us all out and start again? Wipe out the Universe and all the angels and humans with it. No one would know. You could keep trying till you get it right—

  GOD: Because I would know. I would forever know I had failed, that all my heartbreaking effort, my death on the Cross had been for nothing. Though he no longer existed, Satan would have in fact defeated me. Evil would have won.

  ME: You ARE in a bad way! Who can believe it? Almighty God! Oh how the Almighty have fallen! and on such hard times!

  GOD: Things aren’t that bad. I will win in the end—

  ME: You hope! Another break while we all weep for poor God!

  01.39.56

  ME: This is In Town Tonight and I am interviewing God. Oh yes—this great question just handed to me: Which is the one true church?

  GOD: The church of Jesus Christ.

  ME: What? Never heard of it.

  GOD: The church of Jesus Christ? Whoever knows me, loves me, obeys me, the salt of the earth, the twice born, the forever loved—

  ME: Here’s a comment from a viewer—“I thought God would be full of Bible. Scripture by the ton! Verses by the boatload!”

  GOD: I myself am Scripture. I myself am the word of God—

  ME: I DO wish you wouldn’t say things like that! The lightning bolt that hits you is SURE to hit me—

  GOD: (LAUGHS) You are safe from God. It’s men you have to beware of!

  ME: Answer the question—

  GOD: Would you like Ephesians 3:10?—hina gnoristhee nun tais arXeis kai tais exousiais—

  ME: I have no idea what you said—I’m not a Hebrew scholar. What are you saying?

  GOD: That’s not Hebrew, that’s Greek. That’s what Ephesians was written in.

  ME: You speak Greek then?

  GOD: From a child. We spoke it at home.

  ME: You’ve just made a great mistake. Jews spoke Hebrew!

  GOD: Some Hebrew and much Aramaic. But the Romans rule our country and they speak Greek. If a Roman soldier speaks to you and you can’t understand him, you might end up dead. So it is wise to know a lot of Greek and bit of Latin, too.

  ME: I’ve never heard anyone say that.

  GOD: Greek is the official language of the Empire. We all speak Greek. That’s why the New Testament was written in it.

  ME: A viewer asks, “Which version of the Bible do you recommend? The King James Authorised Bible?”

  GOD: The original Greek. Your King James says “to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known”—that’s a bad translation—“might be MADE known by the church the manifold wisdom of God”—

  ME: Manifold sounds like a motor mechanic—

  GOD: It says God wanted His many-layered wisdom to be revealed to the angels in the Heavens by the church. By you human beings. We want all humans to be Christians—to be the church—and through the whole human race we want to demonstrate our perfect wisdom—in fact all our infinitely perfect attributes—to all the angels, both good and bad, in the invisible heavenly realm—That’s why the human race was created. To demonstrate to all the angels—and humans—what God is like, through my dealings with you.

  ME: Well, you’ve failed, haven’t you? How many of us go to church these days?

  GOD: On the contrary, my dealings with bad people also reveals my character. My patience, my justice, my longsuffering, my fairness, my goodness, my love—

  ME: So it is good for you that so few of us are Christians? Is that why you stay so hidden that half the world doesn’t think there even IS a God.

  GOD: I stay hidden because of our agreement. It would be impossible to make the human race a fair test between Satan and me if we were able to be seen all the time. So we stay hidden.

  ME: What agreement?

  GOD: The agreement between Satan and his angels and God and his angels.

  ME: You made an agreement?

  GOD: Of course. I told you we talk together. My angels advised it and we agreed with them. It was really arranged angel to angel. But we accepted it. And I implemented it.

  ME: You have agreements with Satan...?

  GOD: We had a serious crisis. Nothing you have on earth is anything near the seriousness of the crisis we had in Heaven. When a third of the angels revolted against me, the whole angelic realm was split. None of them wanted that. The good angels wanted to know what it was that the revolting angels had against my kindly rule. And Satan told them. And he was right.

  ME: He was right? God is admitting that Satan was right?

  GOD: He quite rightly said the angels only had my word for it that I was good. They had never seen me deal with anything other than perfect beings in perfect situations. They had never seen me opposed until now. Stood up to. They had never seen my goodness tested, demonstrated. I may have been all talk and no do. And he was right. I agreed with him, and so did we all. So I proposed a demonstration. Beings would be created who wouldn’t know or see me but would be put in positions where they would demonstrate my character to all the angels—

  ME: Oh yes, I have a viewer question on this: “Doesn’t that make the human race just a Nazi experiment?”

  GOD: Nazi? No. Experiment? Not to me. I knew what would happen. But the angels needed it. The good angels needed confirmation that they were right about me, and the bad angels needed to see they were wrong about me—

  ME: And did they?

  GOD: My angels appear more than satisfied. They too see tortured babies and realise and accept why it is impossible for me to act—

  ME: And the bad angels?

  GOD: Satan of course wanted to be in on the act. He wanted HIS character to be demonstrated as superior, he said, to mine. His values better than mine. My angels debated a little with this but ended up agreeing that this was fair, as did I.

  ME: And the rest is history.

  GOD: We created a universe and allowed Satan to alter it any way he wanted subject to our approval. So with life-forms. We began with simple and moved to complex.

  ME: And you did it all in six days!

  GOD: So we did. Six days, six hours, six seconds, six thousand years. We are not subject to time. We took as long as we needed. We can compress that into six days if you wish. The process was demanding, because if Satan and his angels disapproved of the final result, we would not have a conclusive test.

  ME: So you conspired with the Devil against the human race—

  GOD: We began many promising combinations of life only to have him object to something or other.

  ME: I think you are talking of evolution.

  GOD: Oh yes, the human race evolved. He and his angels weren’t satisfied until we had a species that could be corrupted in their thinking to his values if they once obeyed him. There were hot debates over that one but finally we accepted a tilting of the experiment in his favour—

  ME: You wanted us to fall. You NEEDED us to fall!

  GOD: Never. Never. You had the power to withstand Satan. We were there waiting if you wanted us. You only had to call. But you never called. We waited in vain.

  ME: You’re talking Adam and Eve again—

  GOD: Yes I am—

  ME: But Adam and Eve is a myth—

  GOD: They are no myth, believe me—

  ME: But presumably you foreknew all this? You EXPEC
TED us to fall—

  GOD: I foreknew every word of it. Nothing surprised us. All has unfolded exactly as we knew it would.

  ME: You created us knowing we would fall—

  GOD: Just as you put your son in that 50 metre race knowing he wouldn’t win—

  ME: Oh, you know that, do you? Um, but with this difference: I didn’t create his legs—

  GOD: Oh yes you did—

  ME: (LAUGHS) Maybe you’ve got me there—

  GOD: Listen—the human race has free will. You can do whatever you choose. You chose Satan and his advice against me and my advice. And you suffer the consequences. There are always consequences. Always. And I can only reverse them if someone asks me to. Prays.

  ME: We will take a quick break, be back in a minute—

  I have noticed the noise penetrating this supposedly sound-proof room and the Boss’s worried face—His voice crackles through the earplug: “I think they might break in.” It seems a massive crowd has gathered outside and they are determined to see “God.” Some, I am told, are very sick. They have come for God to heal them. This is their last chance for life, so they think, so their relatives think. Though not broadcasting the camera stays on me as I say, “What about the police?...They can’t get through the crowd? Helicopter them