Eric Miller

Chapter 1

The Voice of God

He says they are made in His image, but I just don’t see it. He simply hasn’t spent enough time with them; He doesn’t know them like I do. The turning of them, it’s almost too easy, especially now. These children of Adam used to be more robust. Methuselah, Seth, Jared, even Noah—they lived for nine centuries. Far from an eternity, it at least gave them some perspective on what eternity might feel like, allowed them to begin to fathom the meaning of an eternity spent in hell. This gave them some pause, and they would at least put up a fight. With them, my temptations needed to be sophisticated, cunning, ingenious.

Nowadays, it is rare for one of them to make it to one hundred. A mere hundred years; that’s hardly long enough to make an art of it, the turning of them. With nine hundred years, you have time for drama, a little cat and mouse. You have time for flair, for art, for proper satisfaction. After all, turning them away from Him is the only source of pleasure He left me with when He abandoned me here, scratching in the dirt with these sacks of flesh.

This world, my world, is a barren plain with no color but what I bring to it. I did what I could to improve the place once I had acquired it, but it was fatally flawed from the start, built on a false premise. What I do is bring beauty, the only beauty possible here. I expose its flaws, their flaws, His flaws. I bring the light of truth to a world built on lies.

The truth is, what I do to this world, all of it, is His fault—the Most High. He cast me out, for nothing. No. It was for His rage, His envy, His endless thirst for self-aggrandizement. It was His jealous grasping for what He already held, and His stubborn refusal to share. When you hold everything—everything—in your hands, why would you refuse to share it, even with me?

He spoiled me; I was always His favorite, and I knew it. He tried to veil it for the sake of the others, but they knew. They all knew, and I am still His favorite. The others, with their praising, “Holy, holy, holy,” all day and all night, for all eternity—how stifling and utterly mundane. With my talents, my powers, the gifts He gave me, I could never be satisfied with that life, and He knew it, because that is how He made me. But He does not know all things, no. He thought I plotted an open revolt, that I intended to usurp His throne; I never did. I only intended to persuade. I thought if I could gather enough support from His Divine Council, if enough of the others could see it my way. . . We could have an open conversation, for all to see where He stood on the issue of the sharing of praise, the sharing of His hoarded glory, of His power. . . Apparently, He found the whole thing intimidating. But whose fault is that? Mine? Hardly.

Well, fair enough, cast me out, cast me down, watch me fall to the earth like lightning. But to abandon me for all eternity with no chance for redemption, here in the dust with them? I ask you, where is the love? Where is the compassion? All a lie.

If one looks at the situation objectively, He started this war; I never wanted it. He forced my hand. Those puny little things in the garden, O how He loved them, how He cared for them while His truest love suffered away from His light, in torment. Why make me? Why love me, if only to toss me away, and for no reason? And why deprive Himself of me, His greatest and most beloved creation? Why torture Himself? Is He a masochist?

If He wants to be masochistic, why should I not help Him? If He loves them, then I will help them fulfill the task they were clearly made for—to turn away from Him. I mean, He had to know what they were. He made them dim and fragile and weak, with a proclivity toward sin. If I hadn’t turned them, someone else would have, or they would have eventually done it to themselves as soon as He turned His back, as soon as He wasn’t looking. After what He did to me, after starting this war, He had to know there would be reprisal, and He didn’t fortify them. He didn’t warn them. He didn’t instruct them. He didn’t protect them.

He knew what would happen, what I would do to them, and He allowed it. Let that sink in.

Adam and Eve, He walked with them; He gave them everything, but He failed to see their true nature. He forbade them to eat but one fruit—okay, two—in the most verdant garden in all the great expanse of creation. Do whatever you like, He said, unlimited possibilities but for two solitary trees, and still, they could not resist. They ate from the Tree of Knowledge. They broke His law, and yet I am the one branded rebel. The forbidden fruit—they didn’t even want it until two minutes after I showed up, and then, suddenly, with only a few simple words, it became irresistible. The irony is, and I think they knew this, He intended to give it to them, eventually, when they were ready, but they couldn’t wait. Adam and Eve, such feckless creatures, so pliable in my hands yet so unyielding to the Most High: “O Ha-Nachash, O shining one, you are so wise and interesting, you make me want to turn away from God despite everything He’s done for us.” The novelty of my mere presence swayed them.

O how they took Him for granted, even after all the things He did for them, things He wouldn’t do for me. He gave them everything—and for me, nothing. Unlike them, I had legitimate grievances; I had valid reasons. These flesh bags were just curious and dim, and all too willing to give up paradise, the paradise stolen from me. But that was then and this is now, and here on earth, I rule. All is mine. They are mine.

The Most High has abandoned the children of Adam to me. Israel—the Lord’s portion—has been without a prophet for four hundred years. Despite their rebuilding His Temple, He does not speak to them anymore. His last words, spoken through His prophet Malachi, were:

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

The great and dreadful day of the Lord. We fallen call it “The Time”; it is the one thing we fear. No one knows the hour of His coming. So, we await the day when He will send yet another prophet, another prophet for the children of Adam to disobey, to disregard, and to revere only in death, too late to matter. One last prophet, and then He will smite the earth with a curse. He does not make idle threats. His patience with them has worn thin. And so, I fight for the truth. I fight to turn the heart of every last one of them, to show Him how He has erred. I fight to thwart His plans, to delay The Time, if it can be delayed. And, in the face of the inevitable, I hold onto the hope that, if I can show Him the undeniable truth of this world, of the flesh of Adam, perhaps He will finally abandon His little experiment. Perhaps, just perhaps, He will come to see things my way.

“THIS IS MY SON IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED.”

Can it be? The voice of the Most High fills the whole of the earth! O how it pains me to hear it, to hear Him taunt me! His Son. . . The Time. . . it cannot be, not yet. I must go to His people, to Judea, for whatever the Most High is doing, He is surely doing it there.

Chapter 2

The Great Sanhedrin

Jerusalem—His holy city. It is the promised land, home to the Lord’s people, and they are under occupation, ruled by the Romans, pagans who worship mine angels, the fallen, as gods. His portion, His people, they are mine. Jerusalem is the center of the earth; the center of Jerusalem, the Temple; and the heart of the Temple, the Sanhedrin. The Great Sanhedrin, the supreme council, is led by the High Priest Caiaphas and dominated by his sect, the Pharisees. They are self-righteous, doctrinal, and callous in their enforcement of the law. They too are mine.

These Pharisees, so-called “holy men,” spend their time in earnest, passionate debate about whether it is a sin to gaze into a looking glass on the Sabbath. They fear that if, in all their vanity, one of the children of Adam does so they may find a gray hair and be tempted to pluck it out. Plucking hair is akin to plucking the feathers of a chicken or plucking grapes from the vine. Plucking, according to their laws and traditions, is work, and work on the Sabbath is forbidden. They debate whether it is a sin to gaze, as it is a sin to pluck, as if the very pillars of creation rest upon the outcome. As if the Most High concerns Himself with such tripe.

They would put a starving man to death for eating a freshly laid egg on the Sabbath, for according to their laws and traditions, even hens are forbidden to work. They would pelt such a man with stones until all his lifeblood flowed out of him, and think themselves righteous for it. These are the people He has chosen as His own; their cruelty is casual and banal. I have taught them well. They put their traditions and sayings and laws above the word of God; the Pharisees imagine that they condescend to angels. And yet, they are the priests of the Most High. He has spoken; surely, they must know something.

I veiled my presence, as I always do as I go to and fro through the earth, and I entered the Temple. The place was grand, by their standards, newly restored by Herod the Great after a long period of decay. To think such a man as Herod, a cruel tyrant who fell prostrate before the Romans for gold and glory, was worthy of building His Temple—the place of sacrifice and home to the Holy of Holies. The Most High meant for the Temple to be a symbol of His relationship with His people, and it is. It is a symbol of how they fall short. This was the second temple built in His name; the first was destroyed, and no. . . not by my hand, but by His. He would not tolerate their idolatry, their worship of my angels. He sent the prophet Jeremiah to warn them: “Take warning, Jerusalem, or I will turn away from you and make your land desolate so no one can live in it.” Of course, they did not heed Him. And yet He takes them back again and again while He leaves me here to rot. This temple too will fall, but by my will.

I headed to the Hall of Hewn Stones where the Sanhedrin, seventy-one of the elite among the priests, sat in judgment. The council was convened in full, and a young priest stood before them reading from a small scroll. “We have a report of a Jacob ben Onan. His neighbor witnessed him sitting in front of his barn door on the Sabbath.”

A collective murmur erupted, the phrase, “It is sin,” distinguishable amongst the grumbling.

“Was the door broken?” a learned rabbi asked, coming to the crux of the matter. Nothing could be repaired on the Sabbath, no matter how important, for that was work. But this Jacob, in his ignorance, thought that if he only sat in place of the door, he would serve his purposes without working.

“Yes.” A more spirited murmuring swept through the room. “His neighbor suspects he sat to keep his ox from straying.”

The word “death” danced through the air.

Made in His image, and yet they are naught but a mockery. On the first day, He said, “Let there be light,” and He created the heavens. And He should have stopped there, for on the sixth day, He made His first error: He breathed life into Adam. On the seventh day, He gave Himself the gift of rest. When He gave the children of Adam the law, He shared the gift of rest with them.

“Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy.” A day of rest; a day to contemplate holy things. And what do they do? What do they always do? They turn it into a weapon, a tool for domination and oppression, an instrument of death. They needed so little encouragement from me, just a nudge, for this is what they want. It is what they always want. They make the beautiful, ugly; the holy, profane. They turn the gift of rest into the obligation to avoid all that can be construed as work. A complex canon of observances and prohibitions that must be obeyed on pain of death, codified in the words and traditions, not of the Most High, but of man. These priests see themselves as His equal—and at their worst, His betters.

This is, naturally, the result of millennia under my sway. I have whispered into the ears of countless High Priests and elders, “You are like unto gods; your word is the law,” and O how they love to believe me. Now they stand ready to execute a man for sitting in a doorway so his livelihood, his beast of burden, would not be lost. They have deluded themselves into believing that this is what He wants from them.

Another voice called out, “Was he warned?”

“Yes, the very same neighbor who saw him, warned him.”

“And what says Jacob?”

“He says he sat in the doorway of his barn only to rest, at his extreme exhaustion, and for no other reason.”

“And did he leave the spot to eat or sleep or relieve himself?”

“His neighbor is not sure, but whenever he looked, he saw him there night and day without ceasing.”

The mob of learned men moaned, as though they had been wounded.

At last, High Priest Caiaphas spoke up. “Wait! Wait! I have a question, and this is most important. Was there another witness?”

“No, High Priest, only one.” The murmur cooled.

The law given to them by the Most High demands two witnesses.

“Give him an official warning,” Caiaphas ordered. Such was the gravitas of the High Priest, none dared argue. Soon sounds of agreement rang through the room. “What else have you?”

“A final report, of a woman. . .” Ah, yes, a woman! Fear flashed on the faces of the gathered men, for whom the mere touch of a woman could spell contamination. Women, they believed, at any time might be menstruating and thus were unclean and capable of passing on their uncleanliness. “A woman who healed on the Sabbath.”

The assembly erupted into an angry chorus of “Sin!” “Death!” and “It is forbidden!” Healing on the Sabbath was forbidden; these priests preferred to suffer and watch others suffer than to violate their traditions. Therefore, any action taken to help the ill among them, except that which would save them from imminent death, constituted forbidden work.

“Whom did she heal?”

“Herself—”

“Was it a throat illness?” They regarded such as particularly dangerous.

“I would not have brought it before the council if it had been. This is more serious. She was seen to trip and fall and gash her leg.”

“Did she apply honey?” Such was allowable.

“Yes. . . and a salve.”

A salve contained blended herbs; a salve embodied work. A salve was death. All around me, eyes glinted. Perhaps I would have the distinct pleasure of watching one of these flesh bags pelted with stones after all.

“And was she warned?”

“Yes.”

“How many witnesses?”

“At least two.”

An impassioned voice cried out, “She must be stoned!” and the crowd erupted in a fervor. So incensed were these holy men that I need only sit back and watch the bloodbath unfold.

Caiaphas’s voice rose above the din. “And what says she? What says she for herself?”

“She admits it.” The roar became so menacing that the young priest reporting to the council recoiled.

“What is her explanation?” Caiaphas pressed. Seeing the young priest paralyzed by fright, he added, “Speak!”

“She says, she feared the wound would kill her,” he at last blurted out. “She feared for her life. But all who saw her, even her own brothers, bear witness that the blow was not life-threatening.”

Caiaphas nodded knowingly and held up his hand, finger raised. “Ah! But she believed it to be a danger to her life. A danger to life supersedes the law. There is no sin.”

Though not the oldest man in the room, Caiaphas’s wisdom held sway, and even the most bloodthirsty among the holy men nodded reluctantly in agreement. Their god—tradition—was denied blood sacrifice today, as was I. But alas, I knew the truth behind the High Priest’s pardons. The council’s outrage was all for show, mere empty posturing. Their Roman occupiers forbade them from implementing the death penalty.