Chapter 332: Archangel Michael's Press Interview

Thursday, April 5, 2007 (Continued)

I suggested, "Before we start the Question and Answer session, I have some advice for you. I would like you to behave sensibly and maturely. You're all adults, so I'll assume you're all aware of what I'm asking for. If you behave in ways that annoy me, I will sensibly and maturely toss you into the ocean. At the risk of annoying all the reporters, I'll take the first question from the only non-reporter smart enough not to remove himself from the platform in one way or another."

Private Guy asked, "What is God's plan for mankind?"

"Good question. The short answer is that It doesn't have one, but I won't be so unfair as to stop there. A better answer would be that It's letting you develop to be all that you can be. The importance of freewill cannot be overstated; that's what God created your Universe for. That's why God doesn't have a plan as such; It's letting you choose your own path. You can flush yourselves down the toilet or ascend to the heights. Everything you do is entirely your choice, including failure."

There was a pause, then several questions came at once.

I wobbled the floor a little, which very quickly restored silence.

I'd been slightly frustrated by not knowing Private Guy's name and I hadn't wanted to ask, so I used this as an excuse to satisfy my curiosity. I instructed, "I guess you've been reporters for too many years to behave like polite adults. This is what we'll do. You'll form a rectangle. The front along the edge facing me, then a second rank behind them. I'll lengthen the platform to accommodate that. The person in the front corner nearest the cameramen will state his or her name, network and question. While I'm answering, you'll rotate one position clockwise, to rotate a new person into the hot seat ready for the next question. Please form the rectangle now, then we'll restart."

It took a while, but I used the time to check around the area carefully. No one was pointing weapons at me that I could see. The suspended Christians were paying the CIA woman's womanhood a lot of attention. Speedboats had started arriving five minutes ago, with many more on the way. So far I'd been turning their engines off whenever they got within three hundred horizontal feet of us, then picking up the boat so it was five feet out of the water, turning it sideways, and putting it down again. Some of them had gotten the hint the first time, but those that persisted in trying to get closer got picked up and put down fifty feet farther away. I'd keep that up while it worked. If things got too chaotic I'd disable the trouble-making boats or move us much higher. I preferred to stay low though, as that made for a much easier getaway for me should one suddenly become necessary.

The reporters had moved into position, and the next question was a classic trashy reporter's question, "What do you say to viewers who think you're Satan or some other evil demon?"

"Nothing. Their opinions don't affect my ability to do my job."

"But if you want to people to believe you're an angel the way you claim, you should provide some proof."

"I've already answered your question. Move to the right please."

"You can't claim ... AHHH! HELP!" I'd picked her up and started floating her down to a suitable location to drop her into the water from, near some of the boats on our shoreward side.

I explained to the survivors, "I would've given her one more warning, but she made the mistake of telling me what I can't do. Anyone that stupid would've been a nuisance. Next question please?"

"Why do you look like a man wearing a homemade costume?"

"I'll answer those two questions separately. I look like a man because I'm dealing with humanity. When I decided to make an appearance, I found someone willing to let me borrow his or her body, since being incorporeal wouldn't have filmed well and it's difficult to talk without a mouth. The donor happened to be a male rather than female, but that was happenstance.

^-- "The homemade outfit is partly a necessity and partly a joke. You might have noticed that I like jokes. I needed a covering to protect the identity of the man whose body I am using so he will be safe after I leave, and because humanity has too many prejudices that have too much effect on your thought processes. The color of my host's skin would have irrationally affected your thoughts about my comments so I'm hiding it. That I'm hiding it behind a silly outfit is because I have silly sense of humor. If you listen to enough of my jokes, you'll want to throw me into the ocean."

The reporters rotated, the next guy asking, "Is God male or female? Black or white? Old or young to look at?"

"You can't look at God because It isn't accessible via the electromagnetic spectrum. 'God created man in his image' couldn't be more wrong, as God doesn't have an image. Thinking of It as human is a comfortable but an incorrect anthropomorphism."

The next reporter asked, "Is the Bible true?"

"Most of your questions, I'm happy to answer bluntly. Questions about humanity's holy books I will be more circumspect with. They provide a source of inspiration, strength, community and many other positives, so their value to humanity over the millennia has been enormous. That's all I'm willing to say on that subject." Also because they could VERY easily catch me out if I allowed them to quiz me on the Bible.

The same reporter added, "Why did you leave out 'providing moral guidance'?"

"I'll answer your follow-up, but you'll be skipping your turn when you go around again.

^-- "I left it out because that aspect is greatly overrated. People who adhere to one holy book too often believe they have a moral superiority over the people of other books, or people of no book. That's incorrect, but too easily believed because the comparison is usually made across different cultures. What is moral in one culture is sometimes immoral in another, creating beliefs of moral superiority in both."

Someone from the middle of the pack yelled, "Hang on! Are you saying that right and wrong aren't fixed?"

"In some human cultures, a wife who is incapable of sex for any reason would be behaving morally if she arranged regular visits from a prostitute for her husband, while an American wife doing that would have her morals questioned. In America, a mother who drove her children to church services three times a week would be considered a moral woman, but in other cultures she'd be a harlot who people would spit on in the street. The same act in different cultures has different meanings, reasons and effects, so it MUST have different moralities."

"I don't see that," commented one reporter.

"Then you need to get out more. Visit other cultures with your eyes open and your moral superiority turned off. You'll learn a great deal. We're overdue for a rotation and a new question."

The next question was, "Are you a Christian?"

"I see that the way I've been talking has made you doubt that. You're putting the cart before the horse. I've been in existence for billions of years; Christianity for a couple of thousand. Christianity attempts to explain me and what I'm involved in, as do other major religions. They all succeed and fail in various ways. Their failures don't mean I'm a bad Christian; it means Christianity is not accurately reflecting what I am, which means what God is, because what I am is what God wants me to be."

"Was Jesus the Son of God?"

"Jesus was a mortal child who grew up containing an angel. I've been using this body irregularly over the last two years, but Jesus was angel-occupied almost continually from birth, except for the missing years when the angel had work to do elsewhere. Whether that makes Jesus the 'Son of God' I'll leave to you to argue about."

"You're saying that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were normal people?"

"I don't know what criteria were used to choose that family, so they might've been special in some ways, but they were normal in the sense that they weren't divine. Mary wouldn't have been a pregnant virgin, for example; that's one of the more amusing and absurd inaccuracies that got added to the story. You humans have some strange psychological fixations about virginity."

"Your saying that is going to upset a lot of people."

"Everyone should know that people are rarely honest about sex, so it's foolish of anyone to invest much emotion in such an implausible myth. It makes no useful difference to anything at all whether or not people believe Mary was a virgin mother, and the value of the message isn't affected by whether or not the messenger's mother had ever had sex, so I suggest you spend this time asking about subjects that matter."

"Do we have souls, and do they go to Heaven or Hell when we die?"

"That's a more difficult question to answer. I'll restrict myself to saying that all of your holy books are mostly inaccurate on this topic, but not entirely so. Atheists aren't correct either. Dying isn't an absolute ending, but it wouldn't serve a good purpose for me to explain it in any detail."

"Do we have souls?"

"Sort of. What you understand by that word isn't very accurate, but there is something that the word soul could be stretched to fit. While there are some individual aspects to it, it'd be more meaningful to say that humanity has a soul which you all contribute to, but that's as much as I want to say about that. A change of topic please." I'd watered the seed, so hopefully the question I was waiting for would grow in someone's mind sooner or later. If not during this visit, then fingers crossed it'd be during the next.

There was a momentary pause while people tried to mentally regroup. A woman reporter in the middle of the group called out, "I have a Bible and a cross with me. Would you hold them both and swear you're an angel?"

"Sure, but I would've thought my halo proved that." I'd thought of this joke a few days ago and had deliberately chosen not to activate my halo effect for this interview.

"What halo?" | "You don't have a halo." | and several other similar comments.

"Is the damned thing on the fritz again. Hang on..." I hit myself on the side of the head a few times. The halo blinked on and off a couple of times, then appeared and stayed on.

^-- "There ya go! Just a loose wire. I should've taken it in for its thousand-year service seven years ago, but I haven't got around to it yet."

There was some weak laughter from a couple of the reporters, and from most of the cameramen, but it wasn't a belly-splitter. I'd known it wouldn't be. It was the sort of joke which everyone watching their TVs would think about later, and it help them see me as a "good guy", in the usual (non-divine) sense.

"You're a hard audience to get a laugh out of. Lighten up! My arrival doesn't presage Judgment Day, Armageddon or any such End Of Time, because God's intentions are open-ended."

^-- Meanwhile I'd floated the Bible and cross out of the reporter's hands and was now holding them in each of my mittened hands. I didn't want anyone to ask me to swear in Hebrew, so I didn't waste any time saying, "I swear by Almighty God, on the Holy Bible, and by the Holy Cross, that I am an Archangel of the One True God." I floated them back to her, saying, "There you go."

She said, "Please hold them in your bare hands when you do it."

"How can you believe swearing an oath to God to be a powerful proof if it can be negated by a thin piece of fabric? Do you think the all-powerful God is fooled or held back by a single layer of cloth? In other words, stop being so superstitiously foolish. As I explained before, I don't wish to show you what racial group this body belongs to because that would cause too many unhelpful reactions. Next question please."

"How do you hold us up in the air like this, and the other impossible things you do?"

"The Universe is God's to command, and God has commanded it to cooperate with me, so the Universe will comply with many of my requests. I imagine that doesn't help you much, but that's the answer."

"You make it sound like the Universe is alive?"

"You're getting into the realms of physics now, which most of your audience won't have any interest in. I'll just say that it has some of the aspects of being alive."

"What aspects?"

"Ask your physicists. I don't want to give you any science you haven't earned for yourself."

"So you don't believe in science. Does that mean Intelligent Design is correct?"

"Haha. I've been in existence for billions of years, during which I've witnessed life evolve. Intelligent Design is right up there with Political Integrity. To put it bluntly, it's a crock of shit. Of course I believe in science. Don't you believe 1+1=2? Mathematics is a science, you know.

^-- "Humanity is a very irrational species. Some of you say that because God is so powerful, the lifetime of the Universe must only be a few thousands years rather than billions. How can believing God is powerful be used to justify reducing the magnitude of It's achievement? Isn't it more impressive to believe that humanity is the current-day culmination of an extraordinary series of evolutionary steps, compared with humanity being made in a single step? People who try to limit God are doing so because their egos are weak. They want to feel more important, so they argue that God is smaller. It's a good thing God doesn't take that personally! Haha."

"For the last year, someone who calls himself Majestic Countdown has been leaking highly embarrassing government documents. He's been using 'Angel' and 'Michael' as verification codes. Are you associated with him?"

"I emailed those documents. I've been observing humanity for quite a while on this visit, and what I saw led to me deciding to shake things up before I leave, culminating in my appearing in front of you the way I am now."

"You're leaving soon? When?"

"That depends on how humanity reacts to the shaking. Humanity has a couple of serious problems: its leaders are abusing their power in ways that can destroy civilization or humanity totally, and they're so arrogant they refuse to listen to reason. Arrogant people take a LOT of shaking, so I'll keep escalating the shaking until I think it's had the desired effect, and then I'll leave."

"What are they doing that could destroy civilization?"

"You're probably thinking of specific problems, which are symptoms, not the disease. God could fix problems with a wave of It's non-existent hand, but humanity would simply dig itself other civilization-destroying holes. Remember, I spoke of how important freewill is to God, and that It's letting humanity be all it can be. I'm not here to tell you to fix Global Warming, religious-inspired killing or any other specific issue. I'll shake you up to encourage you to do some thinking for yourselves, but what you decide to do and how you decide to do it is up to you.

^-- "The most I'm willing to do is point out that you can't arrive at good decisions now because your leaders are corrupting the decision-making process for their own short-term purposes. Your leadership crisis is so entrenched and widespread that you're not going to be able to prevent or fix critical problems until you fix your leadership one. That shouldn't be taken as my endorsing any political party. I think in terms of centuries, not election cycles. None of your political parties existed the last time I visited Earth, and I'm sure they won't exist the next time I visit."

"Would God truly let us destroy ourselves?"

"Sure. It gave you freewill knowing that was possible."

"What would God do then? Flood the Earth and restart with another Noah and the Ark?"

"Haha. You should've learned enough about God from me already to know It doesn't do quaint things like that. If humanity pursues a path toward self-destruction, God won't intervene. Your destiny is yours to choose."

"Then why did He create us?"

"God didn't create you. It created a Universe for the expression of freewill, and the Universe evolved you."

"But if we destroy ourselves, won't that mean everything will have been in vain?"

"Why would it mean that? Humanity's extinction affects a miniscule proportion of the Universe, and in another few hundred millennia, something else will have evolved to sentience here anyway. If you destroy yourselves, it's not even a pimple in the road the Universe is heading down."

Private Guy said (unfortunately without introducing himself; most people were forgetting to do that), "You're saying there are alien species throughout the Universe?"

"I wondered how long it'd take before one of you was open-minded enough to ask that. I can't answer that question, except I will give you a rule of thumb. If there are two ways God could've done something, believe in the most impressive option."

"Why haven't we met any aliens yet?"

"I won't talk about that."

"Why not?"

"Because God wants you to have freewill. There are very few types of information I can give you without compromising that. Verifiable scientific data is the worst sort."

A male reporter commented sarcastically, "How very convenient for you."

"No, it's very inconvenient. It'd be much easier to get you to do what I want if I wasn't so constrained."

The sarcastic reporter thought I needed it explained, "I meant it's a good excuse for your not providing us with proof that you really are an angel from God."

"Yes, I know you meant that. I don't need an excuse for not proving it, because I'm prohibited from proving it. There always has to be ambiguity so you've got room to exercise freewill. I agree that this makes this all seem like a big con job and I'm happy that you suspect that."

Private Guy asked, "Explaining why we haven't met any aliens doesn't remove any of our freewill, because we've got no way of knowing whether your answer was true or not."

"Not you personally, but humanity might decide to put a great deal more effort into space exploration than it would have if I hadn't answered, or maybe put in a lot less. Or humanity might develop technology to negate the reason I said the aliens were failing to contact you. Or if humanity eventually encounters those aliens and finds out that my reason was true - especially if the reason was unusual and specific - then those future humans might believe they'd just discovered definitive proof that I was who I claimed to be, and that God existed, making believers out of everybody. There are too many changes of behavior that could send humanity down a very different path than it would've gone otherwise, so I won't answer questions like that.

^-- "What I can do are things like have you stand on an invisible, flying platform. God prefers you not to self-destruct, so I can do some things to ensure that you do have a path to follow. But if you can turn your path away from the cliff, you'll have to choose for yourselves where it goes."

"Why do bad things happen?" asked the next reporter, obviously bored with the talk about freewill.

"Because of freewill."

"I don't understand?"

"Let's say your wife dies of cancer..."

"I'm not married."

"Imagine if I'd said 'Your wife dies of cancer' to someone who is married? That person would be deeply worried. To continue; let's say your wife dies of cancer and some years later your child grows up to become a research doctor who invents a cure for cancer. Was your first wife's death a 'Bad Thing'? Because without her dying, millions of others might've died until someone else invented the cure..."

"Why should anyone die of cancer? God should eliminate it."

"To quickly finish my previous point: if God chose which present-time events to allow based on It's judgment of their future outcomes, then It would be steering humanity, thus depriving you of freewill. To answer your interruption: cancer and other 'Bad Things' are allowed to exist because they provide the force behind evolution. Survival of the fittest wouldn't work if every creature survived."

"So? What does that matter, now that we've evolved?"

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you're not the pinnacle of evolutionary perfection that you seem to think you are. I know it's hard to believe, but God's still hoping for something a little better." Even my victim laughed. I was sure that most of the reporters didn't know what evolution actually was, but they still recognized a deserved put-down.

"Speaking of perfection, your body's shape is extreme?"

"Yes it is."

"Did he look like that, or did you change him?"

"I found myself a healthy and physically impressive human, although he's on the short side. I would've preferred him to be an awe-inspiring seven feet tall, but changing human bodies isn't one of my abilities. I will admit to finding the size of his cock amusing. Humanity is unlike any other species. You surround yourselves with sex everywhere you look, yet pretend it doesn't exist or is bad. It's essential for the species, it's one of the strongest psychological drives you have, and it's a lot of fun for you, but you create futile moral indignation over its appeal. You're a very self-dishonest species. I've been especially amused when the condemning looks this cock has earned me have come from those of you who've had YOUR external sexual characteristics expanded. Please put your hand up if you've had breast implants installed."

There were fifteen news teams on the platform. All the cameramen and sound technicians were male, as were six of the reporters, none of whom had elected to get breast implants. There were nine females who could've responded. Two of them put their hands up without hesitation, presumably having already gone public over the issue. One hesitantly raised her hand halfway, not indicating half a job, only indicating reluctance. That left four liars. Amusingly, all but two of the female reporters had bags in their breasts. The two that didn't, VERY obviously didn't need them.

The hesitant confessor's cameraman was surprised and amused.

I searched her handbag with a sight blob, seeing business cards in the name of Lydia Bowman. I'd heard some of the reporters call her Lydia when they'd been talking before the Q&A session started, giving me the confirmation I needed. I said, "Congratulations on being honest Lydia Bowman, even though you were clearly reluctant to do so. That speaks well of your character. What I find amusing is that some of your compatriots are lying by not raising their hands when they should. Is it acceptable for reporters to lie on camera?"

One of the liars answered, "Many women think it's private."

"Yet they get it done because they want the results to be publicly noticed. Personally I think you can do almost anything you want with your body, if it's not offensive to others, so I'm not criticizing women who've had the operation done. Nor do I care much about whether they tell others or not. I'm just amused by your criticizing my body's large external sex organ, yet not admitting you've enlarged your own when I turn the question around. It's hypocritical of the four of you that didn't put your hands up when you should have, which is the point I wanted to make. Because humans lie to themselves and others about sex, you've made a minefield out of an issue that should be a great deal more joyful and less problematic than it is. Enough on that topic I think. Time for a change of question."

One of the two 'natural beauties' asked, "Who're the women who lied about not having the surgery?"

"I don't like your motivation for asking that question so I'm not going to answer it. I know who the liars are, and that's all that matters. One day they will be judged."

"We get judged when we die?"

"Your contribution to mankind's soul is measured. That's how God measures your progress. It's not interested in your physical or mental accomplishments, only your moral ones."

Private Guy asked, "So the purpose of the Universe is to develop moral beings?"

"It's more that immoral beings tend to destroy themselves and other species, delaying the Universe's development. Immorality is the most damaging consequence of freewill, so God keeps an eye on it. Which is why I was sent here."

A reporter asked, "So what happens to people who're judged badly?"

"Something happens, but you wouldn't understand it and it wouldn't be helpful for me to try to explain. To be honest, I can't say that I understand it fully myself either. God didn't give me powers in that area, so I don't know anything about it by direct experience, only from what I've picked up from the angels who work in that department when we get together for beers after work on Fridays."

"Huh? You drink beer?"

"You're not very good at detecting when I'm being silly. I often don't take myself seriously, to make my existence more enjoyable. I have to amuse myself because I left my deck of cards in my other pants."

It got a couple of chuckles this time.

"Why do you keep saying 'my existence' rather than 'my life'? Aren't you alive?"

#14: <Because we want you guys to start asking about life and death issues.>

"That's a definitional issue. I don't have a body, and in some respects I'm not even an "I" because I overlap with other angels in some ways, and with God in many ways. I'm a creation of God's will rather than an entity that was born. Plus, it seems to me that one of the requirement of being called 'alive' is that it should be possible to be 'not alive', but that's not something that can happen to me. I can exist and not exist, but I can't die, so maybe I can't be said to have a life."

"Then why were you so scared of having guns pointed at you?"

#4: <AT LAST someone's asked a question we can use!>

"For several reasons: It demonstrates a very rude lack of respect, which annoys me in much the same way as lying to me does. It was a thoughtless attempt to exercise power over me. Your society exercises excessive power over people far too routinely and with an appalling absence of moral consideration. And most importantly, I wasn't scared for myself because only God can end my existence, but I was worried about my host. He is a human so his body can be killed by bullets. Obviously I have some very effective ways of defending him, but I'm not infallible. The people who attacked my host's body would live to regret it, but that wouldn't bring my host back to life. God won't let us do that unless there's a very good reason for it, and my sloppiness wouldn't qualify."

With considerable excitement, several reporters asked variations on, "You can bring people back to life?"

"If God empowers me to. That shouldn't excite you because you know Jesus came back to life after having been crucified. But as I said, God doesn't like us doing it without good reason. There was a good reason with Jesus, because his death and resurrection were part of his angel's plan to inspire a new religion. He had prior permission from God to resurrect Jesus or he wouldn't have let the crucifixion happen. I don't have any such permission for my host, so unless the circumstances of his death were extraordinary, he'd stay dead. I wouldn't want to be the indirect cause of that."

"Could you could bring back someone else, such as Elvis?"

"What is it with your society's fixation on Elvis! He was killing himself with bad food and drugs. If I brought him back, he'd quickly kill himself again, especially because all of his friends and family have grown older and changed in other ways. You're barking up the wrong tree suggesting Elvis."

"Could you bring back Jesus?"

"Once again, I COULD, but I WON'T. Why on Earth would you want to bring back someone who would completely fail to understand modern life? The poor guy would have no chance of making the transition. He'd be a highly distressed fish out of water."

"But think of all the questions we could ask him! We could find out what truly happened! Find out..."

"Stop right there! I would NEVER bring back someone to suffer so others can benefit so selfishly. It's unacceptably immoral of you to suggest that, especially considering how much Jesus suffered the first time. If anyone is resurrected - which is highly unlikely - it'd be done for their and their loved ones' benefit, not so society can squeeze more songs out of them or have its curiosity satisfied. Please try to think morally; I highly recommend it. We'll drop that subject. Next question please."

This was the WHOLE reason for my "Angel Plan"! The purpose of this interview was to talk about religion until someone asked something that I could use to get us onto the resurrection issue. In a later appearance, Archangel Michael is going to follow up on the issue, and that's going to culminate in the angel bringing Mark Anderson back to life. Because Mark's body has been lost, someone will have to volunteer to give up theirs. Somehow I have a feeling that Ron Fisher will feel so indebted to the Anderson family for how wonderfully they've treated him that he'll volunteer. It will be a publicly SPECTACULAR plan, but it's essentially a very simple one: "Me will change me into me so I can live the rest of my life as myself." It's a very self-contained plan.