#27 - We’re all gods, right?

In a dimly lit apartment in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a bespectacled man with a long grey ponytail escorted a small group of followers to the door. He handed each one a bag of crystals and wished them a blessed evening. “Our next group meditation is Saturday evening. Don’t forget to wear something loose-fitting and comfortable, okay? And make sure the colors are bright and positive. We want to create positive energy. Remember, we’re all gods, all of us; and together we can change the world. See you all next week.”

With that said, the man closed the door behind them and began to tidy up the apartment a bit. He rolled up the meditation mats and propped them up against the far wall. He collected all the little pyramids that were strewn around the room and placed them side by side on the kitchen table. Suddenly, the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hello John,” a deep male voice said through the speaker.

The man the voice called John paused, taken aback by the revelation of this personal tidbit of information.

“Uh,” the man began slowly. “Who is this? No one has called me John in thirty years. Do I know you?”

“No, John. You know of me, but you don’t know me. How was the group meditation meeting tonight? Were all the gods and goddesses fulfilled tonight?”

“Ah, well of course. We chanted our sacred mantras in harmony and the positive energy simply flowed all around us. It was great. We’re all achieving the great realization of godliness.”

There was silence on the other end. The man felt nervous. “Um,” he began, “you should come next week and join us. You will realize your divinity too, I promise.”

“Really.”

“Sure. Do you realize that you’re a god?”

“I do.”

“Great. So, would you like to come and see what we do?”

“I’ve already seen it.”

“Uh, when? And what’s your name, by the way?”

“Jah.”

“Jah. Ah, so you’re Jamaican? No?”

“No.”

“Sounds Jewish then. Are you Jewish?”

“Yes and no.”

“Ah, okay. Undecided, I see. At least you’re aware that you’re a god.”

“I AM.”

“Good. You’re on your way to true enlightenment then. So—Jah…you’ve seen us, eh? What did you see?”

“I saw mere mortals pretending to be gods.”

The man paused, stunned again. “Uh, sir, I thought you said you believed in man’s divinity. Are you being rude?”

“You are not gods, but I AM.”

“Please explain then.”

“You are bold, John, bold enough to lift up your heart and say you’re a god. You must be sitting in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas, aren’t you, John? After all, you are a god?”

John looked around the apartment. It was not quite the sea, and not exactly a godly throne. “No, I’m not.”

“Since you’re a god, you must be wiser than the Prophet Daniel. Isn’t that right? There is no secret that anyone can hide from you because you are all-knowing. Your great wisdom and unsurpassed understanding have gotten you great riches, and have filled your treasures with gold and silver. Isn’t that so?”

John looked around again at the cramped apartment and remembered that the rent wasn’t paid yet.

“By your great wisdom and by your trade you have increased your riches, and your heart is lifted up because of your great riches, isn’t it John?”

John’s mouth had gone dry by now and couldn’t answer.

“You are a mere man, and not God. Yet, because you’ve set your heart like the heart of a God, I will bring strangers upon you, the vilest kind. What will your wisdom do against their weapons? Will it keep your godly brightness and splendor from being defiled? They will drag your mortal body into the Pit and you will die like those who die in the middle of the ocean—alone. What will you say while they’re slaying you? ‘I am God?’ You may believe you’re a god, but you’ll be nothing more than a weak, mortal man in the hand of your killer. You will die like an unrepentant unbeliever, without knowing the true GOD, alone by the hand of strangers.”

John, the man known as Bhodi for the last thirty years since he turned away from Jesus Christ and towards the occultist New Age beliefs, now trembled. “Why are you saying these things? And how do I know these things you say will really come true?”

“Because I have spoken it.”

“Who are you?” John screamed into the phone, at the voice coming from the phone.

“I AM, the Lord GOD,” answered the voice from no definite place, yet seemingly from everywhere all at once, every place in the apartment and every place in John’s head. An annoying busy signal suddenly buzzed from the phone’s speaker into John’s ear, as if the phone had been left off the hook too long.

John placed the phone down with a trembling hand. Who on earth was that person, he thought? It must’ve been some crazy person, but…he knew my real name. He was either a crazy person or a god like me…or a god like…God. God? “The Biblical GOD?” John muttered aloud. “No way, that’s crazy.”

Suddenly, every book in his apartment flew off the shelves, all of them, except for one. As John looked at the floor, he noticed that all his New Age and occult books were on the floor, and every book was splayed open to specific pages. Every book was opened to either page 6, or page 66 or page 666, depending on the size of the book. The only book that remained on the shelf was a copy of the Authorized King James Holy Bible. And the Bible was opened to Deuteronomy 6:4, and John read, “The LORD our God is one LORD.” As soon as John touched the page with his fingertip, the pages mysteriously flipped and stopped at another page where the verse at Isaiah 43:11, stood out, “I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.” He touched the page again and the pages flipped once more. Another verse stood out, “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.”

And this continued on for hours, until the glow of the dawn bathed John’s room. All night long, every touch of the Bible’s pages turned the pages to another message from God. The verses that stood out were enlightening. John discovered, as if for the very first time, what a real God is and Who God really is. Verse after verse showed God as being the Creator of the heavens, the earth, the entire universe and all things within it. God was all knowing, all-powerful, ever-present at all times and in all places. God made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, the crippled and lame to stand and walk. God raised the dead, raised one nation against another, created life and destroyed it. John realized he was not a god, nowhere near being even a hint of a divine being. John was a mortal. John was dust.

By the time the morning sunlight overpowered the sixty-watt light bulb of his bedroom lamp, John was on his knees, his forehead bowed down to the carpet, sobbing uncontrollably, begging and pleading with the One True God for forgiveness, and thanking the LORD for even considering this unworthy mortal for a lesson in Truth.

This is fiction, of course. It is what could transpire if God deemed a New-Ager worthy of a verbal warning and a miracle. The conversation between God and John is merely a reiteration of God's warning to idolaters in Ezekiel 28:1-10, set in a modern day setting.