Reluctant Demon (12 page)

Eve loved her children so intently before they were born that she endured her own body splitting apart to give them life. Adam liked the kids once he got used to them, but I can tell you that if it had been up to him to give birth, the entire human population would have stopped at three. In fact, when Eve told him she was going to have another baby, Adam told her to figure out what was causing it and quit doing it.

Although Adam and Eve would live the rest of their lives with the consequences of their sin, God was still incredibly kind to them. They knew He was helping them, though He never dropped by for a walk anymore. They wanted their children to know about Him, so they were forever telling stories about God and how He continued to take care of them and teach them. My opinion is they were trying to find ways to make up for what they had done in the garden. As a matter of fact, the whole idea of humans offering something back to God from their earthly labor started with the two of them. I thought it was silly. God is in need of nothing that His creation could offer Him. Surely they must have known that.

Yet, they were sacrificing food or whatever to Him as if they thought He must have to eat like they did. You can imagine my surprise when I realized God Himself was the One who gave them the idea to do it.

If true justice prevailed, they were supposed to be living under a curse and deprived of any special consider-ation from God. Now, I ask you, how would a reasonable person understand a curse? A curse, in my mind, means no supernatural intervention—none at all. That's what I got; no sympathy whatsoever. Throw them out and let them make it on their own, I say.

But here was God coming up with a scheme by which He could get around His own rules and give them whatever they needed. By giving some of the fruit of their labor back to the Lord, He now had a legal method to bless their work and their obedience. I no longer had any compassion for them at all. They taught their children to do the same in returning part of their earnings to God. Before long, I could see how offering God the first portion of something He didn't need to start with was a form of interaction, communion you might say, with God. So much for living under a curse.

Cain, the first son, went into agriculture. He thought the offering ritual was silly and that God couldn't possibly need the crop as badly as he did. Cain went along with it because it was easier to do it than argue all day long with his parents about it. Nonetheless, Cain was always looking for a way to minimize his losses. When it was time for the offering, Cain would present God with a plant that looked like it was going to die anyway. Then he would make a big show out of offering it up. The Lord, as I knew would be the case, was unimpressed, so much so that He blew the smoke of the offering right back in Cain's face.

Abel, the second boy, got the hang of giving first-fruits right away. He made his living tending the flocks because he was good with animals. He never seemed to begrudge the offering ritual in the least. It seemed he rather looked forward to it. He would take the best part of the animal, dedicate it to God, and then burn it up right there before Him on an altar. Then Abel would take the rest for himself.

Until this happened, Satan had not paid that much attention to Adam and Eve's kids. But when he heard the rest of us talking about the petulant Cain, he sparked to immediate attention. He walked to the edge of second heaven and watched intently to see if there would be a further exchange between Cain and God. And, of course, you know there was.

God let Cain stew in his pity for a while and then spoke to him. "Why are you angry, Cain? What's the matter with you?"

Cain did not answer. He put his hands in his pockets and kicked some leaves around with his foot.

"You must do what is right," God went on. "If you persist in offense, sin will overtake you. Cain, start now.

You must master it." God almost pleaded with him The dawn of understanding cracked open for me when I heard that. A lot of things I had been unable to comprehend suddenly became clear. I should have seen it before. Satan is going to need human beings if he wants to get anything done on Earth. If God restricted Himself to work through mankind, Satan would have to do the same.

Satan hurried back to his lair and summoned one of the most loathsome of our kind to his private chambers.

His name was Murder. Satan assigned Murder to go down to Earth and shadow Cain. When Cain thought about how God had embarrassed him, Murder was to affirm his feelings by entering into the conversation Cain was having with himself. Ever so seductively, Murder crept into Cain's mind.

Murder reminded Cain of every childhood incident where Abel was favored. He would tell him Abel plotted to make Cain's offering look meager.

"Why would Abel offer such an extravagant sacrifice if not to shame your efforts?" Murder whispered.

As Cain's offense grew against Abel, Murder was to watch for the moment when Cain's self-pity swallowed up his common sense so that he blamed God for His unfairness. When it happened, and it did, Murder sailed through the open door into Cain's soul.

One might think Cain would have lost his ability to make choices after more or less becoming a slave to Murder's orders. Not so. Cain's spirit warred against the intrusion of Murder into his soul. Two out of three wins, so it would be Cain's flesh that would choose between the desires of the soul and the demands of the spirit. The design flaw in humanity's makeup could never have been more evident than at that moment.

I make no pretense to be smarter than God, but even I would have known not to use flesh and blood as building materials in creating a reasoning life form. Flesh is fickle, inferior, and completely unreliable in a crisis. Its demands are never satisfied, and it's in need of constant mainte-nance. It is easily enticed, manipulated, and bargains for very little. The souls of men would not have near the casualties if it were not for their skin, blood, and bones.

Things might have turned out quite differently if it had not been for Cain's soulish desires. I feel certain his mind would have overcome his emotions had it not been for the pleasure of revenge, which caused his skin to tingle in anticipation. Cain was probably still thinking it over when he asked Abel to go for a walk with him.

Cain found his brother with the cows. "Let's go out to the field."

Abel tried to engage him in friendly chitchat, but Cain was not much of a conversationalist that day. His mind was consumed with listening to Murder speak into his inner ear.

"Do you want to know why your brother deliberately made you look foolish in front of your parents?" Murder whispered.

Cain was listening, and as he did so, Murder slipped deeper into Cain's consciousness and unleashed a power into Cain that exhilarated him beyond anything he had ever felt.

Murder continued, "It's about the inheritance. You're out of the will now. When they die they will leave everything to Abel. He will drive you away."

"I'll be destitute to wander Earth with no place to live," Cain said in his own mind.

Murder didn't have to say another word. Cain's mind took over at that point, and as the demonic power surged within him, he talked himself into fratricide.

"Abel has tried to turn my parents against me all my life. He won't get away with it," Cain assured himself.

Ecstatic with the demon's power coursing through his soul, and lusting for revenge, Cain picked up a stone and attacked his brother and killed him.

For less than an instant, Cain was thrilled by his power over life. The adrenaline surge satisfied his need for revenge. But he had only a moment to revel in his sense of invincibility; as quickly as Murder had seized Cain, he left, taking his power with him. Cain fought to retain the ecstasy that bled out of his soul, but he could not. He slumped over, weak, mortified, and full of fear.

Murder couldn't fly fast enough to get back to Satan's lair to brag about his success.

"Just like his old man," Murder laughed, "dumber than dirt." Satan roared and slapped Murder on the back with his claw in that silly way we males have of congratu-lating each other.

Cain looked at his slain brother on the ground before him and became horribly afraid.

"What have I done?" He dropped to his knees and tried to revive his slain brother. Cain lifted the bleeding head of Abel and tried to remember why he had hated him so. He dropped Abel's head and jumped to his feet as if trying to grasp something that was no longer there.

Where was the awesome power that he felt moments before? Where had it gone, and why was he now in such deep despair?

Satan roared with satisfaction at the whimpering Cain who had been so easily seduced by Murder. In fear of being discovered, Cain dug a shallow grave and buried Abel. Then he ran as far as he could until the weight of God's presence bore down upon him, driving him to his knees.

God said, "Where is your brother Abel?"

"I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"

I wanted to shout out, "Bad answer, Cain," but, of course, I did not for fear of being overheard by you-know-who. Oh, but if I could have advised him, I knew I could have gotten him a lighter sentence. I've watched God and humans long enough to know God's soft spot.

"Cain," I would have said. "Lose the machismo.

Repent. Beg for forgiveness. Grovel. I know God. He loves that stuff. Trust me, it will work." But, of course, I said nothing.

God said, "What have you done? Your brother's blood cries to Me from the ground where you buried him.

You've brought a curse on the land. From now on you'll get nothing but failed crops. This won't be your home any longer, and you'll be a restless wanderer on Earth."

Cain got the very thing he so feared—the curse he had only a day before pronounced upon himself. Still on his knees, Cain whimpered to God, "This is not fair.

This punishment is more than I can stand."

I was disgusted with the whole charade. "Cain," I shouted, no longer caring who heard me, "can you be more of a wimp? Banished from your land? You call that punishment? Let me tell you about punishment. How about if God expelled you from the planet? How about being left alone to float endlessly in space? You are still alive and on the same earth where you were born, and yet you whine like a sniveling coward?"

When I thought he could not get any more pathetic, he whined some more.

Cain said to God, "My punishment is too much. I can't take it! You've thrown me off" the land, and I can never again face You. I'm a homeless wanderer on Earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."

Then God said to him, "Not so. If anyone kills you, he will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then God put a mark on Cain's head so that no one who found him would harm him. God went home, and Cain went on to live happily ever after in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

I simply could not believe it had happened again; another pass for humanity. I wanted to fly after God and demand a hearing. "God, if you are going to punish those who sin against You, at least be consistent. Where do You get off letting a murderer go free? Is that what You call punishment? Why does he get another chance? Why didn't I?"

I slouched back to my perch, covered my head with my wings, and groused at the unfairness of it all.

Cain got married and had many children. Adam and Eve conceived again, and Seth was born. He too married and had many children, and the whole population of Earth grew. While this went on for decades, Satan remained somewhat passive as far as humans were concerned. Ages came and went, and while the demons were allowed to vex the humans from time to time, Satan seemed oddly disengaged with the whole thing.

Then one day, he turned his attention to the ruling principalities over Earth. They had been in place since Earth was created and were the very powerful angels who had authority to govern the affairs of Earth before Satan stole it. The fact they remained at their posts and the fact that Satan thought he needed an army meant there was sure to be a fight at some point. I stayed away from them myself, not knowing where their loyalties might be in light of the Fall, humans, and all that.

W h e n I saw Satan flying toward them, I knew he had a plan. Another kind of war was about to be unleashed upon Earth.

CHAPTER 15

I COULD NEVER HAVE
been a member of the elite angel league, of course, but many others were chosen, hundreds of them. God had a lot of ideas about the countries and continents mankind would discover on Earth, but He also knew humanity would have no idea where to start. To help humans get the hang of managing the many challenges in bringing order and stability to their growing society, God appointed protectors from the mightiest of the angelic guard and set them in government over each of the divisions of the planet. As it always was with Him, when He gave power and authority, it was an irrevocable gift.

By now, can you figure out what a wretchedly bad idea that was? How could anyone who hoped to main-tain peace and devotion to oneself ever suppose that the combination of irreversible power, authority, supernatural ability, and free will might be a good idea? Someone on the council should have warned God about what could happen in a setup like that.

That is how it came to be that these mighty ones were established in provincial reign over Earth, helping humanity learn to manage the planet. But before these angels were assigned to Earth, they were in third heaven.

Like all the angels, they were under the authority of the archangels, the chief among them being Lucifer.

Because most of them had been trained under Lucifer before he went bad and became Satan, they recognized him immediately when he approached, in spite of the fact that he now looked like the last three days of a misspent life. The mighty ones had not followed him into rebellion, but their prior familiarity with him and the natural curiosity that we angels have left open an unfortunate door that God should have thought about and closed off at once.

I would never have had the nerve to do it, but Satan was not even a trifle reluctant about approaching the awesome angelic brigade. Knowing how sly and disarming he can be, I would have expected them to have their guard up when they saw him coming. Perhaps they thought there was little to fear from this battle-scarred old archangel.