Reluctant Demon (21 page)

When the angels appeared, Lot jumped to his feet to greet them before he realized they were not whomever he was waiting for. When he saw their shimmering outline against the night sky, he became visibly nervous.

"My lords." He bowed low. "Your servant awaits your command."

"Do not bow down to us," the first angel said. Lot stood up but kept his head down, avoiding looking at the angel's face.

"We have come to destroy the cities," spoke the second angel.

"But.. .but why?" Lot stammered, now looking up.

"The stench of their sin and the cries of the victims of their debauchery has reached God's throne."

"I see." Lot continued to stammer. "I'm on that. I just need a little more time. I can be an influence for good here." Lot looked around nervously, suddenly remembering who was coming to meet him at the gate.

"Let's get away from here," Lot urged. "Come to my house where we can talk. Please, come right now."

Lot could not move fast enough to get the angels away from the gate lest they find out about his late-night rendezvous. The angels agreed to follow Lot to his house, but you have no idea how close Satan came to having Lot's soul sewn up that very night. Two hours later and all of history would have been different.

Lot unlatched the door and led the angels quickly into the darkened room, bumping into the table and stumbling over a bench in search for embers to light the candles. His wife awakened and came into the room to see what the noise was about.

"What is it, Lot?" she asked. "Who are these—men?

"Nothing," Lot replied. "Nothing, go back to bed."

At that moment, loud and rude voices from outside of the house called for Lot. Someone pounded on Lot's door.

"Come out and play, Lot," said a drunken voice from the porch.

"What is that?" the lead angel asked. As if he needed someone to tell him.

"What is what?" Lot replied as he stumbled around trying to put a lock on the door.

The angel continued, "The men at the door, what do they want?"

"Them? Oh, nothing, I'm sure. Partiers on their way home who probably lost their way; they're knocking on my door by mistake." Lot fumbled with the locks.

Lot cracked the door and shouted, "You there, on with you now. We'll sort it out tomorrow."

But the men outside would not be silenced. They had seen Lot take the beautiful strangers into his house, and they salivated at the prospect.

"Bring your friends out to play with us," the voice continued.

Lot was sweating when he opened the door just enough to squeeze himself out. He motioned for them to be quiet, but his nervous state only served to incite them all the more. Soon the crowd surrounded the house.

They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."

Well, there it was for the entire world to hear. The blood drained from Lot's face as he heard the angels open the door behind him and step out on the porch.

"Step aside," they said to him.

"No, masters. Wait," Lot pleaded. "It is not what you think. It isn't like that at all. I can handle this. Don't trouble yourselves. Go back inside. Sit down, eat, drink. I can do this."

The more Lot tried to hush the crowd, the louder they became. Then Lot did the unthinkable thing.

"Leave these men alone," he begged. "I have two virgin daughters who have never known a man. I will bring them out to you. Do with them as you wish, but do not involve these strangers."

Fire leapt from the angels' eyes when they heard Lot offering to sacrifice his daughters. For a moment the crowd drew back at the sight of their righteous anger.

"Get out of our way," the angels ordered Lot as they pushed him back inside his house.

"Please, let me talk to them," Lot pleaded. Once inside the house, the angels slammed the door.

The crowd grew bolder. "Look who wants to play the judge! What's the matter, Lot? Aren't we good enough for your new friends?" The crowd mocked him as they advanced. "We'll treat you worse than them."

Contrary to what sympathizers would later write, Lot could not have stopped the crowd if he had wanted to. He had no moral authority in that city whatsoever.

Whatever he may have had, he lost long ago. Neither was he trying to protect the angels. He was trying to protect
himself
from the angels lest they figure out what kind of person he had become.

When the crowds grew larger and their threats escalated, Lot became truly afraid. Just then the angels raised their arms and struck the crowd of men with blindness so that they could not find the door.

In their terror at being suddenly blind, they cursed all the louder for Lot.

"Lot, what have you brought upon us?"

"Open the door. Let us in." They tried to find the way to the door but could not.

The angels took over the situation and told Lot to get his family together and leave the city. Lot had no idea how close he was to utter destruction. He stumbled around, trying to get the family to obey him, but they laughed, especially his daughters' fiances. The boys were never fooled by their father-in-law-to-be's pretense. It was time to go, but the family would not obey.

When Lot hesitated, the angels grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them forcefully outside through the blind and terrified men until they reached the gates of the city. I followed, determined to keep my eye on Lot.

The larger angel urged them to run. "Flee for your lives!

Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain!

Flee to the mountains, or you will be swept away!"

Truly frightened now, Lot grabbed his wife's hand to pull her along with him up the hill leading away from the city gates, but she drew back and broke loose from his grasp.

"I cannot go," she cried. "All I know is in the city."

Before Lot could grab her, she spun about and was turned into a pillar of salt right before his eyes.

Lot grabbed the hands of his daughters and pulled them along with him to a cave atop the hill overlooking the city. Lot and his daughters stood helplessly by and watched the cities burn.

Days after it was over, the girls tried to run away as well, but Lot would not let them go. It wasn't long after that Lot committed incest with his daughters and then blamed them.

I don't know why Abraham bothered with his nephew.

I pondered what this might mean. It occurred to me that none of this had a thing to do with Lot and everything to do with Abraham. The angels had not gone into Sodom to save a righteous family. They were there because of the righteousness of Abraham. But why? I began to put the pieces together.

"First, Adonai came down to announce to Abraham and Sarah that a baby was coming in a year," I outlined the events in my mind. "Next, He starts to leave but decides to tell Abraham how He is going to destroy the cities."

"But, why?" I said aloud. "To save Lot? If Adonai had wanted to save Lot because Lot was a righteous man, He could have done so in response to the prayers of Lot Why involve Abraham in it?"

"Of course," I continued to myself. "Because, obviously, Lot had not prayed any righteous prayers." Lot was as guilty as the rest of them or would have been if he had stayed there another night. Given that certainty, why was Adonai so interested in saving a loser like Lot?"

"But wait," I was beginning to figure it out. "Maybe He never intended to save Lot. Adonai had been clear about what He planned to do: destroy the whole city—end of sentence. Adonai never mentioned Lot nor anyone else as a possible exception until He started bargaining with Abraham."

"What was the bargaining about anyway?" I wondered.

"God knew there were no righteous people in any quan-tity in the city. W h y play a game with Abraham?"

"Oh, my," I collapsed into a heap as I figured it out.

"God was getting Abraham to pray for Lot so no one of Abraham's bloodline would perish in the city." I knew I had the answer, and when it proved to be right, it would change the balance of power between righteousness and evil and the consequences in the human realm forever. I got myself together and trudged off to report to Satan.

Satan towered over me, demanding to know what had happened. He would tolerate no threat to his domain. I stood trembling before him, expecting to die for what he would force me to tell. He glared at me with those menacing eyes, warning me of the consequences of giving answers he did not want to hear, while at the same time demanding to know.

"Why are you holding back?" He moved closer to me.

"There is more, and you know what it is. It makes no sense for God Himself to come into this realm to destroy those cities. He has no claim to anyone in there. Why did He come?"

His breath was hot on my head. "Don't tell me it was for that worthless nephew Lot. He had another reason, and you, you scoundrel, know what it is. I command you to tell me."

By now the other demons had circled us, waiting to hear my reply. "It's because God wanted Abraham to intercede for Lot to stay His hand of judgment."

"Mercy?" Satan roared.

"Something like that," I mumbled my reply.

"Impossible. Not upon the guilty." He roared again at me.

"Yes, even upon the guilty, at least for a time."

"No," he howled, "that is against the rules."

"Technically," I continued, immediately recognizing my poor word choice. "Technically, the rules He set do not limit Him in time."

"Meaning what?" he demanded.

"Meaning that He does not have to bring destruction on the guilty within a specific time period. He can wait until the day of wrath if He chooses to do so."

"But He can make no distinctions among sinners,"

Satan countered. "Lot is a sinner same as the rest in Sodom and Gomorrah. If He destroyed any, He is bound to destroy all for their sin. No respecter of persons and all that mumbo jumbo. By His own mouth, He said it."

I avoided the
technically
word and continued to explain the finer points of the rules of engagement that God had declared.

"His covenant states that He will do nothing on Earth except it be done in response to the request of a human being. He may do anything He wants so long as a human asks Him to do it, provided it was in His divine will to start with. When Abraham interceded for his nephew, it fulfilled the legal grounds for God to do what He wanted in the first place."

Everyone was listening, but their vacant eyes told me they had no idea the significance of what I was trying to make Satan understand.

"It was like this. Yes, Lot was in danger of judgment, as were the rest, but the intercession of Abraham, a righteous man, made it legal for God to temporarily overlook Lot's sin—a stay of execution, so to speak, in the face of judgment falling on those round about him."

"But for what reason?"

"Can only be one thing: repentance. It gives the guilty party time to repent before judgment."

It was every bit as bad as I had thought it would be.

Satan was furious at the thought. He and all the rest remembered how fierce and how fast the judgment had come for us when we were thrown out of heaven because of our rebellion. Now here I was suggesting that this inferior creature, Adam's seed, could stay the hand of God in judgment by interceding for those who were about to be cast down, who, by the way, were every bit as guilty as we had been.

I almost agreed with Satan's outrage and certainly did not blame the others for their anger. I myself wanted to yell out to God, "How is that fair? Look at me. If I had been given just a moment more in heaven, I would never have followed this lunatic." But as always, I said nothing.

We didn't know how it would happen, but we knew things would change after this. How far might this prayer thing go? Certainly it had always been available to humans, but very few of them had actually used it, and until Abraham, no one could have been called an intercessor.

What would happen if this idea were to catch on?

What if the righteous learned to intercede for the souls Satan had already captured? Unless he could kill them first, the intercession could buy them enough time to repent, and all of his work would be for naught.

Some of the others went into the war room with Satan to lay plans against the possibility that intercession might become more common. But I went back to my perch and stared at the abyss far below. I thought again how different things would have been for me if I'd been given a few more minutes to reclaim my sanity on the day of our rebellion. I would have made it past Michael and crawled on my belly to God's feet to beg forgiveness.

"Why was there no one in heaven to intercede for me when I needed it?" I screamed into the blackness.

No one answered.

CHAPTER 25

IT HAPPENED JUST
as God said it would. Isaac was born to Sarah. At first it looked as if they might be one big, albeit unusual, family of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac. But, of course, Satan wouldn't stand for that. He sent a demon into the camp to stir up the old rivalry between Hagar and Sarah.

Although the two women had more or less peacefully coexisted for many years, it was easy for the demon to agitate the bitter root between them, which had never been removed. As long as the root remained, Satan could rouse the ire between the women anytime he wanted.

If he thought a fight between Sarah and Hagar might advance his plan, or if he were just bored with the whole thing, he could whip one up in a moment.

The hurt feelings between Sarah and Hagar could flare because each was offended by the other and neither could do anything but feel sorry for herself. Each woman felt she had been sinned against, and each had. The problem between them could never be resolved because of the legal nature of sin. Sin against someone else requires restitution. If there is no restitution, the sin remains.

Therefore, it should have surprised no one that by the time Isaac was two or three years old, Sarah had made up her mind that Ishmael was a threat. She ordered Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away.