2 Nephi 26

After Jesus Christ comes alive again he will visit and teach you. That will be the new law. I’m seeing many generation from now, more wars, rooted in our family’s chronic dysfunction. Not till after those wars will Christ come, fanfared by geological and astrological signs, not only of his birth, but his death, etc. The same fate will come as did for Israel and Jerusalem.

It’s always that way when people slaughter the holiest men on earth. It’s our cottage industry of spiritual suicide.

If you’re proud of that, one day the sun will consume you in its fires or the earth gobble you up, the mountains tip over on you, tornados twist you like giant pretzels, buildings drop on you like anvils. If that doesn’t kill you off, he’s got thunder, lightning, a basketful of natural disasters

I’m sick to my stomach thinking about all this. I’ve seen visions about it. I still have to say, though: God wears the badge.

The righteous, by the way, will stay safe, as long as they keep up their hope of Christ’s coming. They will, by this time, have weathered plenty. Christ will drop in at their houses, see how things are going. Oh, and then he will obliterate the bad ones. They will have worn their pride like badges on beasts tagged for the slaughterhouse. The devil—whom they chose over God—will just laugh. God doesn’t play games without timers. When the game’s over then it’s Game Over. Which, believe it or not, makes me horribly sad.

Convincing Jews about the Anointed One won’t be a picnic. Nothing casual about it. But it’s got to be done. God will have to do most of it himself, via unlikely happenings, inexplicable visuals and sound effects, anything you’d think pertinent to a low-budget Reconciliation workable for the masses.

After we’ve all given faith the heave-ho—and suffered because of it—the Gentiles will surround us with guns and nasty tempers, watching from their towers for any chance to cut us down with bullets. When we’re down to our last few men, words like mine will come to mind.

Books make dead people speak. That’s part of their illusion and grace. They mutter like mediums at séances. Even the worst book is a supernatural happening. For my book, I hope it will seem divine. Angels whispering from the catacombs.

God says, Write, and I write. People like me can’t help it. And only good people deserve to read the result. You can’t beg for words and then spit them out.

God will burn off bad people like stubble on the mown fields. It will be sudden. And you know how fast those burns turn into infernos.

The Gentiles will light the fire. Which is not to say I don’t hate their pride as well as yours, God says. Pride is a huge rock you can’t help stumbling over. These Gentiles will love their costly church buildings and their preachers’ perpetually paid ministries. They’ll love to grind poor people’s faces as if they were sharpening flint. And they’ll love to split their churches into more and more of them, wrangling over trivial points. Every new church will contain the infection of the old, spreading.

And then there’s the backroom, handshake-and-a-gun deals the devil first made up before time began. He made up murder. He leads his employees around with a leash they can’t see. But it will tighten around their necks until he wraps it around their bodies like a cocoon.

God doesn’t play by those rules. He does everything and everything he does he does for the good of everyone. He loves this world to the point he’ll give up his life (as the Lamb) just to inspire people to reform. He doesn’t turn away people, never says “get lost,” but only “get found.”

“Come to my store,” he says, “and when you come to the counter with milk and honey the register will be broken. Everything’s free today.”

Here’s a simple checklist of three semi-rhetorical questions to ask about him:

—Has he ever told anyone to leave a church of any kind?

—Has he ever told anyone not to try and be saved by him?

—Has he ever told anyone not to enjoy the good things he’s created?

The principle behind your answers should be this: he invites everyone to find freedom, for free. He hates privilege and stuck-up religion or puritanical coldness.

He forbids preaching as a career or teaching faith as a path to prosperity.

He knows how popular those things will get. And he hates it. His big commandment is this: Love each other. Without love you’re nothing. With love you’re everything. And one way to know you have love is to pay people fairly—a living wage, at least. At the same time, every worker should be working for the good of the whole society. Not to fatten his bank account.

I’m sure I don’t need to review the baseline behavioral commandments for you: don’t murder, lie, steal, speak God’s name thoughtlessly, envy, cheat, rage, pay for sex … none of these thing works. You do them at your own risk. He prefers, or should I say, insists upon, opposite behaviors in every case.

He also likes plainness and inclusivity. Your distinctions—like black white, Jew Gentile—are not in his dictionary.