“God became obsessed with staying in power so he wanted to make sure people kept believing in him. You know the ten commandments? The first two basically say that you should  believe in The Lord, no other gods allowed. In the early years god took this really seriously. If any of ‘his chosen people’ started worshiping another god, or if they did worship him but weren’t devoted enough, he would punish them. He would even kill people. And the sick thing is, it’s all there in the bible. After the creation story, Noah’s Ark, and the story of Moses bringing the Israelites out of Egypt, there are several hundred pages of the same basic story repeated over and over: people start worshiping another god, The Lord punishes them, they go back to worshiping him. It’s there as a warning to people. What’s not in the bible is that this wasn’t limited to humans, it also applied to Angels. Even they could be punished for not being devoted enough. 

Now, I said God isn’t all knowing, but he manages to keep track of people anyway. He uses the same methods as any human dictator: a network of spies and informants. You see, the priests were originally just messengers, spreading the word of God to the people. When Yehova started controlling who people worship, he realized that he could use the priests as informants. They would “pray for the sinners” and shortly afterwards, God would punish the very people the priests had prayed for. Eventually Yehova realized he could leave the punishment to the priests as well, effectively turning them into a kind of secret police. Things have changed since then, of course, people no longer get killed for heresy, but that’s another topic.

Anyway, for the angels God went one step further, turning the Seraphim into a kind of angelic thought police – proper 1984 stuff. And this is where The Devil comes in. A few thousand years ago – there is no record of exactly when – an angel from one of the lower orders decided to rebel. There had been attempts at revolution before, but God had always suppressed them. This angel – we do not know his real name – had a brilliant idea. Instead of opposing God directly, he figured out he could cut off God’s source of power. His plan was to tell humans all the stuff I’ve told you tonight, and more. By enlightening people about the true nature of their ‘god’ he hoped that they would stop believing and thus reduce his power. He even started calling himself Lucifer as in The Bringer of Light. As you probably know, God got word of this plan but instead of killing Lucifer outright, he exiled him, turning him and his allies into outcasts. He then launched a campaign to discredit him and anything he had to say, depicting him as an evil monster. All the bad stuff  you’ve ever heard about Lucifer, that he’s The Devil, The Evil One, that he lures people to sin, tempts them into doing evil and so on, all comes from this smear campaign. The whole image of demons with big leathery wings and horns is also just propaganda. But remember what I said earlier about the Tauriel’s appearance being undefined? The propaganda campaign actually worked so well that Lucifer himself and a few of his more prominent followers actually started looking demonic to the eyes of humans. The rest of them, no matter ”angel” or ”demon” have taken on an appearance that is…mostly human…

Anyway, there is some truth in that propaganda,  Lucifer does indeed want to tempt people away from God, but only because he wants us to live our lives as we see fit, free from the influence of the Tauriel. At least that’s what he and his followers claim. There are rumors that he doesn’t actually want to stop people from believing completely. That he’s realized that the only reason he has any power himself is because people who believe in The Lord also believe in The Devil and if the former were to lose followers, so would he. That would explain why Christianity is still a thing, even in the 21st century.”

The old man took another swig of his drink. Just as he was setting the glass down again, two figures appeared behind him. They were suddenly there, almost as if they had materialized out of the air but I guess I just hadn’t noticed them until now. The two of them looked very similar, like twins, and there was something odd about their look but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. One of them spoke – I didn’t quite see which one –  in a voice that sounded neither masculine nor feminine, “is he bothering you sir?” “Not at all,” I answered. “Has he been talking about Angels,” the other one asked but didn’t seem to listen to my reply. “Come on Grandpa,” they said in unison, their voices resonating like in a church. They grabbed the old man by his shoulders and he got to his feet without a word; somehow I had expected him to protest. “Sorry about this,” one of them said, “he always gets like this when he drinks.” They led the man out of the bar, and just as they were leaving one of them turned to cast one last glance at me. I caught his eye and at that moment I knew.. 

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