Judgment Day - A Story

On May 21^st 2011, the year of our Lord, Jesus, son of Yahweh, returned to Earth and Judgment Day began. First, he went to his old stomping grounds in West New York. None of the locals could understand his Aramaic or any of the Seneca that he remembered from last time he was there. Someone pointed him to Utah so he stopped in over there. And left quickly.  Same story in Canaan; mostly, it was just very loud there and he was never one for yelling.

All in all, he took 138 people back to heaven. Most of them were subsistence farmers who worked the land with their bare hands. There were going to be almost double that number until he learned they were raising pigs for food – no one who’d ever eaten pork gets to go to heaven - that was one of the really important parts of that book he helped write.

Through his whole trip he was very surprised at how humans acted about the whole thing. On one hand, so many people were happy THEY were RIGHT.  But that shouldn’t have been so hard, that instruction book couldn’t have been clearer – well, actually it could have been a little less vague in some parts, but deciphering was some of the fun, right?. It really baffled him to see that EVEN THOUGH he clearly remembered saying that you had to be RIGHT about EVERYTHING to get to heaven AND they got the date of return correct, most everyone didn’t spend more than a few years trying to pretend to be on the up and up before inspection time. He would have seen through those attempts anyway, but just 6 months of temple attendance? “Come on!” he thought, “you could have tried a little harder than that.”

He did feel a little bad that apparently his teachings were so hard to interpret – he laughed (privately) about all the different attempts that flubbed up so miserably. Maybe he should have spent a little more time with the editors to make sure the message got across clearly but at the time he really just wanted to get his father’s stupid assignment over with.

As he and the 138 were about to rise to heaven, many of those to be left behind were dumb struck. They had spent most (but not all) of their lives trying to figure out how to get into heaven. Some of them got really loud amplifiers to communicate with him as he was rising into the sky. (This whole levitation process took about 2 days. What? You thought the survivors would just shoot to heaven instantly?). He agreed to a question and answer period – the first 2000 feet were kinda awkward so this was the best way to break the tension. Mostly he just phoned in the answers. “What is God like?”, “I don’t know, what is your Dad like when the puppy he got ends up shitting on the rug all the time?”. The one question he gave some real thought to came from a 16 year old girl. He only called on her because she was kinda cute.

"So what are we supposed to do now? Some of us were closer than others, should we all try to live our lives like those that you took? The bible doesn’t say what we are supposed to do after the Rapture, will you come back to get more of us later if we do the right things?"

So he responded after a little thought:

“ First, RAPTURE is a mistranslation. It was talking about a RAPTOR, a bird of pray. That fucking sweet eagle I rode down here on. You think I would use this slow ass levitation bullshit if I didn’t have too? But nooOOOOooo, you had to kill all the mother fucking bald eagles. Now there are only 27 left? Fuckin’ A humans!  Secondly, there’s not a chance im coming back here. I said it’s gonna happen once and I keep my word. Yeah, and good luck ever getting my dad’s attention ever again – ever wonder why there haven’t been any miracles lately? It’s cause he is busy with all his other projects across the universe. Seriously, I want to speak in no uncertain terms: he doesn’t give a shit about you anymore.” He laughed at the clarity of it all and continued, “I guess you should all just be nice to each other and enjoy yourself. From here on out, you’ll just go to the ground when you die. Like, listen to me, I’m honestly not trying to test you like my father was: heaven and hell will not be an option for you any more. Really. Really, I’m not trying to be cute. We won’t be watching anymore. That golden rule thing those atheists came up with sounds good, go with that. Just, uh, have fun.”

There was a long silence and Jesus remembered he had left the coffee pot on at home and was frustrated the levitation was taking so long. And so he politely stopped answering questions and called his girlfriend to see if she turned it off and if she could pick him up from the airport. Wireless service while you’re flying, amazing what technology can do these days.