Read Online The Last Testament: A Memoir by God, David Javerbaum - Free Book Online

Consider the tectonic plates; how, as with many marriages, a pair of them will grind up against each other decade after decade, neither side budging, the tension building beneath the surface, until suddenly a breaking point is reached and they move violently apart, leaving behind them a trail of chaos, destruction, and sad children.
15 Yet there is no inherent reason why this could not have been otherwise; why I could not have fashioned the plates such that they would be perpetually gliding in very slow motion, their friction never accumulating.
16 And indeed, I strongly considered this possibility during Creation; going so far as to prepare a special high-viscosity liquid that would have oozed upward from the planet’s mantle, providing its crust with a never-ending source of lubricant.
17 “Land butter,” I called it.
18 Or consider the sky, whose winds and rains and snows will betimes turn on thee; it, too, could have been designed so as to avoid such occurrences; yea, it could have been designed in any way I saw fit.
19 Those five or six days a year when thou steppest outside and think, “Oh, this weather is just perfect!”?
20 I could have made it like that every day.
21 But I did not; for a) I like the seasons, and b) I wanted to retain the option of burying and blowing and deluging and tossing thee about like a matchstick on a moment’s notice.
22 Still: how great are those five or six days a year!

CHAPTER 2
1 I n the good olden days I, as a matter of policy, personally took the lead in the planning, implementation, and in a few cases even choreography of every disaster designed to cause over 500 deaths and/or destroy an area of over 100,000 square cubits;
2 Following the precept, that if thou wantest something horribly wrong done right, do it thyself.
3 Take as an instance Pompeii, which I destroyed in 79 A.D., just as Christianity was gaining a sandaled toehold in the Roman Empire.
4 I wanted to assist the rise of my son’s benevolent new religion by revealing the apocalyptic hellscape awaiting anyone who spurned it.
5 So I called my team together, everyone but Jesus; I did not think his presence there would benefit the discussion; for he and I have very different management styles when it comes to killing people.
6 I said, “Boys, the issue is not whether we have the capacity to make an example of a wicked Roman city; of course we have; no pep talk is needed on that score.
7 But I want to do it in such a way that its wickedness is somehow preserved for posterity; that even the sinners themselves remain frozen in time, permanent monuments to their own vice.
8 And I also want it done so that survivors could reasonably view it as a purely natural phenomenon; so that only the bright, perceptive Romans will convert, while the morons stay heathen.
9 So nothing supernatural; nothing deus ex machina–ish; nothing so clearly the work of divine reckoning that we lose all leeway for plausible deniability.
10 From the earth’s perspective, this needs to look like an inside job.”
11 As soon as I uttered these last words, Uriel’s entire face began to light up with inspiration, as if he had stars in his eyes.
12 It turned out he did have stars in his eyes; they’d somehow gotten in there on his way back from Cassiopeia; we got them out with holy water and tweezers.
13 But afterward he told us of the town of Pompeii: how it was not only a cesspit of immorality even by Roman standards, but was conveniently located next to a roiling volcano that could spew lava . . . and ash.
14 Quick-suffocating, slow-entombing, moment-of-death-freezing ash.
15 It was a brilliant plan, but for form’s sake I had everyone else work up a couple of pitches; the only other semi-interesting proposal was pickling Rome in a brinestorm; creative, but forced.
16 And everything went beautifully; Vesuvius exploded; Pompeii was utterly destroyed and preserved; and hundreds of wiser Romans discerned the true cause, and converted to Christianity,