Okay, I'm back. Had to go off-planet for a while, on business.
Speaking of planets, here follows the true history of yours (a planet which, by the way, will soon be coming to an end. As VP pick Sarah Palin has said, "What need to conserve energy or to combat global so-called warming? Jesus is coming soon! And won't that be nice, for some of us!")
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Sixty centuries ago, back when He first created the Garden of Eden, God the Father was quite enthusiastic about His creation, almost like someone who has just made the thrilling purchase of a vacation cabin in the woods. The Lord in those days came down to Earth every chance he got. He took walks in the cool of the shade of the Garden. He chatted it up with Adam and Eve.
Next thing you know, the whole place has been shut down and boarded up following a misunderstanding over a piece of fruit.
Throughout the Stone Age, Yahveh still made that long trip to Earth whenever His schedule allowed. He paid personal house calls to Cain, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, and Moses. His travel arrangements were quite elaborate, typically including a real body in real clothing. When obliged to have dinner with those Old Testament heroes, Dad drank real wine and ate real food (digesting all 100% for reasons we need not discuss here [Gen. 18]). And it was truly Yahveh, not just God the Son, or God the holy Ghost, who paid these visits to Earth. But then came an especially messy incident during the Exodus from Egypt, arising from one of the Lord's night-time walks through the camp of the Israelites (a mishap alluded to in Deut. 23:13); and that was the last we saw of Him down here for quite a while.
What really popped His cork, though, was back when He first heard about what the men of Sodom and Gomorrah had been doing to one another. Yahveh took the holy Ghost aside, and said,
"The outcry about Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin is reportedly so grievous, that I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the rumor of it, which has reached Mine ears; and if not, I will know." (Gen. 18:20-21)
When the outcry first reached the Lord's ears in 2108 BCE, via the aggrieved prayers of outraged heterosexuals, the report hardly seemed credible; but the men of those two towns were indeed doing according to the rumour of it. Many Sodomites and Gomorreans were doing altogether according to the rumour of it, two or three times a week, along with variations that the Lord Himself, prior to Creation, when human beings were still in the planning stage, had not fully considered – not because God has a blind spot in his omniscience but because there are some things that the Lord has never spent much time thinking about, and this particular human activity is one of them.
Leaving the holy Ghost behind in Heaven to hold down the fort, Yahveh came to Earth to investigate with His own eyes and ears, thereby to see what (and who, and on whom) had been going down in Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the region round about.
The Lord, when He investigates sin, doesn’t miss much – but the Sodom trip was the last of its kind. Dad almost never does it that way any more. He almost never comes down from Heaven, to investigate with His own eyes and ears. Here’s why: He is too disgusted.
Don't get me wrong, Yahveh is no quitter. During the so-called Age of Judges, and the Age of Kings, and the Age of the Prophets, the Lord still took a direct interest in human events, especially when a rumour of extraordinary buggery reached His ears. But ever since that historic visit to Sodom, visible incarnations of God the Father have been few and far between. When you chart human sightings of Yahveh as documented in the Old Testament, those close encounters follow the same basic curve as marital sex. At first, almost every day. Then twice a week. Once a week. Once a month. Special occasions (birthday, wedding anniversary, Father's Day, Christmas). Once in a blue moon. Only in your dreams.
– L.
