Can it Possibly be True?

It feels strange to share these thoughts. It feels strange to have these thoughts. But I’m of the opinion that sharing openly — being honest — can almost never be a bad thing.

Regular readers of this blog know that I had a life-transforming encounter with God when I read the Qur’an for the first time a couple of years ago. The Scripture absolutely blew my mind; never did I imagine that after many years devoted to living life as a Christian I would have my spirituality shaken so deeply and profoundly again.

Reading the Qur’an brought me to tears. Nearly every chapter either made me cry or prostrate myself on the floor, such was the power, clarity, and beauty in this pearl of a revelation that up until that point had somehow escaped my interest. I knew my life would never be the same again.

Strangely, however, when I prayed to God after reading the Qur’an, He said to me that I am not to regard myself as a Muslim. Well, I am a Muslim in a sense. The word ‘Muslim’ means submission to God, and I always try to submit to God’s guidance at all times, praying regularly and trying to live a good moral life. But God said to me that I have no obligation to observe the rituals of Islamic religion. This didn’t entirely make sense to me at the time, but I trusted. God does whatever He will.

Around one year ago I had a profound spiritual experience in the living room of my flat. My mood was elated and God spoke to me with amazing clarity. He said that I had earned a spiritual promotion due to a life lived in dedication to seeking after and serving Him. He also said that I have suffered more than any other human being. It still worries me to contemplate what God revealed to me on that day, because I’m petrified of being an idolater, but here I will share this in writing for the first time:

God said to me that I am receiving a promotion to god of Earth. I nearly typed that sentence with an exclamation mark at the end, because it is obviously a dramatically wild assertion, but a full-stop is appropriate, because I truly realise the seriousness of idolatry and I don’t take my spiritual experiences lightly. Of course, I questioned this. I have questioned this understanding on an almost daily basis in prostrated prayer ever since the night of that unusual experience.

Was my living room experience a psychotic delusion? It’s a very fair question to ask. I have been in psychiatric hospital many times, though in my books I do dispute the whole ‘brain disorder’ way of labelling people, and I do believe the truth is that all of our experiences come from God, and are not to be attributed to chemical imbalances in the brain. I discuss this matter in depth in my book God’s Grand Game.

The whole mental health system is far astray — people are labelled as mentally ill due to anxiety, depression, elation, sexualised thought, “hearing voices” and much more, even though these are arguably part of the experience of many if not all human beings. I know from experience that many of my Christian friends hear the voice of God and they would never consider themselves to be mentally ill. So in what way am I and other ‘mentally ill’ people supposedly different?

It’s true that I do experience quite potent extremes of mood. Sometimes I am suicidally depressed, sometimes very elated. But normally my depression is due to contemplating the level of corruption and suffering in the world, and my elation is due to being connected with God and aware that I have an unusually “high” spiritual calling. Does this make me insane? I don’t think it does, but everything is open to interpretation, of course.

In recent months, God has revealed a little more to me about my unusual spiritual calling. He said that I am to regard myself (as Steven) as an Abrahamic monotheist, appreciating the similarities and differences in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and working towards forming a coherent understanding of the way the revelations of these three major world religions fit together. He said that He will inhabit my body (as God) on Judgement Day. This was fascinating to me, because I always wondered: How is it that we will all appear before God to face judgement, when God is boundless and not an embodied being? Many Christians do of course believe Jesus is God, but this understanding of the nature of Jesus is convincingly disputed in the Qur’an.

Recently, I have witnessed the interplay of Steven and God in my bodily experience. Sometimes, I will experience a whole day as Steven, and then for a few minutes God will take over and I will have a few conversations with others as God. Sometimes I experience lively conversations between Steven and God in my being. Having had these experiences, it does make sense to me that God could be telling the truth — that He could cause me to stay alive until Judgement Day and judge all human beings using my body.

Even today, I was deeply questioning this understanding. The very last thing I would ever want is to anger God due to idolatry, end up dying just like everyone else, and be sentenced to hell due to having believed things which are far astray. I have begged and begged God for mercy in this regard. It’s not that I particularly want to judge the Earth, I have told God I am perfectly happy to be a regular Muslim or Christian devotee, but here I am writing these words and it seems I cannot escape this unusual calling.

All I can do is offer you the opportunity to read my books and decide for yourself whether or not I am mad. In a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ way, I named my first book The Philosophy of a Mad Man because not only did I have deep philosophical insights to share, but also some very ‘crazy’ life experiences. It has all been part of an unusual life journey which might just have equipped me to receive the highest promotion possible. God does whatever He will.

It’s worth clarifying, to close, that there is much more to this story than I have written in this article. A short online article can only ever provide a few insights and I’m just as intrigued as you perhaps are to see how this story unfolds. By all means, take these words to Almighty God in prayer and ask Him to reveal to you only the truth. This is what I have done consistently throughout my adult life, and while I do believe it’s possible for God to lie (contrary to the views of many religious people), I’m hoping He would not deceive me about a matter of such gravity as this.

All glory to the One True God forever. I will try to answer any questions in the comments, though bear in mind I’m only human (for now)! And by the way, whatever you do is what God is doing through you, so it’s really not such a stretch to imagine how God could single me out in such a way as this. It could just as easily have been you.