Matthew Ford feels cut off from the society around him. He stares at people from afar. He walks through a crowd rather than with them. People speak of him rather than to him. He is alone, bitter, yet unable to do anything to guide his own destiny and bring himself happiness. One night he is embarrassed by a failed internet date and returns home, one sad night in a series of many.
Once home, Matthew finds himself kept awake by a bothersome ghost intent on attracting his attention despite the fact that the big final is tomorrow. In an act of displaced rage, Matthew heaves the ghost out of the house evicting it from its place of eternal residence.
The following day, after a horrible morning and a near car wreck, Matthew takes his final and proceeds to the parking lot to return home when he is accosted by two Cherubim, Mel and Ezekiel, the eternal innocents of the Christ. They tell him of an important meeting he has with their boss. Unnerved by the pair, Matthew finds himself kidnapped when he attempts to get away and spirited into the atmosphere, through space, and into a black hole on his way to Heaven.
What Matthew finds in Heaven is far from golden fields and Eden. It is a grim, Orwellian world where all are bored, watching Prime Time television for their sole glimmer of entertainment, Jesus is a neo-con fascist dictator, and the angels are a fringe element of brutal thugs constantly dreaming of undermining Jesus’ regime.
Once at the spire, the heart of Heaven, Matthew is ushered into the presence of the Almighty where he is made part of a photo-op for the struggling Messiah. With the current problems of the Church and in Jesus’ faltering authority, it has been decided to make an example of Matthew for the whole of Existence. In evicting the ghost, Matthew has broken one of Creation’s laws. Only an agent of the Church may evict, i.e. exorcise, any known entity from a property. Because Matthew is not an agent of the Almighty, he is told that his eviction of the prior night is non-binding and he must accept the ghost back. Stubborn, not simply because he has finally had enough of being pushed around, but also because he sees this as one more burden added to an already crushing life, Matthew refuses the order and even demands to speak with God. To his surprise, Matthew discovers the once great Creator is now a vegetable in a wheelchair.
In an act of disdain and the beginning of his maturation, Matthew tells Jesus no shaming "The Messiah" in front of the whole of Heaven. Matthew is cautioned there will be repercussions but fails to heed the warning. Upon his return to Earth, Matthew discovers that Jesus’ threat is not an idle one. It begins with a poor case of acne. Then Matthew’s professor is given a vision to fail his student. In a fit of rage, Matthew strikes back against Jesus in the only way he can: he desecrates a nativity scene. The feud between the two escalates until Matthew frames a priest for a string of robberies only to reveal a deep criminal streak in the Church and threaten its earthly foundations.
It is into these uncertain times that Satan appears to offer Matthew the opportunity to truly hit Jesus while he is down. Fearing what the Messiah will do in response to his latest act, Matthew finds himself seduced into aiding the Devil and becomes a new age pop guru that guides the world away from religion to a new philosophy. An important piece of his new agenda is the obese who Matthew encourages to accept the ultimate diet: fasting. In so doing he creates not only a deep undermining separation between the fat and thin, but also stokes a growing, underlying rage through the stress of withdrawal.
Matthew’s philosophy proves disruptive to America. The fat are fomenting food riots across the country and his speeches are increasingly calling for not merely a change of government but its outright overthrow. Beginning to feel doubts about what he is doing, Matthew hesitates in continuing on with the plan between him and Satan. It is then that Matthew finds himself the subject of an assassination attempt by the Vatican in order to stop the rise of the Antichrist. In a harrowing escape attempt, Matthew is murdered. Only then is it revealed that Satan was behind the murder plot before the Devil casts Matthew into Purgatory and seizes Matthew’s body for his own.
As Matthew tries to find a way out of Purgatory, Satan brings to fruition a rebellion that topples the American government and pushes the world closer and closer to World War III. The Vatican is invaded via the Patriot Act while Pakistan and India destroy one another in a nuclear war and China goes to war with Taiwan.
Through the help of two coyotes, men that smuggle Mexicans into Heaven, Matthew finds his way back to Paradise narrowly escaping an angelic border patrol that drives the group into the lands of Buddha. It is there that Matthew learns of the truth behind the two thousand year cease fire between Heaven and Hell. Heaven is collapsing, that collapse what effectively we call the expanding universe. In an effort to stop the collapse, Satan created universal law in order to bind the chaos for the eventual rebuilding of Heaven. Instead, Life appeared and God refused to allow their death for such an endeavor. Increasingly bitter and upset at God’s refusal to allow him to save Existence and finish his work, Satan is cast out of Heaven along with Jesus, one of his followers. In order to regain favor with God, Jesus attempts to enlighten man making good on his probation. To the shock of all, Jesus is crucified leading to God having a stroke. With the Creator incapacitated, Jesus hurries back to Heaven and enacts a coup stealing the authority of Existence. With his power base still wobbly, Satan offers a truce between Heaven and Hell that has held for twin millennia. It is only now, with the threat to all of Existence, that Satan’s deeper motives have become clear.
Events find themselves driven towards that final battle at Mount Megiddo between man, the undead, angels, and demons for the fate of all Existence. The only true question is how in the hell is Matthew going to survive all this?
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