Chapter 29
Three weeks passed, and the changing winds of public opinion meant there were days where the news was all about “Of course this proves God exists. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just being stupid.” On other days, the talking heads on the various news shows were the naysayers who were sure that Erika was a fraud, even if they didn’t quite know how the moon disappeared.
In general, there were three schools of thought for this:
1. Pure magic, the kind that any other magician could do if they set their minds to it. Sometimes, what seems like a miracle is simply misdirection, skillfully applied. This option ignored the scientific evidence about the Earth shifting in its orbit around the sun. That was another form of magical deceit, likely easily explainable once other magicians put their minds to it.
2. The moon hadn’t disappeared at all. In fact, it never existed. What Erika had done was to perform a global hypnotism, convincing everyone that the Earth had previously had a moon but now didn’t. As hypnosis acts go, this was quite impressive, but it certainly didn’t mean anything physical had actually moved as much as a centimeter.
3. Popular with the Flat Earth Society, the moon simply had set faster than normal and has stayed beneath the horizon ever since. This was nothing to be alarmed about and nothing magical.
There was one other theory, one that didn’t make it as much to the talk shows: Erika was indeed a supernatural entity, but clearly, she was sent by Satan, not by God. The unspoken evidence was her dark skin. God’s child would obviously be Caucasian.
I wondered how Erika never lost her temper whenever this garbage found its way to her. She would nod or shrug as if it was nothing personal.
Even I knew it was entirely personal.
Erika worked on her five-minute sermons and the additional information on her web site.
Then, on an otherwise totally normal day, she came to me and said, “We have to go. We’re addressing the United Nations General Assembly at 4:00 this afternoon.”
“We are?”
She laughed. “Well, I am. You’re coming to take photos. Peter is coming to record it and post it online.”
“You don’t seem nervous.”
“I’m not. I have a message they need to hear. It’s a good message, and I hope they learn something.”
At noon, a helicopter landed in the parking lot. Security had been notified, so the area around had been cleared. We climbed up and strapped ourselves in. Thirty minutes later, we landed on the U.N. helipad.
In all my time photographing important scientific achievements, I’d never managed to find a reason to go inside the United Nations Headquarters building. Even though I was walking beside God’s daughter, the building somehow affected me as much as Erika did, and I felt like an unimportant pawn in a cosmic chess game.
When the time came, Erika stood at the lectern and gazed out at the audience. There was no sound inside the large auditorium. Every eye was staring at her, and each face wore either raptured interest or hateful disdain. There was little chance for middle ground.
There are 193 countries that belong to the United Nations. I had to look that up. All 193 nations had their representative sitting in the assembly. Most had earbuds with wires drooping down. Erika’s voice would be simultaneously translated by an army in the floor below the main hall.
“Mr. Secretary General, thank you for inviting me to talk to you.
“Ambassadors to the world, I come before you with a message of hope, of faith, and of the profound opportunity you each have to save the people of your own nation.”
She paused and looked out.
That’s when I noticed a remarkable thing. All the ambassadors removed their earbuds. It wasn’t because they didn’t want to hear. Quite the contrary, they didn’t need a translation. Whether their native tongue was Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, or dozens of other languages, they each could hear Erika talking to them directly. Most of the naysayers lost their look of disdain and stared instead in puzzlement.
How could she speak fifty different languages, with each language directed only to the people who wanted that language? I, of course, heard her in English.
I later was told that not only did she speak Portuguese to the Portuguese ambassador, that person heard a different dialect than the Portuguese heard by the Brazilian ambassador. Languages change in distant countries. Even more surprising, each visitor saw Erika’s mouth move in exactly the right manner for the words they heard.
As I listened to her speak, I was only partly aware of the miracle she was performing right in front of me, and once again I felt like a small insect compared to her majesty.
She continued. “All of you represent your own nation, and I am also an ambassador to all of you. I represent the Lord, my father, and I am here on a mission of hope and excitement.
“My father wants to ask his children for only two things. He wants you to love Him and he wants you to love each other.
“Seems pretty easy, doesn’t it?” Erika smiled and about half the audience couldn’t help but smile back at her. She was beaming with charisma, and she took the opportunity to move out from behind the lectern and walk slowly around the stage. As far as I could tell, she didn’t have a microphone. It didn’t matter. Her voice carried out over the speakers as loud as when she spoke into the mic.
“As I look out at all of you, I see the reflections of your people. I see pools of kindness and gentle natures, I see love and respect.” She paused, locking eyes with a few of the assembly members. “I also see hate and corruption and jealousy and greed and fear. Fear from your people against their own government.”
I watched Erika as she stared at one of the people in the audience. She was sending a clear message to whoever it was. From my vantage point, I wasn’t sure who she was looking at. I think the stare made a number of people uncomfortable.
She finally continued. “Each of you also brings with you a balance of your people who follow my father. Some of you are full of faith, even if your nation is supposedly run by a secular government. God has noticed.
“Others of you are at the other end of the spectrum, crippled hypocrites who have no faith at all while professing that same faith to your people.”
Nobody whispered. They all stared at Erika, and I had a feeling this was the only time in the U.N.’s history that the general assembly was so quiet.
She walked down one of the aisles, glancing around at everyone. The ambassador from Israel reached out to touch her hand as she passed.
“You owe it to your nation to stop hating one another. You all have your land and your resources, and the Lord will help you if you simply ask him to do so. Our God is a good God who wants to have a relationship with you.
“But you must love your enemies. Put down your weapons. Help those in need, and start to enjoy the life our father has given you.
“These are not very difficult asks.
“If I put myself in your place, I might ask, WIIFM? What’s in it for me?
“The answer is easy. Peace is better than war. Love is better than hate. Faith is better than fear. Each one of you can make so much difference to your country. Go back and help your people. Tell them the Lord is listening and wants them to experience joy. Tell them the path to eternal life is to love the Lord and to love each other.
“It’s really very simple.”
Erika had come full circle and was back behind the lectern.