Alien Evangelist 3

Neville was flying the saucer, on his own, towards Thaarg. A woman covered in brightly coloured feathers, like a budgerigar, appeared on the screen.
"Alien spacecraft, identify yourself."
"I am Neville, flying an unarmed civilian saucer, from Zeta Reticuli."
"You don't look like a Reticulan."
"I am from Earth."
"That explains your appearance. You are from another planet in the Zeta Reticuli Union."
"Is that what they call it now?" asked Neville.
"It's what they called it then. Earth no longer exists. What is the purpose of your visit to Thaarg?"
"To speak to the King."
"Is that what people from Earth really do? Just like those old films. 'Take me to your leader.' Would you really say that if you arrived on another world?"
"But I really need to speak to your leader."
"Why?"
"I am a university professor." Neville exaggerated. He had a degree in Electronics and watched lots of space documentaries. But he had wanted to be a professor until he had got dismal marks for his final exams. "I have come to give the king advice on how to deal with the asteroid." The woman looked amazed.
"You'd better see him straight away. I'll tell everyone you're on your way."

The saucer flew over the king's palace and landed on the purple stones outside the gates. Neville got out of the saucer. He was surrounded by men covered in yellow and green feathers who were wearing black hats like policemen with white bands around the sides.
"I am Professor Neville Maxwell from the university of Northumbria on Earth."
"We know who you are," said one of the men. "Two of us will lead you inside." Neville was led into a room where the king was sitting on a large armchair, not wearing a crown and royal robes but rather more relaxed, in a garment that looked like a brightly coloured men's dressing gown.
"Good morning," said the king. Lifting up a wing, as if to shake hands. Neville took the wing in his hand and gently moved it up and down. "Have you travelled far?"
"A few hundred thousand light years."
"Not very far," said the king, smiling. "I've travelled millions of light years. Now, the asteroid. Our scientists say it is too big to be deflected in the usual manner and, if we exploded it, it would break up into lots of small pieces the size of a sports stadium that would hit the planet like a hail of bullets. What is your solution?"
"I think you should get down on your knees and repent before God." The king looked amazed.
"Which of the gods do you think we've offended? We win lots of battles. The Thaarg empire stretches across whole galaxies. We throw all those heretics into pits full of giant bulldogs. Surely the gods must be pleased with us."
"You have offended the God of the Christians. One day all the other gods will bow down and worship him." The king leapt from his chair.
"The god of the Christians? The ones we've been persecuting all this time? He is the real god and the other gods will bow down and worship him? Oh no. We really are in trouble. What must we do?"
"Call the whole planet to prayer. If you all fast and pray for a whole day, the God of the Christians is faithful, he will forgive you."
"Indeed I shall. I will get onto the television news service and speak to the whole planet immediately."

Neville returned to his flying saucer and flew back to the starship, on which they were watching the King of Thaarg on the big screen in the lounge.
"I have sinned," said the king, crying. "I told you that the gods wanted glory and conquest and the whole of the universe brought into subjugation. The god of the Christians is different. He doesn't like war and conquest. He doesn't like his followers being thrown to the giant bulldogs as heretics. My people, you must fast for a whole day and get down on your knees and pray. The asteroid is only 3 weeks away. The god of the Christians may still forgive us." The television went to another programme which must have been broadcast several years later. A giant blue globe of Planet Thaarg with its 10 continents filled the screen. A budgie creature appeared sitting behind a desk, wearing a bright red dinner jacket .
"Welcome to Thaarg today. A huge religious revival is sweeping the 10 continents of Thaarg. Wherever you go, people are becoming Christians. We visited a local house church." A group of budgerigar people sat on deck chairs in a crowded living room.
"Are you the leader?" the interviewer asked someone who was pressing his wrist watch to change the Bible verses and pictures that appeared on a screen on the wall.
"We don't really have a leader. We take it in turns to lead the Bible study. This is my house."
"Three quarters of the population of Thaarg have become Christians in the last forty years," said the interviewer. "Have you had any difficulty coping with the numbers?"
"Yes we have. There were too many people to get into the hall. So the church had a rule that any church member who had their own home had to have their own house church. The teaching would be centrally co-ordinated and we'd follow the same timetable. The music would be broadcast by video link. But the house churches became too small. Lots of young people were becoming Christians, who lived with their parents. I did most of the youth work, so the church paid for me to have an extension built onto my house. It's a huge extension. It goes into the back garden. It goes underground." The budgie person led the reporter into a huge rear extension that looked like a university lecture hall. It had huge circular rows of seats and a platform in the middle, on which the person leading the meeting could stand. "There were a hundred young people in here on Thursday night."
"This is fantastic. This is your home and you've made it into a church."
"I've made it into a Christian youth centre. There's one on every street corner, I mean literally." Everyone could see that Neville was crying.
"Praise God," he said. "It wasn't a complete waste of time."
"It wasn't a waste of time at all," said Magnus. "We brought a planet into revival, who hated and persecuted Christians before."
"The Lord really did want us to go to Thaarg after all," said Kelvin.
"Look out of the window," said Jonas. The stars appeared to be falling like snowflakes. "How can the stars be falling from the sky? There's nowhere for them to fall to."
"The stars can't fall to the ground," said Neville. "There is no ground here and there is no sky either."
"So why are the stars falling like snowflakes?" asked Jonas.
"They're not," said Neville. "It just looks that way. Think of the stars as being on a reel of film, and God is rolling up the reel of film."
"What is film?" asked Kelvin.
"The Bible compared it to rolling up a scroll," said Magnus.
"I think I understand now," said Jonas.
"God just took spacetime and folded it up like that pair of jeans in the laundry room," said Magnus. By now the stars had disappeared altogether. "And then he put the jeans in a drawer." The starship was flying over an absolutely flat world. Some of the larger features on the ground like craters and canyons could be seen. It seemed to be hundreds of thousands of miles long.
"Where is this?" asked Kelvin.
"Heaven," said Neville. "Heaven's eternal city. The dwelling place of God is with men, fluorescent Reticulans, fly people, budgie people, cat people and every other kind of creature you've ever seen on a movie channel."
"Wow," said Kelvin.
"If this is Heaven," said Jonas, "how did we find it and how did we get here so quickly?"
"Space just got smaller," said Magnus.
"That doesn't make sense," said Jonas.
"Relativity theory doesn't have to make sense," said Magnus. "Right now the sphere of everything extends to approximately the distance between Earth and the moon, with a much lower limiting speed than the previous universe. We're not travelling at the speed of light anymore. We've slowed right down to the speed of a supersonic aeroplane. Nothing in this universe can travel faster than 1500 miles an hour. We can't land the starship here without setting the world on fire. We'll have to get into one of the saucers."

The saucer floated down onto the flat world of Heaven's city. It landed on a field of grass. A man with a hairy face the colour of a ginger cat was preaching to a crowd of people around him. Six of the people looked like budgies, three had insect heads, four looked like cats, three were obviously from Earth and another two were Rectiulans, lighting up the rest of the creatures with their fluorescent yellow glow. 
"God has brought us all together from the farthest corners of the universe," said the man who looked like a ginger cat. "Glory to his name."
"Glory be, glory be, amen, amen," said the people around him.
"It is a fulfillment of the words of Jesus. He will gather his elect from the four winds, from  one end of the heavens to the other. We have some new people with us today. Where are you from, my friends?"
"We are from Earth," said Magnus.
"And I was a missionary to Thaarg," said Neville.
"Praise the Lord," said one of the budgie creatures. "We are from Thaarg. The people repented when they heard the king's speech. We fasted and prayed. God deflected the asteroid. Thaarg's judgement was spared for another 40 years."
"What happened then?" asked Neville.
"The whole universe came under God's judgement," said the ginger cat man, who was preaching. "It was destroyed completely."
"Is there anyone here from beyond the Milky Way and the small galaxies immediately around it?" asked Neville. There was a couple with heads like goats.
"We're from Andromeda," one of them said. Neville couldn't tell which one was the man and which one was the woman, if they had male and female.
"I'm from a planet that never sinned," said a creature that Neville had taken to be a tall hedge but no, it had eyes, it had a mouth, it could talk. An angel appeared flying above them. Neville recognised it because it looked like the Gateshead angel. It looked like a steel man with aeroplane wings. The angel landed on the ground next to Neville.
"I have come to bring you your reward," the angel said. "You obeyed God's command to go and see the King of Thaarg. You persuaded him to lead the planet in repentance and prayer, the asteroid was deflected, and the planet was spared God's judgement for another 40 years."
"It was you," said one of the budgie creatures, putting a wing around Neville's shoulders. "We knew nothing about your visit. You are the unsung hero of Thaarg."
"Let us discuss my reward," said Neville. "There were plenty of good looking women on Earth that I wanted to marry."
"There is no marriage here," said the angel.
"There will be no more sorrow or pain," said Magnus, laughing.
"What about those two goats?" asked Neville. "I thought they were married."
"We're just good friends," said one of the goats.
"There were plenty of good Christian women on Earth I wanted to marry. I don't mean to be unspiritual. They were all dear sisters, lovely Christians and beautiful people inside. I always hoped that when I got to Heaven I would see them again."
"Neville," said the angel, "this is Heaven. You've got all eternity to make friends with whoever you want and no one will stop you making friends with Sarah, Jenny, Natasha, Crystal or Gillian. You will see them again. But your reward is simply for me to come and tell everyone what you said to the King of Thaarg."
"I was the king of Thaarg," said one of the budgie men. "What this fellow says is perfectly correct. Thank you Neville that you came."
"Yes, we will be eternally grateful," said a budgie with a woman's voice.
"Right," said the angel, "lunch break's over, back to the temple."

Neville followed the others to the temple. When Neville was a student he used to have a job building dry stone walls in the summer. When he arrived at the temple, there were Sarah, Jenny, Natasha, Crystal and Gillian building the walls. He went to join them.
"Hello Crystal," said Neville.
"Hello Neville," said Crystal. "You did a very brave thing when you evangeised the King of Thaarg. This is your reward."
"Why is this his reward?" asked Sarah, putting down a stone she had been cutting with a hammer and a chisel. Neville suddenly realised that Sarah had never realised how much he had loved her.
"To spend eternity with the loveliest Christians I've ever met," said Neville, wondering what he could say to avoid causing any embarrassment.
"Do you forgive me for breaking your heart?" asked Natasha, putting down a hammer she had been using to break up stones into small pieces.
"What do you mean, you broke my heart?"
"I walked down the aisle with another man. I could see you crying your eyes out."
"Natasha, I can forgive you under one condition. You must say that you were happy together, that you had lots of children and that you lived together until one of you died of old age."
"That's exactly what my marriage was like."
"In that case my prayers were answered," said Neville.
"Prayers?" asked Sarah.
"I used to pray for Natasha to be happy."
"You must have prayed for me a lot, Neville. I was always very happy."
"Then I'm glad I did. It doesn't matter. It never mattered, Natasha. Of course, I'd have liked you to marry me but I just remembered you in a very kind way, as a very lovely Christian and a very dear sister."
"Neville, I am partly telepathic," said Crystal, laying down a stone block she was holding, on top of the pile of stones that would become the wall. "I know how you felt about me and everyone else here."
"We all love each other now," said Neville. "This is Heaven. We don't need to be married. We all love each other anyway. Here there won't be any disappointment, any broken hearts, any difficult relationships because we're all brothers and sisters in the Lord."
"Thank you Neville," said Gillian. "We've always felt that way but you can put it into words."
"I think you're very brave," said Crystal.
"I'm just what anyone else would be in the same circumstances."
"No you're not," said Gillian, putting down the sandpaper with which she'd been rubbing a piece of wood. "Most men would be angry and vindictive if they'd been rejected by so many women. I can't believe that you're so kind about it."
"And they'll know you are Christians by your love for one another," said Jennie, as she swept some wood shavings from the floor. An octopus slithered along to join the group.
"Hello Magnox," said Crystal. "Have you come to help?"
"Hello Crystal," said Magnox. He took a brick in each of his eight tentacles and carefully positioned them on top of the wall. "I love doing that. It's something l'm really good at."
"It's what you were born to do," said Natasha, laughing. Jesus came walking into the temple in a long purple robe, wearing a crown and looking like a king. He sat on a throne.
"Worship time," shouted an American man with a beard who Neville vaguely recognised. Where had he seen that face before? Neville walked up to the big church organ. "Can you play the organ?" asked the man with a beard.
"I can play a little bit. I can play pop tunes on the synthesiser with one hand. I wish I could play the keyboard like Keith Green. He was legendary. Never used the 8 track tape recorder. Keith Green could play a complicated piece of music and sing at the same time."
"Why don't you try it? I just picked up a ukulele and played it when I was three." Neville suddenly realised that he was talking to Keith Green. "There's no limitations on anyone's brain anymore. No one here struggles to play a musical instrument because their sense of pitch is too poor or their fingers move too slowly."
"I'll start with something simple," said Neville. He put his fingers on the keyboard and started playing a piece of music from an old Christian record. His fingers hit the right notes easily. The sound was powerful. The temple filled with a spiritual atmosphere. The women who had been building the wall started clapping their hands. The octopus started waving its tentacles in the air. Jesus looked at Neville and smiled.