Stephen Beam - Balaam, the Gray Prophet

Balaam pulled open the top drawer of his old dresser. He kept canned food in there, consisting mainly of pork and beans. That’s been his favorite food for most of his life. He did a quick inventory, noting he had quite a few cans left. Now, with the new gold coins in his pocket, he could splurge and buy something a bit more exotic. A steak perhaps? He could afford to indulge in a few dreams of the flesh. Maybe even spend the night with a high class harlot, one of the pretty elites from the temple. But he was only joking with himself. He knew such behavior was ungodly.

Despite what others imagined, his special mojo never brought him wealth. It barely paid the mortgage. His spiritual gifts held him back more than anything else. Whenever he transformed into an oracle, it always came back to bite him in the ass. Whether he issued blessings or curses, both were a double-edged sword. When either side of the blade pressed against his skin, he bled.

Balaam pulled the tab and took the lid off the can of pork and beans. He placed the can directly on the hotplate heating element, not bothering to pour the beans in a pot. While waiting for them to warm, he pondered his relationship with the Lord. At times, YHWH would sing the world away, and when He did, visions flooded his mind. The path to the future was a carpet woven in gold, stretching from universe to universe, beyond all temporal horizons. It terrified him. He dreaded prophetic visions. To remain ignorant of the world’s fate was of much greater comfort. When he revealed his prophetic visions to the people, no one doubted their veracity. They were always dead on accurate. And though he’d rather hide these prophecies, he always did what the Lord asked of him.

Why did the Lord bother with him? Why was he chosen to be part of a grand cosmic plan he didn’t understand? YHWH was God to the Sons of Israel, and Balaam wasn’t of that tribe. People in these parts worshipped whatever god their tribe asked them to. Baal was a popular god around here, and he came in various guises, all of them hated by YHWH. YHWH had declared all Baals false gods, and that struck fear in the heart of every Baal worshipper.

The God of the Israelites was most frightening of all the gods. There was no end to His power. When He blessed His followers, He made them invincible. YHWH demanded only one thing in exchange for His blessing: absolute obedience. Obey the laws of YHWH, and you received His blessing. Balaam knew from his dreams that Moab was on the Lord’s list of abominations, but Balaam could do nothing to help, not unless the Lord willed it. The residents of Moab and their neighbors, were afraid. They watched The Sons of Israel draw ever nearer. Angels of death manifesting as bikers. Riding heavy fire breathing motorcycles — steel machines custom designed from ancient data and built by nanobots, running on hydrogen fuel — the very fuel of the sun.

The pork and beans were warm enough. Balaam lifted the can from the hotplate using an oven mitt and spooned beans into his mouth. He was hungry. Tonight, he needed energy. Outwardly, he would appear to be in a very deep sleep. When YHWH willed to invade his dreams, it drained him as thoroughly as if he’d run an uphill marathon. The divine synchronization possessed him completely: his mortal will dissolved into YHWH’s divine will, lost in its unfathomable, infinite density. Occasionally in this visionary state, he was cursed with lucid dreaming. If he could remain calm, he could blast away from it, riding on a blinding stream of light. This took most all his life energy, leaving him clinging desperately to his mortal frame.

He finished the beans and threw the empty can into the recycling bin. Now came the second phase of his visionary ritual, the one he looked forward to most. Though he’d had a few drinks at the bar, this night called for more fortification. The second phase of preparation was drinking precisely four shots of whiskey. This was the magic formula to help him past any lucid dreaming state he might get stuck in. To confront the power of YHWH, and not be in total submission, was a grave error. There were no halfway measures with the Lord. YHWH wanted everything from His followers or nothing. He demanded one-hundred percent of their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Nothing short of that would do.

Balaam undressed and put on his warm, fluffy bathrobe. It was important to be comfortable when contacting YHWH. The less distractions, the better.

He kept bottles of whiskey and drinking glasses in the bottom cabinet drawer. He grabbed an already opened bottle, along with his favorite glass, a shooter, and set them on the cabinet next to the hotplate.

Why God used him as His prophet made no sense. He wasn’t a Son of Israel. There was no lineage, no blood ties that bound him to their tribes. He owned no kosherized motorcycle. The Israelites claimed their Lord to be the one true God, creator of heaven and the heaven of heavens. YHWH was no pretender to the throne like the Baals or Ashtoreth, and Balaam knew this was true, as surely as he ate, drank, and breathed. YHWH was, is, and always will be, the one true God. He lived inside Balaam’s conflicted and warring heart.

There was no savoring the whiskey. With glass filled, he threw his head back and downed the whiskey in one quick move. By the fourth glass, the alcohol had already saturated his brain and softened his world, sweeping away stinging shards of anxiety in preparation for the Lord. He didn’t bother to pull down the comforter and snuggle under it; he flopped on his back against the bed and waited for sleep. It would arrive soon. And with it, the Lord.

Consciousness drained away quickly and quietly. Balaam’s mind, soft and accepting, opened the door for the Lord to enter. YHWH burst through intellect’s doorway, radiating energy, removing the constraints of his neural matrix. Balaam’s mind shot skyward, expanded, and left the world behind, touching heaven’s edge. No longer dreaming — he was the dream. Every consecutive millisecond Balaam was born anew. Once a human being, he was now a particle of thought, unresponsive to material gravity.

The Lord asked, “Who were those men with you at the bar?”

Balaam was sucked down one whirlpool of thought into the next. He said, “Why ask? I know that you know who they are, but I’ll say the words. They were men sent by Balak, Chief of Moab. He fears the Sons of Israel will destroy him and his people. He wants me to curse the Israelites in order to save Moab.”

Luminous columns of spirit rose from whirlpools of intellect that continued to pull Balaam from one vortex to the next, each new vortex more powerful than the last. Stars danced across the night sky. Towering columns of light tunneled past galaxies that swirled amongst glowing fields of plasma. Inward, ever inward, into the realms of the humanly unthinkable. There were limitations embedded within the minds of humankind, and Balaam had reached them.

The dark curtain of space rent in half, revealing billions of star islands spinning kaleidoscopically outwards, each held firmly in the gravitational hand of the Almighty. God, hidden by the very nature of His absoluteness within the stationary center of infinity, revealed of Himself to Balaam all he could assimilate. Before every beginning, past every ending, YHWH reached out in love to Balaam, offering all the truth the prophet could take in.

YHWH then spoke to Balaam: “You shall not go with them to see Balak. You will not curse the Israelites, for they are blessed.”

Abruptly as the flick of a light switch, the vision ended. Balaam sat bolt upright in bed as if tazed in the ass. He looked about the room confused, empty, and temporarily demented. When God severed the divine connection, it was quick and harsh. The glories of heaven were sucked away in an instant, deflating Balaam’s mind like a pin popped balloon. He was a grain of sand, lost amongst trillions of its kind. He’d traveled from the highest golden glories to the drab gray mundane, all within seconds. Balaam now faced the raw morning. He swung his legs off the bed, managing to stand without falling.