Author Jeff Olson’s I Am God, I Am Jesus, I Am Allah is an amalgam of puzzling statements regarding religion, spirituality and the author’s visionary and mystical experiences.
“In this book I am going to tell you many things you probably have not heard of before,” begins Olson, “…God calls me Allah, and Noel [another name for Jesus in this book] calls me Father.” The author is seemingly correct; most people have probably never heard of that revelation, or that Moses died of prostate cancer, that “Adam and Eve were Neanderthals”—or many of the other revelations contained in these pages.
Overall, the work is difficult to classify. Novel? Fable? Memoir? Visionary literature? Devoid of a preface or introduction, the stories contained within—of angels and Satan, sibling rivalries, and familiar names in unfamiliar roles (e.g. Allah as an angelic creation instead of God from the Islamic tradition; Allah, it also seems, is the author of the book)—feel like a mashup of metaphysical ideas that never fully gel into a cohesive whole.
Moreover, the narrator often breaks the fourth wall to address readers directly, as Olson does when he confesses as “Jeff (Allah)” to killing a turkey at his mother’s house or avoiding a terrible car accident, and discusses the struggles he endured as a Marine with an injured left hand. Each incident had the hand of Satan behind it, he contends.
The author also speaks of what he sees as spiritual truth: that peace wins, that Allah embodies peace, and that if you want to lead a holy life you must reject Satan and his minions of fallen angels. One of the biggest culprits in promulgating lies about God, he posits, is the Catholic Church, in particular “the two popes Innocent” (possibly referring to Pope Innocent I and Innocent the II).
Lacking clear focus and presenting a dizzying array of controversial and unsubstantiated statements, the book is unlikely to attract a wide audience.
Also available as an ebook.
