Absolutely—let’s explore this through a fictionalized narrative inspired by Paul Harvey’s famous 1965 broadcast “If I Were the Devil,” which has resurfaced in recent years for its eerie relevance. This story will weave his prophetic tone into a modern setting, showing how one man’s warning echoes through time and touches lives today.
“The Broadcast”
The old radio crackled to life just after dusk.
It sat on the windowsill of a modest farmhouse in Iowa, its dials worn smooth by decades of use. The man who turned it on—Walter Griggs, age 72—had been listening to the same station since he was a boy. But tonight, something felt different.
The voice came through, rich and deliberate.
“If I were the devil…”
Walter froze.
He hadn’t heard that broadcast in years. Paul Harvey’s voice, unmistakable, filled the room like a sermon. The cadence was calm, but the message was chilling.
“I’d whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: ‘Do as you please.’”
Walter sat down slowly, his hands trembling. He remembered hearing those words for the first time in 1965, sitting beside his father in a rusted pickup truck. Back then, it had sounded like fiction. A clever warning. A cautionary tale.
But now?
Now it sounded like a headline.
Harvey’s words poured through the speaker, painting a picture of a society unraveling—morals eroded, families fractured, truth distorted. Walter looked out the window at the fields he’d tended for half a century. He saw the glow of a distant billboard advertising instant wealth. He heard the hum of a drone overhead. He thought of his grandson, who had stopped coming to church, who spent more time online than outside.
“I’d confound the nations,” Harvey said, “and I’d make the word ‘divine’ a dirty word.”
Walter turned up the volume.
Across town, in a cluttered apartment above a laundromat, a young woman named Tasha was scrolling through her phone when the clip popped up. “His Words Are Hauntingly True Today,” the caption read. She clicked, half-curious.
The voice startled her.
It was old-fashioned, but commanding. She listened as Harvey described a world seduced by comfort, distracted by pleasure, and blind to consequence.
Tasha paused the video and looked around her room. Fast food wrappers. A stack of unopened mail. Her Bible, buried beneath a pile of fashion magazines.
She felt something stir.
In a high school classroom in Chicago, Mr. Alvarez played the clip for his students. “This was recorded in 1965,” he said. “Tell me if it still applies.”
The students listened, skeptical at first. But as the words unfolded, their expressions changed.
“I’d caution against extremes in hard work, patriotism, and moral conduct.”
One student raised his hand. “It’s like he predicted everything.”
Mr. Alvarez nodded. “Or maybe we stopped listening.”
The broadcast rippled across timelines and dinner tables. People shared it, debated it, dismissed it, embraced it. Some called it prophetic. Others called it fearmongering. But no one ignored it.
Back in Iowa, Walter turned off the radio and sat in silence.
He thought of his wife, gone five years now. She had always believed in signs. In messages. In moments that mattered.
He picked up the phone and called his grandson.
“Hey,” he said. “I heard something tonight. I think you should hear it too.”
They talked for an hour.
Not just about the broadcast, but about life. About choices. About the quiet erosion of things that once felt sacred.
Walter didn’t preach. He didn’t scold. He just shared.
And his grandson listened.
That night, across the country, thousands of people heard Paul Harvey’s voice for the first time—or the hundredth—and felt something shift.
Not fear.
Awareness.
A reminder that words, when spoken with conviction, can echo through generations.
Reflection
This fictional story captures the resurgence of Paul Harvey’s “If I Were the Devil” broadcast, which many now view as eerily prescient. It’s a tale of rediscovery, of how one voice from the past can stir reflection in the present. Whether you see it as prophecy or poetry, its impact lies in its ability to make us pause—and ask what kind of world we’re building.
Would you like a poetic retelling of Harvey’s message, or a story from the perspective of someone who ignored it until it was too late? I’d love to keep exploring this theme with you.
