THE SILVER CHAIR
Chapter Listing
- Behind the Gym (Ready To View)
- Jill is Given a Task (Ready To View)
- The Sailing of a King (Ready To View)
- A Parliament of Owls (Ready To View)
- Puddleglum (Ready To View)
- The Wild Wastelands of the North (Ready To View)
- The Hill of the Strange Trenches (Ready To View)
- The House of Harfang (Ready To View)
- How They Discovered Something Worth Knowing (Ready To View)
- Travels Without the Sun (Ready To View)
- In The Dark Castle (Ready To View)
- The Queen of Underland (Ready To View)
- Underland Without the Queen (ready To View)
- The Bottom of the World (ready To View)
- The Disappearance of Jill (ready To View)
- The Healing of Harms (ready To View)
HEAVEN OR HELL by Ray Mossholder
Jesus spoke more about Hell than He did about Heaven while He was here on Earth. It has rightly been said that, because He did, if there is no Hell then there is no Heaven. But it is also rightly said that Jesus Christ died and rose again to prove He is the only way to Heaven for every living person (John 14:1-3.) He said so and He only spoke the truth (John 14:6.)
Ray:
I'm a Christian but I'm fed up with life as I watch America self-destructing with more and more of the things I hate. In fact, this whole world has gone crazy. Pain and suffering are everywhere. Tragedy is commonplace. Atheists and all others who hate God are trying to delete Him from society. Jesus Christ has been reduced to a swear word. Drug trafficking, the sex trade, pornography, rape, murder, evil laws, have fully replaced the American flag. So, here's my question: Why didn't Christ come back for His Church before our nation lost its mind? In fact, why didn't He come back centuries ago and stop the devil and all the evil on this planet? If I was a loving God, I wouldn't have allowed the world to get into the shape it's in. Why has He allowed it?
Fed Up
Dear Fed Up:
I agree with the points you've made about our nation. The one true God seems to be receiving an eviction notice from more and more Americans. I grieve with you about that. However, please be assured that the questions you've raised about God, and what you wouldn't have done if you were Him, are questions that have been asked by sincere Christians throughout the centuries ever since the night Christ went to the cross for all who would receive Him (John 3:16.) Pain and tragedy have been a major part of this Earth ever since the very first sin in the Garden. So here is my response:
You're NOT God and either am I. If either of us were, we would understand what love is and we don't. We have to work at loving people, even our spouses, especially if they disappoint us in any way. God's love, not ours, is unconditional and is not based on day to day experiences even in the slightest (Romans 8:1, 18-19.). If that wasn't true, I'd still be wallowing in the pig pen I made for myself.. God's love is for the lost as well as for the saved in a way that we, at best, can only understand intellectually. We don't even understand our own love. He IS love..
"God is not willing that ANY should perish but that ALL should come to repentance" ...2 Peter 3:9.
Where you see pain and suffering, our loving God sees HELL AHEAD for all who don't receive Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, as their Savior (Romans 10:8-10.) God knows how hideous eternal life in hell will be.
You, like me, probably don't spend much time in the average day thinking about hell. But have you noticed that when Christ returns for us, the first thing He'll do is wipe the tears out of our eyes? (Revelation 21:4). Why will we all be crying when Christ comes and not shouting with absolute joy? Because we are then going to see every family member, every relative, every friend, every neighbor - people that we've loved - and every acquaintance too who has not sincerely asked Christ to save them while they yet live or lived here on this Earth - thrown into Hell (Revelation 20:11-15.) Every Christian will at that minute realize they could have shared Christ much more openly and lovingly, and reached at least some of these who are forever hell-bound with the message of eternal life with Him. If we hadn't been so busy with the things of this world, or so angry we quit caring about others, or so otherwise occupied day to day with trivial pursuits, we could have reached them with His love. Instead, we'll see them cast into the lake of fire. And the final thing we'll see and hear is them screaming on their way to the beginning of eternity in a never-ending nightmare far beyond any we could have ever known.. The horror and their absolute helplessness at that moment will make us cry like we've never cried before. THEN He'll wipe away our tears. And still we'll never grieve like God is grieving over the lost.
Please realize, had Christ come in answer to Christian's who prayed centuries ago or even a hundred years ago, you or I would never have been born and never known our Savior. Amazing grace!
Maranatha! But reach the lost until He comes.
WHAT WILL HEAVEN BE LIKE?
“HEAVEN” by Randy Alcorn is the definitive book on where every Christian will be after they leave their body at death. Carefully examining the Scriptures, he proves the Bible is full of Scriptural references to life beyond this Earth. "HEAVEN" is a book that is both brilliant and thrilling.
"To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8.) Every Christian has or will leave these earth-suits of ours and death "will be swallowed up in victory" (Isaiah 25:8.)
You and I will celebrate with Jesus Christ forever. The nearly 500 pages of Randy's book "HEAVEN" will excite all Christians who read it. How could any Christian not care about where they will spend eternity? Your whole family, kids included, need to know these truths.
Here is a brief overview of just some of the things the Bible tells us about Heaven. Read Randy's book for the Scriptural proof. You won’t need harp lessons or a voice that won’t ever wear out singing hymns. But if you think anything you've done on Earth has been exciting, you ain't seen nothing yet!
WHAT WE ASSUME ABOUT HEAVEN WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT HEAVEN
Non-Earth New Earth
Disembodied Resurrected (embodied
with a new indestructible
body)
Completely foreign All the comforts of
to the great things home with the
we enjoy here innovations of our
on Earth infinitely creative
God.
Leaving favorite things behind Retaining the good things;
Finding the best ahead
No time and space Time and space
Static Dynamic
Neither old (like Eden) nor new and Both old and new
Earthly; just strange and unknown
Constant boredom with nothing to do; Father God,
Floating on a cloud and playing Jesus Christ
a harp. and the Holy Spirit
to worship and follow;
A universe to rule;
Purposeful work
to accomplish;
Our Christian
family with old and
new friends to
enjoy forever.
Boring, No learning or discovery; An eternity of
Instant and complete knowledge. learning and
Lots of desire. discovering.
Deep and lasting regret over things The absence of regret;
we lived through and did in life. Never any sorrow,
pain or tragedy
Constant presence
of adventure, joy
and awesome
surprises.
In short, we're going to love Heaven beyond anything we've loved on Earth.
Because the Holy Spirit will permeate everything happening, Heaven will be forever filled with the fruit of the Spirit as recorded in Galatians 5:22-23 - "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."
See you there, Ray
TWO VERY DIFFERENT VOICES
TWO VERY DIFFERENT VOICES
A testimony from Ray Mossholder
"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" (John 10:27)
The following is how I came to recognize the awesome power of the truth behind I Corinthians 2:14-16 as Christ healed me of cancer without need for surgery.
God was taking me through three healings for cancer of the lower tract when He led me to these verses during the first of the three encounters. This was very soon after I had gone to a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles “to prove she was a fake” and God turned the tables on me and showed me healing was for today. Directly after watching her minister and hearing her say, "I don't know if I have 'the gift of healing.' I don't even know what 'the gift of healing' is," I entered into the healing ministry myself.
It was a really traumatic time in my life because I came home to Daly City, California, all excited about meeting her, seeing all the Lord did through her and having her talk with me afterward. I was the youth director and spoke that Sunday night – sharing all I’d seen and heard in Miss Kuhlman’s meeting. Afterward the pastor said gruffly, “Come to my office!” and read the riot act to me. He said, “I’m not going to have you lie to my people like that. You’ll either theologically agree with me or resign! You’re going to have to renounce what you’ve said you saw at that woman’s meeting. Go home and pray with Arlyne, then come back and tell me you’ve repented.” This pastor believed in all of the gifts of the Spirit, he simply didn't believe women should at all be in a speaking ministry.
I came home and told Arlyne we needed to pray and how angry the pastor was with me. I told her he said I had to renounce what I’d seen. We knelt down and I didn’t even begin praying. We instead laughed. It was ludicrous. We got up off our knees fully aware that I couldn't renounce what my eyes had actually seen. So I went back to the pastor and was fired for insubordination.
Arlyne, our three little ones, two teenagers we were raising and I wondered what would happen to us with no more money and no idea of where God wanted us to go.
That next weekend I was teaching at a camp full of Chinese teenagers from Chinatown in San Francisco. After an evening session I went to the bathroom and passed blood. I was shocked, prayed, but then went to sleep fitfully. The next morning a demon spirit woke me and was saying audibly as I came out of slumber, “You have cancer. You are going to die. And what will happen to your wife and children now? You’ll leave them penniless and make them a laughing stock!” Instantly that voice was replaced with a voice I knew was Jesus Christ Himself, my Shepherd (John 10:27-29). He said, “Peace, be still. Peace, be still” and absolute calm came over me at once.
I did a final morning meeting and camp was over. The campground was near Sebastapool, California, and a friend of mine who lived there had given me a box of apples to take home to my family. It was sitting next to me on the front seat of my Volkswagon and when I climbed in to drive home I laid the Bible I’d taught from that morning, the Living Bible paraphrase, on top of the apples. I was very uncomfortable, a gnawing pain inside me near my waist wouldn’t stop.
I turned on the radio to get my mind off the pain and the blood I’d passed. I found just the right programming - a Giant-Dodger baseball game. I was a rip-roaring Giants fan at the time and when I began to listen, the Dodgers were leading 7-2. As I drove, the score began to change…7-3, 7-4, 7-5, 7-6. I was deeply engrossed in both the game and the driving when I heard a voice again. The voice commanded, “Turn off your radio!” I felt a tug of reluctance because I was so much into the game, but I obeyed. Instantly the voice spoke again: “Command the hand of God to heal you!” Again, I instantly obeyed. I said audibly,“I command the hand of God to heal me!” The pain was gone.
Immediately fear replaced the pain. I thought, “Who just spoke to me - God or the devil - who just told me to command God’s hand to heal me? Have I just committed a terrible sin? Who am I to command GOD to do ANYTHING?”
At almost the same moment, I realized my Bible was sitting on the apples. I prayed, “Oh God, I’m sorry if I just obeyed the devil. I’m terribly confused. Please give me a word to know if that was Your voice I obeyed.” I reached over and picked my Bible up while pulling the car over to the side of the road so that I could read. Opening the Bible at random, my eyes saw the latter part of 1 Corinthians 2:12-16. What I read at that moment thrilled me. It has ever since. I’ve often commanded healing ever since with great results.
Here's what 1 Corinthians 2:12-16 says in the Living Bible (and it is the only version of the Bible that says it exactly this way, so think of the odds of that!): "And God has actually given us His Spirit (not the world's spirit), to tell us about the wonderful free gifts of grace and blessings that God has given us. In telling you about these gifts we have even used the very words given to us by the Holy Spirit, not words that we as men might choose. So we use the Holy Spirit's words to explain the Holy Spirit's facts. But the man who isn't a Christian can't understand and can't accept these thoughts from God, which the Holy Spirit teaches us. They sound foolish to him, because only those who have the Holy Spirit within them can understand what the Holy Spirit means. Others just can't take it in. But the spiritual man has insight into everything, and that bothers and baffles the man of the world, who can't understand him at all. How could he? For certainly he has never been one to know the Lords thoughts, or to discuss them with Him, or to move the hands of God by prayer."
The pain was gone and stayed gone for several days. I thought for sure I'd been healed. I had no idea God was going to take me through two more encounters before erasing the cancer forever, but He did.
One afternoon I passed blood again and the pain was back too. That week I went to Kaiser Hospital and a doctor, after a thorough examination, told me I had cancer of the lower tract. He scheduled me for surgery. But that evening I sat in church with my wife and heard the pastor refer to "the Holy Spirit within us." Suddenly the Holy Spirit amplified that simple phrase as He so often amplifies a certain Scripture verse you or I are reading. I got a silly thought. I thought if my back itched and I asked my wife to scratch it, she would do that even in church. So since the Holy Spirit is within me and is closest to the cancer in my body, and since Jesus loves me, I could ask the Holy Spirit to take away the cancer. So that's exactly what I did. Instantly the pain that had been stronger than before was gone entirely. It stayed gone for nearly a week. During that time. I assumed I was healed. But then I passed blood again and the pain was back yet again. Now surgery seemed inevitable.
The night before the surgery was to take place I was prayed for by a group of my Christian friends with the laying on of hands. The next morning I went to the hospital for surgery. I had no pain that morning but my doctor had said to come. Funny how we Christians so often believe human doctors rather than the Great Physican's own words(John 14:12-14.)
A doctor greeted me and said, “I need to take two more X-rays. I want to be absolutely certain where I should cut.” I praise God to this day that he did that. He came back an hour later. I was sitting on a gurney. He was a Chinese doctor at a San Francisco Kaiser Hospital and said, “A busy day like this and they send a man like you here. You don’t have cancer. Go home!”
But what of commanding God’s hand to heal, the direction I received in my car? Again, here are the final words of 1 Corinthians 2:16as written in the Living Bible paraphrase: For we Christians actually do have with us a portion of the very thoughts and mind of Christ.
The above is both strong and weak. The New American Standard Bible says pretty well the same thing in 1 Corinthians 2:14-16: "But a natural man does not accept things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE IS WILLING TO INSTRUCT HIM? BUT WE HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST.
Only the words in Verse 15 seems to me to obscure the full and breathless wonder of these verses. Unless you are in certain occupations, the words "appraises" and "appraise" aren't common in a Christian's vocabulary, though the very point made in the Living can certainly be understood from it: “FOR WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM?”
The only question left here is: is the Lord in that verse instructing the spiritual man, or is the spiritual man instructing the Lord, i.e, commanding the Lord? The answer is in the very next words: BUT WE HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST.
A footnote under Verse 14 in the New American Standard Bible published by Zondervan, underlines the whole point. It reads: "Natural man. Described in Jude 19 as one who is "worldly-minded" (cf Romans 8:9). The non-Christian is basically dominated by the merely physical, worldly or natural life. Because he does not possess the Holy Spirit, he is not equipped to receive appreciatively truth that comes from the Spirit. Such a person needs the new birth (John 3:1-8; Titus 3:5-6).Foolishness (see 1 Corinthians 1:18.)
What joy to know the living Creator God in three Persons, speaks to us today. Oh, what a difference it will make in our lives when we hear Him!
DR. LUKE AND THE BOOK OF ACTS
LUKE 1:1-4
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.”
ACTS 1:1-2 “The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when He was taken up to Heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen.”
Dr. Luke could rightly be called “The first Christian historian.” Today we'd most likely call him “an investigative reporter.” He could have read the Book of Mark because it had been published earlier than his writing of Luke. He also may have interviewed Mary to get her perspective and exact details of Christ's birth, their flight to Egypt, and the issue of Jesus in the Jerusalem temple at the age of twelve.
The two books Luke wrote – Luke and Acts – are more than a fourth of the New Testament.
Even though Paul called “Doctor” Luke “the beloved Physician,” in Colossians 4:14, doctors were totally unskilled in the first century, often trying to cure infections with cow dung and other such things. Once Luke realized the truth of Mark 16:17, “My believers – and Luke was definitely a believer in Christ – will lay hands on the sick and the sick will be healed,” he had a FAR GREATER HEALING POWER than any medicines known in his day...or ours! ...Then when he saw Paul and Peter laying hands, he undoubtedly did that too.
Philemon 24 – Luke was with Paul while Paul was under house arrest in Rome. There, Paul called Luke “a fellow worker.”
In the very last chapter Paul ever wrote – 2 Timothy – Luke was with him. In fact, Paul wrote, “Luke alone is with me.” At that time, Paul was about to be put to death.
Many biblical scholars assume Luke was a Gentile who became a Christian, BUT THE BIBLE DOESN'T SAY THAT. If Luke was a Gentile, he was the only non-Jewish author of the New Testament.
Another thing the Bible doesn't tell us is who Theophilus was. That name was a popular one in that time. It could have been a name Luke used to describe ALL Christians. But it is also very possible that Luke wrote it specifically for a Christian in royalty whose name was Theophilus, a government member who wanted a totally accurate history from the birth of Christ to the death of Paul. It shouldn't shock you to know that that government member may have paid Luke to write these books, knowing how accurate Luke would be, and that many eye-witnesses, including disciples, were still living and could give accurate reports from their perspectives too, just as Mary did.
And Luke wasn't only a historian, he was a theologian. Luke had been with the disciples as well as with Paul long enough to thoroughlly understand the theology of Christianity first-hand. If Theophilus was royalty, he learned from reading Luke's two books exactly how Christ died for the gentiles, just as He'd died for the Jews. Acts furthur expands the truth that Gentiles were every bit as much a part of the Christian life as the Jews were. As the angel announced to the shepherds in Luke 2:10-11, “I bring you good news that will bring great joy TO ALL THE PEOPLE. The Savior – yes. The Messiah, the Lord – has been born today.” ...Savior was Luke's favorite word to describe Jesus, and He uses it throughout the book that bears his name.
Luke tells us several really powerful things the three other gospel writers left out:
For example, there's what we call “the Christmas story” of Jesus born in a manger and so much of what happened at that time.
Luke also is the only author who includes the parable of the good Samaritan; the widow who gave her last mite; and the parable of the prodigal son. His major emphasis is on Jesus' ministry to the outcasts, the poor, and to the religiously unfit. He also shows how vital women were in the spreading of the gospel.
Because it was so many centuries ago, how do we know it was Luke who wrote both Luke and Acts? First, because the still-living disciples could have denounced it as a fraud if it wasn't the truth. And from the time he wrote each book, people identified Luke as the author.
The mentions in various portions of each book concerning both government members and geography, cofirms their historicity. Since there is no mention of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. or Nero's persecution of the Christians which began about 64 a.d., Acts was most likely completed in 62 a.d. Which was prior to the execution of Paul. That's why his execution is not recorded.
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