By In writing the first five novels of the FAITH CHRONICLES, I realized when writing Book 6 of the series that I had a lot of questions from the writing of the stories of the Old Testament in the novel, GENESIS, book 4 in the series and HALLELUJAH, book 5 in the series. I had lots of questions. Many dealing with the issues covered in the earlier novels, Faith, Forgiveness, Alcohol Abuse, Love and etc. So, in the sixth novel of the series, Seeing the Power of God, I have written a thrilling and exciting novel that answers all the questions I had in the first five. Before I began writing, I asked the question, Does a person have to believe in the Bible to be a Christian?
If you have ever had a question of why God would do what he does, then Seeing the Power of God is a must read! So far it has picked up numerous 5-star reviews from readers around the globe. Give it a try. Find out for yourself if one needs to believe in the Bible to be a Christian.
BOOK 6
FAITH Chronicles
God’s Word is a fiery, exploding, all-pervading, and living message that should cause us all to fall down to the ground and tremble… yet that is rarely the experience for so many dispirited people of God!
After writing Genesis and Hallelujah, I became one of those people who asked, “Can anyone be a Christian and not believe in the Bible? Is it wrong to question any of the scriptures in the Bible?
Some people believe questioning the Bible, the direction God is going, or even God himself, is blasphemy. Some think it’s a sign of disbelief.
Daniel Thornton is one such man. He believes his son, Rusty Thornton, is lost without God and takes him to a faraway place in the early 1950s near Spicewood, Texas, where he would never come in contact with people. He has an old King James Version of the Bible and began to try and cure his son’s affliction of skepticism.
Rusty Thornton remembers nothing before his eighteenth birthday. The first book he read after learning to read and write was on Hinduism. His father didn’t know how such a book ended up in his library. He took it and hid it from his son, but not until he had read it from cover to cover. Was it too late for his son? Did what he learned about Vishnu and Krishna absorb his entire thought process where he never recognized Jesus Christ as the one and only son of God? Who’s right, Daniel Thornton or his son?
Rusty questions his ability to communicate with animals. Was it a God-given talent? Why can’t he remember anything in his life before his eighteenth birthday? Who is his cousin, Carolyn Thornton, who comes strangely into his life on his twenty-first birthday? Who is the stranger, Billy Joe Briscoe, who is hired to become Rusty’s companion and teach him about Jesus Christ and the Bible?
Let’s try to answer the question, “Is it wrong for Christians to Question God?”
As an author, I found three questions one should never ask. One should not ask a question of the Lord because they think they know better than Him. One should never question God’s authority, a big No, No! We should never ask questions of God to try and stall our obedience to the Lord.
If we are questioning the scriptures in the Bible because we desperately want to know the answer we are searching for, then that should be okay.
In the mind and thoughts of Rusty Thornton, it is perfectly fine to do so!
Snippets from Seeing the Power of God:
***
“My father taught me that God is merciful and caring for all human beings. Yet what I read in the Bible here,” he turns a few more pages, “can hardly be so if this is true.”
He stopped turning the pages at the Book of Joshua and began reading aloud, “Jericho is shut up. God instructed Joshua how to besiege it!” He paused a moment, torn by conflicting emotions.
“Does that make any sense to you, Billy Joe? It causes me to have grave concern over God’s plans. If he is for sure the Creator of all things, how could he possibly instruct one of his own human beings, his own creation, to besiege a city that’s filled with others of his creation and kill men, women, children, and animals… all his creations?”
***
“Let me ask it this way of you, Billy Joe. If God has the power to take out Satan and love us, why doesn’t he do it? Why did the Lord have to come down and die on the cross to save us from the grasp of Satan, who was a creation and subject of God in the first place? Why does Satan still exist if he has disobeyed God more than anyone else?”
***
Rusty Thornton wanted to know what someone who died saw in the afterlife.
“Many say,” Billy Joe jumped in and mixed up the conversation, “that when you die, you will meet a skeleton holding a scythe. Some say you go to Heaven. Some say you go to Hell. Others say you are reincarnated or that you turn into a ghost. Some even say that you sleep for all eternity.
The problem with death, my dear friend, is that we will never know until after we die.”
THE SIDNEY ST. JAMES SHOW 