Fire and Sword (26 page)

Paul looked around him as the whole jail shook violently. Suddenly their cell door flung open. They could hear the other cell doors in the jail opening with a crash. Serus looked at Gabriel.

“All of them?”

“The power of such praise liberates many,” explained Gabriel. “Not just those doing the praising. But you may release their bonds.”

Serus went in and touched the shackles that bound Paul and Silas. They fell off the men. He did the same with the other prisoners as well. They were completely baffled at the turn of events. Within a few minutes, some of the other prisoners began poking their heads out of their cells, wondering what had happened. They gathered outside Silas and Paul’s cell, as if compelled to join the men whose prayers had obviously been heard.

“Stop! Stop!” cried a voice.

The jailer rushed in with a torch. Some of his family, who lived with him in the house above the jail, were with him. He looked at his family and then put his hand on his sword and began drawing it out. Paul saw this and rushed at the man.

“No! Don’t kill yourself. We’re all here!”

The man fell to his knees, trembling with both fear and gratitude. He could see that these were not ordinary men. He didn’t understand this God they served, but he knew that he wanted to serve Him as well. Recalling their words to him earlier, the jailer pleaded with Paul and Silas: “What must I do to be saved?”

Paul marveled at the Lord’s grace—the saving of the very jailer who had custody of them. Paul put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Listen to me. If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you—and even these in your household—can be saved.”

The man looked back at his family, and saw his wife with tears in her eyes. He nodded in agreement, and Paul and Silas prayed with the man and his family. Within the hour they had baptized them and were seated at the man’s table enjoying a meal!

Serus and Gabriel stood in a corner of the room. They enjoyed the sweet sense of fellowship that filled the house. Serus suddenly looked at Gabriel with an excited look. “I hear joyous shouting.”

Gabriel smiled.

“It is the Host, Serus,” said Gabriel. “They are shouting with great joy at this man’s salvation.

Serus looked at the family.

“May there be many such celebrations in Heaven!”

Chronicles of the Host

“I am amazed at Athens,” said Paul. “Idols everywhere!”

They had just passed a market with yet another shrine dedicated to one of the hundreds of gods worshiped in this very religious city. Athens was a cultural, political, and religious center of Greece. It attracted philosophers, religionists, and orators from all over the empire who came to Athens to see and be seen.

The representation of so many gods, combined with the Greek need to be precise, had even caused the creation of one idol that intrigued Paul; dedicated to an “unknown god,” it was designed to placate any god who had not been recognized. Paul found his way to a market where many men met to debate their varying points of view in regards to religion and life.

Two groups in particular were intrigued with Paul’s teaching: the Epicureans and the Stoics. The Epicureans taught that life was best experienced through the senses, that there was no real life after death, that life and knowledge must be accumulated by what is experienced. The Stoics believed that life is best lived void of passion, that reason must control passion, that true knowledge is only attainable when one is in complete control. But what brought these and others to this place was the exchange of thoughts and ideas—and the words Paul brought them were intriguing.

“Excuse me, sir, but your words are strange to us,” said a man. “We have many gods here.”

“Yes, and each one says something different!” said another to general laughter.

Paul smiled. “You do have many gods here,” he said. He walked over to one stone in particular. “I even found among all these others an inscription for an unknown god.”

Paul stood in front of the idol. “Men of Athens, that which you worship as unknown, I am going to proclaim to you. The God whom I serve—the God who made the world and everything in it—is the Lord of Heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. God does not live in rocks and buildings. Nor is He is served by human hands, as if He needed anything. You yourselves understand that He who created all is not dependent upon human wisdom.”

“But, sir,” asked one man, “we have always worshiped in temples. If we do not worship what we see, then how can we truly worship? Was this not what man was made for—to worship?”

Several men agreed.

“Of course,” said Paul. “From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him.” Paul paused and looked at Silas. “Though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being. You are learned men. Even some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’ Agreed?”

“Of course we believe that,” said a Stoic. “Indeed we are His offspring.”

“Well, then,” Paul continued, “since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. We are like our Creator in this—that we are made in His image. And friends, in the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent of such false worship.”

Paul placed his hand on the altar to the “Unknown God.”

“These will not suffice anymore. We have no excuse to worship such things. For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

Crispin and Serus watched Paul as he deliberated with the Greeks on the following day. Each of the men there was proud of his philosophy and argued his point passionately. Crispin listened with interest at the intricate—albeit flawed—lines of reasoning that human thought had developed. As an instructor at the Academy of the Host, Crispin often debated with students who listened to his teaching. One student in particular had taken the debate too far—Lucifer—and the result forever marred all human thinking. He regretted those days of opposition in Heaven.

“These men don’t know what they speak of,” said Serus, listening to a Stoic deliver his thought with great dispassion. “Such nonsense.”

“It’s what comes of a mind created by the Most High, but separated from Him,” said Crispin. “A mind void of truth will always stray to its fundamental root.”

“Ignorance?” asked Serus.

“Pride,” Crispin said.

They continued their stroll, stopping to listen to a man argue that wisdom is the essential thing. Several enemy angels also hung about—inflaming the intellectual arrogance that human knowledge always feeds on. Among them was Pellecus, who enjoyed any opportunity to see Paul bested by another human. Crispin noted these angels.

“Those creatures. They were great in their day. They taught alongside me at the Academy and were very good handlers of truth. Gifted teachers. But pride set in and ruined both the gift and the message.”

“So says you, Crispin,” barked back Pellecus, who was sitting amid a group of Stoics. “Human minds are great empty pots. Just waiting to be filled.”

“True,” said Crispin. “The Most High gifted men with a great capacity for learning. But when men stray from the truth that only comes from God, they will inevitably fill their minds with something less than truth.” He looked at the Stoic with compassion. “Anything that is not of God is not of truth.”

“Truth is an evolving dynamic,” said Kara. “As all of these humans prove. Each has created his own truth. Each is satisfied with his own gods. They even have a stone dedicated to any god they might have missed.” He winked at Crispin. “You know how offended some gods get.”

“The gods they worship are nothing more than prideful conjectures,” said Crispin. “Wishful thinking on the part of men who know there is something greater than themselves but are helpless in attaining it. The Most High created men to be hungry for His love. But pride has pushed that love away.”

“Pride is what fans that desire to reach the Most High,” countered Pellecus. “In whatever form it takes—be it stone, wood, or gold. It is not these pathetic creatures’ fault that the Most High is offended at being carved in rock.” He patted a beautiful statue of Apollo. “Some of them are quite good actually.”

“Pride sometimes fans the desire to achieve or reach greatness,” said Crispin. “But it deceives. No man may attain the Lord apart from His gracious reaching out. We found that out when the Most High was willing to die for the very creatures who lost their way.”

“Nevertheless, the Lord would do well to accept the praises of men who seek Him in stone.”

“Perhaps
your
master accepts such praise,” said Crispin. “The Most High is worshiped in spirit and in truth. Not in prideful nonsense.”

“This is exactly why the rebellion took place—this sort of slavish acknowledgment of a God who is too holy to be seen and too easily offended.”

“Did you say rebellion?” Crispin asked slyly. “I always thought it was a progression of angelic thought.”

“It’s war, Crispin,” said Pellecus. “However you define it. And in the end this love you spew will fail. Men will never give way to such grace. They are too steeped in themselves to worship anyone else with real meaning. Love will always fail when it’s left to humans.”

“Precisely,” said Crispin. “That’s why it wasn’t left to humans.”

They continued walking, moving in close to where Paul stood praying, as he prepared to speak with the men who had invited him back. Silas and the others were with him, also praying and asking God’s blessing on their effort.