And the Light Shines

Terri Wallace

Description

The road to life is not an easy path to follow. Chris discovered that truth in a prison cell as he remembered and told his story to Michael. In the prison cell, he remembered aspects of his life he had forgotten because of the life he had chosen; yet a plan still existed for him. He thought God’s plan for him would end in a prison cell filled with pain and torture, but he was wrong. The path was clear. Would Chris follow it?

Informations

• Publié par: Toplink Publishing, LLC
• Date de parution: 11 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781950256631
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

And the Light Shines
Terri Wallace


Copyright © 2019 by Terri Wallace.
Paperback: 978-1-950256-62-4
eBook: 978-1-950256-63-1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Contents
Pre face
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter T hree
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter S even
Chapter E ight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter El even


Preface
The city was in ruins. The buildings were little more than rubble, stones, and dust. But the energy of the city remained and moved with the single survivor as he walked through the city. He noticed the reddish tint to the sky and the deafening silence that followed the last of the bombs. He walked aimlessly through the rubble looking for a marker that would tell him that he had arrived at the right building where he would leave his message for the following genera tion.
As he walked his mind returned to the beginning of Dumpstar’s reign. Although Dumpstar claimed to have been dually elected by the vote of the people, he was a tyrant with one mission, the destruction of all free thinking in the world. He was like a magician who cast a spell on everyone. The enchantment led people to the darkest part of the human heart where hatred, bitterness, and prejudice dwell. He set brother against brother, father against son and so on until there was no unity in the country. This enchantment soon spread across the world and changed life drastic ally.
If you didn’t believe everything that Dumpstar said, you were labelled a dissident and an outlaw. The dissidents were placed in a prison, a walled off city, to be rehabilitated. Once in this prison, there was no escape. The walls were electrified and security police were placed every ten feet with orders to kill. Dumpstar could not allow these prisoners to escape because they alone could change the world he was creating. They contained a power he could not reach because of the life he had chosen. He could have gained their power if he chose to surrender himself to their God and His way. The prisoners were Christians. The Christians were starved, tortured, beaten, ridiculed and mocked. Some even disappeared. Dumpstar tried everything to get the Christians to turn away from their faith, but no one did. There was only one thing left to do: the total annihilation of the city.
The man shuddered as he thought of the past. His heart was burdened with the knowledge that there was no one to teach or tell the next generation of God’s love for them. The reddish tint in the sky seemed to mingle with the blood on the streets and the deafening silence was broken by an agonizing scream. The police have moved in, the man thought, to kill everyone that had survived the bombs. The man’s pace increased, he had to leave something for the generation to come before he was killed. He climbed a hill of rubble. At the top he paused, rubbed his eyes and looked again in wonder. In the midst of a ruined city, a church stood untouched. Urgency filled him and he ran toward the church. In the church, he found a typewriter and paper. He inserted the paper and left a message. He walked out of the church and thought, it is a good day to die.


Chapter One
The screams of the children could be heard as the police vans rolled through the center of the village. The children scattered. It was useless to run, the children knew, but continued because they might get away this time. The police captured the children, threw them into the vans and left the vil lage.
Jenna watched from the top of the hill, tears streamed down her face as she watched the round up. Nobody knew where the children were taken, but when they returned they were different, devoid of life.
Jenna watched the dust settle from the vans’ passage. She stared at the village wondering why the police came each day. What did they do to the children that made them different? Why did the police have to change the children? What was so wrong with us, she wondered, that they came every day? At the tender age of eight, she knew the city was excellent and the village atrocious. The city was something to be attained. Why wouldn’t someone want to be in the city? The city was clean with shining buildings that can be seen for miles. In the city, people received water from pipes, had food, neat clothes, nice homes to live in, and didn’t have to worry about being captured by the police. Jenna glanced back at the village, her brow furled, life was hard there. One was lucky if one surv ived.
As Jenna got up one of the ragged edges on her tattered dress caught on a rock and tore off. She bent down to pick up the rag and her gaze fell on the city of rubble. The city intrigued her. More than once she had thought of investigating the city but never had because of the police that regularly patrolled the area. It seemed strange to her that she never thought about what her father would think only the police. She realized, she knew exactly what her father would say and the consequences for disobedience. Normally, she would have gone through the consequences but today was different. As she stared at the ruined city, the wind picked up and rolled the ancient debris from the city. Jenna could see paper and clothes moving across the ground. She moved closer to the edge of the hill. The open space was free of tracks and beckoned her towards the city. The wind told her that the police would not be at the city today. Cautiously she descended the hill, her head seemed to swivel around her neck as she checked in every direction for the police patrols. At the bottom of the hill, she took off like lightening. An eternity passed before she covered the expanse and sat gasping for breath behind the broken walls of the city. After she caught her breath, she peeked around the wall at the distance she had covered and wondered how she had made it without been seen.
The ruined city was different. Even in the desolation that surrounded her, she could sense a presence or energy surrounding her. For the first time in her life Jenna was not afraid. She felt different, encompassed in this presence was peace, joy and love. She followed where the presence led. The buildings in the city were crumbling down; some looked like they had been blown apart. The ground was littered with skeletons and yet Jenna knew that the people had willingly died for the presence that led her through the city. As she walked an idea formed in her mind.
The idea sprang from a story an old man told her once. The old man said the story was told to him by his father and had been passed from father to son for a long time. Jenna stopped at one of the buildings and entered to get some relief from the sun. As she rested, the story of the city returned to her. In her mind, she could see the shrivelled man on the hill, wearing a filthy cloth around his middle, gazing lovingly at the ruined city. She didn’t even know that he knew she was there until he began to speak. His raspy voice filled the morning sky.
“My father told me this story from the time I was your age until I had children of my own. It is important that you know that humans didn’t always live like this.” His withered hand swept across the air in the direction where the village was loc ated.
“There was a time that people didn’t live in fear, or wonder if the police would take their children and not return them. Before the reign of Dumpstar, people decided what they wanted to do, where they wanted to go, who they would marry and if they wanted to have children. More importantly, they chose what they wanted to believe and who they would believe in. We had the freedom to choose. Dumpstar came and took that freedom away. Everyone wasn’t ready to give up this freedom. The people that lived in the ruined city would not bow down to Dumpstar and they paid for it with their l ives.”
“I do not want to frighten you child. I wish only to enlighten you to another way of life that has been suppressed for a long time. The rulers think they destroyed the way when the city was demolished, but God is greater and will prevail in the end.”
“God?” Jenna inquired, “Who is this G od? “
“That is why I have come, to tell you about Him. Long before the security police and Dumpstar, God existed. He created the world we live in and someday I will see what it looked like before man destroyed it. In His love, God created us but we decided to go in another direction then the one God had planned for us. But even in this, God did not desert us, He had a plan. When the time was right, God sent His Son to earth to die for the sins we had done. God’s Son’s precious blood washed away the sins of those who believed in Him. He promised that someday we would be with Him in glory, if we followed Him.
That’s exactly what the people in that city did, they followed him. The people in the city were called Christians. They wouldn’t follow Dumpstar so he put them in that city, which was really a prison. He told them to stop following God and he would let them out. The Christians said, “They would rather die than deny their God.” Dumpst