It’s been more than a half-century since I read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Until rather recently, I don’t believe I'd seen any of its film adaptations. And I’ve never been very good at memorization. 

Yet for 50+ years, I've been able to recite the last line of this beloved novel: 

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”  

The speaker, of course, is Sydney Carton. He is headed for the guillotine, sacrificing himself to accept the punishment meant for the aristocrat Charles Darnay. 

I don’t know about you, but I see in this story a reflection, albeit imperfect, of Christ’s death on the cross as payment for the sins of the world, so that “whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:15).  

But apparently I’m wrong about that, because the Wikipedia entry on this novel insists on another meaning entirely: “The very last thoughts attributed to Carton, in their poetic use of repetition, register this faith as a calm and soothing certainty: that both the name of Sydney Carton and of France will be reborn into glory and made ‘illustrious.’" 

There’s no mention of Jesus Christ in this somewhat lengthy synopsis. No mention of the biblical account of His sacrifice, which seemed to me so clearly to have inspired Dickens. And just one mention of Heaven, in its quotation of the novel’s opening paragraph.  

So color my face red: A Tale of Two Cities must be nothing more than a compelling saga about those greedy aristocrats and the noble (if murderous) revolutionaries and a suicidal lawyer who was trying to make a name for himself with his Top Secret sacrifice. 

Just one problem with that assessment: Charles Dickens was a devoted Christian and student of the New Testament. Consider just some of what he wrote on the subject:

• “The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.” 
• “Remember!--It is Christianity to do good always--even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything." 
• “I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and lessons of Our Saviour.” 
• “I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man’s narrow construction of its letter here or there.”

What's more, Dickens’ last published work was a gospel-retelling entitled The Life of our Lord. Written for his children, it was an instant best-seller when it was finally published in 1934, after the death of his last child.  

Some observers charge that Dickens believed in a works-based plan of salvation. If that’s true – and it may be so – how curious that he painted, in Sydney Carton, such an astounding picture of substitutionary sacrifice in the satisfaction of a death penalty. I certainly have read only an infinitesimal fraction of the world’s books, so I’m no expert; but from what I have read, I don’t know of any novelist who more clearly captured Christ’s atoning sacrifice.    

I’m guessing there must be much more biblical imagery in A Tale of Two Cities – imagery that I would have missed when I read it, having been well on my way to full-blown atheism, and having never paid a bit of attention to my weekly Sunday School lessons. It’s high time I dug out my old copy of this outstanding novel and read it through the lens of the Bible.  

Some time back, I caught a movie version of A Tale of Two Cities – the 1935 edition produced by David O. Selznick of Gone with the Wind fame, starring Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton.
 
The ending was, not surprisingly, absolutely riveting. As Carton headed up to the guillotine at the film’s end and the camera panned to the heavens, he spoke those heart-wrenching last words, “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done …”
 
But even more gripping was what followed: A title card reading, “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. –John 11:25”
 
Dickens himself quoted this verse four times in his novel.  I wonder how many of the more recent movie versions included it? I’m guessing none, but perhaps I’m wrong – perhaps another movie-maker or two felt compelled to acknowledge the Christian message of this unforgettable story; it’s hardly subtle, and overlooking it would be an obvious  demonstration of willful ignorance.   

"Unsolved scientific mysteries don’t have to be large-scale questions about the nature of the universe," wrote someone named Thor Jensen, long enough ago that I've lost the original reference. "They can be closer to home--such as the centuries-long investigation into why cats purr. The soft rumbling noise is typically made as an expression of happiness and contentment, but cats also emit the sound when  they’re upset or recovering from injury ... Even more puzzling is how they purr--there’s no specific organ that makes the sound, and the best theory we have is that it’s a result of contractions of the larynx around the vocal [chords]."

And that's just the start. It seems that there are more unsolved mysteries in this world than solutions, beginning with the origins of all that mystical, mythical compressed matter that supposedly erupted, via a mysteriously caused Big Bang, into everything in the universe. (No word on where space came from.) Then there are puzzles about phenomena from human fingerprints to the distribution of prime numbers to the existence of gravity and free will.
 
So here's my question: How is it that so many people--allegedly a growing majority, including a grand proportion of our intelligentsia--are trusting their eternities to the word of scientists who can't even explain how cats purr? We're talking about the most critical whodunit of our lives, and the atheists' bumbling Hercules Poirots are turning a blind eye to the obvious Suspect.

If you're looking for the solution, open the nearest Bible; you'll find it thoroughly explained in the very first sentence, AKA Genesis 1:1.

Perhaps you’ve noticed: A celebrity contracts XYZ disease, or loses a loved one to it, and here comes the pitch for battling it. “Let’s conquer XYZ in our lifetimes so that no one else has suffer!” You can even see it in the daily obituaries, where survivors of the less-than-famous request, in lieu of flowers, memorial donations to XYZ research.
 
The good Lord knows there are all kinds of horrible diseases to take us out. I’ve personally lost family and friends to everything from heart disease to breast, colorectal, kidney and ovarian cancer, from MS and lupus to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. You probably have, too. So which of these killers should we fight with all our hearts, souls, minds and, most importantly, money?
 
Here’s the problem. Even if we were to succeed in wiping out all these diseases, its victims would ultimately die of something else – because it’s death that’s our enemy, not the means of death. In fact, sooner or later, we are all going to die of something, leaving these earthly bodies behind to spend eternity in heaven or hell. What sense does it make to pour our time and money into fighting earth’s inevitable end, while virtually ignoring the reality of eternity?
 
Fortunately, there’s a solution: experiencing death as the doorway to everlasting joy in heaven. We need simply repent of what God says is sin and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to have paid our sin penalty on the cross. (Not that it’s easy; as Jesus is quoted as saying in Luke 9:23, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” But it is simple.)
 
You say you don’t believe this? You hold to some other scenario, such as “we cease to exist upon death” or “everyone goes to heaven except for Hitler” or “no one can possibly know what happens after death”?
 
But what if you’re wrong? Considering that we’re talking about eternity, don’t you think it might conceivably be worth investigating the subject as ardently as you plan your next week-long vacation? I beg you to do so before it’s too late; the Lord has promised that you will find Him when you seek Him with all your heart (see, e.g., Jeremiah 29:13).  
 
If you’re already a born-again believer, great! I look forward to seeing you here, There or in the air. In the meantime, how about reserving your charitable contributions for efforts that are making a difference for all eternity? 

Since I became a born-again Christian in 2000, I've thought incessantly about how to reach the lost – especially the young. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that there are two approaches that might have opened my eyes many moons ago.
 
SELECT THE RIGHT SOURCE
 
First, I might have been greatly impressed had someone I admired taken the time to discuss topics such as these with me:

• Absolute truth. We all know it’s just plain wrong to murder, steal, and lie. No matter what the naysayers may tell you, absolute truth does prevail in every realm -- physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Do not listen to those who tell you it doesn't.
• Can’t see it? So what? Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it does not exist. Consider love, hate, joy, depression, oxygen, helium, gravity, and wind. We may see the effects of each, but not the thing itself. So when someone tells you that God doesn't exist because we can’t see Him, don't you believe it.
• There is a Creator. And there’s a stunning amount of readily available evidence to prove it.
• The Bible is true. Ditto on the evidence front, starting with science and prophecy.
• This life will end. Your loved ones will die someday. So will you. Here's how you can make sure you'll all be spending eternity together in eternal joy.

It would’ve been nice if these things had been taught in the Sunday school my parents dragged me to every week, until I escaped to boarding school. Although maybe they were addressed; I usually spent those classes daydreaming about more interesting subjects, like horses or boys. But there were some older kids and adults I thought the world of, and probably would have listened to – even if the subject had been God.
 
So that's one possibility: Reach out to the lost one-on-one, via Christians whom they admire. 
 
TEACH THE CONTROVERSY
 
A professor at a nearby Lutheran school routinely promotes teaching students both sides of any worldview issue. His reasoning: even those well-instructed in Christian truth will one day walk out into a big wide world that mocks this truth, substituting clever lies disguised as the real deal. It’s up to the Christian community to help young people understand those lies within the context of truth, to prevent their faith from being shaken.  
 
For instance, don't simply teach young people that the Grand Canyon was carved out by the Genesis Flood. Do so of course, but also:

• Explore the world’s old-earth explanations with them, pinpointing where each one falls into absurdity.
• Help them to consider how even a mighty little river could possibly have carved out this vast canyon, and weigh that explanation against the likelihood that it was formed quickly by a cataclysmic hydraulic event.
• Show them photos of the Canyon’s curved rock layers and ask how those layers could possibly have been caused by slow erosion and deposition; then show them how easily the Flood explains such formations.  
• Ditto on the subject of fossils, so often advanced by evolutionists as proof of their God-free old-earth theories.  

 
And that’s just one narrow slice of the discipline-wide science supporting the biblical worldview. I'll bet the same approach could be taken with virtually any subject of interest to a particular young student. For instance, a budding historian might be interested in comparing biblical accounts to what the world says about the evolution of languages. Or perhaps he or she would like to explore the root causes of Nazi Germany, and what secularists say on that score vs. what the Bible suggests.
 
THE BOTTOM LINE
 
So there you are – two possible ways to help the vulnerable young grow up to be solid Christians, well-prepared to help their own children follow suit. If you have further suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Click here to email me.  

Is there anyone in America who hasn’t heard the story of Chicken Little – the chick upon whose head or tail something falls and who immediately erupts into full-blown “THE SKY IS FALLING!” panic?
 
It’s a folk tale that’s either a couple hundred years old or a couple thousand, depending upon who’s telling its history. And there are many different versions out there today, featuring catalysts from an acorn plummeting onto Chicken Little’s noggin to a leaf drifting onto her tail. There are apparently numerous endings available, too, most of them featuring an evil fox eating Chicken Little’s friends for supper.
 
But whatever its denouement, the point of the story is obvious: Don’t ever panic over foolish fears based on sketchy claims from unreliable sources. And for Pete’s sake, if you simply can’t control your terror, keep it to yourself; please don’t infect others with it.
 
Whichever positions you've taken in the current pandemic debates, you have to admit that the world has ignored the lessons of Chicken Little, allowing itself to become overwhelmed by fear.  And if certain observers are correct, it’s only the start; a much more devastating virus may already be on its way, along with another surefire vaccine or two. Grab the kids and head for the hills, Ma!
 
This is not to say that we should just ignore diseases and other dangers. And naturally we should take reasonable precautions: If you’re sick, stay home and resist the temptation to go wandering around a nursing home. If you’re well but have an acquaintance who is sick, don’t pay her a friendly visit until she’s better. And if you’re a healthcare worker, be sure to wash your hands thoroughly between patients, just as Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis advised in 1847.  
 
Of course, many people have good reason to be hysterical over this current pandemic, as well as a host of other potentially deadly dangers. Because the truth is this: We are all going to die, sooner or later. And for many people, death will be the gateway to an eternity in hell, where “there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth,” as Jesus warned multiple times.
 
It doesn’t have to be that way. As any born-again believer in Jesus Christ can tell you, God has made a way for every last person to be saved for all eternity. Here's how: Repent of what He has defined, in His word, as sin; and then trust in Jesus to have paid the penalty for that sin, in full, on the cross. If you do this, you can look forward to heaven as your eternal home, and perfect joy as its endless theme.
 
These are essentially our choices: Embrace the world’s fear and cling to this life as long as possible. Or relax: Embrace the Lord and His plan of salvation. Trust in Him to be in control of every facet of your life. And get ready for an eternity that will be glorious beyond our imaginations.     
 
Don’t believe it? That’s your privilege, of course. But as they say, “Think while it’s still legal.” Investigate the subject for yourself; here’s one place to start. If you do so with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, you’re guaranteed a happily ever after.
 
Hope to see you there!

I didn’t think it would ever happen. But just three short years after falling in love with the Adoniram Judson biography To the Golden Shore, another book is threatening to overtake my heart’s literary #1 spot.
 
That book is Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas (Harper One, 2007). It’s the story of the horrific African slave trade, and the institution of slavery throughout the British empire, and one man’s epic 20+-year battle to abolish both.
 
Over the years, I had read and heard a great deal about slavery, starting with the enslavement of the children of Israel by the ancient Egyptians, as described in the Bible’s book of Exodus. And of course you can hardly grow up in America without hearing many accounts of the institution’s abominations in the South.
 
But earlier this year, I learned a great deal more from Jonathan Aitken’s stunning biography John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (Crossway, 2007). Then, to further my education, Maranatha Baptist University’s Dr. David Saxon and his wife Jamie recommended that I read this Wilberforce biography.  
 
After sketching out the content of the book for me, Jamie Saxon added an irresistible incentive: “You’ll love his writing.” And indeed, my review of this book really has to start with a mention of the extraordinary writing of Eric Metaxas.
 
I always mark up my books, but normally only to highlight important facts. Not this time: At least half of my mark-ups are to call attention to particularly elegant language, or especially poignant observations, or even the author’s wonderful sense of humor (amazingly, there’s plenty to laugh about even in this dead-serious book about the abolition of slavery – more proof of Metaxas’s unique gift, I suppose). You’ll find just a few examples of his skill in the excerpts below.
 
So, in a nutshell, William Wilberforce (1759-1833) was a brilliant and wealthy British politician and Member of Parliament who spent the first years of his career as a party animal; became a born-again Christian in his mid-20s; and eventually, having heard about the ghastly ways that African slaves were treated during and after their transport to the New World, embraced the cause of abolition.
 
Metaxas’s account of Wilberforce’s conversion to Christ is alone worth the price of the book. What Wilberforce would later call his “Great Change” didn’t happen overnight. But it seems that a key event in this process was a horse-drawn chaise trip he and his equally brilliant friend Isaac Milner took from Nice to Calais, over 1200 miles of winding, unpaved roads in heavy snowfall. To occupy themselves, they read and discussed Philip Doddridge’s 1745 book The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. Writes Metaxas of this journey:
 
“The extraordinary felicity of this scene, of these incandescent minds meeting on this subject of eternal things, sailing in their horse-drawn coach through the mountains, seems like something out of a fairytale, one in which a gnome and a giant on a journey in a sphere of glass and silver discover the Well at the World’s End, and drinking a draught therefrom learn the secret meaning at the heart of the universe.” (pp. 47-48)
 
It was this journey that apparently changed Wilberforce’s heart once and for all:
 
“Anyone who had been privy to his thoughts at this time would have wondered what had happened to the gay, carefree fellow of just a few months before -- the one … who had thought nothing of shaving the truth here and there during his speech in the castle yard at York to ‘tear the enemy to pieces’ and elevate himself to the highest parliamentary place in the land; who ate and drank and danced and sang till the wee hours of hundreds of mornings. Where had that fellow gone?” (p 49)
 
It’s uncertain exactly how this new creature in Christ first came to make the abolition movement his life’s work. Ex-slave-trader, beloved pastor and “Amazing Grace” author John Newton was a family friend, and no doubt his conversation had something to do with it. And along the way, Wilberforce also befriended a number of other folks who would play key roles in his campaign.
 
It’s possible that Wilberforce’s attention was first arrested by the accounts he heard and read of “the Middle Passage” – the second leg of slave ships’ trip from England to Africa, Africa to the New World, and then home to England again. It was in Africa that the English traders kidnapped men, women and children, often with the help of local chieftains, and packed them into ships without regard to their health or comfort.
 
The conditions were unimaginably awful: overcrowding so excessive that in some cases the captives were piled on top of each other; no fresh air; suffocating heat; and relentless stench. Many died outright during the ensuing weeks, before being unloaded on the other side of the Atlantic. And in at least one case known as the Zong Incident, 131 sick and even relatively healthy slaves were simply tossed overboard into the ocean to drown or be devoured by sharks. The reason: the captain would be rewarded for his work by the value of his cargo at auction, and sick slaves didn’t fetch much; but dead slaves were covered in full by insurance.
 
Metaxas quotes extensively from some of the first-person accounts of the atrocities. I won’t repeat any of them here. I can’t. You must read them yourself. Try not to weep.
 
But it must have been such accounts that transformed Wilberforce and his companions into passionate enemies of slavery. And thanks in part to their zealous efforts to capture the hearts of British citizens, the abolition movement gained strength throughout England in the last quarter of the 18th century.
 
It’s important to recognize the spiritual nature of this movement. As the author notes, “The acutely Christian character of the British abolitionist movement is undeniable, for its leaders were all consciously acting out of the principles of their deeply held faith.” (p 96)
 
Yet some of abolition’s enemies claimed to be Christians, too. Metaxas comments: “For this the leaders of the Church of England, not merely the people in its pews, were to blame. The Church of England at the time had a great deal of money invested in West Indian plantations and did not make any connection between the tenets of the Christian faith and abolition. Making that connection fell to outsiders – to the Methodists and other so-called Dissenters, such as the Quakers and Moravians.” (p 96)
 
(An aside: the author’s discussions of England’s “retreat from serious Christian faith” in the 18th century is one of the fascinating subplots in this book.)
 
At any rate, Wilberforce became convinced that he must lead the charge against the slave trade in Parliament. For “if, as [he] thought, God Himself was calling him to this task and he shrank from it, God too could find another to do it, and surely would.” (p 113)
 
It was a highly complicated, heart-wrenching and endlessly frustrating era for Wilberforce, and it involved domestic and international political machinations that would surprise even the careful observer of 21st century American politics. It consumed him for over two decades, robbing him of his peace and his health as he approached Parliamentary victory again and again, only to suffer defeat after debilitating defeat.
 
Wilberforce received a great deal of encouragement along the way, however. For example, in perhaps the last letter he ever penned, just a few days before his death, John Wesley wrote to Wilberforce. He said, in part, “…if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”
 
Metaxas’s comment on this letter: “What an encouragement it must have been to read these words from the battle-scarred veteran, who had fought the good fight, and run with patience the race, and had kept the faith … And so William Wilberforce now ran, cheered on by a great and growing cloud of witnesses.” (p 145)
 
Wesley’s last epistle arrived in February, 1791. It would be almost exactly 16 years later, in 1807, that the battle would finally be won, with abolition secured in Parliament by a resounding vote of 283-16.
 
Throughout the painfully long proceedings, Metaxas reports, Wilberforce “had sat composed, quite composed.” But when the final vote was tallied, and the rejoicing began, “he was overcome, and taking his head in his hands, he wept.” (p 210)
 
As we watch the celebration unfold, the reader rejoices with the author, and very belatedly, with all those who made this victory possible. It was over! Surely the work was only beginning, but the strongest enemy had been defeated! Hallelujah!
 
But wait: “Let’s not run ahead just yet,” Metaxas says. “Let’s behold [Wilberforce] here for a little while longer, here in this Moment of moments, a man allowed that highest and rarest privilege, to be awake inside his own dream. Seated there, head in his hands, humbled and exalted in his humility, we have the apotheosis of William Wilberforce.” (p 211)
 
And there’s more. Oh, so much more! But my review is already way too long. You simply must read this book. Don’t delay. Read To the Golden Shore, too, and then you can decide for yourself which one is more life-changing.  

In the meantime, I have to run and order another book by Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer, perhaps, or maybe Martin Luther ...