And the Light Shines

By Terri Wallace

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 Gods 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?

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490803043

Terri Wallace

Only through the grace of God is anything written by me, for he is the author of my life.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Dedication – This book is dedicated to all who follow and those who need to make a decision to follow Jesus. This book has remained unread for many years until I finally did what God wanted and allowed someone to read it. After he read it, Captain Steven Cameron, wondered when it would be published and he pushed for it. He wasn`t the only one, my mother, Lorraine Watson also pushed. Instruments that God used – may His Name be glorified through the reading of this book.

PREFACE

THE CITY WAS IN RUINS. The buildings were little more than rubble, stones, and dust. But the city’s energy remained and moved with the lone survivor as he walked through it. He noticed the reddish tint of the sky and the deafening silence that followed the last bomb. He walked aimlessly through the rubble, looking for a marker that would tell him he had arrived at the place where he would leave his message for the following generation.

As he walked, his mind returned to the beginning of Dumpstar’s reign. Although Dumpstar claimed to have been duly elected by the people’s vote, he was a tyrant with one mission: destroy free thinking. 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 drastically.

If you didn’t believe everything Dumpstar said, you were labeled a dissident and an outlaw. The dissidents were placed in 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.

The prisoners were Christians. They 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: annihilate the city.

The survivor shuddered as he thought of the past. His heart was burdened with the knowledge that there was no one to teach or tell the people of 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 finally broken by an agonizing scream. The police have moved in, the man thought, to kill everyone who survived the bombs.

The man increased his pace. He needed to leave something for the coming generation 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 the ruined city, a church stood untouched. Urgency filled him, and he ran toward the church. Inside, he found a typewriter and paper. He quickly punched out a message. It’s a good day to die, he thought as he left the church.

CHAPTER 1

THE CHILDREN’S SCREAMS COULD BE heard as the police vans rolled through the center of the village. The children scattered. They knew it was useless to run, but they continued, because they might get away this time. But as expected, the police captured the children, threw them into the vans, and left the village.

Jenna watched from the top of the hill, tears streaming down her face during the roundup. 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 is so wrong with us, she wondered, that they come every day?

Even at the tender age of eight, she knew the city was excellent and the village atrocious. Life in the city was something to be attained. Why wouldn’t someone want to be in the city? It was clean with shining buildings that could be seen for miles. There, people received water from pipes; had food, neat clothes, and 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 furrowed. Life there was hard. One was lucky to survive.

As Jenna got up, one of the ragged edges of her tattered dress caught on a rock and ripped 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 did because of the police who regularly patrolled the area.

As she stared at the ruined city, the wind picked up and rolled the ancient debris from it. Jenna could see paper and clothes blowing across the ground. She moved closer to the edge of the hill. The open space was free of tracks and beckoned her toward the city. The wind told her that the police would not be there that day.

Cautiously, she descended the hill. She checked every direction for the police patrols. At the bottom of the hill, she took off like lightning. What felt like an eternity passed before she covered the expanse and sat gasping for breath behind the city’s broken walls. 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. She felt that being encompassed in this presence meant peace, joy, and love. She followed where the presence led.

The city buildings were crumbling; some looked like they had been blown apart. The ground was littered with skeletons; 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. It sprang from a story an old man told her once—a story he said came from his father and had been passed from father to son for a long time.

Jenna stopped at one of the buildings and entered it 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 located.

"There was a time when 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. We had the freedom to choose. Dumpstar came and took that freedom away. Everyone wasn’t ready to give up this freedom. The people who lived in the ruined city would not bow down to Dumpstar, and they paid for it with their lives.

I do not want to frighten you, child, the old man told her. 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 asked. Who is this God?

"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 people destroyed it. In His love, God created us, but we decided to go in another direction than 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 if they stopped following God, he would let them out. The Christians said they would rather die than deny their God. Dumpstar killed them, because he knew that their God was mightier than he was, and with the Christians annihilated, the news of God couldn’t be spread. Everybody would listen and do what Dumpstar wanted, because there would be no other way to compare life.

But Dumpstar didn’t succeed in annihilating all the Christians; God’s message of love still flourishes in today’s society, and that is the reason for the poor villages. In these villages, the last of the remnants of God’s people survive. They are weak and afraid of what will happen if certain people learn of their existence, but the time is coming when God will move mightily through the land again. It is said that the ruined city holds treasures for those who believe in God.

Why are you telling me this?

The man smiled. God has plans for you. He stood up and slowly moved his decrepit body down the hill. Jenna stared after him, wondering what he meant.

Sitting in the building, Jenna again questioned what the old man meant. How could she, a mere child, do anything to help the God of this man? Before meeting that man, she had never seen anyone filled with hope, peace, and love. Where had he attained those qualities in a world stricken by hatred and fear?

A voice whispered, His God provided the feelings.

I think I would like to know more about this God who can take away fear, Jenna thought.

Follow me, and I will show Him to you, the voice answered. But now it is time to leave this place and continue your journey.

But I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing in this place.

And yet you have followed the tugging of your heart without question—until now. Not many people would follow what they do not understand to a forbidden place where there are unknown dangers at every turn and the punishment for entering is death, the voice stated.

There is a presence that leads me, and if I follow, I know that I will have nothing to fear. You are a part of the presence I feel, aren’t you?

Yes I am, the voice whispered, but now we must continue the journey and complete the task.

As Jenna walked through the city, she wondered how anyone could have survived its destruction. Could what the old man told her really be true? Did people survive and continue to hold to the values that had brought them to this city in the first place? And if the values and beliefs were so important to them, why didn’t they tell others about them? Questions swirled in her mind as she walked through the city. Her mind was so concentrated on the questions that she gave little thought to where she was going or the dangers that lay in the ruins. Many times, she narrowly escaped debris falling from a building or giant cracks in the ground that could have tripped her. Not once did she look for the police who regularly patrolled the city.

Aimlessly, she walked through the city, looking for something she could not describe; she simply knew it was a marker. She climbed a hill of rubble that she thought must have been a very large building or maybe two. When she reached the top, she couldn’t believe her eyes. In the midst of the debris stood an intact building. She knew that this building was what she was looking for, so she ran down the hill, not taking any heed of the surrounding area for any danger.

Behind the building, in the shade, a police van sat. Its driver watched the building. In all the years since the destruction of the city, the police waited, because Dumpstar was positive that one day, the building would be visited and Christianity revived. Several generations had passed, and the watching of this building was the only order not changed in any degree after Dumpstar’s death. Those who watched the building detested the job, because nothing ever happened in the desolate city, and many watchers came to read, sleep, or make plans for the future.

Jenna came running down the hill, shouting, I’ve found it! I’ve found it! I’ve found it! Her voice echoed in the dead city. She didn’t think of any consequences; she thought only about finding the building.

The police officers were awakened by all the shouting. At first, they thought they were dreaming, because no one would ever enter the forbidden city when the penalty was death. One of the officers decided to lie back down, and as he did, he noticed something moving on the hill of rubble.

Come on, Bert; we have to check this out, Allan said.

It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.

Normally, I would agree with you, but I feel there’s something different—something wrong in the city today.

If you want to check it out, fine, but I’m going back to sleep.

As the police officers argued about whether or not to investigate the noise, Jenna drew closer to the building. She was still blinded by the grace of God to the van that was now clearly visible beside the building. She walked up to the building and pulled the doors wide open, leaving them open behind her. The building was not extravagant. There was nothing that would draw a person to this place. There were long wooden benches that Jenna guessed would be used for seats and a platform at the front of the room on which stood a wooden box about four feet high. Jenna didn’t know what this place was or what she