In this 2014 Chalcedon magazine article, I traced some of the many steps of God’s providence by which I came to write my Bell Mountain novels. It started with a young R.J. Rushdoony reading Cornelius Van Til, and starting a correspondence with him–while I was still, literally, in knee-pants.
https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/christian-reconstruction-and-fantasy
You have to view these things in retrospect, because you can’t detect them while they’re happening. God’s work is subtle: best to view it from a distance. Get up too close, and you can’t see anything.
Anyway, here’s how my books came to be written, and why they’re written the way they are.
“God’s work is subtle: best to view it from a distance.” — Beautifully put, Lee! And that’s been happening all my life. I think I’m going to make your observation into one of my daily prayer reflections. And oh boy, do I need such a reminder now.
“Get up too close, and you can’t see anything.” — Which leads me to a hymn encore request for “Too Close to the Mirror.”
I’ll get to it as soon as I finish with the WordPress Happiness Engineers.
I loved every word of this!
Very interesting. It is the complete trust, as a small child has off its parents, that is the hallmark of the truly devoted. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but I know the God will restore all things in His due time and right all wrongs. The way the characters in the Bell Mountain series practice their faith is admirable and, IMHO, exactly as it should be. They aren’t self-righteous or conspicuous in acting out their good deeds, but instead are quietly confident in God, as they do the humanly impossible.
When I came into the Christian faith as a young adult, the major theme was Israel had become a nation which started some prophetic clock ticking to a rapture event to escape the takeover of the world by a dictator. This never settled with me, so when I came across the Chalcedon Foundation books I knew I had found the truth of Christ’s victory, and thus the church’s victory over the world. Now it is over 70 years since Israel became a nation and none of the prophecies have come true – kind of like the Climate Change prophecies.