MORE THAN A MERE STORY - Bruce Atchison.

Though adults assured me the accounts were true, Bible stories seemed like fables to me when I was young. In the black-and-white comprehension of my juvenile mind, tales of crossing the Red Sea on dry ground or the walls of Jericho falling down had no bearing on my daily problems. God seemed to be a remote figure who perform miracles, such as healing blind people, long ago in "Bible times." Now he seemed to do nothing to help those who prayed to him.

While attending a vacation Bible school in my home town of Fort Saskatchewan during August of 1969, I heard the gospel for the first time. Until then, I believed I had to be a good boy or I'd go to hell. The glorious meaning of Christ's resurrection finally burst upon my mind, blowing away those unbiblical notions.

In Deliverance from Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School), I described how Christ's resurrection took on a whole new dimension for me. In this excerpt, I wrote of the impact that the Easter Sunday service at the Church of the Nazarene had after I gave my life to Christ.

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Now that I was a born-again Christian, the Easter message held special relevance. In years past, it was merely a story like all the others in the Bible. Now I understood the tremendous price Christ paid for purchasing our forgiveness as well as why he needed to die and rise again the third day. I believed in previous years that Pontius Pilate defeated him. Now I understood that Jesus died voluntarily for everybody who put their faith in him and rose victoriously on the third day.

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Deliverance from Jericho abounds with vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. Please feel free to click on this link to my books or contact me directly for more information about them.