ABOUT THIS BOOK
(28 chapters, 49,000 words)
What is inside the fascinating house with the locked door and the shuttered windows? Satan wants an experiment. God allows it. John is caught up in the plan as Satan’s human representative. The experiment? To demonstrate that there can be peace in the world if God allows Satan to run things in his own way. A group of people gather together in an idyllic village run by Satan, with no reference to God, and no belief in him.
J Stafford Wright has written this startling and gripping account of what happens when God stands back and Satan steps forward. All seems to go well for the people who volunteer to take part. And no Christians allowed!
John Longstone lost his faith when teaching at a theological college. Lost it for good -- or so he thinks. And then he meets Kathleen who never had a faith. As the holes start to appear in Satan’s scheme for peace, they wonder if they should help or hinder the plans which seem to have so many benefits for humanity.
Locked Door Shuttered Windows
J Stafford Wright
Original writing ©1985 J Stafford Wright
First publication 2013 © C Stafford Wright
This e-book ©2015 C Stafford Wright
ISBN 13: 978-0-9932760-3-3
Locked Door Shuttered Windows is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.
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Table of Contents
COVER
ABOUT THIS BOOK
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
MORE BOOKS
ABOUT WHITE TREE PUBLISHING
NON-FICTION
CHRISTIAN FICTION
BOOKS FOR YOUNGER READERS
INTRODUCTION
This book was written shortly before the author's death in 1985. J Stafford Wright was a respected theologian and author, and former Principal of Tyndale Hall Theological College, Bristol.
Well known for many books on the Bible and Christian doctrine, this is Stafford Wright's only full work of fiction. It was initially believed that he had left an incomplete manuscript of this book, but a complete work has now come to light. In it the author, my father, had got as far as making the occasional handwritten correction to the first third of the book, sometimes adding a few words for the sake of extra clarity. My son Jonathan and I have done minimal editing on the remaining two thirds of the book, of which I know my father would have approved, being careful to leave the whole story intact.
This supernatural story by a prominent Christian minister and writer will challenge those readers who see the work of the devil to be solely one of destruction. The plot is ingenious, and the ending memorable.
Details of other books by J Stafford Wright currently in print from White Tree Publishing, are shown on the end pages.
Chris Wright
Bristol
England
CHAPTER 1
Although I didn't know it at the time, my story began like Job's in the Bible. "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, 'Whence have you come?' Satan answered the Lord, 'From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.'"
In the account that I am writing in this book, a later conversation between God and Satan took a very different turn. The Lord spoke. "You have done more than going to and fro on the earth. You have been attacking my people for thousands of years."
"And you have attacked mine. That is why I have come to talk to you, if I dare. I remember how, when I first opposed you, you threw me and my supporters out of heaven."
"You wanted the throne of the universe for yourself. But you may speak freely, and I will listen."
Satan looked round on the angels who had gathered, and then spoke. "Why need we continue to fight? I have come to suggest a diplomatic settlement. If you are willing."
He paused to see the effect of his words.
"What have you in mind, Satan?"
"You will remember that I proposed a settlement two thousand years ago when you came to earth as man. I am addressing you as the Three in One. When I tempted you in the wilderness, I made a very generous proposal. I told you that if you would admit my claims to the so-called fallen world, I would hand it over to you. You wanted the world, and it could have been yours."
"I died on the cross for it."
"But I offered you a shorter and less painful way. Your Bible describes me as the god of this world. I have many followers, and we could have reached an agreement for a joint rule. You might have bargained for even more, but you didn't. Yes, you died on the cross, but what good has it done you? You know what the world is still like. Is it not time we started working together, and had a proper control?"
"My answer now is as it was then: Be gone, Satan!"
Satan stepped back. He remembered that, when he finished tempting Jesus in the desert, "Be gone" meant that he had to go, and it had been set down in black and white in the records as "then the devil left him."
But this time Satan stood his ground, although he sounded hesitant. "Let me dare to speak once more. I have much experience of the world, although I admit your experience has been greater than mine. But there are things in your government of the world that puzzle me. I wouldn't wish to criticise, but …"
"But what?" God said sternly.
"… but I feel that together we might achieve what neither of us can do singly."
"You mean that you could govern the world better than I can."
"I have only used the term Together."
"But even so, you are thinking you could do better -- if you ruled it on your own."
Satan nodded. "Yes, I believe I could run the world in a good way -- if I had complete freedom."
"How can you prove that?"
"If I could have a community of men, women and children who are people of goodwill, without being tied to you as Christians, I believe I could do with them more than you have been able to do. I don't ask for them to be sinless, since that is impossible. But I would rule them in my own way, and I believe I would succeed."
"Succeed in what way?"
"I would make them happy and obedient, and turn them into a viable community."
"So you would teach me a lesson, Satan? Suppose I allow you. Where would you set up your commu
nity?"
"I have travelled through the universe, and there is a planet some millions of light years distant from earth. Its climate is not so different. It has plants and creatures not so very different either."
"I know it," said God. "I created it and the life on it, but without humans. You can guess why."
For once Satan was taken aback, before he slowly understood.
"Yes," God said, "I foresaw that you would request this experiment. All right, you may have a free hand, if you can transport your community there."
"Then I am free to rule it as I wish?"
"Yes, quite free."
"When you let me tempt Job to make him lose his trust in you, you set a limit each time on what I was allowed to do. Is there a limit here?"
"Yes," answered God, "there is just one. If any of your people turn to me and pray, then I shall be free to help them."
Satan bowed very slightly. "I agree", he said. "However, I can promise that none of them will turn to you. I shall choose my company with care."
God said, "The audience is over. You can go."
CHAPTER 2
Poor old Job was never told of the scene in heaven which led to his troubles, and it was some time afterwards that I was told of what I have just related. But in what follows, I will be describing my own experiences.
My name is John Longstone, a bachelor of thirty-two when this story begins. When I left school, I won a university scholarship and read classics for my first year. During this year, I had an experience which I believed to be a conversion to the Christian faith. So with a view to possibly being ordained, I switched from classics to theology for my second and third years.
Theology at university at that time was beginning to argue about Christian beliefs, and I didn't feel more Christian at the end of the course, perhaps even more confused. However, I went on to a theological college, and in due course was ordained in the Church of England. Overall, I think I was a fair preacher, and was able to help people who needed the help that a parson can give.
One day to my surprise the principal of my former college gave me an invitation to return as a member of staff to teach theology. I was glad to accept, because although I had preached the old-fashioned Christian beliefs in my curacy, I had pushed aside the problems of some modern thinkers. I thought that to be forced as a lecturer to study these doctrines more closely would clear my mind considerably.
I had tried to be satisfied with orthodoxy. Now the various new approaches frightened me. For two years I lectured along the lines of "What the Bible teaches", but being forced to read all the latest serious works I gradually found myself unable to teach. I tried to stand orthodoxy on its head by saying one thing and meaning another. I knew what I doubted, but what did I believe? Was the Resurrection true? Was the Virgin Birth a fact? Was Jesus Christ truly God? Did his death on the cross mean anything?
Then one morning I woke up with what seemed to be nothing less than a second conversion. I suddenly saw the liberating truth -- there is no God. If there is no God, all these other problems are nothing. No God, no God-Man, no atonement, no resurrection, and of course no prayer and no sacraments. I was free at last. I thought of the verse in the Gospels, and laughed: "The truth shall make you free."
I saw the college principal after breakfast and told him I had lost my faith, and must leave. I didn't tell the students why I was leaving, as somehow I felt that this was my own conclusion about the Christian gospel, and they must find it for themselves, if ever they did. I saw the bishop and resigned my Orders. He did his best to talk me back into the Christian faith, but I assured him that I already knew all the standard arguments.
I was fortunate enough to have inherited quite an amount from my parents, so I didn't immediately need to find fresh work. I was able to follow up something that had interested me for many years. I suppose I must have a streak in me that some might call "spiritual", although I prefer something like "non-material". That is to say, from a child I've sensed that there is something beyond the material world and the way the brain sees it.
I had looked in poetry and art, but now I turned with enthusiasm to the study of parapsychology and the psychic realm. It became a substitute for religion with me, a religion without obligations, without superhuman demands. There was no God, but there was an exciting inner world to be explored, much of which might explain some of the phenomena of religion, and dispose of the unique claims of Christianity. I mean, Christian and other experiences might well be purely natural, and have nothing to do with a god.
I was absorbed in the field of extra-sensory perception, clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, ghosts and poltergeists, when something strange happened.
CHAPTER 3
As far as I remember, it was a Sunday evening. Yes, I had been subconsciously aware of distant church bells as I settled in my deep armchair with a new book on some interesting psychic cases.
I'd been wondering for a day or two whether psychic energies could account for all the phenomena in which I was interested, or whether one would need to postulate the actual existence of spirits, whether spirits of the departed or of an order of demonic, or even beneficent spirits. Could such spirits become involved with people and events in this world? I mean to say, were poltergeists unleashed psychic energies of someone in the family, or the pranks of a noisy spirit, which is what the German word poltergeist means?
I was half asleep, and the book fell on to my lap and wakened me. The atmosphere had suddenly turned cold. I instinctively looked up. I was in my favourite chair on one side of the fireplace, while a smaller armchair for visitors was on the other side.
In this smaller chair sat a tall man in black. I could tell he was tall by the length of his legs which he had stretched out in front of him. When I had sat down, the chair had definitely been empty, my front and back doors were bolted, and my sitting room door was shut. How had he come there?
In my present state of mind I could think of only two explanations: a hallucination or a ghost. Mind you, the two could be the same thing. I was surprised by my own calmness.
The man dressed in black seemed to guess my thoughts. "I'm hardly unsubstantial enough to be a ghost, and if you shake hands with me you'll find I'm not a hallucination."
He leaned forward and put out his hand. Hardly realising what I was doing, I put out my own and gripped his. His hand was cold as ice.
"Who are you, then?" I demanded.
"Someone who knows you very well. I've been watching you for quite a time."
I stared at him. "But I don't know you. In fact, if you'll excuse me, I've never set eyes on you before. And it beats me how you got in here in the first place."
"We have our ways," he said, with a smile.
"Well, what do you want with me?"
"A good question. I'd better begin at the beginning. I've observed that you no longer believe in God, although you included theology in your degree, and have preached and taught as a Christian."
It was a puzzling opening, and I couldn't see where it was leading. But I answered him. "That's quite true. I discovered there were only psychological and traditional reasons for supposing there's a God. Perhaps you know something about psychology?"
"I know as much as you do, and more. And parapsychology too. You're interested in that?"
I nodded in bewilderment.
"Tell me then," he said, "do you believe in the spirit world?"
"I really don't know," I said, forgetting the strangeness of his arrival, and warming to my subject. "Curiously enough, it's something that's been in my mind for several days. Surely everything can be accounted for by the projection of psychic force from the inner mind, without postulating the existence of spirits."
He smiled. "Suppose I told you that I am a spirit -- materialised of course. Would you believe me?"
"If that's a hypothetical question, I would have to weigh it up before I answered. But if you want me to believe that you are a materialised spirit sitting in my armchair, I would have
to say No."
He continued to smile at me. "I am a spirit."
I now felt frightened, not because he might be a spirit, but because he might be mad, and possibly dangerous.
Again, he must have guessed my thoughts. "Don't worry, I'm not out of my mind."
"Then who are you? For goodness sake, tell me."
"Then will you listen with an open mind to what I'm going to tell you?"
I nodded agreement.
"When I said I'm a spirit, I meant it. But I am more than a spirit: I am the most powerful of all spirits."
"I used to believe that God is the most powerful spirit, but that's out for me now, as you know."
"Of course. My name is not God. I am Satan."
You know the shivers you get when it sounds as though there are footsteps on the stairs in a dark old house? I couldn't speak, until gradually the thought came back to me that I was dealing with a schizophrenic with delusions of super personality. I began to wonder what excuse I could make to get to the phone in the hall.
His smile now seemed to me to be the mindless smile of the insane. He spoke. "You said you would listen with an open mind."
I took the risk of a little psychological tact. "You don't want to be Satan. Satan is hopelessly bad, and you want to be good."
He sighed. "I see I must give you a lesson that as a lecturer in theology you ought to have known. People blame me for being the source of evil. In fact, the stuff men and women think of as evil -- murder, theft, rape, and other things of a similar kind -- actually come from within people themselves. Even Jesus knew that, when he talked about what came from the heart. It's true I may put someone in the way of those sort of things, but my work is to direct the plans of individuals and the world into what I know could be good for them."
"In what way?" I asked, strangely now half-believing him.
"Do you remember how I tempted Jesus in the wilderness? Jesus was evidently thinking out there what his policy would be, but he wouldn't listen to my suggestions. He was certainly a miracle worker, but he was stupid enough to starve himself almost to death by refusing to do a simple miracle for himself, and turn stones into bread. I told him the world would be impressed if he were to throw himself off the temple roof, and let the angels, whom he professed to believe in, carry him gently down to the courts below. Even I would like to have seen that. In the end, to show how honest I am in wanting what is good for the world, I offered him a partnership with myself."
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