C.S. Lewis concerning his conversion:
“I always wanted above all things, not to be interfered with. I had wanted to call my soul my own. I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight. I had always aimed at limited liabilities….You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, when ever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929, I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not even see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility, which will accept a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore the Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful and darting eyes in every direction for a chance to escape? The words ‘compelle intrare,’ compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and his compulsion is our liberation.”
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“I may, I suppose, regard myself as a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets-that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Internal Revenue-that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame, even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions-that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time-that’s fulfillment. Yet, I say to you, and beg you to believe, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing; less than nothing, a positive impediment, measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.”…author Malcolm Muggeridge
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…They (the disciples) knew Jesus in the chronological sequence of His birth, life, death and resurrection. Paul encountered Him in the logical sequence of His resurrection, death, life and birth. Through the keyhole of the Resurrection, (Paul) argued backwards in time… C.S. Lewis, addressing this same theme in the allegorical form that appeals to all ages, effectively captures this powerful truth in his book The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe…as the bewildered children hasten back to the scene, they are greeting by Aslan, triumphant over his death…the children yearn for an explanation:
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge only goes back to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”…Ravi Zacharias in his book A Shattered Visage.