Showers In Season Order Printed Copy
- Author: Beverly Lahaye | Terri Blackstock
- Size: 1.8MB | 348 pages
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About the Book
"Showers In Season" is a Christian fiction novel that follows the lives of four women facing challenges and struggles in their marriages, careers, and relationships. As they navigate through their difficulties, they find strength and guidance through their faith and the support of each other. The book explores themes of forgiveness, redemption, and the power of friendship.
Gregory Thaumaturgus
Gregory the Wonderworker’s Early life
Gregory was born in a Pontus, a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in the modern-day eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey, around 212-13. His was a wealthy home and his parents named him Theodore (Gift of God) despite their pagan beliefs. When he was 14 years old his father died and soon after, he and his brother, Athenodorus, were anxious to study law at Beirut, Lebanon, then one of the four of five famous schools in the Hellenic world.
Influence of Origen
However, on the way, they first had to escort their sister to rejoin her husband, who was a government official assigned to Caesarea in Palestine (modern Haifa, Israel). When they arrived they learned that the celebrated scholar Origen, head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, lived there.
Inquisitiveness led them to hear and speak with the Origen and his irresistible charm quickly won their hearts. They soon dropped their desires for a life in Roman law, became Christian believers and pupils of Origen, learning philosophy and theology, for somewhere between five and eight years. Origen also baptised Gregory.
Pastor (then Bishop) of Neoceasarea
Gregory returned to his native Pontus with the intention of practicing oratory, but also to write a book proving the truth of Christianity, revealing his evangelistic heart. But his plans were disrupted when locals noticed his passion for Christ and his spiritual maturity. There were just seventeen Christians in Neoceasarea when Gregory arrived and this small group persuaded him to lead them as their bishop. (‘bishop’ simply meant a local overseer). At the time, Neocaesarea was a wicked, idolatrous province.
Signs of the Spirit
By his saintly life, his direct and lively preaching, helping the needy and settling quarrels and complaints, Gregory began to see many converts to Christ. But it was the signs and wonders that particularly attracted people to Christ.
En route to Neocaesarea from Amasea, Gregory expelled demons from a pagan temple, its priest converted to Christ immediately.
Once, when he was conversing with philosophers and teachers in the city square, a notorious harlot came up to him and demanded payment for the sin he had supposedly committed with her. At first Gregory gently remonstrated with her, saying that she perhaps mistook him for someone else.
But the loose woman would not be silenced. He then asked a friend to give her the money. Just as the woman took the unjust payment, she immediately fell to the ground in a demonic fit, and the fraud became evident. Gregory prayed over her, and the devil left her. This was the beginning of Gregory’s miracles. It was at this time he became known as ‘Gregory Thaumaturgus,’ ‘Gregory the Miracle Worker’ (or Wonderworker).
At one point Gregory wanted to flee from the worldly affairs into which influential townsmen persistently sought to push him. He went into the desert, where by fasting and prayer he developed an intimacy with God and received gifts of knowledge, wisdom and prophecy. He loved life in the wilderness and wanted to remain in solitude with God until the end of his days, but the Lord willed otherwise.
His theological contribution
Though he was primarily an evangelist and pastor, Gregory also had a deep theological understanding.
His principal work ‘The Exposition of Faith’, was a theological apology for Trinitarian belief. It incorporated his doctrinal instructions to new believers, expressed his arguments against heretical groups and was widely influential amongst leaders in the Patristic period: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and Gregory of Nyssa (The Cappadocian Fathers). It was the forerunner of the Nicene Creed that was to appear in the early 4th century.
In summary
He gave himself to the task of the complete conversion of the population of his diocese. The transformation in Neocaesarea was astonishing. Persuasive preaching, numerous healings and miraculous signs had a powerful effect. Such was his success that it was said that when Gregory became bishop (c 240) he found only seventeen Christians in his diocese; when he died only seventeen remained pagan (Latourette 1953:76).
Basil the Great’s Testimony
Basil the Great (330-379, Bishop of Caesarea, in his work ‘On the Spirit’ wrote the following account of Gregory the wonder-worker.
“But where shall I rank the great Gregory, and the words uttered by him? Shall we not place among Apostles and Prophets a man who walked by the same Spirit as they; who never through all his days diverged from the footprints of the saints; who maintained, as long as he lived, the exact principles of evangelical citizenship?
I am sure that we shall do the truth a wrong if we refuse to number that soul with the people of God, shining as it did like a beacon in the Church of God: for by the fellow-working of the Spirit the power which he had over demons was tremendous, and so gifted was he with the grace of the word ‘for obedience to the faith among. . .the nations.’ that, although only seventeen Christians were handed over to him, he brought the whole people alike in town and country through knowledge to God.
He too by Christ’s mighty name commanded even rivers to change their course, and caused a lake, which afforded a ground of quarrel to some covetous brethren, to dry up. Moreover, his predictions of things to come were such as in no wise to fall short of those of the great prophets. To recount all his wonderful works in detail would be too long a task. By the superabundance of gifts, wrought in him by the Spirit, in all power and in signs and in marvels, he was styled a second Moses by the very enemies of the Church.
Thus, in all that he through grace accomplished, alike by word and deed, a light seemed ever to be shining, token of the heavenly power from the unseen which followed him. To this day he is a great object of admiration to the people of his own neighborhood, and his memory, established in the churches ever fresh and green, is not dulled by length of time. (Schaff and Wace nd., Series 2. 8:46-47).
“Gregory was a great and conspicuous lamp, illuminating the church of God.” —Basil the Great.
Live Like You’ll Live Forever
The world makes its quiet but furious war against death, groping to live forever. Plastic surgery, obsessive fitness, compulsive dieting, pouring billions into scientific research searching for the holy grail of immortality. The author of Hebrews describes the condition as a lifelong slavery to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). Try as we may, Adam’s and Eve’s children cannot shake the ancient nightmare. [God] drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:24) Humanity, east of Eden, still reaches out in vain for that Tree of Life. Curing Death How would the world change overnight if all people everywhere heard that a man had cured death? How many ages would pass celebrating the discovery? But as it stands, these same people bypass the knowledge of a true eternity because it is not the eternity they invented. “How would the world change overnight if all people everywhere heard that man had cured death?” God has placed in us a sense that life continues after death: “[God] has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Yet most suppress this knowledge of their own immortality. But why? Because they “did not see fit to acknowledge God” (Romans 1:28) — the God “who inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15). They disavow the truth their hearts would thrill to believe because they do not approve of any eternity with God. Better to steal happy moments from a broken and fleeting mortality, their dead hearts reason, than submerge in an endless existence with the God they disapprove. Immortal Beings All men, we know, shall live forever. We trust and love the eternal God, we believe in the resurrection from the dead, we believe Jesus’s promise of eternal life with him. And we know the everlasting fate of the wicked: “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). Eternity exists, we believe, and all men are immortal. The souls we come in contact with at the ballgame, in the restaurant, walking the dog — shall be a million years from now. The mailman, the bus driver, the nosy neighbor — immortal beings. The most decrepit among us shall outlive the galaxy. “The most decrepit among us shall outlive the galaxy.” Even considering those who have gone before us — the deceased grandfather, the fallen child, the departed spouse — though hidden momentarily from our eyes, we know they are and shall be again. Death, we profess, is the Great Interruption, not the Great End. Falling Leaf While we say we believe in undying souls (a truth that the world would go delirious to acknowledge), do we give that momentous reality much thought? Does that eternal weight of glory hold much weight with us? Has it changed your week at all? How many of us have believed upon eternity, as John Foster lamented, in vain? The very consciousness that your minds have been capable of admitting and dismissing this subject [eternity] without a prolonged and serious emotion, ought to produce at last that seriousness, by means of wonder and alarm, which may well be awakened by the consideration how many years you have believed this truth in vain. (An Essay on the Improvement of Time, 150–151) How many years have I believed in eternity without much effect? And not just any eternity, but eternity with the Blessed God? Eternity with Jesus Christ? How many of my waking moments of these short and numbered days have orbited around the ceaseless “day of eternity” (2 Peter 3:18)? If in Christ I have hope in this life only, do I really feel myself of all people most to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:19)? How this world deceives me. The sturdy tree and its branches I call “this life”; the falling leaf I call, “eternity.” Forgotten Forever With one glance of the mind, I realize my madness. Who at sea would give all his affection and thought to a day’s trip onboard, completely disregarding the inescapable land ahead? I forget that “Surely a man goes about as a shadow!” (Psalm 39:6) as a dream (Psalm 78:18–20), as a flower that fades, as grass that withers (Isaiah 40:6–8), as a mere mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes (James 4:14). This world, O my soul remember, “is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17). I hope you have kept eternity closer at hand than I have. Have you, Christian — possessor of the mightiest revelations, steward of sacred knowledge, keepers of the way of eternity — appropriated these truths for yourself and distributed them freely to a desperate and decaying world? Has forever bent down with you as you changed diapers? Has it drove with you to work? Has it laughed along while you had a game night with neighbors? Has “everlasting” brought you low to plead in prayer for your children, your church, your city? Has that terrifying splendor, “immortality,” lifted your gaze from this painted and perishing kingdom to the one that cannot be shaken? Has eternity provided you an anchor in suffering? Sent you along on a grand mission? Warned you against friendship with Here and Now? Bestowed solemnity to life? Brightened up gloomy days? Infused courage to venture on in Christ? Showed you the coming tsunami that will wash away all these splendid sandcastles? Endowed acquaintances with new significance? Lifted our eyes with abiding gratitude to God? Equipped us to drive a spear through sin? Have you believed in eternity in vain? Tree of Life We must awake to the coming world without end. We are those who look “not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). People all around us live and die for the seen, the felt, the tasted, the pleasurable, the transient. But God has left you and me here to speak, to reason, to plead with immortal souls that they be reconciled to God. Through faith in Christ, we have reached our hands out to a Tree of Life on Golgotha’s hill, and we will taste of that fruit denied to our first parents: To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. (Revelation 2:7) Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. (Revelation 22:14) This tree is within reach because Jesus Christ — the Resurrection and the Life — has drawn near to us. He promises, “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die,” and asks the pertinent question, “Do you believe this?” (John 11:25–26). God give us grace to believe, and to make sure our friends know, our families know, our children know, that eternity is only a short time away. Article by Greg Morse
