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Aslan, Jesus Christ And The Resurrection
By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
April 12, 2006 - Last week, the DVD version of C. S. Lewis’s “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” was released for sale in stores throughout the U.S. The story, if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, is about a magical wardrobe, four precocious British children in World War II, and a kingdom called Narnia, a land in perpetual winter.
The major theme of the film is the conflict between an evil White Witch and Aslan, the Lion. Aslan dies and is resurrected from the dead to lead the children to battle against the witch and her evil demonic forces. Good overcomes evil in the end and Narnia’s perpetual winter is broken. The ice melts, flowers bloom, and Narnia becomes a spring time paradise.
In a letter written to a friend in 1958, C.S. Lewis explained Aslan in this way: “What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?”
C.S. Lewis had been an ardent atheist and a strict rationalist until he began encountering a network of Christians at Oxford University where he taught medieval and renaissance literature. After his conversion to Christ, he observed: “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere [in reading the Bible].”
After hours upon hours discussing the reality of God and of Jesus Christ with his Christian friends, (including J.R.R. Tolkien) Lewis eventually came to the inevitable conclusion that there was a God, Jesus Christ was real, and that He had risen from the grave—just as it says in the Bible.
Once Lewis became a Christian, his writings in defense of Christianity and of the Gospel changed the lives of millions throughout the world. Lewis had the amazing ability to clearly and rationally explain why Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God and why it is reasonable to embrace him as Savior.
Writing in Mere Christianity, Lewis presented a challenge to skeptics about the reality of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection. He wrote: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
As we celebrate Easter this Sunday, we would be wise to think on the words of Jesus after His resurrection when, before ascending into heaven, He told his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
These are comforting words to those of us who have embraced Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. They should be equally as comforting to those—like C.S. Lewis—who are still searching for the truth about Jesus Christ.
By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
April 12, 2006 - Last week, the DVD version of C. S. Lewis’s “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” was released for sale in stores throughout the U.S. The story, if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, is about a magical wardrobe, four precocious British children in World War II, and a kingdom called Narnia, a land in perpetual winter.
The major theme of the film is the conflict between an evil White Witch and Aslan, the Lion. Aslan dies and is resurrected from the dead to lead the children to battle against the witch and her evil demonic forces. Good overcomes evil in the end and Narnia’s perpetual winter is broken. The ice melts, flowers bloom, and Narnia becomes a spring time paradise.
In a letter written to a friend in 1958, C.S. Lewis explained Aslan in this way: “What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?”
C.S. Lewis had been an ardent atheist and a strict rationalist until he began encountering a network of Christians at Oxford University where he taught medieval and renaissance literature. After his conversion to Christ, he observed: “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere [in reading the Bible].”
After hours upon hours discussing the reality of God and of Jesus Christ with his Christian friends, (including J.R.R. Tolkien) Lewis eventually came to the inevitable conclusion that there was a God, Jesus Christ was real, and that He had risen from the grave—just as it says in the Bible.
Once Lewis became a Christian, his writings in defense of Christianity and of the Gospel changed the lives of millions throughout the world. Lewis had the amazing ability to clearly and rationally explain why Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God and why it is reasonable to embrace him as Savior.
Writing in Mere Christianity, Lewis presented a challenge to skeptics about the reality of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection. He wrote: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
As we celebrate Easter this Sunday, we would be wise to think on the words of Jesus after His resurrection when, before ascending into heaven, He told his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
These are comforting words to those of us who have embraced Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. They should be equally as comforting to those—like C.S. Lewis—who are still searching for the truth about Jesus Christ.
