How Do You Know a Good Story When You See One?

The Dispensational Storyline

I heard it first credited to C.S. Lewis that “Story always win.” I’ve read in plenty of business books that stories sell. If you are one that enjoys the court room drama like me, then it is not always the one who has all of the facts that win the case, but it is often the one with the best story. Stories move people. They persuade others to move. The ability to tell stories is vital for all people because we live with other people. The world is moved by stories.  

What makes a good story though? At this point, I’ve read thousands, watched hundreds, and told dozens. Stories are all around me. I enjoy them. I might even say it is a part of who I am. While I am a fairly stoic individual, there are few things that move me like a good story. One trope that I often enjoy is the hero’s journey. It is the path of millions of characters that have traversed through our heads throughout history. Normally, there is a hero, boy or girl, and they have to go do something hard. They have to either go up into the heavens or down into hades, metaphorically, and come out changed. Then they have to defeat the villain. To be a good story, it should be realistically dramatic. Life isn’t cut and dried.

There is one part of the journey that always gets to me though, the hero’s sacrifice. There should always come a time when the hero has to give up something for someone else. The hero has to give up some part of themselves for the good of others. They have to risk who they are in order to save someone else. It may be a father fighting off a group of bandits, or as simple as going to a job that he hates in order to give his son a better life. The officer has to lay down his life for his men in battle. Or something more fantastically, the prince has to fight the dragon and face death to save the princess. These are all types of sacrifices that are a part of the hero’s journey. This sacrifice is key to the hero’s story. There is often a point where all things seem lost. Yet, there is always a glimmer of hope. The father comes back. The officer makes it back through the smoke of battle. The prince rises after being struck down by the dragon to deliver the killing blow. 

Some famous examples are Paradise Lost by Milton and Faerie Queene by Spencer. In Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve are taken out of the garden of Eden. Adam thinks that all is lost. His actions lost everything. Bankrupt. Had to start over from scratch yet doesn’t know what scratch is. All hope is lost as he heads out with his wife. Yet, he is not alone. The angel is with him. Before the angel leaves, he shows Adam the future. He takes him through time and shows him when the savior will come to make up for Adam’s mistake. All people will be saved in the future. There is hope. Not because of Adam. Adam lost all hope. There is hope because a hero will come. 

Similar, but different, is Faerie Queene. The Redcross Knight, having traveled across the land, facing terror and misfortune, comes to the end of his journey. He is finally ready to face the beast that no other living man is even willing to try to conquer. Cheered on by his lady Una, Redcross is at last facing the deadly dragon that is terrorizing the land. Redcross faces up to the dragon, not willing to back down even though the odds are against him. The battle is evenly matched the first day, going back and forth between man and beast. The second day, Redcross is beginning to tire. The dragon takes the advantage and lays into the knight, beating him across the way and sending him sprawling into a pond, not moving. It appears that the dragon has won. Redcross is struggling to get up. His face is in the water. Things look bad. Unbeknownst to the dragon, the water is slowly healing and energizing Redcross. He slowly gets up, stronger than before, and on the third day, defeats the dragon and wins the girl. 

The story of a hero’s seeming defeat and lost hope is one that is innate within mankind. It is the kind of story that we love. It is the kind of story that we admire, not because we would do it but because we wish that we were brave enough to do it. We hope and pray that we are heroic enough to stand up and fight for the right thing when all hope is lost. I believe that this story is innate because it is the story of mankind. This is the story of Christ. Christ came to earth and was brought into the city as the Messiah as can be seen in Luke 19. Christ was hailed as the king. His disciples thought that the fight with Rome was almost over. The Jews were recognizing their king. The hearts of the people were then turned. Jesus was then hung on the cross and died. The sky was darkened for 3 hours in the middle of the day. The curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, and rocks split. The tombs of the saints were opened, and they walked out. People literally came back to life as Jesus died. With everything else that was happening, what do you think everyone was thinking? That everything was fine? Probably not. With what I know of the Old Testament, I would bet that the Jews were thinking that they had epically messed up all of God’s plans for them by killing the man that had come to save them. What would be the consequences of their actions? They had killed the son of God. Even the Roman guards were saying it. What do you think Satan was thinking at this time? Do you think he thought that he had won? Did he know he had just signed his death warrant? Do you think he was only hoping to enslave some Jewish leaders to his side? I don’t know what his thoughts were, but I don’t think he knew what was to come next. The laws of nature broke because of all their actions. Hope had to have been gone. Then there was the longest 3 days known to man. Another earthquake happened, and Jesus came back. He gave the most epic, “I told you so” speak. Even let Doubting Thomas put his fingers into the nail holes of his hands and side. He ate food and walked through walls. Again, breaking the natural laws of the universe that He created. Christ then ascended into heaven, saying that it is not for man to know when the kingdom would be restored to Israel. With the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the church was born. Things looked really bad when Christ was going into the grave, like the world was ending. Yet it was for our blessing. It was to save us from our sins. It was to give us hope and faith.

This same story arch is the story of the dispensational premillennial. Since Pentecost, the church has struggled on. Things looked bright when Christianity became the main religion of the Roman Empire. Then it fell to the pagans. Throughout the medieval times, the church ruled all the schools and nations with an iron fist, becoming more corrupt as time passed. The reformation happened which made things seem better for the church. Yet the church lost its hold on academia. The Modern and Post-Modern movement happened that moved the majority of society farther away from any truth. This brings us to current time that there seems to be a tipping point happening. In America alone, the Left continues to push things to more insanity. People who are stuck in the middle will have to soon say that they have gone to far. There needs to be a reaction against what is being said. Yet, things are not as bad as they as going to be though. Looking at Matthew 24, things are going to get really bad. The kind of bad that all of mankind would cease to exist, like it says in verse 22. I believe it will be like the book of Revelation, a kind of cataclysmic events that change and bend all the natural laws that we know, showing off the power of God in His creation to call all of creation to Himself. Things will be terrible. It will look like the world is going to end (because it is). Even in that darkest hour though, there is still hope. There is still Christ who is coming. Even though the stars will fall, and the sun will falter, there is still a hope in the Lord to come. And He will come. Come to reign over His people here on earth for a thousand years. All for Satan to rise up against Him one last time before he is defeated for good. Then paradise will come. 

The story of darkness before the light is common and cosmic. We get it from our Creator. He built it into our universe and set it all up for us this way. It is how life goes. It is how history goes. It is how our stories go. And it is how Christ and His church will go. Christians can always rest assured that even if we lose at one point in time, even if we lose here and now, we do not lose in the end. Even Christ had to die first in order to win. We should not count it as a lose if we also have to die like He did. We will also win in the end, just not now. There is always hope when the sun rises. 

This is what makes a good story. One that reflects our savior and the world as He wrote and is writing into existence. Before there was darkness, and then there was light. This tension is what we love because God loves it. We are reflecting Him in this. 

Now, you may be thinking that there are other storylines out there that are also good. That may be true. This is one storyline that you can’t say is bad though. If you think it is done too much, or is old hat, you need to change your tastes. Your tastes are actually wrong because this is God’s story. You may like other stories. You just can’t not like this one. This one is essential. This is one that our savior lives, and we should seek to live it out too. So go forth and do likewise. Go die a little. You may end up living a little more.