Fantasy Vs Reality
All my life I’ve been enthralled with fantasy. I’ve read “The Lord of the Ring” trilogy and “The Hobbit” five or six times both in English and French. I love science fiction (decent ones, of course). I think, like most humans, I’m enamored with the idea of power; power over the world around me; having the ability to control nature and the material world, being able to do magic. I love the Star Wars movie series because of the powers of the force, plus, the movies are fun, with good overcoming evil. People of all ages are crazy about super powers. We love Superman, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and more, but...
When I read the life of Jesus the Christ, I find that all of these fantasies are pale in comparison with the power that The Creator of the universe holds in just His little finger. I find that fantasies are just that—fantasies. Fiction. Stories. Impossible in this world and in this existence. Jehovah God, the Living God, has spent thousands of years writing the most fantastic book of all and many ignore it. We push it aside and make up our own stories which are laughable in comparison with the book that is called The Bible. The word Bible means Book.
There’s one story about Jesus that makes a deep impression upon me and scares me with the awesome power displayed by The Christ; power displayed with much fanfare and media attention. This story is found in Luke 8:26-39. It turns out that the powers of a living God are so much more interesting than any fantasy. Read on about …
The Deliverer vs the Demonic Legion
The Deliverer (that’s what Jesus means) was a great and mighty hero who traveled everywhere to visit with people and rescue those in dire trouble. One day he took twelve friends to go on a relaxing cruise across the volatile, miniature Sea of Galilee, which turned out not to be so relaxing when a deadly storm struck them with awesome force. The Deliverer, with just words, was able to save his friends, causing the storm to just suddenly stop. His friends were in awe of him and wondered that such a dangerous force of nature could being quieted by only the words of their superhero.
When they arrived on the shores of the Gerasenes, they stepped onto the land from the boat and immediately a sickly-fantastic apparition ran up and fell face down at The Deliverer’s feet.
This apparition was a horror of a human being, having a naked and brutalized body; wild, unkempt, contorted and loud. This body was totally controlled by many demons called Legion who tortured the body of what once had been a man (think of all the Star Trek shows). Legion made the ex-human live in the graveyard; causing it to beat itself, and giving it super-human strength. The people of the city would catch it and chain it up, but it had the strength to break the chains and escape into the desert, or lonely places.
This creature somehow knew that the Lord of the Universe had set foot on his land and felt compelled to run and fall at the Lord’s feet. As it fell to the ground in close proximity to The Deliverer, Legion was forced to writhe and beg for mercy. The Lord told Legion to leave the man’s body. Legion begged not to be sent back to a place called The Abyss. (With just words The Deliverer had the awesome power to send a legion of demons to The Abyss!) Legion instead begged to be sent into a nearby herd of pigs and the Lord of Hosts permitted it. When Legion invisibly sucked itself out of the man’s body the demons eerily floated over to the herd of swine and after entering them, the pigs went totally insane, squealing and running over a cliff to drown below in the waters of the Sea of Galilee.
The frightened pig herders saw it all and ran into the city to round up some help. The populace came out as quickly as they could and they saw the wild man in his own mind, with cloth covering him and sitting at the feet of what looked like just another man (The Deliverer didn’t like to wear spandex). The towns-people were scared to death and talked among themselves. What kind of creepy power could do all of this? They came up to The Deliverer and told him that he frightened them too much and could he leave their country.
The Deliverer understood and as he turned to get back into the boat, the wild man begged him to take him along, but the hero told him to go to his people and tell them the good news about his deliverance from the tortures of Legion.
The wild man obeyed and some months later, when The Deliverer returned to the land, the people were happy to see him... having been taught that superheroes can be great to have around!
My Lord, and my God, is The Deliverer. I find that the fantasy books just don’t compare to reality. I love to read the real histories in the Bible about the power of my God.
Hebrews 1:1-3 tells us that Jesus, The Deliverer, is the exact representation of God’s nature and the very radiance of God’s glory. He upholds all things by the word of God’s power. Acts 17:28 says that we live and move and have our very being in this God. He gives to all life and breath and all things. John 1:3 says that it’s through Jesus that God made the universe and without Him nothing could have been made.
This is the God in whom I trust. Not some fickle Force that’s only available to a few lucky people who were fortunate to be born with more than their share of mitochondria, or whatever, in their blood. Not some fickle mutation theory, of which supernatural powers are only available to those who are born with mutations in a mindless Russian roulette fashion. The Have’s and the Have-nots. The Great Power I serve is available to ALL who decide to come in obedient faith, who love righteousness, and who love doing what is right.
The apostle Peter makes a super important statement in II Peter 1:2-4. “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”
Being a part of a divine nature is what everybody wants; it is not a fantasy! We all want power over life and death and the only place in the universe where we can attain that power is in The Deliverer himself.
And this same Deliverer made his self known to the human race and lived among us as a human and allowed us to murder him so He could prove to us that He is God and that He has power over life and death. He raised Himself from the grave, just like He resurrected the husk of a man in the graveyard of the Gerasenes. This is the God in whom I place my trust and am doing everything I can to be able to say like the apostle Paul, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21.
—TL Raynor
