The Gateway of Crisis: 1

What happens when a believer receives Christ yet continues to live from the strength of the old man? Against the streets, homes, workshops, and river landings of 1922 Fuzhou, twelve historical parables follow ordinary people discovering that the Christian life cannot be built upon natural strength made religious. The cross, baptism, consecration, restitution, and the break with the past move from doctrine into costly choices. Family loyalties, possessions, reputation, intelligence, and self-reliance all come under the same searching question: will the old life be improved and offered to God, or brought to its end so that Christ may become the believer's life? These parables ask a question that reaches beyond the first believers of Fuzhou: has the cross truly ended the old ground from which we live, or have we merely asked God to improve it? The Gateway of Crisis is Volume One of The House-to-House Chronicles: Parables of the Little Flock.