Of any of the creatures that may go bump in the night in our imaginations, perhaps none is more feared then that of the “dragon.” A mere mention of the name of these fearsome mythical beasts no doubt conjures up from the imagination any number of these fearsome fire breathing beasts from the depths of time. Whether it’s Fafnir in the Nordic Sagas, the hydra who fought Hercules, The Dragon in Beowulf who is responsible for the death of the fabled hero, Smaug in Tolkien’s The Hobbit or Eustace becoming an enchanted Dragon while resting upon the cursed treasure of a dragon in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the worlds of myth and fantasy are filled with a menagerie of these incredible serpents. Heroes from antiquity on are often urged to tread lightly around them, as to awaken one is to arouse the anger and fury of these creatures.
Thus, should any place on Earth be named for a dragon, it’ll often times be met with a sense of fear and foreboding, as if those who came before were warning future generations to stay away. At the same time, for a person demonstrating many of these same dragon-like tendencies, it can become a temptation, one that can only bring about their destruction.
After all, if any image of these creatures is most prevalent, it is the image of the dragon resting upon its treasure. One would venture to guess that as a result of these two images of the dragon that it is easy to see just how they became so associated with the seven deadly sins of Christian thought. Upon its treasure, and its thirst for more, one sees in the dragon pride, lust, gluttony, greed, envy and sloth all rolled into one terrible hide, while in the image of these beasts reigning destruction and hellfire on a town appears to allow the beast to revel in the sin of wrath.
As Gozan, the President of Nepur said and the guide of the Cooper family says in particularly ominous tones Frank Peretti’s TheDoor in the Dragons Throat, and the faith of the Cooper family, and the failed attempts to approach the door by other teams,
“Mr. President, many have tried and no one has succeeded. Not the German expedition with forty men and heavy machinery—not the team from France who seemed so bold and confident. The United Nations exploration team couldn’t even enter the Dragon’s Throat before half of them were killed by scorpions and cobras The Swiss expedition vowed never to return. You’ve send letters to nations all over the world, but no one will dare to go near the Dragon’s throat! May my liege live forever, but why did you invite a mere scientist from America and his two young children? What made you think they could succeed where all the others have failed?…They’ve never tried to enter the Dragons Throat. They’ve never tried to open the door. They will learn to fear.”
One would think that with multiple international teams having failed would be enough to encourage anyone to stay away from the treasure, especially when the members from the UN were killed. However, once could perhaps surmise like Thorin Okensheild in The Hobbit, Eustace in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or Fafnir in the Icelandic sagas, that the president has been seized by his own dragon sickness. Like them, all he can think about is the treasure and will do anything to get it, no matter the cost.
Nothing else appears to matter to him, anymore then it appeared to matter to Thorin once the sickness overtook him. The lives of several men have already been lost, and other teams have fled in fear of this Door. Then, when Dr. Cooper offers a reward for the safe return of Jay and Lila when they are kidnapped, the president has the audacity to ask for an exact price and in what form this reward would take. As long as he can obtain his earthly treasure, and perhaps make a little extra along the way, he’ll sacrifice anyone and anything to obtain it.
Thus, due to the dragon’s biblical connections with the serpent, the name also becomes not unlike a forbidden fruit to the greedy President, as he vows,
“But they must open the door!…Anything so impregnable, so fortified, so guarded but curses must contain incredible riches! I must have that treasure!”
As the story progresses, readers learn there is much more to this ominous door then just a mere entrance to a treasure chamber. The door has taken on a life of its own over countless centuries and various legends and superstitions have sprung up concerning its origins and true nature. After all, any historian or archaeologist worth their salt is aware of the fact that many of these legends often contain a small grain of truth.
As a result, Dr. Cooper finds the lore surrounding this door to be quite fascinating and even informative. As he says in The Door in the Dragons Throat regarding the local superstitions regarding the Door,
“..I was fascinated to hear some of the folklore surrounding the Dragon’s Throat. I found your old legends very informative and I think the old superstitions might give us some clues as to what this strange cavern really is.”
This is something that sets the Cooper family adventures apart from other attempts at doing Indiana Jones style adventures for young adults in a faith-based setting. Too often the end goal for these authors is to try and “prove” the events of the Bible actually happened, or to simple try and educate the younger readers. The problem becomes, however, that the characters in these biblical archaeology based stories are fictional, much like Alan Quartermain, Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Nathan Drake, Benjamin Franklin Gates, Rick O’Connell or Robert Langdon. An Indiana Jones-expy finding the robe of Joseph, son of Jacob, isn’t going to prove to readers that the story of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat happened anymore then Indiana Jones finding the Ark of the Covenant “proves” the Exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt. Matters of the Holy Scriptures need to be taken at faith value, not just evidence, especially if those items are recovered by a fictional archaeologist.
When conveyed in this way, it allows the artifact in question to maintain an air of mystery as though to seek them out is to venture into the unknown. Thus, in order to solve the mystery in question, Dr. Cooper and his family are willing to hear the local lore surrounding the artifact in question in hopes of uncovering it’s origin and purpose whether good or evil. When asked in a Behind the scenes interview for Monster why his work deals with a level of the unknown, Peretti responded,
“I know that I’m a suspense writer I guess I find those types of stories interesting. But if you don’t have some kind of evil-well at least some kind of struggle-then you don’t have a story to tell. You’ve got to have something to drive the story. You’ve got to have something to help keep the pages turning.”
Thus, as soon as this door is introduced, the story moves along with the same break neck pace as an Indiana Jones picture. When it comes to the door and the mystery begins to unravel, Dr. Cooper runs on the theory, agreeing with the president in many ways that it could be a treasure chamber, specifically one belonging to Nimrod, the legendary figure who is said to have build many of the cities in the ancient Near East, including Babylon.
Great Kings of the past like the Pharaohs of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Alexander the Great of Macedonia, or Julius Ceaser of Rome would build great monuments to themselves to protect their treasure and at least feature their name and the brave deeds they’ve done, and nimrod would certainly fit the bill. Identified by some historians as Sargon of Akad, it was said that he was the first ruler of the Akaddian Empire, only of the first empires in recorded history. Sargon, or Nimrod was as ruthless as Attila the Hun and Genghis Kahn, cutting massive swaths across Mesopotamia, conquering many of the Mesopotamian city states. As emperors like Sargon would grow in power, they would accumulate great wealth and treasures, and very naturally build store houses in which to horde their wealth like the great dragons of myth. It certainly stands to reason that there could be some kind of treasure hidden away in the vault.
The Roman-Jewish historian Josepheus noted of Nimrod,
“Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers. Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion …
All this door says is that this was a great king who came from Heaven, and nothing further. Dr. Cooper believes that because of the proximity to Babylon it can better shed light on some of these great past civilizations. He even mentions one particular legend that brought him to Nepur, of a great star that sailed across the heavens, plundered the earth and hid its treasure deep within the earth.
“For this reason people who knew nothing about it, said that a crown came down to him from heaven.”
Kings of ancient civilizations tend to take on legends of their own, with Alexander the Great of Macedonia being perceived as the son of Zeus-Amun, a hybrid of the Greco-Roman Zeus and the Egyptian Amun-Ra being the most notable. These conquering kings seemed unrelenting, their armies indomitable, and to some plane dwelling cities, seeing them descend from a mountainside could give the appearance as though they were coming down from the Heavens.
However, as Dr. Cooper and his team draw closer to the door, strange things begin to happen as the Earth begins to shake, as if something or someone is giving them another warning that this door is not to be open. Then during one of these earth quakes, Jay calls upon the name of Christ and the shaking stops. Instantly what comes across as a simple treasure chamber is confirmed to be something more supernatural in origin.
An old man from the wilderness has done all he can to not only thwart the efforts of the Cooper family but those who tried before them. Desperate to have someone listen to them, he leaves a note that Jay and Lila find, urging them to meet him at a particular street. It is at that moment when he kidnaps them, an act that frightens the children and enrages Dr. Cooper.
Later, when the old man informs them, he meant them no harm but was forced to take drastic actions to prevent the door from being opened. Like the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword in Indiana Joens and the Last Crusade or the Medjai in the 1999 Mummy movie, he is part of an order that’s wore to protect the door at all costs. However while the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword protects the Grail to keep it out of the wrong hands because it is a sacred vessel used by Christ Himself, and should no fall to the heathens or the Nazis, and for the Medjai it is about protecting the treasures of the Pharoah and preventing the resurrection of the cursed mummy Imhotep, for the old man, and his order, there cause to protect the door is because the behind it is pure evil itself, and to open it would bring about the End of Days.
As he tells them,
“…(W)e have been the keepers of the Sacred chest of Shandago. I received it from my father, who received it from his father, who received it from his father. From generation to generation, the keeping of the Sacred Chest has been entrusted to us…I have been hounded by the spirit of your God! Listen to me-your God will not release me! He has followed me; He has spoken to my heart. He has opened my eyes and now I see that Shandango is a liar…This Sacred Chest…and the Door in the Dragons Throat…and the God of the Earth-they are unspeakably evil. Sandago has lied. He has fooled the people of Nepur into thinking the Door contains a vast treasure and they will try to open it, but it hides a terrible evil that he wishes to unleash upon the door. Please I beg you, do not open the Door. Abandon any thought of it.”
It’s an ominous warning, one that sounds more like it belongs over the gate to Dante’s Inferno, then a treasure chamber. Usually when it comes to treasure chambers any warnings are at least met with some level of invitation to the seeker. In an adventure story, only those who are worthy can obtain that treasure in the end, and thus, these challenges are necessary to prove the hero’s worth. In embarking on the quest and approaching the treasure, they are subjected to a series of tests that put their intelligence, resourcefulness, and even their moral character to the test as a means of proving their quality.
Theseus solves the labyrinth and frees Thebes from King Minos and defeats the Minotaur. Perseus uses his cunning to not only defeat Medusa, but free Andromeda from the Cetus. Jason undergoes a series of challenge to claim the Golden Fleece. King Arthur follows the Riddles of Merlin to obtain Excalibur form the lady of the Lake to unite England under his rule, while his Knights embark on a quest to find the Grail. In The Goonies, as the kids approach the remains of One Eyed Willy his last riddle informs them to take only a little for themselves and leave the rest for Willy. In Disney’s Aladdin the Cave of Wonders informs Jafar that only a good man with a good heart may enter the cave.
In more modern treasure hunts we usually see the hero decided to do the right thing over doing what feels like the easy choice to get rich. In The Goonies, Mikey and his buddies don’t take from Willy’s scale, and thus avoid setting off one last complicated booby trap. In Aladdin we not only see him follow the Caves insurrections but we’ve seen throughout the film how he cares for other beggars and tries to protect Jasmine when he thinks she’s in trouble, showing that despite his gruff street rat exterior, he’s a deeply caring person.
For Dr. Jacob Cooper and his children however, this riddle is no challenge or test of moral or intellectual character, but an earnest warning from a greater authority not to meddle in forces beyond their kin and a reminder to them to guard their hearts against temptation. This allows for the Door to be so much more then just a mere treasure or a magic lamp, but a power, much like the Ark of the Covenant or the holy Grail that must not be disturbed and must be regarded with the utmost respect. Thus, it becomes the last piece of the puzzle for Dr. Cooper and his family, hinting at something far more sinister.
Dr. Cooper puts the pieces together, deducing in the story’s climax,
“Did you hear me, Gozan? There is no treasure. We were wrong about the door…Everything you feared about the door is true. The Door is evil…We head the legend figured out all wrong, Jay. I misread the inscription. The star didn’t fly through Heaven; it fell to heaven!…The Door did not belong to Nimrod!… Nimrod didn’t put it there. Someone else did…Put it together Jay, the star that fell from heaven…the God of the Earth…and that name the old man used: Shandago. That’s an old expression for the word Dragon of Serpent. Those terms are in the Bible…”
Even the image upon the doorway itself calls to mind the fall of Satan, and feels less like a King’s tomb. Jay and Lila, lead through their fathers thought process come to the same conclusion these inscriptions have been misread. Considering that the languages of the Sumerian and Akkadian Empires are dead languages, and unlike Latin or Sanskrit which have been studied closely, few if any can decipher these ancient lounges, allowing for mistranslations to become more frequent.
Diving further into these verses, Dr. Cooper makes a starting discovery, that this great king that came from the Heavens was not Nimrod at all but the devil himself. Moreover, behind that door lay legions of demons waiting for the last days.
As it says in the book of Revelation, chapter 9 verses 1-11,
“The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them…The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).”
This is not the last time in the Cooper family’s adventures that the characters encounter something or someone paralleling Christian eschatology. In Escape from the Isle of Aquarius, a group of tribesmen on a south pacific island fall under the saw of a Cult leader who enforces many of the same rules as the biblical Antichrist, including requiring them to bare any mark in order to by sell or trade and enforcing the people to worship him. In The Tombs of Anak, the Anakim in the Bible were said to be the descendants of the biblical Nephilim, beings who are said in some circles to return in the Last Days. In Finally, in The Secret of the Desert Stone, it is revealed that the stone itself was not only sent by God to help prepare the tribe for the news of Christ, or to protect them from a warlord, but was a physical manifestation of the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel of the great stone that would one day overcome every kingdom of man.
As it says in Daniel,
“Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.“After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.”
Key to Peretti’s work is the concept of Spiritual warfare, of the never-ending conflict before God and the devil, and the armies of Heaven and Hell. It is this verse, from Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 6 verses 10-12, Revised Standard Version, that serves as the epigraph for his novel This PresentDarkness and encapsulates the world of his supernatural thrillers and adventures,
“ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
To that end, Peretti’s description of the door appears to draw influence from the description of a similar doors and pits found in the novel story At the Mountains of Madness and the short story “The Call of Cthulu” by the infamous horror writer, HP Lovecraft. In these stories, Cthulhu appears as one of the chief “Old Ones” or “Dark Gods” alongside a hoard of beings ascribed with names that sound like they escaped form the bowels of Hell itself. Capable of bending the minds of humanity, this being seeks to plunge the world into eternal darkness upon his release.
Additionally, in Lovecraft’s work among these many temples and deities exists one to Dagon, the god of Philistines, notable adversaries of the Hebrew people inferred as one of these “Old Ones”. Later in the Tombs of Anak they encounter a group of cultists devoted to the worship of one of the Nephilim, known as “Ha-Rapha”. This Rapha character would show up again later in Peretti’s novels This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness as a demon.
For over a century this legendarium has played a pivotal role in the horror genre, as forces of evil dating back to the dawn of time seek to break forth from the bowls of the earth and enslave humanity once again. It makes for a formidable challenge, as the likes of Indiana Jones, The Rocketeer, The Justice League, and even Darkwing Duck, have taken on some lose analogues of these creatures.
For Darkwing Duck, it was about spoofing old horror movies as the Daring Duck of Mystery sees his town under the mind control of Duck’Thulu and is forced to team-up with his enemies to defeate this entity. For the members of the Justice League in the two part episode “The Terror Beyond” it becomes a journey of faith as Hawkgirl is guided by Doctor Fate in her struggle forced to content dwith her own beliefs as his dark entity once nearly destroyed her home world of Thanagar, and juxtaposes her beliefs with those of Wonder Woman who all to eagerly invokes the notoriously fickle Greek deities. For The Rocketeer serves a thinly veiled jab at Hollywood Elites and the open secrets of their involvement in a certain cult started by a science fiction writer, but jabs at how they are willing to sell their souls for fame, right down to the villain known as Rune declaring,in The Rocketeer: Hollywood Horror,
“All you need to now is that soon All Hollywood will be under control of the Dark Lord…and the Dark Lord will be under the control of Rune!”
In the graphic novel Indiana Jones and the Tomb of the Gods that sees Indy in a race against time against the Nazis before they can open a door to Cthulhu, and plunges the world into this eternal darkness. As a result, Indy, like the Cooper family, comes to understand that some secrets are best left undisturbed.
Marcus Brody even tells Indy,
“Whatever that key opens, one can only presume it was shut for a very good reason. You’re not going up there to bring this one back, Indy. Whatever it is, if it’s as dangerous as Alex says, and the Nazis are close…you’re going there to destroy it…”
Later, when Indy drops a load of dynamite down the door and blows it up, effectively sealing it up for ever, Brody tells him he did the right thing and reminds him that while knowledge may certainly bring someone closer to God, Brody a devote Christian admits that one has to be careful which God that is, either the one true God, or demons masquerading as gods. We even see Indy come to understand how some artifacts should be left alone, not even placed in a museum. More importantly, whether it’s Darkwing Duck, The Rocketeer, Indiana Jones or the entire Justice League, encountering a being like this is a reminder to these heroes that some threats require more then just brains, brawn, gadgets and a well-timed, right hook.
In the case of Peretti however, it’s something much different. Upon discovering the true nature of the door, the Cooper family comes to understand that this is more than just a mere MacGuffin for the them to uncover, or a well-deserved jab at the rich and famous, but an evil that should be avoided at all cost. Moreover, this evil was not some sort of play thing to treat like a mere bauble, like the Sankara Stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but something real, tangible and destructive, coming directly from the devil himself.
As CS Lewis noted in the Preface to TheScrewtape Letters,
“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
Further, both Babylon and subsequently her legendary founder Nimrod have been closely associated both with the devil and the Kingdom of Darkness in Judeo-Christian thought, thus casting it as the spiritual polar opposite of Jerusalem. While the builders of Babel, or Babylon, bestowed upon their city a named meaning “gate way to the Gods”, and sought to climb to Heaven, the Messiah came down from Heaven, through the Jewish people, and performed his ministerial work in Jerusalem, meaning “City of Peace” demonstrating how true peace could only come through God. Nimrod sought to be a god, while through Christ, God became man and dwelt among humanity.
St. Augustine in particular noted of the dichotomy between Jerusalem and Babylon in his Expositions on the Psalms,
“Babylon is interpreted confusion, Jerusalem vision of peace. Observe now the city of confusion, in order that you may perceive the vision of peace; that you may endure that, sigh for this. Whereby can those two cities be distinguished? Can we anywise now separate them from each other? They are mingled, and from the very beginning of mankind mingled they run on unto the end of the world. …Two loves make up these two cities: love of God makes Jerusalem, love of the world makes Babylon.”
As Tim LaHaye coauthor of the Left Behind series noted in Revelation Unveiled,
“Satan has a kingdom; Babylon has, from the earliest time, been considered the capital of Satan’s kingdom. Idolatry gained its start in Babylon through Nimrod and his mother, inspired by Satan. As long as Babylon remained a dominant world power, it made an excellent headquarters for Satan’s attack on the human race…Near the river Euphrates, Nimrod built the city of Babylon, where idolatry received its origin and surged through the world. It was to Babylon that the children of Israel were taken captive, and it will be in this area of the world that the final sin of man will culminate…”
In particular in the book of Isaiah, chapter 14, the prophet Isiaah foretold the ruin of Babylon and her King and used the language ascribed to the fall of Satan to describe the moment, saying,
“The realm of the dead below is all astir to meet you at your coming; it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you—all those who were leaders in the world; It makes them rise from their thrones— all those who were kings over the nations. They will all respond, they will say to you, “You also have become weak, as we are; you have become like us.”All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps; maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you. How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: “Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?”
Peretti, and like his contemporaries, Ted Dekker, Bill Myers, and Jerry B. Jenkins, were more willing to at least more willing to approach the “dark side” in order to convey the message of Christ being victorious over the devil. It isn’t just about adventure, or proving faith, but rather to instill a key spiritual truth as the Great Storyteller did when He told stories.
John Eldridge observed in “Spiritual Warfare” a conversation with author Ted Dekker,
“There is something in human nature that just doesn’t want to face the reality that we live in two worlds. We live in the physical material world where we have jobs, read books, and go about our business .And we live in a spiritual world, and that is a world at war.”
Yet it is a war that has already been one with one decisive battle, and so for Peretti and his contemporaries the truth about that war is best summed up in the promise of 1st John 4:4,
“You dear children are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
Then, by weaving that truth into the narrative of a cliff-hanging, nail biting, edge-of-your-seat pulp adventure, Peretti strove to keep reminding his readers of this promise. As Peretti recounted in a Behind the Scenes Interview for his novel, Monster,
“The best way to convey spiritual truth is by telling a story because stories work. I started out as a speaker for Junior High Youth camps years ago. It struck me one day, ‘ You know, we’ve got five days of camp. That’s two chapel services. I can give those kids 10 sermons that they’re probably not going to remember, or I can give them one big effect that they’re going to remember.’ So I devised a story with cliffhanger endings that conveyed a spiritual truth. Just one good truth that I wanted to get across for the whole week.”
As a result Dr. Jacob Cooper and his children learn through the Door, that no matter how “strong” their enemy appears to be, no matter how dreadful he may seem, God is infinitely stronger. The devil is scary. That cannot be disputed. He is the enemy of God, and the enemy of humanity, bent on perverting God’s creation into his image. However, no matter what name this self-proclaimed “god of this world” chooses to use, whether it’s the devil, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Moloch, Mammon, Apollyon, Dagon, Zeus-Ammon, Camazots, Chernabog, Cthulhu, or Shandango, he is a “puny god” next to the One True God, and trembles at His name and is powerless before Him.
As Randy Alcorn notes in the Afterword to his epistolary novel Lord Foulgrin’s Letters,
“We shouldn’t take the devil lightly. But we should realize this roaring lion is on a leash held by an omnipotent and loving God. We must neither underestimate nor overestimate his powers…Nothing must be more infuriating to demons than for us to realize that if we’ve repented of our sins and trusted Christ as our Savior, then the same Lord who evicted them from Heaven dwells within us. He’s far more powerful than they. Through Him we can overcome them. ..The devil may be big to us, but he is small to God. The greater out God, the smaller our devil.”
This is best seen when Jay calls upon the name of Jesus when the earth begins to shake, the quake subsumes, something no other party has done. Later when the President of Nepur retrieves the key stolen from the dig site and attempts to open the door, it is only when the Coopers call upon Jesus and pray that the attack is repelled and the demonic hoard kept at bay until they can lock the door once again. Then for extra measure in a move that would make Indiana Jones proud, they blow the cavern to smithereens to ensure that no other person can open it until God sends His angel to open it at the End of Time.
It’s an exciting moment, and full of action but it drives home the simple Biblical truth, one written about by the Apostle Peter over two centuries ago in 1st Peter 5:8-9,
“Your enemy the devil prowls around like a lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers through-out the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”
It’s more than just standing firm, but that resting in God’s promise and in His Son and trusting in him in total submission the evil of their day is of no threat to them.
As it says in James chapter 4 verse 7-8,
“Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you.”
Like Indiana Jones, in particular the earlier four films from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg there is an element of the supernatural to Peretti’s novels, that permeates the rest of his work. As a result, it raises the stakes of the adventure as Dr. Cooper and his kids can’t just think their way, or even punch their way out of a situation any more then Indy could. They don’t even have a gas gun like Darkwing Duck, an Nth Metal Mace, a magical lasso, or the enchanted Helmet of Nabu like Hawkgirl, Wonder Woman, or Doctor Fate, or a jet pack like The Rocketeer. However, the Cooper’s have Someone far greater in their corner.
Against otherworldly forces from Hell, it requires the Coopers to step out in faith on their own and ask themselves what they really believe and to lean on that faith. But more importantly as the door is sealed off until the end of days, readers are reminded that God will always have the final victory over evil, both now and in the future. Thus, while the likes of Lovecraft, RL Stein, or Stephen King may appear to dwell on the darkness and even make it seem is if evil can win, readers who embark on these serialized adventures of the intrepid Cooper family are reminded that they don’t need to fear the things that go bump in the night, as long as God is with them because even those bogey’s under the bed tremble at the Name.
As author Ted Dekker, a collaborator of Peretti’s. noted in a conversation about the topic of Spiritual Warfare with author and speaker John Eldridge,
“For once you understand that there is a very real enemy arrayed against us, it also becomes clear there is One even greater who is for us. And when we see the fuller story, the love of God, we are now enabled to wage war against the enemy through the light of Christ. The hope we have in Christ is that we will join with Him one day and celebrate the complete destruction of all evil, and live in peace and love with Him forever. And that is the end of the story.”
Perhaps then it is all the more appropriate that the MacGuffin in the first book of The Cooper Kids Adventure series should have such an ominous name as “The Dragon’s Throat”. It’s a reminder to the readers of a simple, and fundamental truth, one they all hope for. It’s a truth echoed throughout all great fantasy stories, adventures and mysteries that someday, very soon, the rightful King will return and defeat the great dragon once and for all, freeing the land for all time.
As GK Chesterton once said in Tremendous Trifles,
“Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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PHOTO CREDIT:
1994. Crossway Books.
DISLCAIMER:
This Blog is not authorized, endorsed, or approved by any entities involved the creation, development, distribution or ownership of the Cooper Kids Adventure Series. The views and opinions contained in this blog reflect those of the author and do not represent the views or ownership of Frank Peretti, Crossway Books, Word Publishing, and any other parties involved in the creation or ownership of The Cooper Kids Adventure Series
Hi! Thanks for stopping by my blog! Somehow you stumbled upon it. Whatever brought you around, I'm glad you're here.
I am a free-lance writer and independent scholar of pop-cultural mythology, living and working in Minnesota.
An aspiring mythmaker, I dream of voyages through space, fantastic worlds, and even my own superhero or two.
I am also an established public speaker and have guest-lectured for college classes on the topic of comic book superheroes.
I graduated from Bethel University in 2007 with a degree in Literature and Creative writing.
I also write for the website NarniaFans.com. Head on over and you can check out my book reviews , a few fun interviews and even my April Fools Day jokes.
Jonathon D. Svendsen 