Watchman on the Wall

Southwest Radio Ministries: Welcome to Watchman on the Wall, a daily outreach of Southwest Radio Ministries and swrc.com. God is still on the throne and prayer changes things. This week, we explore the echoes of Ararat. We are introduced to a figure who helped shape the world of C.S. Lewis's Narnia, and we'll remember Christ's sacrifice with a very special Good Friday program.

Friends, as we approach the end of March, we have a problem. Giving this month is currently running behind our budgeted expenses. That just means we need your help. Please pray and support Watchman on the Wall with a gift today. Visit swrc.com or call 1-800-652-1144. Please give your best gift today. swrc.com. Thank you. Here's today's host, Clayton Van Huss.

Clayton Van Huss: I'm so glad you joined us. We're here today with Pastor Reggie Weems, who is the author of a Jack and Lizzy adventure series. So we're going to be talking a little bit about the books and about the story behind them. If you're thinking, "I don't know what a Jack and Lizzy adventure is," let me just say that the first book in the series is called Looking for Narnia.

We're going to be getting into some interesting talk about C.S. Lewis and his past because Pastor Weems is a C.S. Lewis expert. Not just an expert, but a scholar. He has written peer-reviewed articles digging into the life of C.S. Lewis, so it's a real treat to be talking to you. Pastor Weems, welcome to the program.

Reggie Weems: Thanks so much, Clayton. It's a joy to be here. I always shy away from scholar and expert. I'm a fan like everybody else, and my fandom, perhaps I'm too much of a fan, and that's why I do the research. But like everybody else, I'm a fan of C.S. Lewis.

Clayton Van Huss: It really shows. The conversation we've already had this morning before going on the air, I'm blown away by what you've done. I was a C.S. Lewis fan growing up and reading the Chronicles of Narnia. Here we are getting to talk about this. I keep calling you Pastor because you pastor a church and that's how I know you because years ago I went to the same school as your children and I met you many years ago. So to me you're always Pastor Weems.

Reggie Weems: Children are taught to call the pastor "Pastor Weems" or "Pastor Reggie." Reggie is good. Thank you. I've pastored Heritage Baptist Church in Johnson City, Tennessee since 1991. My second pastorate. My first pastorate was East Park Baptist in Johnson City for ten years, actually 28 days shy of ten years. So I've been at Heritage for 34 years now, it'll be 35 in June.

I'm a husband. Tina and I met in Athens, Greece when I was 11 and she was 10. Our parents were in the Air Force. Our dads were in the Air Force. We met and when she left Athens, we kept a written correspondence. People used to write letters in those days. In the providence of God, we ended up living two blocks from each other when we were 16 and 15 in San Antonio, Texas. Both ended up graduating from the same high school.

I was in college in San Antonio, SAC as it was called, San Antonio Junior College. I quit school because I couldn't go to school and get married at the same time and I so wanted to get married. So I joined the Air Force, which was my family's history. My dad was in the Air Force, uncles in the Air Force, my three brothers-in-law were in the Air Force. So I quit college to join the Air Force for four years, two months, nine days.

I know that because I extended so that our oldest daughter could be born and the Air Force would pay for her. $18.75, that was for Tina's meals. She was born at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. I got out of the military and we had three children. We have two daughters, Stephanie and Angela. Jonathan, our son, died four years ago at 35.

I got out of the military and started at Gunnings Baptist Church in Blountville. I was there for a couple of years, moved to East Park Baptist for 10 years, and I've been at Heritage since that time. In the process though, I kind of went after education because I felt I was lacking, having quit college earlier to get married. Tina says we always did things backward.

So I went on and got my degrees and I've been very fortunate to do so just because I love reading and I love studying. I love learning. I have the great fortune of teaching online at Liberty University. I teach all kinds of different courses. I teach in the undergrad department, the graduate department, the doctoral department. Whatever they'll employ me to do, I love doing again because I just love learning.

Clayton Van Huss: I've seen that in you this morning. You're a true scholar. You're someone who cares enough to look at a matter and to look deeper into it. We were talking about the illustrations in your books. Your books, of course, are written for children. What age range are these Jack and Lizzy adventures?

Reggie Weems: I think they're for children who are learning to read and children who can read for themselves, that initial stage. The books are really meant for parents to read to children or to children to read alongside of parents, for them to experience the adventure together.

As much as Jack and Lizzy are adventuring together, this is for parents and their children to adventure together. Behind all of it, as Lewis intended, is the gospel. Chronicles of Narnia was intended to present the gospel in a fictional format in a suppose-all state. I think Lewis was extremely effective at it.

That's what this series is about also. It's kind of saying, "Where did C.S. Lewis get all of these fantastic ideas for these images and places and these themes? Where did that come from?" I'm of the perspective that Lizzie Endicott, who was his nanny starting at the age of two, introduced him to myth and began this investigative imaginative world that he experienced and ultimately the seed blossomed into the Chronicles of Narnia, the space trilogy, and a lot of other kinds of works.

Clayton Van Huss: You really have an excellent theory. I think before we get into that, what we need to do is explain what these books are. Of course, your new one is now out. That is the second of the Jack and Lizzy adventures, and that is The Fairy Godmother of Narnia.

Reggie Weems: The first book introduces readers to Jack. Who is Jack Lewis? Jack was the name he chose for himself. Who is C.S. Lewis? What's he all about? That's the first book. The second book then introduces Lizzie Endicott, who is his fairy-telling nanny. The third book, which will come out later this year, introduces them together. Here's where Jack met Lizzie, the circumstances, and how their relationship began.

The next seven books will take place in a little tiny hamlet on the northern coast of Ireland where Jack and Lizzie holidayed together as he went with his family. She was the nanny. The idea behind those seven books is taking each one of the Chronicles of Narnia and saying, "What existed in Castlerock? What adventures did Lizzie and Jack and his brother Warnie have, where he could have got some of these wonderful ideas, these images, these pictures that germinated in his mind for all of those years and eventually blossomed into the idea of Narnia?"

Then the last two books, there are 11 books in the series, and the last two books are at Little Lea, which is the very famous house that Jack and his family moved into when he was the age of eight. That's where he began writing these stories that I think eventually became the Chronicles of Narnia.

Clayton Van Huss: The focus on these is Jack and Lizzy, but of course, you mentioned Warnie, and they had quite a relationship all their lives.

Reggie Weems: Jack said that the relationship between he and Warnie was "us two against the world." That's the way he viewed it. When Warnie went to boarding school in England at a very young age, that would have occurred at about eight or nine, it left Jack by himself until he went to attend the same boarding school after his mother died.

There was a point in time in his life during that era where Jack said, "I was living almost entirely in my imagination" because he and Warnie had had these adventures. They had bicycles, they loved touring around Belfast, going into the mountains, going down to the lough where the Titanic was built. His grandfather had a part in the shipyard there.

They would tour that. Jack said, "I grew up in a land where giants could rise out of the mountains at any moment," and it's true. If you've ever seen Grandfather Mountain here just across the border into North Carolina, there's a place called Cave Hill in Belfast and you can see it from anywhere in Belfast. It's the exact same silhouette on Cave Hill. It's of a sleeping giant.

Some people go as far to say that's where the giant in Gulliver's Travels came from, that Jonathan Swift got his idea of that there. Who knows that? But he lived in that kind of world. He and Warnie did experience it.

Clayton Van Huss: You think of Belfast, you've also got the Giant's Causeway, it's called, the basalt stones that go out into the sea. Built by a giant coming from Scotland to fight a giant in Ireland. These books have a very Irish flavor.

We're talking about the new book in the Jack and Lizzy adventure series by Pastor Reggie Weems and that is The Fairy Godmother of Narnia. Of course, we also have Looking for Narnia, the first book about the life of C.S. Lewis as he grew up, but these are children's books, beautifully illustrated, soft, beautiful, very Irish-looking illustrations.

Reggie Weems: There is a flavor in these books because the Irish culture, the Irish people, fairy tales, myths, legends, things like the giants fighting each other, it just seems in everyone's imagination a magical sort of place.

Of course, C.S. Lewis growing up in Northern Ireland and Lizzie, his nanny, also growing up in Ireland, ended up in Belfast. She grew up with the stories and the legends that she passed on. Her mother was illiterate and could not read, so she was very gifted in storytelling.

Her father was first in the British Navy, traveled all the way to America. Then after he retired from the Navy, he joined the Irish Coast Guard. So when he came back home, he also would have these great stories of extravagant lands and new kinds of people, and he would share these stories with the family. This is where Lizzie got her storytelling origins, was from her mom and from her dad.

Clayton Van Huss: So we have this foundation for the imagination. Of course, God gifted C.S. Lewis with this beautiful imagination. You've already mentioned that he spent much time in his own head. I can identify with that growing up as a kid. I still as an adult think I spend too much time playing around in my own head.

But these things that colored that, through imagery and color and sort of a structure into the things going on in his head, they come from that childhood. Of course, we know he had some hard times, and I'd like to talk about that a little bit. Some hard times that helped to shape his life because I think we all know about his journey into atheism and then out of atheism.

Reggie Weems: First let me say I have this saying: when Jesus returns and remakes the earth, Northern Ireland will need the least work. If you drive through the Republic, which is the south of Ireland, you would think you were in northeast Tennessee. It looks just like where we live. If you're in the interior of the island, it has its beauty.

But when you go to Northern Ireland, it's beautiful. It's the most incredible land. It's called the Emerald Isle. Cliffs and oceans. You stand on the north coast of Ireland, there's the Atlantic Ocean and look out where the sky meets the water, and it seems like a forever kind of land. You can imagine Aslan coming from there into the northern part of Ireland.

So the geography, every biographer says the geography richly enhanced the series of Narnia and Jack's imagination. Interestingly, the politics did also. Think with me if you will, in the 12th century, the great plantation began. England started sending English lords to Ireland and gave them property that belonged to Irish people.

So the island became divided over those who were for that and those who were against that. That kind of sentiment still exists, those who believe in British rule and those who believe in home rule. Hence we have this division of the Republic and Northern Ireland, which belongs to Great Britain.

Think about Narnia. It's a land that has been invaded by a foreign power and it's all about the recovery of that land from winter to spring. So Jack was very much affected by the geography of the land, he was affected by the politics of the land, he was affected by the sorrow of the land.

I wish that people could read of Irish history to see what the Irish people have endured. Per capita, Ireland has more Nobel laureates in literature than any other nation on the face of the earth. There's a reason for that. These people are extremely emotive. Someone has said they are the Greeks of the modern era. They write stories in a way that come from the depths of a human person because of what they've endured in their lives, because of the sorrow they've experienced.

So Jack had that not only on a national psyche level, if you will, but he had it on a very personal level, experiencing the death of his mother when he was eight years old, just before he was nine years old. That's one of the things that moved him to atheism. He prayed that God would save his mother and God did not.

Interestingly, in The Magician's Nephew, the first book, young Digory Kirke does save his mother from illness. So there's Jack being inserted into the books, not only the history of the nation, the geography of the nation, but his personal history as well.

Clayton Van Huss: And that really directed where he would go. Then of course he went through some difficult times that all of the world went through, especially in that region. World War I, I know, was a huge influence on everything.

Reggie Weems: Dramatically affected him. In The Great Divorce, when he writes of The Great Divorce and he describes Hell, there are people who say that's the little city of Arras in France where he was wounded, that had been so shelled and bombed that it was gray.

The color was gone, the smoke laid like fog on the city, and some people say because of that experience, that's where he got his description of Hell in The Great Divorce. Hell for Lewis in The Great Divorce is called Gray Town. It is the Gray Town. This is a guy who grew up on the Emerald Isle. So it's a difference, if you will, between black and white and color, so to speak.

That's to some extent what atheism was for him. He said it was too thin, too shallow, didn't answer the real questions of life. So his conversion was an intellectual conversion. His heart came later, but there simply came a point in time in which he described himself as the most reluctant convert in all of England.

He simply had to confess on an intellectual basis. I love this about Lewis: though he was opposed to God because God had not rescued his mother and the remnants of that still resided in his heart, though he was opposed to the idea of God, his intellectual honesty required him to believe in God.

After he'd analyzed every other religion in the world, pretty much almost, he'd come to this realization that the incarnation is the true myth, it's the real story of the world, and it explains everything. I love that about Lewis, that when he was confronted with the facts of Christianity, he said, "I don't like it, I don't want to believe it, but it's true. I must accept it."

Then as we know, we have to obey the Lord even though our hearts may not be in it. We obey him because we do love him. Our hearts come along, if you will. That happened to Lewis. His intellect was baptized first, his imagination was baptized at another time.

Clayton Van Huss: We've got a little over a minute left. Can you just walk us through his journey, when these things came together? What was his response when he came to that point?

Reggie Weems: He writes a chapter in his book called "Checkmate" when it actually happened. It's very interesting. He came to Oxford. The only reason he got into Oxford was because World War I had so depleted the populace of males in the country to attend the university because he never passed math responsions, he never passed his math test to get in.

But they needed students and so they let him in. Interestingly, because his mother was a math genius. She was one of the first women to graduate from Queen's University in Belfast with a major in mathematics. But Lewis was never good at math, constantly misremembered dates and things of this nature.

But he got into Oxford and he said when he got to Oxford, all the wrong things happened. His best friends turned out to be Christians. All the books he loved turned out to be Christian. He accused God of disguising himself, of hiding in good literature. He just thought this is unfair and he wrote that an atheist must be very careful about what they read as a result of that.

But it was, as you know, to some extent the effect of Tolkien, a good friend, and a midnight walk with Hugo Dyson and Tolkien that convinced him that Christianity was real. It was what he'd been looking for all of his life. It answered all of his questions and he believed on the Lord several days after that walk with Tolkien and with Dyson.

Clayton Van Huss: The most reluctant convert. We've been talking today with Pastor Reggie Weems, the author of the Jack and Lizzy adventure series and his new book, The Fairy Godmother of Narnia. We're going to get into that one tomorrow. We're excited to talk about what's going on in the book, so you definitely don't want to miss that.

Southwest Radio Ministries: In The Fairy Godmother of Narnia, author Reggie Weems takes readers behind the scenes of C.S. Lewis's imagination and introduces us to a nearly forgotten figure who helped shape it all: Lizzie Endicott, young Jack Lewis's devoted nanny and master storyteller. Long before Narnia had a name, Lizzie filled Jack's childhood with wonder. Through her kindness, creativity, and vivid tales, she planted the seeds that would one day bloom into fauns, lions, and enchanted lands.

Lewis would later remember her fondly in Surprised by Joy, and her influence echoes throughout the characters and themes of Narnia. This beautifully written and illustrated book uncovers the real-life inspiration behind Lewis's fantasy world and celebrates the quiet, powerful role of a woman who changed literary history not with fame, but with faithfulness, imagination, and love.

Discover the woman behind the wardrobe. See Narnia through the eyes of its first storyteller. Revisit the magic with a deeper sense of meaning. Your children and grandchildren will love this book. Order The Fairy Godmother of Narnia today when you call 1-800-652-1144. That's 1-800-652-1144. Or order The Fairy Godmother of Narnia online at swrc.com. If you love the Chronicles of Narnia, this book will open a new door in your heart, straight into the true story of how Narnia began. The Fairy Godmother of Narnia, 1-800-652-1144.

Pastor Larry: Pastor Larry comes now to answer a question born out of deep concern. Pastor Larry, what about children who die before responding to the gospel?

Anthropologists have estimated that since the beginning of recorded history, two-thirds of children conceived never live beyond five years of age. Today millions of children die through miscarriage, disease, abortion, starvation, war, crime, and natural disaster. In his three-year ministry on earth, Jesus blessed little children. His response to the needs of little children was something that encouraged parents to bring their children to Jesus.

Sometimes the disciples showed their ignorance of Jesus' love for little children by seeking to prevent parents from bringing their children to Jesus, but Jesus rebuked the disciples and said, "Allow the children to come to me." In Matthew 18:1-6, we read that the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Jesus called a child to himself and said, "Truly I say unto you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever therefore humbles himself as this little child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little children who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone—and friends, millstones weighed about 80 pounds—hung around his neck and to drown in the depths of the sea."

In Matthew 18:10, Jesus said, "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven." Angel representatives are in a face-to-face relationship with the Almighty, ready to give God a detailed report of what is happening on earth to little children.

I believe that little children and the unborn are in heaven with Jesus because God often makes plans with the well-being of children in mind. Why did God send his prophet Jonah to the ancient city of Nineveh? Why did God want the city to repent so he could spare the city? Well, one of the reasons was that God wanted to spare the little children.

In Jonah 4:11, God said, "Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right hand and left hand?" That's a phrase applied to little children. There is another scripture that is similar. When the Hebrews were punished by God for their disobedience, God would not let them go into the Promised Land, but their children were exempted from that penalty.

Theirs was a generation that entered what later became the nation of Israel. In Deuteronomy 1:39, the Bible says, "Moreover your little ones, who this day have no knowledge of good and evil, shall enter there, and I will give it to them, and they shall possess it."

In the history of warfare, there is the common practice that women and children are to be protected. They are not combatants. Even Hitler observed that rule, at least for a time. That is why when Russian President Vladimir Putin bombed a maternity hospital in Ukraine, the common reaction was one of shock and utter disgust. The American abortion craze is even more shocking. I always loved the little song we used to sing during Vacation Bible School:

"Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world."

Southwest Radio Ministries: In The Fairy Godmother of Narnia, author Reggie Weems takes readers behind the scenes of C.S. Lewis's imagination and introduces us to a nearly forgotten figure who helped shape it all: Lizzie Endicott, young Jack Lewis's devoted nanny and master storyteller. This beautifully written and illustrated book uncovers the real-life inspiration behind Lewis's fantasy world and celebrates the quiet, powerful role of a woman who changed literary history not with fame, but with faithfulness, imagination, and love.

Your children and grandchildren will love this book. Order The Fairy Godmother of Narnia today when you call 1-800-652-1144. If you love the Chronicles of Narnia, this book will open a new door in your heart, straight into the true story of how Narnia began. The Fairy Godmother of Narnia, 1-800-652-1144.

Tomorrow, author Reggie Weems will continue to introduce us to the fairy godmother of Narnia, so be sure to tune in. Watchman on the Wall is a production of Southwest Radio Ministries and is supported by faithful listeners like you. To learn more, visit swrc.com.