When One Door Closes

In a Middle Eastern country where following Jesus is dangerous, John Whittaker and Eugene Meltsner have brought the Imagination Station to help missionary Adam Haas and Pastor Saeed Asam disciple young believers. But things have gone terribly wrong: after Jalal, a boy from a Muslim family, was allowed into the machine and witnessed Jesus' crucifixion, Whit received a threatening phone call, and Pastor Asam was kidnapped right outside his home by Jalal's furious uncle, Ali Farah.

As the story opens, Adam brings the grim news to Whit and Eugene, who have moved to a safer hiding place. Eugene is crushed to realize the missing pastor was taken because of the boy he let into the station; Jalal had insisted his parents wouldn't mind, but his father's family turns out to be staunchly Muslim. While Eugene despairs, Adam reminds him of the Israelites trapped at the Red Sea, saying, "I've learned to trust God more than circumstances." God has a way of doing the unexpected, he explains, and that includes using our mistakes. Whit texts his son Jason, who has contacts in the region, and the group agrees to shut down the Imagination Station. Meanwhile, Ali locks Saeed in an abandoned warehouse, mocking his pleas and telling him that the imam, a Muslim holy man, will decide his fate.

At the Asam home, Saeed's wife Sarah is exhausted and frightened, wondering whether God has abandoned them, while her daughter Danielle discovers that no one in the neighborhood will admit to knowing anything about her father. Then Jason's message arrives: an imam in the region received a call about an infidel who led a Muslim boy astray. Whit persuades a reluctant Sarah to give him directions, and he boldly visits Imam Abdullah at the mosque. The imam neither admits nor denies knowing about the kidnapping, saying only that he must protect the community's children from radical ideas. Whit leaves promising to pray for Pastor Asam, and for the imam himself, that God will give him a vision of His will. Afterward Whit tells Eugene he feels strangely compelled to pray that God will do whatever it takes to change the imam's heart.

While the adults search, Saeed's other daughter, Grace, slips away to the church and starts the Imagination Station herself. A glitch drops her into the days of Noah, outside the ark, a frightening viewpoint Eugene had deliberately blocked. She listens as cruel men scheme to kill Noah and steal his ark, and when the rain begins she tells them they are getting exactly what they deserve. But then more glitches carry her to Jesus teaching that hatred and anger put people in danger of judgment, and to the cross, where Jesus asks His Father to forgive His killers. Flung back into the rising flood, Grace watches the drowning crowds in horror and sobs that she never meant it, that she doesn't want them to die. When her mother finds her, Grace confesses what she saw and realizes that if everyone cruel deserved destruction, that would include her, because she wished terrible things on her father's kidnappers. Shaken but changed, she tells her mother that she never truly knew whether she wanted to believe what her parents believe. "But now, now I do," she says. Together they pray for the kidnappers, that God will show them He is their God too.

The next day someone breaks into the church, and Whit and Eugene discover the intruder is Jalal, who came through a window just to find a place to pray because his family is so angry with him. Suddenly Ali Farah himself appears, but not with violence: he has come to take his nephew home, and he stuns Whit with the news that Pastor Asam has already been released. At that very moment, Saeed walks through his own front door and embraces his overjoyed family, telling them simply, "A miracle happened."

Saeed then recounts what took place. When the imam arrived at the warehouse, he first showed kindness by ordering water for the prisoner, then described a vision he received three times in one night: he was stumbling through a burning wilderness when he saw a stream, and beyond it a man in a white robe with piercing eyes. Running through the water, the imam became like a little child, wept in the man's arms, and heard him say he was Jesus, who had saved him. The vision even carried a message for the astonished kidnapper: "Tell Ali he is also mine. He and his whole family." The imam ordered Saeed set free and asked to read the words of Jesus for himself, and Saeed, filled with boldness, invited him home to share a meal and read the Gospel of Mark together. Ali, who has served Allah all his life, can only mutter that nothing makes sense to him anymore, while Whit observes that God routinely does the unthinkable.

When Danielle worries the imam's change of heart could be a trick, and asks why God doesn't simply give every Muslim a vision, her father answers that God usually works in ordinary ways, but "when every other way is closed, God enters through His own door." That, he says, is what we call a miracle. As Whit and Eugene prepare to leave, Adam notes that more and more Muslims are coming to faith in Christ through dreams and visions, and Whit reflects that God is the author of time, who opens doors no one can shut and shuts doors no one can open.