Les Martin

This fiercely comic tale stands in marked contrast to its genial predecessor, "The Pickwick Papers." Set against London's seedy back street slums, "Oliver Twist" is the saga of a workhouse orphan captured and thrust into a thieves' den, where some of Dickens's most depraved villains preside: the incorrigible Artful Dodger, the murderous bully Sikes, and the terrible Fagin, that treacherous ringleader whose grinning knavery threatens to send them all to the "ghostly gallows." Yet at the heart of this drama is the orphan Oliver, whose unsullied goodness leads him at last to salvation. In 1838 the publication of "Oliver Twist" firmly established the literary eminence of young Dickens. It was, according to Edgar Johnson, "a clarion peal announcing to the world that in Charles Dickens the rejected and forgotten and misused of the world had a champion."

Surely most evangelicals would affirm the Bible is the Word of God. It is the record of what God has spoken, what He wanted us to know; it is the revelation of Himself and His will. He has declared that what He has given to us is sufficient for us. If all we can know about God can only be found in the pages of Scripture, is that enough? Does He still speak, and if so, how? If He speaks personal revelation to individual believers, what is to be done with such revelation? Is that assumed revelation as authoritative and accurate as the biblical text? Can we know for sure that it came from God? The answers to these questions carry serious consequences. We need to carefully examine what God has recorded in order to accurately understand how God has spoken and how He continues to speak.

FBI agents Mulder and Scully investigate another eerie unsolved mystery in modern America. Another case the Bureau wants handled quietly, but quickly, before the public finds out what's really out there, and panics.