DOORWAY PAPERS
.
For Science and Christianity
THE CUSTANCE LIBRARY
Doorway Publications
c/o Dr. R. Gary Chiang
Ancaster, ON, L9K 1J4
Canada
Telephone: 905-648-8491
E-Mail: arthurcustancecentre@gmail.com
When I received Jesus as my Lord and Saviour, my life changed drastically. Those were confusing times. Yet amazing ones.
I started life anew at 26 years of age and by that ripe old age I already had many years behind me of stubbornness, rebellion and disrespect for all things ‘churchy!’ Words cannot express the profound changes I was experiencing at that time.
Two significant life changing events happened to me in the newborn stage of my adult life of faith.
The first was that a friend who lived at the Inter-Varsity Student Housing Co-Op located in Sandy Hill, Ottawa, invited me to a Bible study with the others who also lived there. Lorna Raper was the house mother of that residence. Lorna was a faithful disciple of Jesus and a wonderful friend and counsellor to all whom she met.
In summer, Lorna was the leader at the Inter-Varsity Pioneer Camp near Huntsville, Ontario. She invited me to come there and be a camp counsellor. I was eager to go and so I did. After camp was over I did not want to return to Ottawa. I had met some other counsellors who were renting a house in Toronto. When the gals invited me to come, I happily and thankfully did so. What a wonderful year we had together!
When I arrived in Toronto I needed a job. I applied for a job at a book store in the newly opened first phase of the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto (1977). I was hired for a part-time evening job. However, I still needed a daytime job and Lorna arranged an interview for me at the Central Baptist Seminary Library. Part of my post secondary education was library related, so I took a one year term position cataloguing the books and typing the catalogue cards. It was during my time there that I discovered the ‘Doorway Papers’ by Arthur Custance.
I was greedy to learn. I devoured these difficult but amazing essays in every spare moment I had. The ‘Papers’ were the first ‘Christian’ writings I encountered. They were way beyond my limited comprehension.
The Internet had not yet been created and it was not easy to find Christian authors in many bookstores at that time. So although I had access to lots of books at the seminary library, for some reason, these writings really caught my attention.
The Doorway Papers deal with topics that are not often covered in our current Christian culture. The papers are long, detailed and complex. I can’t say that even now, I understand much of what is written in them. I share them because I appreciate the work that went into the researching, compiling and writing them as much as for the information they contain.
While these papers are not an easy read, perhaps you will find something of interest should you find the time to work through even a few of these extensive writings by Arthur Custance.