Tag Archives: Francis Schaeffer

Heartbroken Horror

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I am appalled by the hypocrisy of the so-called “progressive” political class today.

New York’s state legislature cheered when a bill was passed that would allow for abortions without limit (up to the point of birth), and the order was given to light up the city in pink to celebrate their achievement. Meanwhile, the governor of New York is working to remove the death penalty from the state’s constitution, arguing that it is inhuman to carry out a death sentence for convicted murderers.

So, just to clarify, the life of a convicted murderer in New York is protected,but this is not:baby

Are we clear?

A lawmaker in Virginia presented legislation that would allow an unborn child to be aborted even while the mother was in labor, and the very same day presented legislation that would make it illegal to spray pesticide to kill the fall cankerworm.

So this is protected in Virginia,

worm

but this is not.

baby

Are we clear?

At the 2019 State of the Union address, the entire assembly cheered (rightfully so) and sang “Happy Birthday” in honor of Judah Samet, a holocaust survivor who also escaped the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018.  Yet those progressives were suddenly quiet when the President spoke about ending the holocaust of our generation, the millions of lives that are taken each year in abortion.

The women in white cheered and danced at the President’s mention of more women than ever before being elected to office, but their dancing sharply contrasted with their stone-cold expression when abortion was discussed.

Simply appalling.

And yet it is not at all surprising.

For years our culture has been pushing the truth of God’s Word to the margins of life. The idea that we were created by a wise, holy, and sovereign God is set aside for the more popular notion of science: big bangs, evolution, and man as the master of his own destiny. Good and evil are no longer defined by an eternal, objective Truth, but are, among everything else, subjective, situational, and shifting with the times and culture, determined by the current milieu.  The value of the person sitting next to me is no longer drawn from the fact that he or she bears the image of God, but only in their positive contribution to society.

Francis A. Schaeffer once wrote in Whatever Happened to the Human Race?,

“If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography … , the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us.”

As we read in Romans 1:21–25:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Every God-fearing, Bible-believing, disciple of Christ should fall on their knees, lamenting the brutality of the world around us.  Our children have been sacrified to the modern-day version of Molech (ie. success, pleasure, prosperity, irresponsibility).

But we also give praise to our Sovereign God, because He has allowed the veil to be pulled back, revealing the hearts and minds of those in power. They are exposed for what they truly are, “slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil… [who] though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:30-32).

We need to pray.

Pray that God would raise up men like Gideon, who would have the courage to bring down the idols of the day.

Pray that God would give us wisdom, that we might know how to reach this fallen world with the truth of His Word.

Pray that God would give us compassion, that we might come alongside those who are struggling with an unexpected pregnancy, supporting and encouraging them in their decision to choose life.

Pray that the Gospel of Jesus Christ would be proclaimed boldly, so that all who are lost in sin might hear the call to salvation and peace with God.

And when you rise from prayer, having drawn near to the living God, stand firm and be ready to make Him known!

SDG

A Word Fitly Spoken

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I stumbled across this today in Francis Schaeffer’s “How Should We Then Live?”

What of tomorrow?  In the United States, for example, a manipulating authoritarian government could come from the administrative side or from the legislative side. A public official in the United States serving at the highest level has wisely said, “Legislative dictatorship is no better than executive tyranny.” And one would have to add that with the concept of variable law and with the courts making law, it could come from the judicial side as well. The Supreme Court has the final voice in regard to both administrative and legislative actions, and with the concept of variable law the judicial side could become more and more of the center of power.  This could well be called “the imperial judiciary.” Cut away from its true foundation, the power of the Court is nothing more than the instrument of unlimited power. This is especially so when it is tied into what Oliver Wendell Holmes called “the dominant forces of the community.”

As the memory of the Christian consensus which gave us freedom within the Biblical form increasingly is forgotten, a manipulating authoritarianism will tend to fill the vacuum.  The central message of biblical Christianity is the possibility of men and women approaching God through the work of Christ.  But the message also has secondary results, among them the unusual and wide freedoms which biblical Christianity gave to countries where it supplied the consensus.  When these freedoms are separated from the Christian base, however, they become a force of destruction leading to chaos.  When this happens, as it has today, then, to quote Eric Hoffer, “When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.”

At that point the words left or right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end.  There is no difference between an authoritarian government to the right or the left: the results are the same.  An elite, an authoritarianism as such, will gradually force form on society so that it will not go on to chaos.  And most people will accept it – from the desire for personal peace and affluence, from apathy, and from the yearning for order to assure the functioning of some political system, business, and the affairs of daily life.  That is just what Rome did with Caesar Augustus.

Keep in mind, Schaeffer wrote this in 1976.  Don’t we see this playing out before us even now?  Nominations to the Supreme Court sway elections, because the court now has the power to legislate from the bench.  The gospel of salvation is no longer welcomed in the public square, but the freedom and liberty found in only in Christ are demanded still, becoming a force of destruction in chaos.  The madding crowds desire not peace, but just to be left alone, and for politicians to maintain the status quo, regardless the cost.

How we need the message of Christ!  How we need the peace only He can afford!  May we turn to him in prayer and seek His face today.

SDG