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THE FRANCIS SCHAEFFER CENTENNIAL – INVOCATION – PASTOR TONY FELICH
Uploaded by schaefferstudies on Feb 3, 2012
Pastor Tony Felich of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Overland Park, KS gives the invocation to the mini conference event in honor of Francis Schaeffer’s 100th Birthday.
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This year Francis Schaeffer would have turned 100 on Jan 30, 2012. I remember like yesterday when I first was introduced to his books. I was even more amazed when I first saw his films. I was so influenced by them that I bought every one of his 30 something books and his two film series. Here is a tribute that I got off the internet from Chuck Colson’s website www.breakpoint.org :
| A Jeremiah Summer |
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By Diane Singer|Published Date: August 29, 2011
“And I will declare my judgments against them, for all their evil in forsaking me. They have made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands.” Jeremiah 1:16 Prophetic timing During this time, I’ve been teaching Jeremiah in my Sunday morning Explore the Bible class. It wasn’t my idea to teach this particular book at this particular time: it’s part of a nine year through-the-Bible curriculum established by Lifeway publishers. However, the timing does seem, well, prophetic. The similarities between the stiff-necked rebellious people of Judah living six centuries before Christ and the stiff-necked rebellious people of America living today are terrifying — terrifying because of the strong possibility that Judah’s fate foreshadows America’s not-too-distant future. I realize that many people will say, “America is not Judah. God does not have the same relationship with America as He did with Israel and Judah; therefore, it’s impossible to draw parallels.” They’re wrong. While I concede that no two nations are alike, let alone two nations separated by more than 2500 years of history, we must recognize that God establishes and rules over all nations from the beginning of history to its end. Time does not erase what He requires, both for those who rule and for those who are ruled. Think about it:
Furthermore, to ignore the warning signs of a nation on the verge of destruction – signs we see in Jeremiah – is to make a liar of the apostle Paul, who wrote that all of the Old Testament is written for our instruction (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11). It also makes a liar out of God, who speaking through the prophet, asserts that “If any nation will not listen, then I will utterly pluck it up and destroy it” (Jeremiah 12:17). The indictment against Judah
They were wrong, as history demonstrated in 586 BC when Judah was crushed by the Babylonians. The indictment against America At the 2011 Resolved Conference, pastor John MacArthur made a claim, based on a passage in Isaiah 5, that particularly offended the anti-Christian crowd: “Materialism, drunkard pleasure seeking, arrogant conceit, defiant sinfulness, moral perversion, and corrupt leadership…Do you not see [them] in America?,” MacArthur asked. He then explained that just as these sins resulted in the destruction of Israel in 721 BC, these sins have brought the USA under divine judgment today. The Christian response “We do not have to guess what God would say about this because there was a period of history, biblical history, which greatly parallels our day. That is the day of Jeremiah. The Book of Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations show how God looks at a culture which knew Him and deliberately turned away. But this is not just the character of Jeremiah’s day of apostasy. It’s my day. It’s our day. And if we are going to help our own generation, our perspective must be that of Jeremiah, that weeping prophet Rembrandt so magnificently pictured weeping over Jerusalem, yet in the midst of his tears speaking without mitigating his message of judgment to a people who had had so much yet turned away.” (emphasis mine) Our response to the evil of our day – to the millions of people who “knew Him and deliberately turned away” – therefore, must mirror Jeremiah’s sorrowful but unflinching response:
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