Is the Bible true truth as Francis Schaeffer contended?

Is It Biblically Proper to Seek Evidence for Creation?

by John D. Morris, Ph.D.

The Institute for Creation Research has become known for its attention to research. It’s important to recognize that we don’t try to “prove the Bible.” The Bible doesn’t need our help. Whether or not there is evidence, the Bible is true! In our research we assume the Bible, and conduct our investigations in that framework. We interpret all historical data within the model of true history given in Scripture.

For instance, we do a lot of research in Grand Canyon, a huge scar in the earth gouged out by moving water. We go there with the firm conviction that the world-restructuring flood of Noah’s day covered Arizona, and that its processes and aftereffects would have left their mark. We interpret the data in that light.

This is not a naïve stance. Everyone has a perspective. Evolutionary naturalism has become such a worldview and is unquestioningly used by its adherents in their interpretation of data. We feel that of the two broad viewpoints of history, creation is the better choice. The Bible and its teachings have proven to be trustworthy, and a solid foundation for our faith. It handles the data better, with no inconsistencies or contradictions.

Since the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, there is no need to fear putting it to the test (I Thessalonians 5:21). Francis Schaeffer used to declare the Bible to be “true Truth.” It is absolutely accurate in all matters on which it touches, and the worldview it presents is applicable in all areas. Research can fill in the gaps in our knowledge, for the Bible doesn’t give all the details. Furthermore, in the Dominion Mandate of Genesis 1:28, we (i.e., all representatives of mankind) are commanded to study creation, in order to use it wisely for man’s good and God’s glory. The Creator instructed Adam to “subdue [the earth]: and have dominion over [it].” Furthermore, He is pleased when we learn more of Him through research into what He has done and give Him the glory. Research can answer questions which might have arisen in the minds of Christians, remove obstacles to salvation in the path of non-Christians, and show the superiority of the Biblical way of thinking. It can and should do all these things.

Nevertheless, some Christians think otherwise. They feel that the Bible is beyond such investigation, and doesn’t even need to be supported. They are offended that we attempt to demonstrate its accuracy, and chastise us for trying. While this may sound “spiritual,” it differs from Christ’s example.

After His resurrection, He appeared to His disciples in the upper room, but Thomas was not present (John 20:24). When told by the others that they had seen the risen Lord, Thomas insisted that he needed to see the evidence. “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails . . . I will not believe” (v.25). A few days later He again appeared. This time Thomas was present. Did Jesus upbraid him for his need for evidence? Not at all. He graciously invited Thomas to come and see the scars. The evidence was there, and his faith was well placed. Throughout Scripture we find God revealing Himself and validating the truth with evidence. Still, He requires faith, but that faith is a reasonable faith, based soundly on demonstrable fact.

* Dr. John Morris is President of ICR.

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Related posts:

The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played in the rise of the pro-life movement. It examines the place of How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, and A Christian Manifesto in that process.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

No wonder Aleister Crowley appeared on the cover of SGT. PEPPER since interest in the occult skyrocketed in the 1960’s.  Schaeffer noted, “Though demons don’t fit into modern man’s conclusions on the basis of his reason, many modern people feel that even demons are better than everything in the universe being only one big machine. People put the Occult in the area of nonreason in the hope of some kind of meaning even if it is a horrendous kind of meaning.” 

Aleister Crowley on cover of Stg. Pepper’s:

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I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this series we have looked at several areas in life where the Beatles looked for meaning and hope but also we have examined some of the lives of those  writers, artists, poets, painters, scientists, athletes, models, actors,  religious leaders, musicians, comedians, and philosophers  that were put on the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. We have discovered that many of these individuals on the cover have even taken a Kierkegaardian leap into the area of nonreason in order to find meaning for their lives and that is the reason I have included the 27 minute  episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted,  ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.”

 Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Album really did look at every potential answer to meaning in life and to as many people as the Beatles could imagine had the answers to life’s big questions. One of the persons on the cover did have access to those answers and I am saving that person for last in this series on the Beatles. 

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

SATANIST Aleister Crowley ~ The Most Wicked Man In The World ~ Great Documentary

Check out at the end of this post the featured artist which is Jann Haworth. Jann Haworth (born 1942) is a US pop artist. A pioneer of soft sculpture, she is best known as the co-creator of The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

During this long series on the Beatles it has become quite evident that there were reasons why certain writers, artists, poets, painters, scientists, athletes, models, actors,  religious leaders, musicians, comedians, and philosophers were put on the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and that is the Beatles had made it to the top of the world but they were still searching for purpose and lasting meaning for their lives. They felt they were in the same boat as those pictured on the cover and so they called it appropriately Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  In his article “Philosophy and its Effect on Society  Robert A. Sungenis, notes that all these individuals “are all viewing the burial scene of the Beatles, which, in the framework we are using here, represents the passing of idealistic innocence and the failure to find a rational answer and meaning to life, an answer to love, purpose, significance and morals. They instead were leaping into the irrational, whether it was by drugs, the occult, suicide, or the bizarre.”

Francis Schaeffer pictured below:

Why was Aleister Crowley the notorious mystic and Occultist and drug user chosen by John Lennon (according to Jann Haworth) to be on the cover?

Francis Schaeffer in his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? gives us some insight into a possible answer to that question:

In this flow there was also the period of psychedelic rock, an attempt to find this experience without drugs, by the use of a certain type of music. This was the period of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967)….The younger people and the older ones tried drug taking but then turned to the eastern religions. Both drugs and the eastern religions seek truth inside one’s own head, a negation of reason. The central reason of the popularity of eastern religions in the west is a hope for a nonrational meaning to life and values. The reason the young people turn to eastern religion is simply the fact as we have said and that is that man having moved into the area of nonreason could put anything up there and the heart of the eastern religions  is a denial of reason just exactly as the idealistic drug taking was. So the turning to the eastern religions today fits exactly into the modern existential  methodology, the existential thinking of modern man, of trying to find some optimistic hope in the area of nonreason when he has given up hope on a humanistic basis of finding any kind of unifying answer to life, any meaning to life in the answer of reason. Though demons don’t fit into modern man’s conclusions on the basis of his reason, many modern people feel that even demons are better than everything in the universe being only one big machine. People put the Occult in the area of nonreason in the hope of some kind of meaning even if it is a horrendous kind of meaning. One must feel as a Christian a real sorry for these people…

Jimmy Page below:

Aleister Crowley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley, c. 1912
Born	Edward Alexander Crowley 12 October 1875 Royal Leamington Spa,Warwickshire England
Died	1 December 1947 (aged 72) Hastings, East Sussex England
Occupation	Occultist, poet, novelist, mountaineer
Spouse(s)	Rose Edith Kelly (m.1903–09) Maria Teresa Sanchez (m.1929–)
Children	Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley(1904–06) Lola Zaza Crowley (1907–90) Astarte Lulu Panthea Crowley(1920–2014)[1] Anne Leah Crowley (1920) Randall Gair Doherty (1937–2002)
Parent(s)	Edward Crowley and Emily Bertha Crowley (née Bishop)

Aleister Crowley (/ˈkroʊli/; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion and philosophy of Thelema, in which role he identified himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century.

Born to a wealthy Plymouth Brethren family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected this fundamentalist Christian faith to pursue an interest in Western esotericism. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life. In 1898 he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. Moving to Boleskine House by Loch Ness in Scotland, he went mountaineering in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, before studying Hindu and Buddhist practices in India. He married Rose Edith Kelly and they honeymooned in Cairo, Egypt in 1904. There, Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with The Book of the Law, a sacred text that served as the basis for Thelema. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The Book declared that its followers should adhere to the code of “Do what thou wilt” and seek to align themselves with their True Will through the practice of magick.

Crowley enjoyed being outrageous and flouting conventional morality,^[234] with John Symonds noting that he “was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time”.^[235] Crowley’s political thought was subjected to an in-depth study by academic Marco Pasi, who noted that for Crowley, socio-political concerns were subordinate to metaphysical and spiritual ones.^[219] Pasi argued that it was difficult to classify Crowley as being either on the political left or right, but he was perhaps best categorised as a “conservative revolutionary” despite not being affiliated with the German-based conservative revolutionary movement.^[236] Pasi noted that Crowley sympathised with extreme ideologies like Nazism and Marxism-Leninism, in that they wished to violently overturn society, and hoped that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union might adopt Thelema.^[237] Crowley described democracy as an “imbecile and nauseating cult of weakness”,^[238] and commented that The Book of the Law proclaimed that “there is the master and there is the slave; the noble and the serf; the ‘lone wolf’ and the herd”.^[224] In this attitude he was influenced by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and by Social Darwinism.^[239] Crowley also saw himself as an aristocrat, describing himself as Lord Boleskine; he had contempt for most of the British aristocracy,^[240] and once described his socio-political views as “aristocratic communism”.^[241]

Crowley was bisexual, and exhibited a sexual preference for women.^[242] In particular he had an attraction toward “exotic women”,^[243] and claimed to have fallen in love on multiple occasions;

Several Western esoteric traditions other than Thelema were also influenced by Crowley. Gerald Gardner, founder of Gardnerian Wicca, made use of much of Crowley’s published material when composing the Gardnerian ritual liturgy,^[271] and the Australian witch Rosaleen Norton was also heavily influenced by Crowley’s ideas.^[272] L. Ron Hubbard, the American founder of Scientology, was involved in Thelema in the early 1940s (with Jack Parsons), and it has been argued that Crowley’s ideas influenced some of Hubbard’s work.^[273] Two prominent figures in religious Satanism, Anton LaVey and Michael Aquino, were also influenced by Crowley’s work.^[274]

Crowley also had a wider influence in British popular culture. He was included as one of the figures on the cover art of The Beatles‘ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967),^[266] and his motto of “Do What Thou Wilt” was inscribed on the vinyl ofLed Zeppelin‘s album Led Zeppelin III (1970).^[266] David Bowie made reference to Crowley in the lyrics of his song “Quicksand” (1971),^[266] while Ozzy Osbourne and his lyricist Bob Daisley wrote a song titled “Mr Crowley” (1980).^[275] Jimmy Page, the guitarist and co-founder of 1970s rock band Led Zeppelin, was rumoured to be fascinated by Crowley. In 1971 he bought Boleskine House, in the grounds of which part of the band’s movie The Song Remains the Same was filmed. He sold the house in 1992.^[276]

The demon Crowley of the television show Supernatural was named so in honor of Crowley.

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When I think of Aleister Crowley it brings to mind two Beatles’ songs, I’M A LOSER and HELTER SKELTER. Below Elvis Costello discusses both of those songs.

September 19, 2011

By Elvis Costello

My absolute favorite albums are Rubber Soul and Revolver. On both records you can hear references to other music — R&B, Dylan, psychedelia — but it’s not done in a way that is obvious or dates the records. When you picked up Revolver, you knew it was something different. Heck, they are wearing sunglasses indoors in the picture on the back of the cover and not even looking at the camera . . . and the music was so strange and yet so vivid. If I had to pick a favorite song from those albums, it would be “And Your Bird Can Sing” . . . no, “Girl” . . . no, “For No One” . . . and so on, and so on. . . .

Their breakup album, Let It Be, contains songs both gorgeous and jagged. I suppose ambition and human frailty creeps into every group, but they delivered some incredible performances. I remember going to Leicester Square and seeing the film of Let It Be in 1970. I left with a melancholy feeling.

52

‘Helter Skelter’

Mark and Colleen Hayward/Getty Images

Main Writer: McCartney
Recorded: July 18, September 9
and 10, 1968
Released: November 25, 1968
Not released as a single

With the raucous “Helter Skelter,” the Beatles set out to beat a heavy band at its own game. McCartney had taken issue with a review of the Who’s 1967 single “I Can See for Miles” that referred to the song as “a marathon epic of swearing cymbals and cursing guitars.” “It wasn’t rough [or full of] screaming,” he said of the song. “So I thought, ‘We’ll do one like that, then.'”

The Beatles recorded “Helter Skelter” on a night when, as engineer Brian Gibson recalled, “they were completely out of their heads.” Lennon played out-of-tune bass and saxophone, and Starr was serious when he screamed, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!”

Despite its association with Charles Manson — “Helter Skelter” was written in blood at the site of one of the Manson Family murders — the title has an innocent meaning: A “helter skelter” is a playground slide. “I was using the symbol as a ride from the top to the bottom — the rise and fall of the Roman Empire,” McCartney said. “This was the demise, the going down.”

The Beatles – From Me To You (Royal Variety Show ’63)

Uploaded on Sep 13, 2007

The Beatles – From Me To You (Royal Variety Show ’63) From the home of the London version of Mamma Mia! the musical.

72

‘From Me to You’

K & K Ulf Kruger OHG/Redferns

Writers: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: March 5, 1963
Released: May 25, 1963 (Re-released: January 30, 1964)
6 weeks; No. 41 (B side)

“I asked them for another song as good as ‘Please Please Me,'” George Martin said, “and they brought me one — ‘From Me to You.’ . . . There seemed to be a bottomless well of songs.”

Martin wasn’t the only one who loved the tune: It actually became the first Lennon-McCartney composition to hit the American Hot 100 when Del Shannon recorded a version after hearing it while sharing a bill with the Beatles in April 1963. (Lennon objected — he thought the cover would reduce the Beatles’ chances of breaking the tune in the U.S.)

“From Me to You” featured Lennon playing harmonica in a Jimmy Reed-inspired blues style he had learned from Delbert McClinton, another American who was on the same bill with the Beatles in the early Sixties. “It’s chiseled in stone now that I taught Lennon how to play harmonica,” McClinton said. “John said, ‘Show me something.’ I was in a pretty unique position, because there just weren’t a lot of people playing harmonica in popular music.”

Appears On: Past Masters

The Beatles – I’m a Loser (Live In Paris, 1965)

Published on Apr 11, 2013

Live at the Palais des Sports, Paris
–
© All rights reserved.
”I’m a Loser” (Lennon/McCartney)
Bealtes For Sale – 1964
Live In Paris, 1965

71

‘I’m a Loser’

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Main Writer: Lennon
Recorded: August 14, 1964
Released: December 15, 1964
Not released as a single

Looking back on “I’m a Loser” in a 1980 interview, Lennon said, “Part of me suspects I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.” Country music and Bob Dylan were catalysts for the song. The country is in the fingerpicking, guitar twang and downhearted words; in 1964, the Beatles were listening to songs by Buck Owens and George Jones that McCartney said were “all about sadness.” The Dylan flavor is in Lennon’s lead vocal and in the hooting, rack-mounted harmonica — and Lennon said he’d decided that if Dylan could use “clown,” a word Lennon had previously considered “artsy-fartsy,” then so could he. But the Beatles’ stamp is everywhere: in the exuberant vocal-harmony intro, in a melody that suddenly dives way down, in Harrison’s pointed Carl Perkins fills and in Lennon’s psychological acuity: “Is it for her or myself that I cry?”

Years later, upon reflection, McCartney heard something else in the song. He suggested that “I’m a Loser” and “Nowhere Man” were “John’s cries for help.”

Appears On: Beatles for Sale

You can’t do that – Beatles (Clip)

70

‘You Can’t Do That’

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Main Writer: Lennon
Recorded: February 25, 1964
Released: March 16, 1964
4 weeks; No. 48 (B side)

Four days after they returned from their triumphant first American tour, the Beatles were back in the studio, trying to meet the demand for new recordings. (It was also Harrison’s 21st birthday, but he didn’t exactly have time to answer the 30,000 birthday cards he received.) On the docket that day was a new song by Lennon that reflected his love for hard-edged American R&B — “a cowbell going four in the bar and the chord going chatoong!” as he put it.

“You Can’t Do That” — the B side of “Can’t Buy Me Love” — features an instrument Harrison had acquired in New York a few weeks earlier, when the band was in town to tape its first Ed Sullivan Show appearance: a 12-string Rickenbacker 360/12 guitar, the second one ever built, which would define the Beatles’ sound for the next two years. But the lead-guitar part, featuring a choppy, tone-bending solo, is played by Lennon. “I have a definite style of playing — I’ve always had,” Lennon told Rolling Stone. “But I was overshadowed. They call George the invisible singer. I’m the invisible guitarist.”

Appears On: A Hard Day’s Night

Delivered from Twelve Years of Occult Bondage

Article ID: DO035 | By: Karen Winterburn

Although my family did not practice any religion, I decided at age 14 to join the Catholic church. I quickly developed a strong appetite for the Word of God. In fact, I had such a strong attraction to the Scriptures that I bought three different translations of the Bible — all of which I read regularly.

But my life soon took a turn for the worse. Following my high school gradua­tion, I entered a very liberal convent. I immersed myself in liberal theology, existen­tial philosophy, and the sociology of religion.

I no longer read Scripture without being armed with my liberal “debunking tools,” and prayer became less and less personal communion with God and more of a general meditation — until even that disappeared. I had turned my back on the Lord and the Christian life.

I left the religious order and for the next four years tried out Marxism, hedonism, and humanism — in that order. But none of them filled the void created in my heart by turning away from the living God. None of them helped me explain the residual nagging sense of the presence of God. God refused to leave me, but I persisted in looking for an alterna­tive explanation for Him. And I found one (so I thought) — the occult!

People I talked to — non-Christians, Christians, and even clergy — called my dabbling in the occult my “spiritual jour­ney” or “pilgrimage.” Everyone seemed to romanticize it. But this “spiritual journey” didn’t turn out to be as purposeful and exciting as it had first promised to be. I found myself longing to find my way back to true spiritual reality. The problem, how­ever, was that I had developed serious doubts about the credibility of Christianity (an outgrowth of my liberal education).

So, for twelve long years, I remained deeply entrenched in the occult. I was a pro­fessional astrologer the whole time — teaching, doing conferences, and counseling.

I was also a trance medium for 16 months. I have over one hundred pages of transcript material from this period —much of which was generated through me while working with a scientific team in Chicago: a psychologist, a physician/psy­chiatrist, a physicist, and a parapsycholo­gist. This team tested me, hypnotized me, and worked with the material I produced while in an altered state of consciousness. I explained and discussed issues in sub­atomic physics that were “right on target,” according to the physicist. I clarified problems in the psychologist’s research on brain waves and biofeedback without even knowing he was doing this research.

None of this scientific material origi­nated in me. I knew that very well, but didn’t want to believe it, preferring instead the message I was getting from my inner “source”: this knowledge was being generated by my own “expanding consciousness.” I was in touch with my “lighter self,” my “God self,” my “Christ consciousness” — and believed this expansion of knowledge and awareness could continue indefinitely.

Besides being a trance medium, I worked a lot with different methods of divination: numerology, psychometry, I Ching, and Tarot cards. I practiced and taught visualization techniques — working from the Western Kabbalah and Eastern yogas, modern inner-healing therapies, and guided meditations.

Over the last five years of this twelve-year period, I was involved in a syncretistic cult Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT). This cult integrates several world religions and many strands of occult tradi­tion. It’s an outgrowth of the “I AM” movement of the 1930s and the Theosophical movement before that.

CUT presents itself as the religion of the New Age: ushering out the “Age of Pisces” under the leadership and authority of the “Ascended Master” Jesus Christ and ushering in the “Age of Aquarius” under the authority of Saint Germain —whom CUT leaders believe to be an even greater Ascended Master. My earlier trance medium experience had prepared me to accept in detail the message and gestalt of this bizarre group.

While involved with this group, I tried defining my Christianity (with which I was still very uncomfortable) through “Christian metaphysics”: a baptized ver­sion of the positive thinking schools and self-help technologies, and founded squarely on the philosophy and method of mental sorcery. I thoroughly absorbed the writings of Emmet Fox during this time.

Over this twelve-year period, I shut out the Lord and worshipped every false god I bumped into along the way: Gautama Buddha, Lord Maitreya, Hindu gods, Greek gods, Roman gods, Egyptian gods, Chaldean gods, the Cosmic Christ, the Solar Logos, the Ascended Masters, the Divine Mother, the Nameless Void — and finally my “higher self,” my “Christ self,” and my “God self.”

“Are you the one?” I would ask. They all answered, “yes.”

During this time, it became increasingly clear to me that spiritual growth was not something I’d been enhancing, but pre­venting. For three months I forced myself to face this issue. Over the years I’d had many interesting spiritual experiences, but there had been no spiritual growth or life. I realized I had been turning circles and was no closer to the truth now than when I first started searching for it.

Having exhausted all these alternatives to Jesus Christ and coming up so short of the glory of God, I began to panic. I went through a week of pure hell that seemed like a lifetime. God had suddenly become so “other” to me. The only thing I began to see clearly about God that week was that He is utterly holy and righteous. No other god even makes a pretense at being holy and righteous. At this time, the con­sciousness of personal sin reentered my life — what a nauseating, embarrassing, and defeating reality! Seeing myself in this honest light was a shattering experi­ence for me.

Then I remembered a verse I’d read somewhere in the Bible: “The LORD is my righteousness.” I began to see — pos­sibly for the first time — that the very holiness that must in justiceconsume me, can be imputed to me as a gift from God! What an incredible realization this was. This was utterly against every principle and tenet of New Age spirituality.

During this time, a verse I did not even know I had memorized came to my mind: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). I felt a combination of relief and terror at this memory. How could all my twelve years of occult involvement have been a spiritual placebo, I wondered?

Revelation 3:20 surfaced in my mind the same way: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with Me.” Jesus Christ was alive and well and knocking at my door! And this was most assuredly not the Ascended Master Jesus Christ. This was the real live Person! I was now willing to dismantle my altars to false gods; to put away The Bhagavad Gita and the I Ching.

“Lord,” I asked, “what do you want me to do now?” After asking this question, I remember opening my Bible to Acts 9:6 where Paul had fallen to the ground when Jesus appeared in a blinding vision to him on the road to Damascus: “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do,” Jesus said to him. When Paul arrived at this city, the disciple Ananias helped him. I applied this verse to my situation, and took it to mean that I should just put myself “out there” and assistance would be arranged.

Little did I know I would soon meet my own “Ananias.” I had on my laundry room table several stacks of graduate school bulletins and catalogues. During the last year of my spiritual “pilgrimage,” I had somehow gotten the idea that I’d understand everything a lot better if I just had a doctorate in theology. So I had sent away for catalogues from every school of theology within a 50-mile radius.

Then I realized I had some preliminar­ies to settle first, such as, which theology? Buddhist? Unitarian? Catholic? Church Universal and Triumphant? One evening I absent mindedly paged through one of the catalogues: Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I immediately noticed the state­ment of faith. What an odd thing to put in a school catalogue, I thought to myself. I read it and had two distinct and warring reactions. One part of me said, “No one with half a brain could assent to this. Throw this into the fireplace and forget it!” The other part of me said, “Thank God someone still believes.” I read through the catalogue and it became increasingly clear to me that the commitment to scholarship was equaled by a corporate commitment to a life devoted to Jesus Christ as God and Savior.

The thought occurred to me that I should talk to someone from Trinity. “But who?” I asked myself. I decided to scan through the list of faculty in the catalogue and my finger stopped on the name of Dr. John Feinberg. I called Dr. Feinberg and told him I had gotten his name in a round­about way and needed to talk to him about “church membership.”

When I arrived at Dr. Feinberg’s home, I opened two doors: his as well as the one I had closed on the Lord years ago. He opened the Bible with me and helped me understand myself and my experience in the light of what it said. He confirmed the exclusivity of the claim of Christ on my life. He also directed me to a good church that remains to this day my spiritual home. The worship, study, and fellowship at this church have been my major source of growth since my deliverance from occultism.

My restoration to the Father through trusting in Jesus Christ has been the most invigorating, eye-opening, and healing event in my life. I really know what it is to be “bought” with a price, to have someone else foot the bill for my rebellious and disobedient squandering. Jesus paid that price.

I can’t praise and thank God enough for what He has done for me. When you’re finally convinced of the hopelessness of your own efforts — when you realize that you’re as powerless as you are rebellious — that your Creator is sovereign and that you, a creature, can’t restore yourself to Him — and then He reaches down and digs you out of the heap, scrubs you off, and brings you home — I can only respond, “What a Father!”

In this earthly pilgrimage, we might not be sure of the terrain, and the environment is definitely hostile. But as Chris­tians, we know where we’ve come from, we know where we’re going, we know how we’re getting there, and we’ve got hold of the hand that is taking us! Praise God for this wonderful thing He’s done!

Editor’s Note: Karen Winterburn is the director of the Chicago and Suburban Branch of Mt. Carmel Outreach. P.O. Box 6407, Evanston, IL 60202.

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Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:

The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there. 

Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason (such as a leap into the occult or into drugs) the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeaffer, footnote 94)

A much more dramatic story surrounds the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the present century. The Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which relate to the text of the Bible, were found at Qumran, about fifteen miles from Jerusalem.

Most of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. Many people have been troubled  by the length of time that has elapsed between the original writing of the documents and the present translations. How could the originals be copied from generation to generation and not be grossly distorted in the process? There is, however, much to reassure confidence in the text we have.

In the case of the New Testament, there are codes of the whole New Testament (that is, manuscripts in book form, like the Codes Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus, dated around the fourth and fifth centuries respectively) and also thousands of fragments, some of them dating back to the second century. The earliest known so far is kept in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. It is only a small fragment, containing on one side John 18:31-33 and on the reverse, verses 37 and 38. It is important, however, both for its early date (about A.D.125) and for the place where it was discovered, namely Egypt. This shows that John’s Gospel was known and read in Egypt at that early time. There are thousands of such New Testament texts in Greek from the early centuries after Christ’s death and resurrection.

In the case of the Old Testament, however, there was once a problem. There were no copies of the Hebrew Old Testament in existence which dated from before the ninth century after Christ. This did not mean that there was no way to check the Old Testament, for there were other translations in existence, such as the Syriac and the Septuagint (a translation into Greek from several centuries before Christ). However, there was no Hebrew version of the Old Testament from earlier than the ninth century after Christ–because to the Jews the Scripture was so holy it was the common practice to destroy the copies of the Old Testament when they wore out, so that they would not fall into disrespectful use.

Then in 1947, a Bedouin Arab made a discovery not far from Qumran, which changed everything. While looking for sheep, he came across a cave in which he discovered some earthenware jars containing a number of scrolls. (There jars are now in the Israeli Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.) Since that time at least ten other caves in the same vicinity have yielded up other scrolls and fragments. Copies of all the Old Testament books except Esther have been discovered (in part or complete) among these remains. One of the most dramatic single pieces was a copy of the Book of Isaiah dated approximately a hundred years before Christ. What was particularly striking about this is the great closeness of the discovered text tothe Hebrew text, whicch we previously had, a text written about a thousand years later!

On the issue of text, the Bible is unique as ancient documents go. No other book from that long ago exists in even a small percentage of the copies we have of the Greek and Hebrew texts which make up the Bible. We can be satisfied that we have a copy in our hands which closely approximates the original. Of course, there have been some mistakes in copying, and all translation lose something of the original language. That is inevitable. But the fact that most of us use translations into French, German, Chinise, English, and so on does not mean that we have an inadequate idea of what was written originally. We lose some of the nuances of the language, even when the translation is good, but we do not lose the essential content and communication.

Dead Sea Scrolls

FOUNDATIONS  OF  THE   BIBLE

The Dead Sea Scrolls

	Cave 4 This most famous of the Dead Sea Scroll caves is also the most significant in terms of finds. More than 15,000 fragments from over 200 books were found in this cave, nearly all by Bedouin thieves. 122 biblical scrolls (or fragments) were found in this cave. From all 11 Qumran caves, every Old Testament book is represented except Esther.
From BiblePlaces.com

Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in pottery jars of this type. The fact that this type of jar was found in the caves and in the settlement at Qumran, and nowhere else, would seem to be convincing evidence that the Scrolls and the Qumran community are tied together.
From CenturyOne Bookstore

The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)

You want some evidence that indicates that the Bible is true? Here is a good place to start and that is taking a closer look at the archaeology of the Old Testament times. Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology.,

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Top Ten Biblical Discoveries in Archaeology – #1 Dead Sea Scrolls

This post wraps up our Top Ten Biblical Discoveries in Archaeology series. To see the complete series please click here.

Old Testament Scribes

How accurate is the Old Testament we hold in our hands? It’s popular today to attack the accuracy of the Bible on the grounds of its lack of effective transmission. Popular authors claim the Bible we have today has simply been copied too many times, with too many textual errors, to be believed as the very words of God handed down to us over the millennia.

Free Video – Session 1 from the Church History Boot Camp

Every single copy of the Old Testament was hand copied up until the printing press came along in the 15th century AD. Imagine that, some of the books of the Old Testament were copied over and over for more than 3,000 years (traditional view of dating). Can a document copied so many times by hand truly be accurate today?

Tradition tells us the Hebrew people were meticulous copyists of Scripture. Scribes were so aware of their task they would go to great lengths to make sure their hand-written copy of Scripture was free from error. Hebrew scribes were bound to the following rules:

1. They could only use clean animal skins, both to write on, and even to bind manuscripts.
2. Each column of writing could have no less than forty-eight, and no more than sixty lines.
3. The ink must be black, and of a special recipe.
4. They must verbalize each word aloud while they were writing.
5. They must wipe the pen and wash their entire bodies every time before writing God’s name.
6. There must be a review within thirty days, and if as many as three pages required corrections, the entire manuscript had to be redone.
7. The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document became invalid if two letters touched each other. The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document.
8. The documents could be stored only in sacred places (synagogues, etc.).

Silver Amulet Scroll and Nash Papyrus

With all the careful scribal work a shockingly few number of Old Testament ancient manuscripts exist until today. The silver amulet scroll is by far the oldest. The scroll was mentioned as #4 in this top ten series. The amulet scroll dates way back to 600 BC. This is fantastic but it is only a couple verses of the entire Bible. So we can get a feel for the accuracy of those couple verses but not be able to get a good representative sample for the entirety of Scripture.

The Nash Papyrus dates to around 200 BC. It’s also a wonderful discovery but similar to the amulet scroll it only contains a hand-full of verses. Gratefully those verses are the Ten Commandments, but nonetheless our only 2 manuscripts of the Old Testament from the BC era are a very small representation of the entire Old Testament canon.

Codex Aleppo

Codex Aleppo is the oldest entire Old Testament possessed by humanity. The manuscript dates to around 900AD. The priceless manuscript is indeed magnificent. When analyzing the more than 2.7 million writing details that make up the Old Testament, the manuscript appears to be very precise in its creation. Although we have such a beautiful manuscript, the elephant in the room is that this manuscript dates from 900AD. Many New Testament manuscripts are older than our oldest Old Testament manuscript. Most of the Old Testament was written over 1500 years before Codex Aleppo.

1946-47

The greatest biblically relevant archaeological discovery, made in the winter of 1946-47, would shake up the biblical and archaeological world. John C. Trever has done a good job reconstructing the story of the scrolls from several interviews with the Bedouin people.

Muhammed edh-Dhib, a 15 year old Bedouin living in Bethlehem, was with his cousin in the region of the Dead Sea. Jum’a Muhammad, the cousin of edh-Dhib, noticed some possible cave openings while out shepherding some goats. Edh-Dhib made it into a cave and discovered something that had been untouched for more than 2,200 years. He reached into a pot and retrieved some scrolls and showed them to Jum’a.

The impact of these scrolls were not readily apparent. The scrolls were taken back to the Bedouin camp to show the rest of the family. The Bedouin kept the scrolls hanging on a tent pole while they figured out what to do with them, periodically taking them out to show people.

The scrolls were first taken to a dealer named Ibrahim ‘ljha in Bethlehem. In one of those famous dumb moments of history ‘ljha returned them saying they were worthless. Undaunted, thankfully, the Bedouin went to a nearby market, where a Syrian Christian offered to buy them. A sheikh joined their conversation and suggested they take the scrolls to a part-time antiques dealer. The Bedouin left one scroll with the dealer and then sold three scrolls to another for the ridiculous sum of $29!

George Isha’ya, a member of the Syrian Orthodox Church, heard about the scrolls and contacted St. Mark’s Monastery in the hope of getting an appraisal, news of the find then reached Metropolitan bishop Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, better known as Mar Samuel.

After examining the scrolls and suspecting their astronomical worth, he expressed interest in purchasing them. Four scrolls found their way into his hands. More scrolls continued to arrive on the scene. By the end of 1948, nearly two years after their first discovery, scholars had yet to locate the source of the manuscripts.

What was all the fuss about? After careful analysis and scientific analysis at the University of California, Davis it was determined that a new era of Old Testament biblical manuscripts had arrived. We were witnessing what appeared to be the discovery of an entire library of Old Testament and ancient Jewish writings. How old were these books? Remember our oldest complete Old Testament had been 900AD. An entire scroll of Isaiah was found and dated to around 200BC! Can you believe that, in one discovery 1100 years of biblical hand-written copies were spanned.

Magnitude of the Discovery

Archaeologists were able to track down the origin of the first scrolls and together with the Bedouins ended up finding a total of 972 manuscripts from 11 different caves. All 11 caves are in the southeastern Dead Sea area of Israel. The area receives almost no rainfall making it a perfect climate for ancient manuscripts to last thousands of years without decomposing.

The scrolls contain verses from every Old Testament book except for one. Only about 1/3rd of the scrolls are biblical writings. 2/3rds of the manuscripts are not biblical but pertain to Jewish life at the time. Think of it as stumbling across the 1,000 volume library of a Christian with many books of the Bible but then all sorts of books about 21st century Christian life and thought. This is the equivalent of the Dead Sea Scroll discovery. Many of the non-biblical books discovered were not known to even exist!

The scrolls, for some insane reason, were put up for sale in the Wall Street Journal on June 1, 1954. They were purchased for $250,000 and brought to Jerusalem where they eventually became housed in a museum called the Shrine of the Book where they reside today when not circulating in museums around the world. The scrolls today are considered priceless. Just to purchase a replica facsimile copy of 3 of the scrolls currently will run you $60,000 (a donation of replica scrolls to Parchment & Pen will not be turned down).

Significance of the Discovery

The scrolls are still, after decades, a discovery still being digested. The 972 manuscripts have shed great light on the accuracy and complexity of the Old Testament. The Isaiah Scroll, in comparison to Codex Aleppo and other manuscripts, show that the message of the Old Testament has not been changed over millennia. More articles and books have been written about the Dead Sea Scrolls than any other archaeological discovery with biblical significance. The scrolls are shedding a great deal of light on the Jewish religious world of roughly 200BC-90AD. The scrolls are generally showing the modern-day Old Testament to be an extremely accurate representation of the original writers.

Work in Progress

Google has announced a new deal with the Israeli Antiquities Authority to photograph all of the scrolls in order to make high-resolution photos available to anyone online for free. The scrolls continue to amaze and delight us; where we once had only a couple fragments of the ancient Old Testament we now enjoy an abundant library.

Please join the discussion by posting your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Today’s featured artist is Jann Haworth

Artist Profile: Jann Haworth

Jann Haworth – Brigham Young University 2013

JANN HAWORTH

Story by Dan Tygard

Photos by Chad Kirkland

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It’s what she knows — it’s what she does. Jann Haworth’s list of accomplishments is impressive and at the moment, she doesn’t show signs of slowing down. This is a good thing. Good for the international pop art scene, and even better for our local Salt Lake City art scene. I had the privilege of catching up with Jann at the Leonardo, where she runs the museum’s art lab, to talk about her work — past and present, as well as her outlook on the Salt Lake art community.

Jann is a native of Hollywood, California and is in many ways a product of the environment there. Her father was a production designer in the film industry and would frequently take her along on sets. Growing up in this kind of atmosphere has proven to be a source of inspiration for Jann’s work. After a year of studying philosophy at UCLA, she changed her major to pursue what was in her blood — art. She upped her commitment to make it her craft with a move abroad to London, to study at the Slade School of Fine Art.

While studying at the Slade, she began to develop her craft as a pop artist, specifically with soft sculpture, making a sculpture out of canvas or cloth. The idea was different. Jann had worked herself to the forefront of some- thing new.

If you don’t know the name Jann Haworth, search her name online. You’ll quickly learn that she co-created the album cover art for one of the most well-known and influential rock albums — the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Jann and her partner on the project, Peter Blake, became friends with the Beatles before the band made it big. When the Beatles weren’t satisfied with the cover for their new album, they enlisted Jann and Peter to redesign it.

The overarching concept for the album was to have the Beatles pose as the Sgt. Pep- per Band. Jann and Peter suggested that the crowd, gathered around the Beatles on the cover, be made up of people that the band admired. Taking inspiration from film, Jann built a life-size set masking two-dimensional cutouts with the three-dimensional Beatles standing in the foreground. The band provided about a third of the people for the crowd, so Jann and Peter supplied the rest. “The crowd is a real amalgam of funny things. Everything from Edgar Allen Poe, to Carl Jung, to Huntz Hall… just mad stupid contrasts. All George could give us was a bunch of gurus,” she laughed.

I’d spent two hours on a Monday evening in the art lab, trying to wrap my mind around all that she’s accomplished in her life up to this point. At the close of our interview she invited me out to her home in Sundance. Jann lives full-time in Salt Lake, but in preparation for a new exhibit featuring some of her work at BYU’s Museum of Art, she planned to spend a few days at her home in Sundance.

I arrived at 7pm on a Thursday evening, the sun dropping behind the mountains, but still managing to keep a corner pocket known as Sundance lit. As you walk from the drive- way to the stone and wood structure, long planks of wood lead you to the entrance of the home. Walking along the deck, you get a feel- ing of being suspended amongst the trees. You can tell instantly that the deck has served the home well. It’s entertained all that have come and spent long evenings and early mornings in conversation and contemplation. The home is amazing. It’s the kind of place where you could lose yourself in your work for weeks at a time and not even care about the outside world. The kind of place that inspires you to write, carve, sculpt, paint, and sew.

As Jann welcomed me into her home, I felt as if I were walking straight into a part of her life — a part that she holds near to her heart. It’s where both her father and her husband spent their final days before they passed. I respectfully walked into the home, my eyes following its architectural design. Large, raw wood logs run across the ceiling. Paintings, pictures, and sculptures fill the space. Each tells a story of Jann’s craft.

She led me to the kitchen and introduced me to her daughter, Daisy. Daisy was born and raised in England while her mother spent 35 years working as an artist, illustrator, educator, and a mother. Jann’s created and taken opportunities like the Looking Glass School in England, which she founded and ran for seven years. These experiences could be seen as tangents to the work of an artist, but to Jann these bifurcations haven’t been. She explained, “None of them have been the enemy of the work. All of them have taught me things and have enhanced the work.”

Jann relocated to Utah in 1997 and lived in Sundance. She continued to work and contribute to her new local art community with the start of Sundance’s Art Shack. She later co-founded the Sundance Mountain Charter School (now Soldier Hollow Charter School). In 2004 she brought her talents to Salt Lake with an outdoor mural, called SLC Pepper. It’s an update of the cover that she designed for the Beatles. Jann explained, “The cover was flawed. We wanted to make SLC Pepper more gender and ethnically diverse with people of stature that were catalysts for change, either in the arts or socially.”

Art has a way of bringing the commu- nity together. Adam Price’s 337 Project, of which Jann and 150 other local artists collabo- rated, brought Salt Lake together in a way the city hadn’t yet experienced. Jann said, “The 337 Project was such a rich experience. I think it helped Salt Lake to define its own vision. There was a shimmer that everybody felt, that meant that some conscious level was raised.”

I asked her if she considers Salt Lake to be home. Without hesitation she said yes, it’s something she’s proud of. “Anything is pos- sible here. You can think big, you can think small, you can make something fantastic,” she said. “Salt Lake feels very vibrant; peo- ple are very supportive of each other.”

Jann’s latest contribution to the local art community is called “Work To Do”. She and three other female artists collaborated on the topic of women, and the complex issues that surround their role and work. I attended the opening night of the exhibit where a large crowd filled the museum to consume the art.

As I watched Jann interact with those eager to talk about her work, art in gen- eral, or whatever else was on their mind. I saw firsthand what she values. Jann Haworth is all about connecting and building the com- munity through her craft. As much as she’s part of the international art community — she’s part of our local art community. And this is a good thing.

Jann Haworth

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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Nux Featurette [HD] Nicholas Hoult

Mad Max: Fury Road Official Trailer #1 (2015) – Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron Movie HD

Mad Max Fury Road Movie Review – Beyond The Trailer

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Movie Clips 1-6 (2015) Tom Hardy Post-Apocalyptic Action Movie HD

I must say that I really enjoyed this movie and I have also included a very positive review of it from CHRISTIANITY TODAY below.

The background of the MAD MAX movies is the destruction of the rest of the world by atomic weapons and the aftermath of disease and survival of fittest of those still living at this point in Australia. The main lesson to learn from these series of movies is that from a humanist worldview there is nothing left except the survival of the fittest and ultimately even the human race is bound for extinction as Nevil Shute presented in his book ON THE BEACH. Francis Schaeffer discusses this book a great deal and he shows that although many people today still hold to a form of optimistic humanism, it really has no basis. Even as far back as Charles Darwin this idea has been put forth.

Darwin wrote, “Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is…” 

Francis Schaeffer observed:

Now you have now the birth of Julian Huxley’s evolutionary optimistic humanism already stated by Darwin. Darwin now has a theory that man is going to be better. If you had lived at 1860 or 1890 and you said to Darwin, “By 1970 will man be better?” He certainly would have the hope that man would be better as Julian Huxley does today. Of course, I wonder what he would say if he lived in our day and saw what has been made of his own views in the direction of (the mass murder) Richard Speck (and deterministic thinking of today’s philosophers). I wonder what he would say. So you have the factor, already the dilemma in Darwin that I pointed out in Julian Huxley and that is evolutionary optimistic humanism rests always on tomorrow. You never have an argument from the present or the past for evolutionary optimistic humanism.

You can have evolutionary nihilism on the basis of the present and the past. Every time you have someone bringing in evolutionary optimistic humanism it is always based on what is going to be produced tomorrow. When is it coming? The years pass and is it coming? Arthur Koestler doesn’t think it is coming. He sees lots of problems here and puts forth for another solution.

I got these comments below off the internet from a person who was reviewing Francis Schaeffer’s film AGE OF NONREASON:

What is the problem of taking nature as the moral standard? To answer this question Schaeffer asks us to consider the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), ”who well understood the logical conclusion of this deification of nature. He knew that if nature is all, then what is is right, and nothing more can be said. The natural result of this was his ‘sadism,’ his cruelty, especially to women.” de Sade writing in his book “Justine” says “As nature has made us (the men) the strongest, we can do with her (the woman) whatever we please.” In nature there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and there is no basis for making those distinctions. In nature, might makes right. Can you imagine what true natural system of law would look like? Schaeffer’s conclusion is; “There are no moral distinctions, no value system. What is right? Thus, there is no basis for either morals or law.” If we are to make nature the rule, the yardstick by which we live then there is no distinction between things like cruelty and noncruelty.

THEREFORE, THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION IS SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST AND IS EXACTLY WHAT THE FILM “MAD MAX FURY ROAD” PUTS FORTH!!!!

Dan Guinn posted on his blog at http://www.francisschaefferstudies.org concerning the Nazis and evolution: As Schaeffer points out, “…these ideas helped produce an even more far-reaching yet logical conclusion: the Nazi movement in Germany.Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), leader of the Gestapo, stated that the law of nature must take its course in the survival of the fittest. The result was the gas chambers. Hitler stated numerous times that Christianity and its notion of charity should be “replaced by the ethic of strength over weakness.” Surely many factors were involved in the rise of National Socialism in Germany. For example, the Christian consensus had largely been lost by the undermining from a rationalistic philosophy and a romantic pantheism on the secular side, and a liberal theology (which was an adoption of rationalism in theological terminology) in the universities and many of the churches. Thus biblical Christianity was no longer giving the consensus for German society. After World War I came political and economic chaos and a flood of moral permissiveness in Germany. Thus, many factors created the situation. But in that setting the theory of the survival of the fittest sanctioned what occurred. ”

Francis Schaeffer notes that this idea ties into today when we are actually talking about making infanticide legal in some academic settings. Look at what these three humanist scholars have written:

• Peter Singer, who recently was seated in an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
• In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”
• In January 1978, Francis Crick, also a Nobel laureate, was quoted in the Pacific News Service as saying “… no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live.”

I had the opportunity to listen to a professor from Cambridge who was a student of the philosophic movies and ON THE BEACH was one of the movies that he liked very much because of its message against nuclear war. Below is a letter that I wrote him on this very issue of the prospect of a MAD MAX type existence happening.

Professor Michael Bate

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Below is a letter I wrote recently to Dr. Bate:

February 11, 2015

Dear Dr. Bate,

I just finished reading the online addition of the book Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters [abridged edition]. London: John Murray. There are several points that Charles Darwin makes in this book that were very wise, honest, logical, shocking and some that were not so wise. The Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer once said of Darwin’s writings, “Darwin in his autobiography and in his letters showed that all through his life he never really came to a quietness concerning the possibility that chance really explained the situation of the biological world. You will find there is much material on this [from Darwin] extended over many many years that constantly he was wrestling with this problem.”

Here is a quote I ran across recently from you in your wonderful in depth interview with Alan Macfarlane :

I acknowledge completely that there is a deep mystery and we fool ourselves completely if we think there is not; I feel that the mystery is less apparent to man in the 21st century, at least in the Western world, than once it was and  I think that is a great pity; I don’t subscribe to a particular religion.  I am like my maternal grandmother who refused to say the Creed because she couldn’t bring herself to say things that she didn’t believe in; we were deeply shocked by that as children; on the other hand I can get very engaged and interested in conversations of how the sort of religion that I was brought up with could actually change to become something that one could feel at ease with; an instance of such a conversation was a man called Richard Acland who gave a series of broadcasts about religion which I found deeply inspiring; he is my grandmother’s cousin; it is a deeply unsatisfactory area of my life because I feel that I don’t make enough time for reflection.

I would agree with you that we should all take more time for reflection on the big issues of life. I noticed in your interview with Alan Macfarlane that you noted that you “saw ‘On the Beach’ with Robert Acland; a transforming moment as so outraged by the thought of nuclear annihilation that I became a rabid nuclear disarmer; went to RAF Wittering with the Cadet Corp to see what they claimed was an atom bomb; thus during the latter part of my school life I became extremely rebellious and formed a lot of good friendships among the nuclear disarmament community....I love cinema; in Australia I was offered a job as film critic for the Australian Broadcasting Commission; I had a weekly programme when I broadcast to Canberra about films and got free tickets to go to drive ins to see films like ‘Last Tango in Paris’ and comment on them; the film that made me realize this was something important was ‘The Seventh Seal’, shortly after which I saw ‘Last Year at Marienbad’ and I have never recovered.”

I love the cinema too and  also have seen the movies ON THE BEACH, THE SEVENTH SEAL and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD and have done blog posts on them.

I noted that you had seen the Bergman movie WINTER LIGHT. Recently I was watching the You Tube series BREAKING DOWN BERGMAN and Sonia Strimban said concerning that movie:

I think the movie is about what can human beings have faith in, and what can we hope for. The confusion of the minister Toma Ericsson (played by Gunnar Bjornstrand) is because he is supposed to be the shepherd of his flock and lead the people and show them the way and he is the one having the greatest crisis of faith. Can a belief in a greater being sustain people and if you don’t believe in the greater being then what is the meaning of your life? So what this minister is struggling with is this question, “Is God real or is God not real then what do I do?” His inability to relate to God translates into the barrenness of the rest of the film and this larger anxiety that everyone has about life and the meaning of life and can they survive.  

When I read the book  Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters, I also read  a commentary on it by Francis Schaeffer and I wanted to both  quote some of Charles Darwin’s own words to you and then include the comments of Francis Schaeffer on those words. I have also enclosed a CD with two messages from Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff concerning Darwinism. SINCE SCHAEFFER MENTIONED THE MOVIE “ON THE BEACH” IT MADE ME THINK OF YOU AND THAT IS WHY I AM WRITING YOU THIS LETTER TODAY. 

In Darwin’s 1876 Autobiography he noted:

“…it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.”

Francis Schaeffer commented:

Here you feel Marcel Proust and the dust of death is on everything today because the dust of death is on everything tomorrow. Here you have the dilemma of Nevil Shute’s ON THE BEACH. If it is true that all we have left is biological continuity and increased biological complexity, which is all we have left in Darwinism here, or with many of the modern philosophers, then you can’t stand Shute’s ON THE BEACH. Maybe tomorrow at noon human life may be wiped out. Darwin already feels the tension, because if human life is going to be wiped out tomorrow, what is it worth today? Darwin can’t stand the thought of death of all men. Charlie Chaplin when he heard there was no life on Mars said, “I’m lonely.”

You think of the Swedish Opera (ANIARA) that is pictured inside a spaceship. There was a group of men and women going into outer space and they had come to another planet and the singing inside the spaceship was normal opera music. Suddenly there was a big explosion and the world had blown up and these were the last people left, the only conscious people left, and the last scene is the spaceship is off course and it will never land, but will just sail out into outer space and that is the end of the plot. They say when it was shown in Stockholm the first time, the tough Swedes with all their modern  mannishness, came out (after the opera was over) with hardly a word said, just complete silence.

Darwin already with his own position says he CAN’T STAND IT!! You can say, “Why can’t you stand it?” We would say to Darwin, “You were not made for this kind of thing. Man was made in the image of God. Your CAN’T- STAND- IT- NESS is screaming at you that your position is wrong. Why can’t you listen to yourself?”

You find all he is left here is biological continuity, and thus his feeling as well as his reason now is against his own theory, yet he holds it against the conclusions of his reason. Reason doesn’t make it hard to be a Christian. Darwin shows us the other way. He is holding his position against his reason.

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These words of Darwin ring in my ear, “…it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress…” . Schaeffer rightly noted, “Maybe tomorrow at noon human life may be wiped out. Darwin already feels the tension, because if human life is going to be wiped out tomorrow, what is it worth today? Darwin can’t stand the thought of death of all men.” IN OTHER WORDS ALL WE ARE IS DUST IN THE WIND.  I sent you a CD that starts off with the song DUST IN THE WIND by Kerry Livgren of the group KANSAS which was a hit song in 1978 when it rose to #6 on the charts because so many people connected with the message of the song. It included these words, “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”

You can hear DAVE HOPE and Kerry Livgren’s stories from this youtube link:

(part 1 ten minutes)

(part 2 ten minutes)

Kansas – Dust in the Wind (Official Video)

Adrian Rogers on Darwinism

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How Should We Then Live? (5) (pt. 2)

August 30, 2014 By Kevin Rhyne Leave a Comment

Here are my notes from a previous discussion from our Friday night series on How Should We Then Live? Chapter 5 continues the discussion on the Reformation, but focuses on the the impact of the Reformation on the relationship between government and its citizens.

People looking back 500 years later get bent out of shape that the Reformers had a lot of vestiges of their own era.  I appreciate that Schaeffer points out that the political freedom that came from the ideas of the Reformation was a gradual change.

We cannot idolize the Reformation, because they were sinners saved by grace just like us.Nonetheless, wherever the biblical teaching has gone, even though it has always been marred by men, it not only has told of an open approach to God through the work of Christ, but also has brought peripheral results in society, including political institutions. Secondary results are produced by the preaching of the gospel in both the arts and political affairs.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 135). Westchester, IL: Crossway Books.

What does Schaeffer point to as the beginnings of our own constitutional system?

And where, as in England, Presbyterianism as such did not triumph, its political ideas were communicated through the many complex groups which made up the Puritan element in English public life and played a creative role in trimming the power of the English kings. As a result, the ordinary citizen discovered a freedom from arbitrary governmental power in an age when in other countries the advance toward absolutist political options was restricting liberty of expression.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 137).

Samuel Rutherford’s work and the tradition it embodied had a great influence on the United States Constitution, even though modern Anglo-Saxons have largely forgotten him. This influence was mediated through two sources. The first was John Witherspoon (1723–1794), a Presbyterian who followed Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex directly and brought its principles to bear on the writing of the Constitution and the laying down of forms and freedoms.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 138).

Will these ideas work without a Christian grounding?  Had they been tried before?  [Form (Roman Republic) & Freedom (Greek democracy)]

The second mediator of Rutherford’s influence was John Locke (1632–1704), who, though secularizing the Presbyterian tradition, nevertheless drew heavily from it. He stressed inalienable rights, government by consent, separation of powers, and the right of revolution. But the biblical base for these is discovered in Rutherford’s work. Without this biblical background, the whole system would be without a foundation. This is seen by the fact that Locke’s own work has an inherent contradiction.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 138).

What was the inherent contradiction with Locke? [empiricism vs. natural rights (innate, not through experience)]

To whatever degree a society allows the teaching of the Bible to bring forth its natural conclusions, it is able to have form and freedom in society and government.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 139).

Schaeffer points to the solution to the problem of minority oppression (freedom of speech and though silenced by the intolerant majority) and majority oppression (freedom of speech and thought silenced by the intolerant minority seeking über rights through special interest groups) that innately results in a society one way or another.

So, to the extent to which the biblical teaching is practiced,one can control the despotism of the majority vote or the despotism of one person or group.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 139).

The ideas upon which the Reformation was based were suspicious of human authority.

For this reason, Calvin himself in Geneva did not have the authority often attributed to him. As we have seen, Calvin had been greatly influenced by the thinking of Bucer in regard to these things. In contrast to a formalized or institutional authority, Calvin’s influence was moral and informal. This was so not only in political matters (in which historians recognize that Calvin had little or no direct say), but also in church affairs. For example, he preferred to have the Lord’s Supper given weekly, but he allowed the will of the majority of the pastors in Geneva to prevail. Thus the Lord’s Supper was celebrated only once every three months.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 140).

Did that surprise you about Calvin? Is that what you normally hear in the popular view of him?

Schaeffer pointed to inconsistencies that developed.  What were they? (Race, and non-compassionate use of wealth)

Race: the church had much greater influence then than now, yet failed to speak out against it sufficiently.

What “fiction” accounted for this?  In what was it based?

Actually they harked back to Aristotle’s definition of a slave as a living tool and were far removed from the biblical teaching.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 141).

What does he point to as the example of the abuse of wealth created by the industrial revolution?

Does his discussion on how the English government approached the Irish potato famine cause you pause in our dealings with certain social justice issues?

A tragic example of the acceptance of these views was the attitude toward the Irish potato famine held by Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807–1886), who was in charge of government relief in Ireland. He withheld government assistance from the Irish on the grounds that they should help themselves and that to do otherwise would encourage them to be lazy. It was not that he lacked compassion or a social conscience (his later career shows otherwise), but that at a crucial point a sub-Christian prejudice stifled the teaching of Christ and the Bible, and sealed Ireland’s doom.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 143).

On slavery in the United States:

To keep the matter in balance: in the first place it must be said that many non-Christian influences were also at work in the culture. Likewise, many influential people who automatically called themselves Christians were not Christian at all; it was merely socially acceptable to bear the name and go through the outward forms. In the second place, many Christians did take a vital and vocal lead in the fight against these abuses. Many Christians struggled to bring into being the social realities that should accompany a Christian consensus. Pastors and others spoke out as prophets, often at great personal cost to themselves. The Bible makes plain that there should be effects in society from the preaching of the gospel, and voices were raised to emphasize this fact and lives were given to illustrate it.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, pp. 143–144).

In the United States some groups did speak out. The Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States decreed as a denomination as early as 1800 that no slave holder should be retained in their communion, and after that date no slave holder was admitted.

Schaeffer, F. A. (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview (Vol. 5, p. 145).

It is important to realize that these blights on our history were the result of those acting inconsistently with biblical Christianity rather than because of biblical Christianity.

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer

The clip above is from episode 9 THE AGE OF PERSONAL PEACE AND AFFLUENCE

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