Royal Wedding: William and Kate’s First Kiss, Too Short for Buckingham Palace Balcony
Prince William and Kate moved in together about a year ago. In this clip above the commentator suggested that maybe Prince Charles and Princess Diana would not have divorced if they had lived together before marriage. Actually Diana was a virgin, and it was Charles’ uncle (Louis Mountbatten) that gave him the advice that he should seek to marry a virgin.
I really do wish Kate and William success in their marriage. I hope they truly are committed to each other, and if they are then the result will be a marriage that lasts their whole lifetime. Nevertheless, I do not think it is best to live together before marriage like they did, and I writing this series to help couples see how best to prepare for marriage.
•Tom Elliff: Couples come to us sometimes and blush, “We want to get married.” “Well, are you sleeping around?” “Yes, that’s why we need to hurry up and get married.” I say, “Then that’s the last thing you need to do right now. The person that God has for you is going to make you more holy not less holy, more in love with Jesus not less in love with Jesus, a more effective worker, a better student, better with his parents and her parents not less. The very fact that you’re frustrated and violating every commandment of God means you ought not to get married. You ought to back up, grow up, deepen your relationship with God before you ever consider being married, because if you bring out the worst in each other when you’re dating, you’re really going to bring out the worst in each other when you marry.” Dennis Rainey: I couldn’t agree more. If there is compromise in courtship, where is the trust going to be there after the covenant is established? That covenant is not some magical binding relational agreement. It’s an accountability before God that you better be experiencing both before and after it’s established.
TOM: Sex before marriage is a revelation of your real value system. It says in spite of all that I say about how much I love you and how much I love God and how much I’m going to serve Him, the bottom line, the thing that motivates me more than anything else is this — I get what I want. Even if you have to be guilty before God, even if I have to defile the temple of God when the Scripture says “Whosoever defiles the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” I am willing for you to do that so I can have a few minutes of pleasure — a terrible revelation of a terrible value system. DENNIS: And one that you don’t want to begin a marriage with that being the basis. You want to begin a marriage with trust. Tom: It just says I can’t be trusted. Dennis: Yes, and you want to trust when that covenant is established. (Tom Elliff and Dennis Rainey, from the Family Life Today radio broadcast: Pre-Marriage Pre-Requisites -Broadcast Date: 05/22/07 )
Weekend to Remember-Family Life…Fireproof your marriage
Tim Hawkins 70’s music in 6 minutes
Revelation (Biblical Numbers 1 of 4)-Dr Adrian Rogers
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
Yesterday I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
Therefore, I went to the website and sent this email below:
Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease GSA $343 M $1.936 B 85% The Government Services Administration is yet another example of a government agency formed with the purpose of serving other government agencies. Part of expecting the government to run in a streamlined fashion is expecting agencies to be capable of managing their own real estate, travel necessities, and supply purchases. Having an agency dedicated to providing the infrastructure for big government only facilitates the further growth of government.
The problem with social security
David John, a Senior research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explains his position on Social Security as it relates to taxes and health care. He suggests it would be a good solution for the government to raise the age of retirement.
File photo of the Schwarzenegger family: (L-R) Maria Shriver, Christina, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Patrick(AFP/Getty Images/File/Jason Merritt)…
Maria Shriver Asks – How Do You Handle Transitions in Your Life?
Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to his wife several months ago that he had fathered a child about 10 years ago with a member of their household staff. Maria moved out, but has not filed for divorce. In the you tube clip above she comments:
“Like a lot of you I’m in transition: people come up to me all the time, asking, what are you doing next?” she said, adding: “It’s so stressful to not know what you are doing next when people ask what you are doing and they can’t believe you don’t know what you are doing.”
“I’d like to hear from other people who are in transition,” she said. “How did you find your transition: Personal, professional, emotional, spiritual, financial? How did you get through it?”
Mrs. Shriver has asked for spiritual input and I personally think that unless she gets the spiritual help that she needs then she will end up in the divorce court. I am starting a series on how a marriage can survive an infidelity. My first suggestion would be to attend a “Weekend to Remember” put on by the organization “Family Life” out of Little Rock, Arkansas. I actually posted this as a response to Mrs. Shriver’s request on you tube.
Earlier this year, I wrote an article for The Family Room called “She Hated Her Husband.” It was about Brian and Julie Moreau’s disintegrating relationship and the key role that a Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway played in saving their marriage. A skeptical reader posted this comment below the article: “If this story is really true maybe you should tell the part of how long and hard the road to recovery from the brink of divorce was.”
I can understand why the reader wondered if Brian and Julie’s story was fiction. It does seem like a fairytale. How likely is it for a woman who tells her husband over and over, “I hate you,” to later say that he is God’s gift to her?
“Impossible,” you say? Yes—apart from God.
Brian and Julie are indeed real people. When they attended a Weekend to Remember marriage getaway, they both made decisions to receive Jesus Christ as the Lord of their lives and the Savior for their sins. Having Christ at the center of their marriage is what changed their home so dramatically. He turned an impossible, hopeless marriage into something brand new. In fact, their relationship is now a beacon of light for other couples whose marriages are hurting.
Rebuilding
“She Hated Her Husband” did not devote much space to the actual rebuilding of the Moreaus’ relationship after the marriage getaway, but many of our stories do. Tom and Maureen Santacroce, for example, were headed for divorce after 34 years of marriage. They attended a Weekend to Remember as a late effort to reconcile. Although they enjoyed it, they had a heated argument right after the conference that left them in despair.
To make a long story short (you may want to read what the divorce court judge told them), the Santacroces recalled the words of a FamilyLife representative at the getaway: “You are going to need someone to help you piece this thing back together.”
Tom and Maureen took that advice and got the counseling they needed. Today they are encouraging other couples as FamilyLife volunteers.
Or take Tom and Anna Flippin. Anna just wouldn’t give up on her husband, even when he was unfaithful.
After two and a half years of counseling, Tom agreed to go to a Weekend to Remember. At the end of the marriage getaway, Tom told Anna that he had enjoyed it, “except for the God stuff.” It took years for Tom to come to Christ, but the Flippins ended up making their marriage work.
The impossible
The changes made in these marriages were not caused by FamilyLife. They were the result of husbands and wives realizing they could not make their marriage work on their own. The Moreaus, Santacroces, and Flippins turned their lives and their marriages over to God, accepted His help, and decided to follow His blueprints for their homes.
Brian and Julie’s marriage changed quickly because they individually vowed to make Jesus Christ the center of their relationship. It took months for the Santacroces, and years for the Flippins, to have truly healthy marriages. But each of these couples had one thing in common: They did not give up.
I never grow tired of writing about changed lives. Each new story reminds me that absolutely “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37)!
Click here for a list of remarkable stories about how God has changed lives and saved marriages and families.
This article originally appeared in the October 11, 2010 issue of Marriage Memo, a weekly e-newsletter. To subscribe free to Marriage Memo and other FamilyLife e-newsletters, click here. For the Marriage Memo archives, click here.
Weekend To Remember Conference Testimony
Here’s a couple who went to a FamilyLife Conference and how it made a difference in their marriage.
Social Security, today’s largest single federal program, provides (1) retirement income to workers and their spouses, (2) survivors benefits to the family members of deceased workers, and (3) disability benefits for workers who have been injured and are unable to work and to the families of those workers. The program is funded by a 12.4 percent payroll tax that is paid equally by both the worker (6.2 percent) and his or her employer (6.2 percent). Employers correctly see their contribution as a part of the employee’s total compensation.
In 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, Social Security spent a total of $685.8 billion providing these benefits. That was also the last year that Social Security collected more in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits. Starting in 2010, the program started to run cash-flow deficits that the Congressional Budget Office says are unlikely ever to end. The annual Social Security deficit will increase every year until about 2030, when it will reach about $350 billion annually in 2010 dollars (without including any inflation), and stay at approximately that level permanently.
Social Security does have a $2.5 trillion trust fund from the surpluses that it collected between 1983 and 2009—but that money isn’t there. Rather than build up real assets in a real trust fund, Congress actually spent that money on everything from roads to corporate welfare. That trust fund is filled with special-issue Treasury bonds that the U.S. Treasury is required to finance when they are needed to fund Social Security’s deficits. As they are bonds not backed by any real assets, the government will have to either borrow or raise taxes to pay for them.
In essence, then, these bonds are really a demand on future tax collections—a lien. In 2010, the Treasury started to redeem these bonds, or tax liens, by tapping into other tax sources in order to cover Social Security’s deficits. Around 2037, even those special-issue bonds will run out. From that time on, under the provisions of current law, every retiree—no matter how wealthy or how poor—will have his or her Social Security benefits cut by about 22 percent.
The Debt Bomb: A Decade of DC Spending is Driving America Closer to an Economic Apocalypse
Alexis Garcia reports on America’s exploding debt. Experts blame entitlements like Social Security and government spending. But what is the solution? Can we raise taxes without crushing the economy and the middle class? Does Obama really want to lower the debt, or does he support continued deficit spending? See interviews with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Brian Riedl, Jason Peuquet and former Congressman Ernest Istook (R-OK).
Couples who were engaged at the time they began cohabiting, the study said, had roughly the same odds of survival in marriage as couples who did not cohabit before marrying. The key, observers said, is the nature of commitment at the time of cohabitation.
“When an engagement has taken place, the ring is bought, caterers are being interviewed, dresses being considered, the clarity of the relationship becomes clearer for all involved. Expectations are clearer,” Stanton said.
In a bulletin circulated March 4, Stanton noted the conflicting ways the study had been interpreted in media reports. A USA Today headline said, “Report: Cohabiting Has Little Effect on Marriage Success,” while The New York Times said “Study Finds Cohabiting Doesn’t Make Unions Last.”
The Times, Stanton said, “did a better job in its reporting.” While it’s true that data indicated engaged cohabiting couples and married couples who did not cohabit were on mostly equal ground, the study did not find that cohabiting generally helped marriages and in fact found that it harmed those that lacked commitment.
The CDC study found that cohabiting women were more likely to have unemployed partners, college educated women were much less likely to be cohabiting than those with only a high school diploma, and young people who grew up with two parents at home were less likely to cohabit prior to marriage.
In comparing the longevity of marriage versus cohabiting, researchers found that about two-thirds of first marriages lasted 10 years or more, while only about one-fourth of men’s and one-third of women’s first cohabitations were estimated to last three years without either disrupting or transitioning to marriage.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., in commentary on the subject March 2, said many young adults tend to believe they are wise to try living together before committing to marriage, but actually they are undermining the institution they hope to protect.
“They do not know that what they are actually doing is undoing marriage. They miss the central logic of marriage as an institution of permanence,” Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said. “They miss the essential wisdom of marriage — that the commitment must come before the intimacy, that the vows must come before the shared living, that the wisdom of marriage is its permanence before its experience.
“Cohabitation weakens marriage — even a cohabiting couple’s eventual marriage — because a temporary and transitory commitment always weakens a permanent commitment. Having lived together with the open possibility of parting, that possibility always remains, and never leaves,” Mohler wrote at albertmohler.com.
Christians should be reminded, he said, that marriage is a gift from the Creator and cannot be substituted adequately with cohabitation.
“In a world of transitory experiences, events, and commitments, marriage is intransigent. It simply is what it is — a permanent commitment made by a man and a woman who commit themselves to live faithfully unto one another until the parting of death,” Mohler said.
“That is what makes marriage what it is. The logic of marriage is easy to understand and difficult to subvert, which is one reason the institution has survived over so many millennia. Marriage lasts because of its fundamental status. It is literally what a healthy and functioning society cannot survive without.”
Weekend to Remember-Family Life…Fireproof your marriage
Tim Hawkins- Old Rock Star Songs
Introduction to the Book Of Revelation- Dr Adrian Rogers
Haunting Cloud
On August 9, 1945, the mushroom cloud of the first atomic bomb rose over Nagasaki, Japan.
I really enjoyed the article “REBEL GRAY’S GOLDEN DAYS: In 1911, LR filled to the brim with Confederate veterans,” by Jake Sandlin that ran in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on May 15, 2011. It took 81 years before more people to gather in Little Rock for another event (Bill Clinton’s election to president) I will be sharing portions of it the next few days and here is the sixth part:
Participants included veterans, dignitaries, bands, and Reunion Queen Kathleen Barkman and her maids of honor in a float drawn by four gray horses. Parade estimates were of 12,000-15,000 participants, with up to 150,000 onlookers. Veterans of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry were among those in the parade on horseback.
“Here and there was a veteran with a leg missing, or with an empty coat sleeve pinned to his breast,” the Arkansas Gazette reported. Many veterans carried “tattered Southern flags … worn and shot riddled.”
One of the parade’s famed participants was known only as a Civil War drummer from Georgia. The one-time “drummer boy” marched and beat his drum until almost collapsing from the heat on the parade’s countermarch, the Gazette reported. He insisted on continuing until the end, where he was seen by a physician and was reported to have recovered.
Fourteen bands from across the South played Southern favorites while marching. “There was no telling how many times ‘Dixie’ was played,” one newspaper account said, “but it could have been played a thousand times and still would have been greeted with great enthusiasm.”
From all accounts, the 1911 Confederate reunion earned Little Rock great praise.
“From a tourist perspective, it was a huge success,” McAteer said. “There was to be no one who would not have a place to sleep or not be fed. The community got together and took care of them while they were here.”
Little Rock again hosted the United Confederate Veterans Reunion in 1928 and in 1949, the latter being attended by only four veterans. The oldest among them was 103 years old.
Photographs for these articles were provided by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, both in Little Rock. Other art elements were obtained from the archives of the Arkansas Democrat, the Arkansas Gazette and The News and Courier of Charleston, S.C.
Benjamin H. Crowley, delegate to the 1911 United Confederate Veterans Reunion. Crowley was the grandson of Benjamin Crowley, who helped found Greene County and after whom Crowley’s Ridge is named.
(L-R) California First Lady Maria Shriver, niece of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, her son Patrick Arnold Shriver Schwarzenegger and her husband CaliforniaGovernor Arnold Schwarzenegger attend funeral services for Senator Kennedy at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston, Massachusetts in this August 29, 2009 file photo. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that he fathered a child more than ten years ago with a member of his household staff, the Los Angeles Times reported on May 17, 2011. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/Files
Maria Shriver Asks – How Do You Handle Transitions in Your Life?
Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to his wife several months ago that he had fathered a child about 10 years ago with a member of their household staff. Maria moved out, but has not filed for divorce. In the you tube clip above she comments:
“Like a lot of you I’m in transition: people come up to me all the time, asking, what are you doing next?” she said, adding: “It’s so stressful to not know what you are doing next when people ask what you are doing and they can’t believe you don’t know what you are doing.”
“I’d like to hear from other people who are in transition,” she said. “How did you find your transition: Personal, professional, emotional, spiritual, financial? How did you get through it?”
Mrs. Shriver has asked for spiritual input and I personally think that unless she gets the spiritual help that she needs then she will end up in the divorce court. I am starting a series on how a marriage can survive an infidelity. My first suggestion would be to attend a “Weekend to Remember” put on by the organization “Family Life” out of Little Rock, Arkansas. I actually posted this as a response to Mrs. Shriver’s request on you tube.
In the fall of 2004, a friend handed Julie a brochure about a marriage getaway called Weekend to Remember®. She suggested that Julie and Brian try it before they divorced. Julie almost threw the brochure away.
Brian came home for lunch that day, and Julie handed him the Weekend to Remember brochure. He returned to work, and about two hours later the phone rang. It was Brian. He told Julie that he had registered for the conference, had booked a hotel room, and that she needed to be sure her parents could watch the kids. For the first time in years, she felt a little optimistic.
Julie had an appointment with her family doctor on the Friday morning of the marriage conference. He shared Scriptures with her in his office and prayed for Brian and her.
On Friday night at the conference, the Moreaus heard about threats to marriage. They broke down in tears when they realized that they had been doing marriage wrong—they had been destroying themselves and their family.
On Saturday morning, when the speakers told about God’s plan for marriage, Brian and Julie knew there was hope.
Brian remembers seeing an illustration of the cross … and understanding the gospel much differently than he had before. When the speaker explained that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is needed to make a life and a marriage whole, Julie and Brian each asked Him to be Savior and Lord of their lives.
Julie learned the meaning of true forgiveness at the Weekend to Remember. She also realized for the first time that Brian was God’s gift to her.
When Brian and Julie left the getaway they were changed people. “The bottom line was,” Brian says, “we both accepted Jesus and we now had that Helper to help us.”
Two happy parents
Today, the word divorce never comes up in either Brian’s or Julie’s vocabulary. “It never will,” Brian says. “We have a different type of commitment.”
The Moreaus now counsel couples, lead marriage classes at their new church, and usually attend at least one Weekend to Remember getaway every year.
Brian says that their marriage has taken a 180-degree turn. He and Julie read the Bible together and understand how God has designed their roles in marriage. “She is a different wife, a completely different wife.”
“Even when I didn’t believe in my marriage,” Julie says, “it didn’t matter, because God did.”
Madissen is now 12 years old and Branden is 14. They both vividly recall how their parents used to yell incessantly at one another. Madissen says that she was terrified when she thought her parents were getting a divorce. “I remember sitting in the closet or under my bed with my brother, and we would cry.”
“All my parents ever did back then was fight,” Branden says, “… I was tired of having to stay up really late some nights just listening to them arguing.”
Today Madissen describes Brian and Julie as her “two happy parents.” Branden says, “I know that God will keep my parents together, and they will never get a divorce. I thank God for that every day.”
Mary May Larmoyeux is a writer and editor for FamilyLife. She is the author of My Heart’s at Home: Encouragement for Working Moms, Help for Busy Moms: Purposeful Living to Simplify Life, co-author of There’s No Place Like Home: Steps to Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom, and co-author of the Resurrection Eggs® Activity Book.
Archaeology demonstrates solid connections between the biblical record and ancient history, in contrast to Christopher Hitchens’ assertion that it is an implausible record. Consider the following:
The Patriarchs
Critics often malign the patriarchs without just cause. They insist that camels were not domesticated during the patriarchal age, thus constituting an anachronism in the biblical text. Yet evidence of camel domestication appears as early as 2000 B.C. in several places in Mesopotamia, concurrent with Abraham—if not slightly preceding him (Kitchen, 2003, p. 339). Another point of confidence is the names of the patriarchs. While God selected Jacob’s name, they all highlight the Mesopotamian roots of Abraham since the names of Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, and Joseph are all of Amorite origin (pp. 341-342). These names were at the height of their popularity when the patriarchs lived in the early second millennium and quickly fell into disuse in subsequent centuries.
A vital piece of evidence is the structure of covenants in the Bible. Covenants made in antiquity evolved over time, and each period has a distinct structure for the covenants made at various times and particular locations. Kenneth Kitchen has surveyed a wide range of covenants used from the third millennium through the first millennium B.C. (Kitchen, 2003, pp. 283-289). He found the Abrahamic covenant made in Genesis 15-17 fits securely in the early second millennium, while the covenants in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua 24 fit only in a late second millennium context.
After the evidence is surveyed, it is apparent that much of the criticism of the Bible arises—not from intense scrutiny of the evidence—but from ignorance of it. The overwhelming weight of the archaeological and historical evidence firmly places the Bible in the sphere of reality rather than myth.
REFERENCES
Hitchens, Christopher (2007), God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything(New York: Hachette).
Hoffmeier, James K. (1996), Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Kitchen, Kenneth A., trans. (2000) “The Battle of Kadesh—The Poem, or Literary Record,” The Context of Scripture, Volume Two: Monumental Inscriptions Form the Biblical World (Leiden: Brill).
Kitchen, Kenneth A. (2003), On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).
As of April 8, 2011, Dewayne Bryant holds two Masters degrees, and is completing Masters study in Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, while pursuing doctoral studies at Amridge University. He has participated in an archaeological dig at Tell El-Borg in Egypt and holds professional membership in the American Schools of Oriental Research, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the Archaeological Institute of America.
I will be sharing portions of the article “How Do We Know that the Bible Is True?,” by Dr. Jason Lisle, Answers in Genesis, March 22, 2011. Here is the first part:
The Bible is an extraordinary work of literature, and it makes some astonishing claims. It records the details of the creation of the universe, the origin of life, the moral law of God, the history of man’s rebellion against God, and the historical details of God’s work of redemption for all who trust in His Son. Moreover, the Bible claims to be God’s revelation to mankind. If true, this has implications for all aspects of life: how we should live, why we exist, what happens when we die, and what our meaning and purpose is. But how do we know if the claims of the Bible are true?
Some Typical Answers
A number of Christians have tried to answer this question. Unfortunately, not all of those answers have been as cogent as we might hope. Some answers make very little sense at all. Others have some merit but fall short of proving the truth of the Bible with certainty. Let’s consider some of the arguments that have been put forth by Christians.
A Subjective Standard
Some Christians have argued for the truth of the Scriptures by pointing to the changes in their own lives that belief in the God who inspired the Bible has induced. Receiving Jesus as Lord is a life-changing experience that brings great joy. A believer is a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). However, this change does not in and of itself prove the Bible is true. People might experience positive feelings and changes by believing in a position that happens to be false.
At best, a changed life shows consistency with the Scriptures. We would expect a difference in attitudes and actions given that the Bible is true. Although giving a testimony is certainly acceptable, a changed life does not (by itself) demonstrate the truth of the Scriptures. Even an atheist might argue that his belief in atheism produces feelings of inner peace or satisfaction. This does not mean that his position is true.
The truth of the Bible is obvious to anyone willing to fairly investigate it. The Bible is uniquely self-consistent and extraordinarily authentic. It has changed the lives of millions of people who have placed their faith in Christ. It has been confirmed countless times by archaeology and other sciences. It possesses divine insight into the nature of the universe and has made correct predictions about distant future events with perfect accuracy. When Christians read the Bible, they cannot help but recognize the voice of their Creator. The Bible claims to be the Word of God, and it demonstrates this claim by making knowledge possible. It is the standard of standards. The proof of the Bible is that unless its truth is presupposed, we couldn’t prove anything at all.8
Footnote #8 This fact has been recognized and elaborated upon by Christian scholars such as Dr. Cornelius Van Til and Dr. Greg Bahnsen.
I grew up listening to sermons by Adrian Rogers who was the longtime pastor of Bellevue Church in Memphis.
Mark Heard in his article in March of 1997 in Christianity Today sums up Francis Schaeffer’s view of the world and how it held true 13 years after Schaeffer’s 1984 death:
some critics have recently allowed that his big picture has proven durable. The conceptual centerpiece of Schaeffer’s historical view is the triumph of relativism in the modern post-Christian world: “Modern men, in the absence of absolutes, have polluted all aspects of morality, making standards completely hedonistic and relativistic.” He would not have been surprised by the advent of “postmodern” thought, which has built countless altars to relativism across the intellectual landscape. Nor would he have been surprised by the resultant moral vacuum that characterizes much contemporary academic thinking. In a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, anthropologist Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban agonized over the fact that her discipline’s prime directive—cultural relativism—left her with no rationale for opposing rape or racial genocide in other cultures. One can almost hear Francis Schaeffer saying, “I told you so.”
In particular, he appears to have been prescient on the issue of human life. In 1976 he observed that “in regard to the fetus, the courts have arbitrarily separated ‘aliveness’ from ‘personhood,’ and if this is so, why not arbitrarily do the same with the aged? So the steps move along, and euthanasia may well become increasingly acceptable. And if so, why not keep alive the bodies of … persons in whom the brain wave is flat to harvest from them body parts and blood?” Schaeffer’s bleak vision is now daily news. “Cadaver Jack” Kevorkian has already killed more people than Ted Bundy, but the state of Michigan cannot muster the political will to stop him. A federal court has forbidden the state of Washington to pass laws preventing doctors from killing their patients, while the University of Washington is permitted to scavenge and sell the body parts of thousands of aborted children every year.
“We stand today on the edge of a great abyss,” they wrote. “At this crucial moment choices are being made and thrust on us that will for many years to come affect the way people are treated. We want to try to help tip the scales on the side of those who believe that individuals are unique and special and have great dignity.”
This year marks the 25th anniversary of “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop. The anniversary serves to remind us just how unaware and unawake most evangelicals really were 25 years ago — and how prophetic the voices of Schaeffer and Koop were.
Whatever Happened to the Human Race? was both a book project and a film series, the fruit of an unusual collaboration between Francis Schaeffer, one of the truly significant figures of 20th-century evangelicalism, and C. Everett Koop, one of the nation’s most illustrious pediatric surgeons. They were an odd couple of sorts, but on the crucial issues of human dignity and the threat of what would later be called the “Culture of Death,” they were absolutely united.
Francis Schaeffer, who died in 1984, was nothing less than a 20th-century prophet. He was a genuine eccentric, given to wearing leather breeches and sporting a goatee — then quite unusual for anyone in the evangelical establishment. Then again, Schaeffer was never really a member of any establishment, and that is partly why a generation of questioning young people made their way to his Swiss study center known as L’Abri.
Big ideas were Schaeffer’s business — and the Christian worldview was his consistent framework. Long before most evangelicals even knew they had a worldview, Schaeffer was taking alternative worldviews apart and inculcating in his students a love for the architecture of Christian truth and the dignity of ideas.
Key figures on the evangelical left wrote Schaeffer off as a crank, and he returned the favor by denying that they were evangelicals at all. They complained that he did not follow their rules for scholarly publication. He pointed out that people actually read his books — and young people frustrated with cultural Christianity read his books by the thousands. They were looking for someone with ideas big enough for the age, relevant for the questions of the times, and based without compromise in Christian truth. Francis Schaeffer — knee pants and all — became a prophet for the age.
_____________________________________
Philosopher and Theologian, Francis A. Schaeffer has argued, “If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute.” Francis Schaeffer, How Shall We Then Live? (Old Tappan NJ: Fleming H Revell Company, 1976), p. 224.
____________________________________
Dr. C. Everett Koop, on the other hand, is a paragon of the American establishment — a former surgeon-in-chief at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia and later surgeon general of the United States under President Reagan. In 1974 Koop catapulted to international attention by performing the first successful surgical separation of conjoined twins. A Presbyterian layman, Koop lives in quasi-retirement in Pennsylvania. His surgical procedures remain textbook cases for medical students today.
Whatever Happened to the Human Race? awakened American evangelicals to the anti-human technologies and ideologies that then threatened human dignity. Most urgently, the project put abortion unquestionably on the front burner of evangelical concern. The tenor of the times is seen in the fact that Schaeffer and Koop had to argue to evangelicals in the late 1970s that abortion was not just a “Catholic” issue. They taught many evangelicals a new and urgently needed vocabulary about embryo ethics, euthanasia and infanticide. They knew they were running out of time.
“Each era faces its own unique blend of problems,” they argued. “Our time is no exception. Those who regard individuals as expendable raw material — to be molded, exploited, and then discarded — do battle on many fronts with those who see each person as unique and special, worthwhile, and irreplaceable.”
Every age is marked by both the “thinkable” and the “unthinkable,” they asserted — and the “thinkable” of late-20th-century Western cultures was dangerously anti-human. The lessons of the century — with the Holocaust at its center — should be sufficient to drive the point home. The problem, as illustrated by those who worked in Hitler’s death camps, was the inevitable result of a loss of conscience and moral truth. They were “people just like all of us,” Koop and Schaeffer reminded. “We seem to be in danger of forgetting our seemingly unlimited capacities for evil, once boundaries to certain behavior are removed.”
By the last quarter of the century, life and death were treated as mere matters of choice. “The schizophrenic nature of our society became further evident as it became common practice for pediatricians to provide the maximum of resuscitative and supportive care in newborn intensive-care nurseries where premature infants were under their care — while obstetricians in the same medical centers were routinely destroying enormous numbers of unborn babies who were normal and frequently of larger size. Minors who could not legally purchase liquor and cigarettes could have an abortion-on-demand and without parental consent or knowledge.”
Schaeffer and Koop pointed to other examples of moral schizophrenia. Disabled persons were given new access to facilities and services in the name of human rights, while preborn infants diagnosed with the same disabilities were often aborted — with the advice that it would be “wrong” to bring such a baby into the world.
Long before the discovery of stem cells and calls for the use of human embryos for such experimentation, Schaeffer and Koop warned of attacks upon human life at its earliest stage. “Embryos ‘created’ in the biologist’s laboratory raise special questions because they have the potential for growth and development if planted in the womb. The disposal of these live embryos is a cause for ethical and moral concern.”
They also saw the specter of infanticide and euthanasia. Infanticide, including what is now called “partial-birth abortion,” is murder, they argued. “Infanticide is being practiced right now in this country, and the saddest thing about this is that it is being carried on by the very segment of the medical profession which has always stood in the role of advocate for the lives of children.” Long before the formal acceptance of euthanasia in countries like the Netherlands, Koop and Schaeffer saw the rise of a “duty to die” argument used against the old, the very sick and the unproductive. They rejected euthanasia in the case of a “so-called vegetative existence” and warned all humanity that disaster awaited a society that lusted for a “beautiful death.”
“Abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia are not only questions for women and other relatives directly involved — nor are they the prerogatives of a few people who have thought through the wider ramifications,” they declared. “They are life-and-death issues that concern the whole human race equally and should be addressed as such.”
How did this happen? This embrace of an anti-human “humanism” could only be explained by the rejection of the Christian worldview. “Judeo-Christian teaching was never perfectly applied,” they acknowledged, “but it did lay a foundation for a high view of human life in concept and practice.” Through the inculcation of biblical values, “people viewed human life as unique — to be protected and loved — because each individual is made in the image of God.”
Two great enemies of truth were blamed for this loss of biblical truth — modern secularism and theological liberalism. The secularists insist on the imposition of a “humanism” that defines humanity in terms of productivity, arbitrary standards of beauty and health, and an inverted system of value. Theological liberalism, denying the truthfulness of the Bible, robs the church and the society of any solid authority. The biblical concept of humanity made in the image of God is treated as poetry rather than as truth. But, “if people are not made in the image of God, the pessimistic, realistic humanist is right: The human race is indeed an abnormal wart on the smooth face of a silent and meaningless universe.”
Everything else simply follows. “In this setting, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia … are completely logical. Any person can be obliterated for what society at one moment thinks of as its own social or economic good.” Once human life and human dignity are devalued to this degree, recovery is extremely difficult — if not impossible.
The past 25 years has been a period of even more rapid technological and moral change. We now face threats to human dignity unimaginable just a quarter-century ago. We must now deal with the ethical challenges of embryo research, human cloning, the Human Genome Project and the rise of transhuman technologies. Even with many Christians aware and active on these issues, we are losing ground.
Francis Schaeffer and Everett Koop ended their book with a call for action. “If, in this last part of the twentieth century, the Christian community does not take a prolonged and vocal stand for the dignity of the individual and each person’s right to life — for the right of each person to be treated as created in the image of God, rather than as a collection of molecules with no unique value — we feel that as Christians we have failed the greatest moral test to be put before us in this century.”
In this new century, that warning is even more threatening and more urgent. The challenges of the 21st century are even greater than those faced in the century before. This should make us even more thankful for the prophetic witness of Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop — and even more determined to contend for life. Humanity still stands on the brink of that abyss. –30– Adapted from the Crosswalk.com weblog of R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
I am a Christian and I do believe Jesus is coming back. In fact, at noon today in Little Rock, the skies got dark and it looked like it was midnight. I am sure the Harold Camping followers were expecting something like this. However, it is 2:53pm now and the skies are much brighter.
Harold Camping is wrong to projecti a day that Christ will come back because of what Christ told us in Matthew 24:36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”
Gary DeMar wrote the article “Harold Camping Will go Mad on May 11, 2011,” January 5, 2010, and he makes some great points.DeMar goes through Camping’s calculations. Here is a portion of that article:
Camping’s prophetic methodology is based on his own strange version of numerology. In John 21:1–14 we learn that Jesus’ disciples were about 200 cubits out from the Sea of Galilee engaged in their trade as fishermen. On this day the disciples catch 153 fish. According to Camping the Bible is teaching that the 200 cubits represent about 2,000 years between the first and second comings of Christ.[7] Since Jesus was born, according to Camping, on October 4, 7 B.C., the interpreter is to add 2,000 years minus one year for the year zero and “presto change-o,” out comes 1994! What about the 153 fish? The number 153 equals 3 times 3 times 17: “The number three signifies the purpose of God whereas the number seventeen signifies heaven. Thus we learn that [the] purpose of God is to bring all believers that are ‘caught’ by the Gospel into heaven.”[8]
Camping reconstructs the genealogies to fit his interpretive model, pinpointing Adam’s creation at 11,013 B.C. While the exact year of creation is important to Camping’s overall system, it is his conclusion that the numbers 13, 130, and 13,000 have date-setting significance. He bases this on the following: Adam was 130 years of age when Eve gave birth to Seth (Gen. 5:3); Jacob was 130 years of age when he came to Egypt (Gen. 47:9); Jehoida was 130 years of age when he died (2 Chron. 24:15). Because of the 11,013 B.C. date for the creation of the world, Camping is stuck with the number 13,000 (11,000 years B.C. + 2000 years A.D. = 13,000 years).
Camping then searches the Bible to find a way to make the number 13 and its multiples significant. He does this by trying to convince his readers that while there are apparently 12 tribes, there are actually 13 tribes. He does the same with the number of apostles. While there seem to be only 12 apostles, there are actually 13 apostles.[9] Camping then moves in for the kill. While there are apparently 12,000 years for the duration of the earth, there are actually 13,000 years.
But we can play the numerology game as well as Camping: There are actually 14 tribes—the ten tribes + Joseph + Ephraim + Manassah + Levi = 14. Fourteen is the result of 2 X 7, the number of the church (2) and perfection (7), according to Camping.[10] Fourteen thousand years becomes the duration of man’s existence on earth. The same can be done with the number of apostles. Using Camping’s math, there are really 15 apostles: “The twelve,” including Judas (Luke 22:3), plus Matthias (Acts 1:26), Paul (1 Cor. 15:9), and Barnabas (Acts 14:14). But this will not do, since neither 14 nor 15 fit with Camping’s belief in the soon return of Jesus and the arbitrary 13,000-year marker.
You might think that I’m making this up, that I’m putting the worst possible spin on Camping’s prophetic system? I assure you that his entire book reads like this. Consider the following:
Likewise, the Bible apparently assures us that there were to be 12,000 years in the duration of the earth. That is, creation occurred 11,000 years (remember 11,000 + 6 years) before Christ [Jesus was born in 7 B.C.]. And Revelation 20:1–3 teaches that Satan was to be bound a thousand years. Since it can be readily shown that Satan was bound at the cross so that Christ would not be frustrated in His program of salvation for the world [!], the duration of the earth should be 11,000 plus 1000 years for a total of 12,000 years. Moreover, you recall that God told Noah in Genesis 6:3: “Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’” While this 120 years could be the 120 years during which Noah constructed the ark, it apparently could also be a reference to the fullness of time for all mankind. The number twelve does signify the fullness of whatever God has in view. Then the 120 years could also signify 1200 years or 12,000 years or 120,000 years for the duration of man’s existence on earth. Given all the other information in the Bible, we know that 12,000 years is the only number that can relate.[11]
Of course, Camping has a problem. He is one thousand years short. He must now figure out a way of stretching 12,000 to 13,000. It is at this point that he hunts for the mystical 13: 12 tribes become 13 tribes and 12 apostles become 13 apostles. “Now we should broach the question: Where does 13,000 years bring us? This is easily answered. Creation occurred in the year 11,013 B.C. Exactly 13,000 years later brings us to 1988. This was the thirteenth thousandth anniversary of the history of the world.”[12] Camping’s calculations only take us to 1988, the end of the 13,000 years for the duration of the earth. “We see again how 13,000 years or the year 1988 stands out as the end of the world. Does that mean,” Camping argues, “that we could expect the year 1988 to be a candidate for the year of Christ’s return? Surely it must be a very important year, but we know it cannot be the year of the end of the world because we have already passed the year 1988.”[13]
Did you follow any of this? Camping maintains that 12,000 years is the magic number, but this leaves him a thousand years short. The number 13 which becomes 13,000 is the missing component. But this only takes us to 1988. The reason 1988 is not the year Jesus will return is because Jesus did not return in 1988! Camping must now come up with six additional years to make 1994 the year Jesus will return. How does he do it? Camping goes to Daniel 8:14 and finds 2300 days that are to be, according to Camping, “the final tribulation period. . . . Therefore, six years later than 1988 (actually 2300 days), Christ would return and we would be at the end of this world’s existence. That is the year 1994.”[14]
For all his certainty, Camping abandons this numerological scheme for a new one based on numbers related to the flood. Camping contends that the flood occurred in 4990 B.C. Seven days before the beginning of the Flood, God commanded Noah to warn the peoples of the world that they had seven days to get into the safety of the ark. The Bible tells us that on the 17th day of the 2nd month of that year God shut the door of the ark. With these numbers in hand, Camping go to 2 Peter 3:8, the fallback verse of all prophetic speculators: “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” Here’s how Camping puts all of it together:
Therefore, with the correct understanding that the seven days referred to in Genesis 7:4 can be understood as 7,000 years, we learn that when God told Noah there were seven days to escape worldwide destruction, He was also telling the world there would be exactly 7,000 years (one day is as 1,000 years) to escape the wrath of God that would come when He destroys the world on Judgment Day. . . .
Thus God is showing us by the words of 2 Peter 3:8 that He wants us to know that exactly 7,000 years after He destroyed the world with water in Noah’s day, He plans to destroy the entire world forever. Because the year 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C. when the flood began, the Bible has given us absolute proof that the year 2011 is the end of the world during the Day of Judgment, which will come on the last day of the Day of Judgment.
Amazingly, May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Biblical calendar of our day. Remember, the flood waters also began on the 17th day of the 2nd month, in the year 4990 B.C.
There is more substance in the Mayan Calendar than the prophetic works of Harold Camping. I cannot understand why people believe this guy. Camping has zero credibility. He blows the 1994 prediction (of course), and then he has the nerve to make another more definite prediction? Give me a break.
Endnotes:[1] Charles H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1876), 23:644 [2] Harold Camping, Time Has an End: A Biblical History of the World 11,013 B.C.–2011 A.D. (New York: Vantage Press, 2005).
[3] Justin Berton, “Biblical scholar’s date for rapture: May 21, 2011 (January 1, 2010). [4] Quoted in Richard Abanes, End-Time Visions: The Road to Armageddon? (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998), 93. Whisenant made the same claim when I debated him in 1988.
[5] Abanes, End-Time Visions, 94. [6] Harold Camping, 1994? (New York: Vantage Press, 1992), 531. [7] Camping, 1994?, 503.
[8] Camping, 1994?, 504.
[9] Using Camping’s math, there are really 15 apostles: “The twelve,” including Judas (Luke 22:3), plus Matthias (Acts 1:26), Paul (1 Cor. 15:9), and Barnabas (Acts 14:14). The New Testament describes the number of apostles as “the twelve” (1 Cor. 15:5).
[10] Camping, 1994?, 371. [11] Camping, 1994?, 440–441.
[12] Camping, 1994?, 441.
[13] Camping, 1994?, 443.
[14] Camping, 1994?, 444.
____
I love the Book of Daniel and have spent a lot of time studying it. I hate to see it misinterpreted!
___________________________________
Here are the other posts I had on this same subject:
Yahoo News reported this morning: It’s hard to feel bad for someone whose doomsday predictions caused so much anxiety, but 89-year-old Harold Camping’s recent admission that he’s “flabbergasted” the world didn’t end last weekend sounds somewhat pitiful. “It has been a really tough weekend,” Camping said Sunday, after emerging from his Alameda, California home […]
(Photo: Reuters/Reuters TV) Harold Camping, 89, the California evangelical broadcaster who predicts that Judgment Day will come on May 21, 2011, is seen in this still image from video during an interview at Family Stations Inc. offices in Oakland, California May 16, 2011. The U.S. evangelical Christian broadcaster predicting that Judgment Day will come on […]
I am a Christian and I do believe Jesus is coming back. In fact, at noon today in Little Rock, the skies got dark and it looked like it was midnight. I am sure the Harold Camping followers were expecting something like this. However, it is 2:53pm now and the skies are much brighter. […]
I love the Book of Daniel and have spent a lot of time studying it. I noticed a gentleman making a lot of copies of his notes on the Book of Daniel, and I asked what he was studying. That man was Edgar Whisenant and he began to tell me that he knew the […]
By Justin Berton | SFGate.com For about 10 years I knew a man by the name of Edgar C. Whisenant in Little Rock. He gave me some material to read and I told him that it was wrong to predict the exact date and time of Christ second coming and he got quite mad when I asserted […]
