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In Face Of This Modern Nihilism, Christians Are Often Lacking In Courage. We Tend To Give The Impression That We Will Hold On To The Outward Forms Whatever Happens, Even If God Really Is Not There. But The Opposite Ought To Be True Of Us, So That People Can See That We Demand The Truth Of What Is There And That We Are Not Dealing Merely With Platitudes. In Other Words, It Should Be Understood That We Take This Question Of Truth And Personality So Seriously That If God Were Not There We Would Be Among The First Of Those Who Had The Courage To Step Out Of The Queue.

-Francis Schaeffer

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In Face Of This

Francis Schaeffer

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In Face Of This Modern Nihilism, Christians Are Often Lacking In Courage. We Tend To Give The Impression That We Will Hold On To The Outward Forms Whatever Happens, Even If God Really Is Not There. But The Opposite Ought To Be True Of Us, So That People Can See That We Demand The Truth Of What Is There And That We Are Not Dealing Merely With Platitudes. In Other Words, It Should Be Understood That We Take This Question Of Truth And Personality So Seriously That If God Were Not There We Would Be Among The First Of Those Who Had The Courage To Step Out Of The Queue.

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One Of The Greatest Injustices We Do To Our Young People Is To Ask Them To Be Conservative. Christianity Is Not Conservative, But Revolutionary.

Preaching The Gospel Without The Holy Spirit Is To Miss The Entire Point Of The Command Of Jesus Christ For Our Era. In The Area Of "christian Activities" Or "christian Service," How We Are Doing It Is At Least As Important As What We Are Doing.

How Should An Artist Begin To Do His Work As An Artist? I Would Insist That He Begin His Work As An Artist By Setting Out To Make A Work Of Art.

... You Are Not Christ's Disciple, In The Sense Of Following Him, If This Is Not Your Way Of Life: Rejected And Slain Daily!

God's Word Will Never Pass Away, But Looking Back To The Old Testament And Since The Time Of Christ, With Tears We Must Say That Because Of Lack Of Fortitude And Faithfulness On The Part Of God's People, God's Word Has Many Times Been Allowed To Be Bent, To Conform To The Surrounding, Passing, Changing Culture Of That Moment Rather Than To Stand As The Inerrant Word Of God Judging The Form Of The World Spirit And The Surrounding Culture Of That Moment. In The Name Of The Lord Jesus Christ, May Our Children And Grandchildren Not Say That Such Can Be Said About Us.

There Needs To Be An Order Of Office, But In Every Single Office That Is Presented In The Scriptures There Is The Personal Emphasis Within That Legal Concept. In The Church The Elder Is An Office-bearer. But Both The Preaching Elders And The Ruling Elders Are "ministers," And The Word "minister" Is A Personal Relationship, It Does Not Speak Of Dominance. There Is To Be Order In The Church, But The Preaching Elder Or The Ruling Elder Is To Be A Minister, With A Loving Personal Relationship With Those Who Are Before Him, Even When They Are Wrong And Need Admonition.

If We Do Not Show Love To One Another, The World Has A Right To Question Whether Christianity Is True.

‎people Have Presuppositions... By 'presuppositions' We Mean The Basic Way That An Individual Looks At Life- His Worldview. The Grid Through Which He Sees The World. Presuppositions Rest Upon That Which A Person Considers To Be The Truth Of What Exists. A Person's Presuppositions Provide The Basis For Their Values- And Therefore The Basis For Their Decisions.

So Our Building Of The Visible Church Becomes Much Like Any Natural Business Function, Using Natural Means And Natural Motives.

Jesus Taught That The Mark Of The Christian Is The Observable Love Shown Among All True Believers.

Truth Always Carries With It Confrontation. Truth Demands Confrontation; Loving Confrontation Nevertheless. If Our Reflex Action Is Always Accommodation Regardless Of The Centrality Of The Truth Involved, There Is Something Wrong.

Christ's Crucifixion Was On A Hill, By A Road, Where Everybody Who Passed By Could Not Only See His Pain, But Also His Shame. It Was Not Done In A Shadow, Hidden Away Somewhere.

In The 20th Century, Evangelical Christians In America Have Naively Accepted The Role Assigned To Us By An Anti-religious, Anti-christian Consensus In Our Society. We Have Been Relegated To A Cultural Backwater, Where We Are Meant To Paddle Around Content In The Knowledge That We Are Merely Allowed To Exist.

To Die Is To Be With The Lord. It Is Not Just An Idea, It Is A Reality.

In Two Areas Above All Others The Christian Demonstration Of Love And Communication Stands Clear: In The Area Of The Christian Couple And Their Children; And In The Personal Relationships Of Christians In The Church. If There Is No Demonstration In These Two Places, On The Personal Level, The World Can Conclude That Orthodox Christian Doctrine Is Nothing But Dead, Cold Words.

There Is Nothing More Ugly Than An Orthodoxy Without Understanding Or Compassion.

In My Reading Of Philosophy, I Saw That There Were Innumerable Problems That Nobody Was Giving Answers For. The Bible, It Struck Me, Dealt With Man's Problems In A Sweeping, All-encompassing Thrust.

Technologically, Modern Man Does Everything He Can Do-he Functions On This Single Boundary Principle. Modern Man, Seeing Himself As Autonomous, With No Personal-infinite God Who Has Spoken, Has No Adequate Universal To Supply An Adequate Second Boundary Condition; And Man Being Fallen Is Not Only Finite, But Sinful. Thus Man's Pragmatically Made Choices Have No Reference Point Beyond Human Egotism. It Is Dog Eat Dog, Man Eat Man, Man Eat Nature.

As Christians, We Must See That Just Because An Artist-even A Great Artist-portrays A Worldview In Writing Or On Canvas, It Does Not Mean That We Should Automatically Accept That Worldview. Good Art Heightens The Impact Of That Worldview, But It Does Not Make It True.

We Must Remember Throughout Our Lives That In God's Sight There Are No Little People And No Little Places. Only One Thing Is Important: To Be Consecrated Persons In God's Place For Us, At Each Moment.

Christianity Is Not Just Involved With "salvation", But With The Total Man In The Total World. The Christian Message Begins With The Existence Of God Forever, And Then With Creation. It Does Not Begin With Salvation. We Must Be Thankful For Salvation, But The Christian Message Is More Than That. Man Has A Value Because He Is Made In The Image Of God.

We Should Not View Men With A Cynical Eye, Seeing Them Only As Meaningless Products Of Chance, But, On The Other Hand, We Should Not Go To The Opposite Extreme Of Seeing Them Romantically. To Do Either Is To Fail To Understand Who Men Really Are--creatures Made In The Image Of God But Fallen.

Humanism Is Not Wrong In Its Cry For Sociological Healing, But Humanism Is Not Producing It.

Killing Of Animals For Food Is One Thing, But On The Other Hand They Do Not Exist Simply As Things To Be Slaughtered. This Is True Of Fishing, Too. Many Men Fish And Leave Their Victims To Rot And Stink. But What About The Fish? Has He No Rights - Not To Be Romanticized As Though He Were A Man - But Real Rights?

Ours Is A Post-christian World In Which Christianity, Not Only In The Number Of Christians But In Cultural Emphasis And Cultural Result, Is No Longer The Consensus Or Ethos Of Our Society.

If Men Act Upon The Teaching Of The Word Of God, And As Proportionately Men Live According To The Teaching And Commands Of The Bible, So They Have In Practice A Sufficient Psychological Base. I Will Find You A Man Dealing With Psychological Problems On The Basis Of The Teaching Of The Word Of God, Even If He Never Heard The Word Psychology, Or Does Not Know What It Means.

This Equation Of The Impersonal Plus Time Plus Chance Producing The Total Configuration Of The Universe And All That Is In It, Modern People Hold By Faith.

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You Must Not Lose Confidence In God Because You Lost Confidence In Your Pastor. If Our Confidence In God Had To Depend Upon Our Confidence In Any Human Person, We Would Be On Shifting Sand.

The Lord Is The General, And He Has The Right . . . The Sovereign Right . . . To Put Us Where He Wants In The Battle.

Christian Art Today Should Be Twentieth-century Art.

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Any Denomination Or Church Group That Forsakes Inerrancy Will End Up Shipwrecked. It Is Impossible To Prevent The Surrender Of Other Important Doctrinal Teachings Of The Word Of God When Inerrancy Is Gone.

Things, Things, Things. Always More Things, And Success Is Seen As The Abundance Of Things.

If You Want A Significant Man, With Absolutes, Morality, And Meaning, Then You Must Have What The Bible Insists Upon - That God Will Judge Men Justly, And They Will Not Be Able To Raise Their Voices Because Of The Base Upon Which He Judges Them.

Isolating The Student From Large Sections Of Human Knowledge Is Not The Basis Of A Christian Education. Rather It Is Giving Him Or Her The Framework For Total Truth, Rooted In The Creator's Existence And In The Bible's Teaching, So That In Each Step Of The Formal Learning Process The Student Will Understand What Is True And What Is False And Why It Is True Or False.

The Command Is To Love Him, Not Just To Think About Him, Or Do Things For Him. We Are Not To Stop With A Proper Legal Relationship - For Example, To Think Of A Man As Legally Lost, Which He Is, In The Sight Of A Holy God - Without Thinking Of Him As A Person. Saying This, We Can Suddenly See That Much Evangelism Is Not Only Sub-christian, But Subhuman - Legalistic And Impersonal.

We Cannot Deal With People Like Human Beings, We Cannot Deal With Them On The High Level Of True Humanity, Unless We Really Know Their Origin-who They Are. God Tells Man Who He Is. God Tells Us That He Created Man In His Image. So Man Is Something Wonderful.

I Have Come To The Conclusion That None Of Us In Our Generation Feels As Guilty About Sin As We Should Or As Our Forefathers Did.

Most People Do Not Realize That There Was A Paid Chaplain In Congress Even Before The Revolutionary War Ended.

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Eve Doubted God, And I As A Child Of God Am Now To Be Exactly The Opposite: I Am To Believe Him. Eve Doubted, And Mankind In Revolt Doubts God. To Believe Him, Not Just When I Accept Christ As Savior, But Every Moment, One Moment At A Time: This Is The Christian Life, And This Is True Spirituality.

We Must Not Only Be True. We Must Be Beautiful.

Are You Still Thirsting? Christ Gives The Invitation Not Only To Others But To You. He Is The Fountainhead. He Has Died And Is Risen. He Offers The Only Way To Eternal Life, Asking Only That You Admit Your Need, Raise The Empty Hands Of Faith, And Accept His Gift. What Is Eternal Life? It Is Meaning In Life Now As Well As Living One‚s Life Forever. Drink Deep. Jesus Offers A Brimming Cup.

They Are Equal Reality. They Are Two Streams Of Present Reality, Both Equally Promised. The Christian Dead Are Already With Christ Now, And Christ Really Lives In The Christian. Christ Lives In Me. The Christ Who Was Crucified, The Christ Whose Work Is Finished, The Christ Who Is Glorified Now, Has Promised (john 15) To Bring Forth Fruit In The Christian, Just As The Sap Of The Vine Brings Forth The Fruit In The Branch.

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The Ancients Were Afraid That If They Went To The End Of The Earth They Would Fall Off And Be Consumed By Dragons. But Once We Understand That Christianity Is True To What Is There, True To The Ultimate Environment - The Infinite, Personal God Who Is Really There - Then Our Minds Are Freed. We Can Pursue Any Question And Can Be Sure That We Will Not Fall Off The End Of The Earth.

...that Is Our Calling: To Show That There Is A Reality In Personal Relationship, And Not Just Words About It.

Hudson Taylor Said, "the Lord's Work Done In The Lord's Way Will Never Fail To Have The Lord's Provision." ...the Lord's Work Done In Human Energy Is Not The Lord's Work Any Longer. It Is Something, But It Is Not The Lord's Work.

No Work Of Art Is More Important Than The Christian's Life, And Every Christian Is Called To Be An Artist In This Sense... The Christian's Life Is To Be A Thing Of Truth And Also A Thing Of Beauty In The Midst Of A Lost And Despairing World.

Today The Separation Of Church And State Is America Is Used To Silence The Church... The Way The Concept Is Used Today Is Totally Reversed From The Original Intent... It Is Used Today As A False Political Dictum In Order To Restrict The Influence Of Christian Ideas... To Have Suggested The State Separated From Religion And Religious Influence Would Have Amazed The Founding Fathers.

When My Conscience Under The Holy Spirit Makes Me Aware Of A Specific Sin I Should At Once Call That Sin Sin And Bring It Consciously Under The Blood Of Christ. Now It Is Covered And It Is Not Honoring To The Finished Work Of Jesus Christ To Worry About It, As Far As My Relationship To God Is Concerned. Indeed, To Worry About It Is To Do Spite To The Infinite Value Of The Death Of The Son Of God. My Fellowship With God Is Restored.

Today The Separation Of Church And State In America Is Used To Silence The Church. When Christians Speak Out On Issues, The Hue And Cry From The Humanist State And Media Is That Christians, An All Religions, Are Prohibited From Speaking Since There Is A Separation Of Church And State.

As Evangelical Christians We Have Tended To Relegate Art To The Very Fringe Of Life. The Rest Of Human Life We Feel Is More Important. Despite Our Constant Talk About The Lordship Of Christ, We Have Narrowed Its Scope To A Very Small Area Of Reality.

People Drift From Generation To Generation, And The Morally Unthinkable Becomes Thinkable As The Years Move On.

I Am Afraid That As Evangelicals, We Think That A Work Of Art Only Has Value If We Reduce It To A Tract.

The Central Problem Of Our Age Is Not Liberalism Or Modernism, Nor The Old Roman Catholicism Or The New Roman Catholicism, Nor The Threat Of Communism, Nor Even The Threat Of Rationalism And The Monolithic Consensus Which Surrounds Us. All These Are Dangerous But Not The Primary Threat. The Real Problem Is This: The Church Of The Lord Jesus Christ, Individually Corporately, Tending To Do The Lord’s Work In The Power Of The Flesh Rather Than Of The Spirit. The Central Problem Is Always In The Midst Of The People Of God, Not In The Circumstances Surrounding Them.

If I'm Going To Be In The Right Relationship With God, I Should Treat The Things He Has Made In The Same Way He Treats Them.

In The Flesh Rather Than The Work Of The Spirit, It Is Easy To Say We Are Showing Holiness And It Only Be Egotistic Pride And Hardness.

Reformation Is A Return To The Sound Doctrine Of The Bible. Revival Is The Practice Of That Sound Doctrine Under The Power Of The Holy Spirit.

Most People Catch Their Presuppositions From Their Family And Surrounding Society The Way A Child Catches Measles.

Modern Man Has Both Feet Firmly Planted In Mid-air

To Fail To Exhibit That We Take Truth Seriously At Those Points Where There Is A Cost In Our Doing So, Is To Push The Next Generation In The Relative, Dialectical Millstream That Surrounds Us.

Christianity Believes That God Has Created An External World That Is Really There; And Because He Is A Reasonable God, One Can Expect To Be Able To Find The Order Of The Universe By Reason.

If God Exists And We Are Made In His Image We Can Have Real Meaning, And We Can Have Real Knowledge Through What He Has Communicated To Us.

The Reality Of Living By Faith As Though We Were Already Dead, Of Living By Faith In Open Communion With God, And Then Stepping Back Into The External World As Though We Are Already Raised From The Dead, This Is Not Once For All, It Is A Matter Of Moment-by-moment Faith, And Living Moment By Moment. This Morning's Faith Will Never Do For This Noon. The Faith Of This Noon Will Never Do For Suppertime . The Faith Of Suppertime Will Never Do For The Next Morning. Thank God For The Reality For Which We Were Created, A Moment-by-moment Communication With God Himself.

The Inward Area Is The First Place Of Loss Of True Christian Life, Of True Spirituality, And The Outward Sinful Act Is The Result.

The Christian In The One Whose Imagination Should Fly Beyond The Stars.

The Christian Should Be The Person Who Is Alive, Whose Imagination Absolutely Boils, Which Moves, Which Produces Something A Bit Different From God's World Because God Made Us To Be Creative.

God Has Communicated To Man, The Infinite To The Finite. The One Who Made Man Capable Of Language In The First Place Has Communicated To Man In Language About Both Spiritual Reality And Physical Reality, About The Nature Of God And The Nature Of Man.

Today We Have A Weakness In Our Education Process In Failing To Understand The Natural Associations Between The Disciplines. We Tend To Study All Our Disciplines In Unrelated Parallel Lines. This Tends To Be True In Both Christian And Secular Education. This Is One Of The Reasons Why Evangelical Christians Have Been Taken By Surprise At The Tremendous Shift That Has Come In Our Generation.

Certainly Every Christian Ought To Be Praying And Working To Nullify The Abominable Abortion Law. But As We Work And Pray, We Should Have In Mind Not Only This Important Issue As Though It Stood Alone. Rather, We Should Be Struggling And Praying That This Whole Other Total Entity "(this Godless) Worldview" Can Be Rolled Back With All Its Results Across All Of Life.

Thank God For The Reality For Which We Were Created, A Moment-by-moment Communication With God Himself.

If There Is No Absolute By Which To Judge Society, Society Is Absolute.

It Is Only As We Consciously Bring Each Victory To His Feet, And Keep It There As We Think Of It - And Especially As We Speak Of It - That We Can Avoid The Pride Of That Victory, Which Can Be Worse Than The Sin Over Which We Claim To Have Had The Victory.

I Hesitate To Add, But I Will, That This Is Fun. God Means Christianity To Be Fun. There Is To Be A Reality Of Love And Communication In The Christian-to-christian Relationship, Individually And Corporately, Which Is Completely And Truly Personal.

Truth Demands Confrontation. It Must Be Loving Confrontation, But There Must Be Confrontation Nonetheless.

Truth Carries With It Confrontation.

In God's World The Individual Counts. Therefore, Christian Art Should Deal With The Individual.

I Believe That Pluralistic Secularism, In The Long Run, Is A More Deadly Poison Than Straightforward Persecution.

The Difference Between Christian Thinking And The Non-christian Philosopher Has Always Been At This Point. The Non-christian Philosopher Has Always Said That Man Is Normal Now, But Biblical Christianity Says He Is Abnormal Now.

Christianity Provides A Unified Answer For The Whole Of Life.

It Is Not Enough For The Church To Be Engaged With The State In Healing Social Ills, Though This Is Important At Times. But When The World Can Turn Around And See A Group Of God's People Exhibiting Substantial Healing In The Area Of Human Relationships In Their Present Life, Then The World Will Take Notice. Each Group Of Christians Is, As It Were, A Pilot Plant, Showing That Something Can Be Done In The Present Situation, If Only We Begin In The Right Way.

This Shift From The Judeo-christian Basis For Law And The Shift Away From The Restraints Of The Constitution Automatically Militates Against Religious Liberty.

There Is No Use Of Evangelicalism Seeming To Get Larger And Larger, If At The Same Time Appreciable Parts Of Evangelicalism Are Getting Soft At That Which Is The Central Core, Namely The Scriptures.

If Christians Win A Battle By Using Worldly Means, They Have Really Lost.

Modern Multiple Divorce Is Rooted In The Fact That Many Are Seeking In Human Relationships What Human Relationships Can Never Give. Why Do They Have Multiple Divorce, Instead Of Merely Promiscuous Affairs? Because They Are Seeking More Than Merely Sexual Relationship.

The Modern Concept Of Separation Is An Argument For A Total Separation Of Religion From The State. The Consequence Of The Acceptance Of The Doctrine Leads To The Removal Of Religion As An Influence In Civil Government.

The Central Problem Is Always In The Midst Of The People Of God, Not In The Circumstances Surrounding Them.

And The Purpose Of Our Creation, In Which All Our Subsidiary Purposes Fit, Is To Be In A Personal Relationship To God, In Communion With Him, In Love, By Choice, The Creature Before The Creator.

If There Is No Absolute Beyond Man's Ideas, Then There Is No Final Appeal To Judge Between Individuals And Groups Whose Moral Judgments Conflict. We Are Merely Left With Conflicting Opinions.

... These Are The Two Factors That Lead To The Destruction Of Our Environment: Money And Time-or To Say It Another Way, Greed And Haste. The Question Is, Or Seems To Be, Are We Going To Have An Immediate Profit And An Immediate Saving Of Time, Or Are We Going To Do What We Really Should Do As God's Children?

We Are Not Being True To The Artist As A Man If We Consider His Art Work Junk Simply Because We Differ With His Outlook On Life. Christian Schools, Christian Parents, And Christian Pastors Often Have Turned Off Young People At Just This Point. Because The Schools, The Pastors, And The Parents Did Not Make A Distinction Between Technical Excellence And Content, The Whole Of Much Great Art Has Been Rejected With Scorn And Ridicule. Instead, If The Artist's Technical Excellence Is High, He Is To Be Praised For This, Even If We Differ With His World View. Man Must Be Treated Fairly As Man.

He Who Loses The Arts Loses The Culture.

There Is No Place In God's World Where There Are No People Who Will Come And Share A Home As Long As It Is A Real Home.

If Man Is Not Made In The Image Of God, Nothing Then Stands In The Way Of Inhumanity. There Is No Good Reason Why Mankind Should Be Perceived As Special. Human Life Is Cheapened. We Can See This In Many Of The Major Issues Being Debated In Our Society Today.

Man, Made In The Image Of God, Has A Purpose - To Be In Relationship To God, Who Is There. Man Forgets His Purpose And Thus He Forgets Who He Is And What Life Means.

The Ordinary Christian With The Bible In His Hand Can Say That The Majority Is Wrong.

...when I Accept Christ As My Savior... I Am Immediately In A New And Living Relationship With Each Of The Three Persons Of The Trinity.

When My Conscience Under The Holy Spirit Makes Me Aware Of A Specific Sin I Should At Once Call That Sin Sin And Bring It Consciously Under The Blood Of Christ.

If There Is No Absolute Moral Standard, Then One Cannot Say In A Final Sense That Anything Is Right Or Wrong. By Absolute We Mean That Which Always Applies, That Which Provides A Final Or Ultimate Standard. There Must Be An Absolute If There Are To Be Morals, And There Must Be An Absolute If There Are To Be Real Values. If There Is No Absolute Beyond Man's Ideas, Then There Is No Final Appeal To Judge Between Individuals And Groups Whose Moral Judgments Conflict. We Are Merely Left With Conflicting Opinions.

The Moral Absolutes Rest Upon God's Character. The Moral Commands He Has Given To Men Are An Expression Of His Character. Men As Created In His Image Are To Live By Choice On The Basis Of What God Is. The Standards Of Morality Are Determined By What Conforms To His Character, While Those Things Which Do Not Conform Are Immoral.

Modern Man Has Not Only Thrown Away Christian Theology, He Has Thrown Away The Possibility Of What Our Forefathers Had As A Basis For Morality And Law.

A Compassionate Open Home Is Part Of Christian Responsibility, And Should Be Practiced Up To The Level Of Capacity.

Christians, Of All People, Should Not Be Destroyers. We Should Treat Nature With An Overwhelming Respect. We May Cut Down A Tree To Build A House, Or To Make A Fire To Keep The Family Warm. But We Should Not Cut Down The Tree Just To Cut Down The Tree. We May, If Necessary, Bark The Cork Tree In Order To Have The Use Of The Bark. But What We Should Not Do Is To Bark The Tree Simply For The Sake Of Doing So, And Let It Dry And Stand There A Dead Skeleton In The Wind. To Do So Is Not To Treat The Tree With Integrity.

The Purpose Of Apologetics Is Not Just To Win An Argument Or A Discussion, But That People With Whom We Are In Contact May Become Christians And Then Live Under The Lordship Of Christ In The Whole Spectrum Of Life.

If Christianity Is Really True, Then It Involves The Whole Man, Including His Intellect And Creativeness. Christianity Is Not Just 'dogmatically' True Or 'doctrinally' True. Rather, It Is True To What Is There, True In The Whole Area Of The Whole Man In All Of Life.

Art Is A Reflection Of God's Creativity, An Evidence That We Are Made In The Image Of God.

We Must Realize That The Reformation World View Leads In The Direction Of Government Freedom. But The Humanist World View With Inevitable Certainty Leads In The Direction Of Statism. This Is So Because Humanists, Having No God, Must Put Something At The Center, And It Is Inevitably Society, Government, Or The State.

Christian Art Is The Expression Of The Whole Life Of The Whole Person As A Christian. What A Christian Portrays In His Art Is The Totality Of Life. Art Is Not To Be Solely A Vehicle For Some Sort Of Self-conscious Evangelism.

The Beginning Of Men's Rebellion Against God Was, And Is, The Lack Of A Thankful Heart.

What We, The Christian Community, Have To Do Is To Refuse Men The Right To Ravish Our Land, Just As We Refuse Them The Right To Ravish Our Women; To Insist That Somebody Accepts A Little Less Profit By Not Exploiting Nature.

Reality Is Not Meant To Be Only Creedal, Though The Creeds Are Important. Reality Is To Be Experienced, And Experienced On The Basis Of A Restored Relationship With God Through That Finished Work Of The Lord Jesus Christ On The Cross.

Ignorance Is In Relationship To Content; It Is Not Just A Spirit Of Ignorance. In Verse 21 It Speaks Of "the Truth In Jesus." Truth Is Content, Truth Has Something To Do With Reason. Truth Has Something To Do With The Rational Creature That God Has Made Us. The Dilemma Here In The Internal World Is Not Just Some Sort Of Grey Fog, It Is In Relationship To Content.

There Are Two Main Reasons Why We May Not Be Bringing Forth The Fruit We Should. It May Be Because Of Ignorance, Because We May Never Have Been Taught The Meaning Of The Work Of Christ For Our Present Lives.

Most People Catch Their Presuppositions From Their Family And Surrounding Society The Way A Child Catches Measles. But People With More Understanding Realize That Their Presuppositions Should Be Chosen After A Careful Consideration Of What World-view Is True.

We Must Stress That The Basis For Our Faith Is Neither Experience Nor Emotion But The Truth As God Has Given It In Verbalized, Prepositional Form In The Scripture And Which We First Of All Apprehend With Our Minds.

Biblical Orthodoxy Without Compassion Is Surely The Ugliest Thing In The World.

There Would Have Been No Bach Had There Been No Luther.

When A Man Comes Under The Blood Of Christ, His Whole Capacity As A Man Is Refashioned. His Soul Is Saved, Yes, But So Are His Mind And His Body. True Spirituality Means The Lordship Of Christ Over The Total Man.

Just Because Something Is Beautifully Written Does Not Mean It Is True.

The Basic Problem Of The Christians In This Country In The Last Eighty Years Or So, In Regard To Society And In Regard To Government, Is That They Have Seen Things In Bits And Pieces Instead Of Totals.

The Church's Or Christian Group's Methods Are As Important As Its Message.

A Christian Should Use These Arts To The Glory Of God, Not Just As Tracts, Mind You, But As Things Of Beauty To The Praise Of God. An Art Work Can Be A Doxology In Itself.

Belief Does Not Change What Is.

The Soul Is Not More Important Than The Body. God Made The Whole Man And The Whole Man Is Important.

Christianity Is Realistic Because It Says That If There Is No Truth, There Is Also No Hope; And There Can Be No Truth If There Is No Adequate Base. It Is Prepared To Face The Consequences Of Being Proved False And Say With Paul: If You Find The Body Of Christ, The Discussion Is Finished, Let Us Eat And Drink For Tomorrow We Die. It Leaves Absolutely No Room For A Romantic Answer.

There Is A Sad Myth Going Around Today - The Myth Of Neutrality. According To This Myth, The Secular World Gives Every Point Of View An Equal Chance To Be Heard. And It Works Fairly Well - Unless You Are A Christian.

God Has Ordained The State As A Delegated Authority; It Is Not Autonomous. The State Is To Be An Agent Of Justice, To Restrain Evil By Punishing The Wrongdoer, And To Protect The Good In Society. When It Does The Reverse, It Has No Proper Authority. It Is Then A Usurped Authority And As Such It Becomes Lawless And Is Tyranny.

Our Trusting The Lord Does Not Mean That There Are Not Times Of Tears. I Think It Is A Mistake As Christians To Act As Though Trusting The Lord And Tears Are Not Compatible.

If There Is No Final Place For Civil Disobedience, Then The Government Has Been Made Autonomous, And As Such, It Has Been Put In The Place Of The Living God.

Here We Are Told That Christ Really Lives In Me, If I Have Accepted Christ As My Savior. In Other Words, We Have The Words Of Jesus To The Thief Of The Cross, 'today Thou Wilt Be With Me In Paradise.' Christ Can Say, 'today Thou Wilt Be With Me In Paradise,' And Mean It. To Die Is To Be With The Lord. It Is Not Just An Idea, It Is A Reality. But At The Same Time, Christ, The Same Christ Who Gives The Promise Just As Definitely, That When I Have Accepted Christ As My Savior, He Lives In Me.

Truth Carries With It Confrontation. Truth Demands Confrontation; Loving Confrontation, But Confrontation Nevertheless.

No Totalitarian Authority Nor Authoritarian State Can Tolerate Those Who Have An Absolute By Which To Judge That State And Its Actions. The Christians Had That Absolute In God's Revelation.

If There Is No Absolute Moral Standard, Then One Cannot Say In A Final Sense That Anything Is Right Or Wrong.

In Fact, Philosophy Is Universal In Scope. No Man Can Live Without A World View; Therefore, There Is No Man Who Is Not A Philosopher.

The Value Of The Things Is Not In Themselves Autonomously, But That God Made Them, And Thus They Deserve To Be Treated With High Respect. The Tree In The Field Is To Be Treated With Respect. It Is Not To Be Romanticized As The Old Lady Romanticizes Her Cat (that Is, She Reads Human Reactions Into It). This Is Wrong Because It Is Not True. When You Drive The Axe Into The Tree When You Need Firewood, You Are Not Cutting Down A Person; You Are Cutting Down A Tree. But While We Should Not Romanticize The Tree, We Must Realize God Made It And It Deserves Respect Because He Made Is As A Tree.

This Is Not An Age In Which To Be A Soft Christian.

In Passing, We Should Note This Curious Mark Of Our Own Age: The Only Absolute Allowed Is The Absolute Insistence That There Is No Absolute.

Each Generation Of The Church In Each Setting Has The Responsibility Of Communicating The Gospel In Understandable Terms, Considering The Language And Thought-forms Of That Setting.

Our Relationship With Each Other Is The Criterion The World Uses To Judge Whether Our Message Is Truthful - Christian Community Is The Final Apologetic.

We [christians] Have The Dilemma Of Using A Symbol System That Was Not Made For Our Worldview, To Give Our Worldview... I Think The Thing We're Waiting For Is A Genius To Come Forth Who Can Either Make A New Symbol System Which Is Still Modern, Or More Properly, As Symbol Systems Don't Come Overnight, A Group Of People To Modify The Symbol Systems Of Our Day, So That We Can Use Them For Our Christian Message Without A Disadvantage.

The Arbitrary Division Between Church And State... Is Used, As An Easily Identifiable Rallying Point, To Subdue The Opinions Of That Vast Body Of Citizens Who Represent Those With Religious Convictions.

Modern Man Has No Real "value" For The Ocean. All He Has Is The Most Crass Form Of Egoist, Pragmatic Value For It. He Treats It As A "thing" In The Worst Possible Sense, To Exploit It For The "good" Of Man. The Man Who Believes Things Are There Only By Chance Cannot Give Things A Real Value. But For The Christian The Value Of A Thing Is Not In Itself Autonomously, But Because God Made It.

Christianity Is Not A Series Of Truths In The Plural, But Rather Truth Spelled With A Capital 't.' Truth About Total Reality, Not Just About Religious Things. Biblical Christianity Is Truth Concerning Total Reality - And The Intellectual Holding Of That Total Truth And Then Living In The Light Of That Truth.

But The Dignity Of Human Life Is Unbreakably Linked To The Existence Of The Personal-infinite God. It Is Because There Is A Personal-infinite God Who Has Made Men And Women In His Own Image That They Have A Unique Dignity Of Life As Human Beings. Human Life Then Is Filled With Dignity, And The State And Humanistically Oriented Law Have No Right And No Authority To Take Human Life Arbitrarily In The Way It Is Being Taken.

But The Fact That Christ As The Bridegroom Brings Forth Fruit Through Me As The Bride, Through The Agency Of The Indwelling Holy Spirit By Faith, Opens The Way For Me As A Christian To Begin To Know In The Present Life The Reality Of The Supernatural. This Is Where The Christian Is To Live. Doctrine Is Important, But It Is Not An End In Itself. There Is To Be An Experiential Reality, Moment By Moment.

Sometimes The Greatest Deterrent To A Great Marriage Is Believing You Have A Perfect Marriage.

True Spirituality Consists In Living Moment To Moment By The Grace Of Jesus Christ.

If One Starts With An Impersonal Beginning, The Answer To Morals Eventually Turns Out To Be The Assertion That There Are No Morals.

Doctrinal Rightness And Rightness Of Ecclesiastical Position Are Important, But Only As A Starting Point To Go On Into A Living Relationship - And Not As Ends In Themselves.

I Am Convinced That When Nietzsche Came To Switzerland And Went Insane, It Was Not Because Of Venereal Disease, Though He Did Have This Disease. Rather, It Was Because He Understood That Insanity Was The Only Philosophic Answer If The Infinite-personal God Does Not Exist.

The Church Is Something Beautiful

Something Beautiful

We Have The Right To Rid Our Houses Of Ants; But What We Have No Right To Do Is To Forget To Honor The Ant As God Made It, Out In The Place Where God Made The Ant To Be. When We Meet The Ant On The Sidewalk, We Step Over Him. He Is A Creature, Like Ourselves; Not Made In The Image Of God, It Is True, But Equal With Man As Far As Creation Is Concerned. The Ant And The Man Are Both Creatures.

The Overall Way Of Thinking In The United States Has Shifted Away From Basic Biblical Values, And The Media Share In The Responsibility For This Change.

We As Bible-believing Evangelical Christians Are Locked In A Battle. This Is Not A Friendly Gentleman's Discussion. It Is A Life And Death Conflict Between The Spiritual Hosts Of Wickedness And Those Who Claim The Name Of Christ.

Some Psychological And Sociological Conditioning Occurs In Every Man's Life And This Affects The Decisions He Makes. But We Must Resist The Modern Concept That All Sin Can Be Explained Merely On The Basis Of Conditioning.

Apostasy Must Be Called What It Is, Spiritual Adultery.

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Charles C. Mann

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