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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.

-Francis Schaeffer

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The Ancients Were Afraid

Francis Schaeffer

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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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.

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He Who Loses The Arts Loses The Culture.

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

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

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.

Tell Me What The World Is Saying Today, And I'll Tell You What The Church Will Be Saying In Seven Years.

Apostasy Must Be Called What It Is, Spiritual Adultery.

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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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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.

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.

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.

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

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We Must Not Only Be True. We Must Be 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.

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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

‎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.

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.

... 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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Belief Does Not Change What Is.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

...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.

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

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.

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.

Modern Man Has Both Feet Firmly Planted In Mid-air

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Sadly Enough, There Is A Kind Of An Anti-intellectualism Among Many Christians: Spirituality Is Falsely Pitted Against Intellectual Comprehension As Though They Stood In A Dichotomy. Such Anti-intellectualism Cuts Away At The Very Heart Of The Christian Message. Of Course, There Is A False Intellectualism Which Does Destroy The Work Of The Holy Spirit. But It Does Not Arise When Men Wrestle Honestly With Honest Questions And Then See That The Bible Has The Answers. This Does Not Oppose True Spirituality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Christianity Provides A Unified Answer For The Whole Of Life.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Truth Carries With It Confrontation.

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.

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.

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

The Spiritual Battle, The Loss Of Victory, Is Always In The Thought-world.

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

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.

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