Now available on YouTube: Francis Schaeffer

Dr. Francis Schaeffer’s spectacular series How Should We Then Live on the rise and decline of Western culture from a Christian perspective is now available on YouTube . The series presents profound truths in simple language and concludes that man’s only hope is a return to God’s Biblical absolute — the Truth revealed in Christ through the Scriptures. Each 30-minute episode focuses on a significant era of history while presenting answers to modern problems.

Francis A. Schaeffer – an American Evangelical theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor, is most famous for his writings and his establishment of the L’Abri community in Switzerland. Opposed to theological modernism, Shaeffer promoted an orthodox Protestant faith and a pre-suppositional approach to Christian apologetics.

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Schaeffer’s biggest concern for the American church

R. C. Sproul shares this story about Francis Schaeffer.  (I think we are living Schaeffer’s greatest fear):

About thirty years ago, I shared a taxi cab in St. Louis with Francis Schaeffer. I had known Dr. Schaeffer for many years, and he had been instrumental in helping us begin our ministry in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, in 1971. Since our time together in St. Louis was during the twilight of Schaeffer’s career, I posed this question to him: “Dr. Schaeffer, what is your biggest concern for the future of the church in America?” Without hesitation, Dr. Schaeffer turned to me and spoke one word: “Statism.” Schaeffer’s biggest concern at that point in his life was that the citizens of the United States were beginning to invest their country with supreme authority, such that the free nation of America would become one that would be dominated by a philosophy of the supremacy of the state.

Read the rest.

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Francis Schaeffer: 100 years!

The new edition of Credo Magazine is out. “As many have observed, it is not an overstatement to say that the Schaeffers transformed, reshaped, and in many ways reformed American evangelicalism. Those writing in this new issue of Credo Magazine are proof, each writer bearing testimony to how Francis Schaeffer has made a monumental impact on how we understand and articulate the Christian faith and life in the world of ideas.”–

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A God who is involved

This is a great story!

“O you who answer prayer . . . .”  Psalm 65:2

Once I was flying at night over the North Atlantic.  It was in 1947, and I was coming back from my first visit to Europe.  Our plane, one of those old DC-4′s with two engines on each wing, was within two or three minutes of the middle of the Atlantic.  Suddenly two engines on one wing stopped.  I had already flown a lot, and so I could feel the engines going wrong.  I remember thinking, if I’m going to go down into the ocean, I’d better get my coat.  When I did, I said to the hostess, “There’s something wrong with the engines.”  She was a bit snappy and said, “You people always think there’s something wrong with the engines.”  So I shrugged my shoulders, but I took my coat.  I had no sooner sat down than the lights came on and a very agitated co-pilot came out.  “We’re in trouble,” he said.  “Hurry and put on your life jackets.”

So down we went, and we fell and fell, until in the middle of the night with no moon we could actually see the water breaking under us in the darkness.  And as we were coming down, I prayed.  Interestingly enough, a radio message had gone out, an SOS that was picked up and broadcast immediately all over the United States in a flash news announcement: “There is a plane falling in the middle of the Atlantic.”  My wife heard about this and at once she gathered our three little girls together and they knelt down and began to pray.  They were praying in St Louis, Missouri, and I was praying on the plane.  And we were going down and down.

Then, while we could see the waves breaking beneath us and everybody was ready for the crash, suddenly the two motors started, and we went on into Gander.  When we got down I found the pilot and asked what happened.  “Well,” he said, “it’s a strange thing, something we can’t explain.  Only rarely do two motors stop on one wing, but you can make an absolute rule that when they do, they don’t start again.  We don’t understand it.”  So I turned to him and I said, “I can explain it.”  He looked at me: “How?”  And I said, “My Father in heaven started it because I was praying.”  That man had the strangest look on his face, and he turned away. . . .

We are not dealing with God as though He were a machine.  He is personal, and as we pray He does not respond mechanically, but as the Personal-Infinite God.  The point is that He is there.  And He can, and does, act into the universe He has made.

Francis Schaeffer, speaking in chapel, Wheaton College, the fall of 1968. (HT: Christ is Deeper Still)

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Displaying love and holiness at the same time

“Increasingly I believe that after we are saved we have only one calling, and that is to show forth the existence and the character of God. Since God is love and God is holy, it is our calling to act in such a way as to demonstrate the existence of God–in other words to be and to act in such a way as to show forth His love and His holiness simultaneously. Further, I believe that the failure to show forth either of these is equally a perversion.

Of course, in one’s own strength it is only possible to show forth either love or holiness. But to show forth the holiness and love of God simultaneously requires much more. It requires a moment by moment work of the Holy Spirit in a very practical way. “

–Francis Schaeffer in an undated letter (HT: Dana Ortlund)

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Is God in the center?

“As I see it, the Christian life must be comprised of three concentric circles, each of which must be kept in its proper place.  In the outer circle must be the correct theological position, true biblical orthodoxy and the purity of the visible church.  This is first, but if that is all there is, it is just one more seedbed for spiritual pride.

In the second circle must be good intellectual training and comprehension of our own generation.  But having only this leads to intellectualism and again provides a seedbed for pride.

In the inner circle must be the humble heart — the love of God, the devotional attitude toward God.  There must be the daily practice of the reality of the God whom we know is there. . . .

When each of these three circles is established in its proper place, there will be tongues of fire and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Then, at the end of my life, when I look back over my work since I have been a Christian, I will see that I have not wasted my life.  The Lord’s work must be done in the Lord’s way.”

Francis A. Schaeffer, “The Lord’s Work in the Lord’s Way,” in No Little People (Downers Grove, 1974), page 74, italics his.

Update:  Justin Taylor has kindly let me know that Crossway Books has put this sermon of Schaeffer’s online.  You can view it here. “The Lord’s Work in the Lord’s Way” is one of the most important things I have ever read. It is never far from my thoughts.

–From Ray Ortlund

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