You promised. Yeah, it didn't take me long to break that promise, did it? All right, let's start with a word of prayer. Father, we thank that you have brought us back together again tonight to spend time learning from the person and the work of Schaefer, his life and ministry, and to understand more about how what he has taught, has carried down to the present day, how he has shown us what would happen, and how he's also given us ideas about how we can speak to the culture that we live in. So we ask that you would be with us tonight as we continue our study and help us to have wisdom in these matters as we consider how to use it. In Christ's name, amen. Amen. Alright, so we're starting our third lecture. I emailed it to you a couple hours ago. No, it's not in your binders. It wouldn't be in your binder because I just actually found that hiding under the podium five minutes ago. Yeah Okay, well I I emailed it to you and I also posted it on canvas so it's available through those two mediums But tonight we're going to be looking at the next part of Schaefer's life last time we left off just as he was celebrating his 19th birthday and enrolling at the Central High School in Germantown to take a couple of language classes as a way of preparing for his enrollment at Hampton-Sydney in the fall. But before we get back to that storyline, which hopefully has had you in suspense all week, We're going to talk a little bit about that individual that Leland mentioned a couple of weeks ago, someone who had quite a significant impact on the life and ministry of Francis Schaeffer, and it's a lady named Edith Rachel Merritt Seville. So, interesting to contrast the backgrounds between Fran and his wife. Fran obviously comes from a very working class background. Edith, on the other hand, comes from a much more culturally refined background. She had the benefit of growing up in a Christian home. Her family background was a combination of English and Irish. And her parents were missionaries in China. and part of the China Inland Mission. Say that again? Yeah, Hudson Taylor. So that was founded in 1865 by Hudson Taylor. So in the late 19th century, we find the Seville's working as missionaries in China. And then Edith was born in 1914. just made her a little too old there. So just a couple of years after Fran was born. Her parents are Jesse Merritt, who was born in 1874. And Jesse's story is a little more complicated because she got married at the age of 20 while in China. But her first child died at birth. And then three weeks later, her husband died of tuberculosis. So she returned to North America, I should say. I was going to say the States. Attended Toronto Bible College. with the intent of going back and serving in China as a missionary after finishing her college. So she returned to China in 1899 and at this time being a widow and without children she was expecting simply to serve as a missionary to China without remarrying. This guy named George Seville came along. He went to Westminster College, graduated in 1898. He was proficient in Hebrew and Greek, so he taught Greek and Latin a couple years in prep school before he felt called to the mission field, joined China Inland Mission, consequently attended seminary for three years where he excelled in Hebrew, and then in 1902 went to China. And it was not long after that that he met Jesse. So even though Jesse's intent was not to remarry, apparently George was a persistent fellow. So in 1905 they were married and then subsequently had several children. Edith was their fourth child. And her three older siblings included two sisters and a brother who died in infancy at eight months old. So by the time Edith comes along, she has two older sisters. She is described as precocious and strong-willed. She lived there in the missionary compound. She learned the Chinese language, adopted Chinese culture. and also had a Chinese nursemaid named Ama. By the time she was a year old, her two older sisters, though they were still pretty young, were in boarding school, so she was kind of by herself with her nanny at that time. She earned the nickname of Mei Fu, meaning beautiful happiness. And according to Sam Wellman, he says, she was a fierce little evangelist. The story is that when she was around her friends, she would say, will you preach to me? And when they didn't answer, she would say, well, I will preach to you. And then off she goes. One of the formative things, I'll mention a couple of things that were formative in her years here. And she was just less than five years old when she left China. So this is from a very early age. But she used to walk with a Dixon host. As he prayed for the missionaries individually, he would take long walks, four hours at a time, and pray for all of those who were serving there in the mission field. And so early on, she was seeing the results of those prayers. She got to see both sides, both the prayer and the answer. One of the rather traumatic experiences she had when she was out one time with her Amma, was they passed by a certain place where she could hear the sound of babies crying. And she asked her Amma, what is that? And it turns out that they were passing near to a pagoda where Chinese parents would leave their infant daughters to die. They would simply leave them because they were not wanted. And that just highlights the fact that there's nothing new about that kind of view. So even at that time, with the greater value that's placed on having a son, you see that working out in a very tragic way. So I'm sure that was a very powerful experience for her to have at a very young age. She knew that that was wrong. So in 1919, the family returned from China. They were coming back expecting to be at home for maybe a year before going back to China for seven more years, but they did not return to China. So nevertheless, those first almost five years that Edith lived in China were very powerful in terms of forming her beliefs and her thoughts, especially, and her love for missionary work. Her father, George, continued work for China Inland Mission, editing their magazine called China's Millions. He ended up becoming a pastor at a Presbyterian church in Newburgh, New York. It was at that time that Edith joined the Girl Scouts and the YWCA. She excelled in math and science and English, but to her father's disappointment, her father was gifted in languages, but it turns out that Edith was not so much. So she didn't do very well in Latin. At that time, George was friends with both Wilson and Machen while they were at Princeton. So there was a connection there already to those Princeton theologians and those who would later go on to start Westminster. During this time, and it was a little difficult for me to figure out exactly the details, but they went through several relocations, spent a couple years in California and a couple years in Toronto before they ended up back in Germantown. So Germantown is where Edith finished high school and she became a passionate apologist that last year in high school. And part of the backstory for that is that her older sister, Janet, had gone off to college by this time and had begun to drift away from the Christian faith. So she was seeing the problem of young people losing their faith in Christianity, especially under the influences of college. So she began reading conservative theology, like Machen and Wilson. And it's funny because one of my first visits to High Plains Fellowship, there was someone there named Zoe Schimke, who was quoting from Machen's book, Christianity and Liberalism. And I couldn't help thinking of her as kind of a similar young lady to where Edith was at that same time. So graduated in 1932 at the age of 17. And it was just a month later that she met Fran at the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown. Fran had just gotten back from his first year at Hampton, Sydney. What state is Germantown in? It's a suburb of Philadelphia. So, you know, that's obviously significant. Philadelphia is kind of his hometown. He'll end up back there to go to seminary. So, we'll get there. Interestingly, the Sevilles lived pretty close to that lot, where just two years earlier, Fran walked into the tent meeting of Anthony Zioli, where he made his commitment. Edith had begun classes at Beaver College that fall. She was majoring in home economics. While she was there in college, she helped to start meetings for the League of Evangelical Students. She would end up leaving college without her degree, so she finished three years before marrying Fran. And her experience at China Inland Mission would be influential later on. think in terms of how, particularly with respect to Labrie and the work at Labrie, they would put an emphasis on learning how to speak the language of the people who are coming to find out the answers to the questions. Another little sidelight before we get back to Fran's story, Machen and Westminster. And a couple of you just finished your American Church History class and had a paper that's looking at the life and ministry of Machen. So you've already got a little bit of background there. Here's one of those intersections between what was going on in the Presbyterian Church in the early 20th century and where Schaeffer just happened to be at the time. So, in the 20s, Machen published four books that were all defending historic Christianity. 1921, the origin of Paul's religion. 1923, Christianity and liberalism. 1925, what is faith. 1930, the virgin birth of Christ. 1923 was an inauspicious year because that was the year of the Auburn Affirmation when approximately 10% of the Northern Presbyterian Church's clergy signed a statement rejecting the inerrancy of scripture. So that was another sign of how things were going in the Presbyterian Church. Inerrancy was, and I would argue that it still is, as Fran would say, the watershed. We are still struggling with the question of what is scripture. And if it's not reliable, then it can't be very authoritative. what I believe was his last book was The Great Evangelical Disaster. And his argument there was we were undercutting ourselves by our weak view of scripture even then. And that was one of the reasons I was thinking about that. the significance of the authority that we work in. I had another thought in there too, but that's basically it. At the risk of oversimplifying it, I think there's a pretty good argument that the Church over the history of the Church, when it struggles with the question of the authority of Scripture, it starts to go bad pretty quick. And even today, the kinds of struggles that we're seeing in our congregations, our denominations, over questions like who should be officers, who should be ministers, all of that comes back to our view of scripture. And if we do not have a high view of scripture, then we're going to go bad pretty quick. So, things were going bad at Princeton during the 20s. And by 1929, the leadership of Princeton was reorganized and a couple of the Auburn signers were added to the Board of Trustees. Machen was reading the handwriting on the wall and decided it was time to leave. So he left Princeton along with a number of others, like Wilson, Oswald Ellis, R.B. Kuyper, Ned Stonehouse, Alan McRae, Cornelius Van Til, Paul Woolley, They went and started Westminster Theological Seminary at that time. Part of the goal with Westminster, in contrast to Princeton, was that it would have no denominational ties. It would be an independent seminary, which means that it would allow for professors coming from different denominations to be part of their work. And so they also had differences in their theologies at a couple of key points, which would become a point of division later on. So their goal initially was to be somewhat neutral with regard to eschatological views and with regard to libertarianism. And at that time, all of the eschatological views were represented. So you had the post and the amillennials, as well as some premillennials. They didn't have any pre-tribulation raptured people, I hope. Just kidding. No, I think it's safe to say that they were not dispensational. Those who were of the premillennial view would have been of the historic view. And Schaefer was in that category. So another obviously turning point was in 1933 when Machen founded the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. That's what ended up bringing him up under charges. And when he's expelled from the Northern Church, and NPC by the way is my abbreviation for Northern Presbyterian Church. I would rather use that than PCUSA which Sounds like the PCUSA we have today. So that's just my differentiation. And OPC... Because it's not the PCUSA that we have today? No, it's not the same thing. And then the OPC, which was originally the Presbyterian Church of America. I'm just calling it the OPC for simplicity. So, Machen forms the OPC in 1936 and A small number, unfortunately not very many, were willing to leave the Northern Presbyterian Church at that time and join the OPC in order to hold on to the confessional standards. Machen was speaking in North Dakota in late 1936 when he contracted pneumonia and died on New Year's Day in 1937. And that was a pretty strong turning point because he was the driving force behind Westminster. So a little bit of a side story on Machen because that's going to intersect in just a little bit. Any questions on that? Or comments for those of you who are doing your studies of Machen? Is the name Wilbur Smith factoring with any of that establishment of the university at all? Name doesn't ring a bell. I know, I know the name Wilbur Smith. I'm not sure. I've seen, I've seen it sort of does tie in with Schaefer in talking about their inconsistency with language. So the Auburn affirmation, they did not deny the Westminster standards as such. But they said, this is what the church used to believe, so we hold it as a historical standard. We don't believe that the things that are true. We don't have to believe them to be good Christians, but we recognize that they're what the church believed. So it's sort of playing with the language, that dialectic sort of thing. There was hostility towards Machen too. He believed that when the gospel came through missions to a culture of people, that it should impart a Christian culture to them. And the people from the liberal side hotly protested that and said that we should, you know, kind of almost like somewhat of a leaning toward the modern day anthropological view, that we don't change their culture. And that they got really hot at Machen over that issue, too. Interesting. Okay. That had something to do with him getting the boot. It was part of it anyways. Well, it ended up leading to the founding of not only a, well, the new seminary was first, of course, but leading to the formation of a new denomination committed to maintaining the historic Westminster standards and not just giving lip service to them. So let's pick up the story with Fran now, going back to kind of this critical moment. He's getting ready. It's the fall of 31. He's getting ready to leave home and start at Hampton, Sydney. And he's still getting opposition from his parents. His parents were opposed all along, even after the confrontation they had in December of 1930, where he said, I'm not going to keep going to Drexel. I'm going to pursue the ministry. Things are still tense. So even as he's preparing to leave, the morning that he's preparing to leave for Hampton, Sydney, has a showdown with his dad. And his dad says, I don't want you to go. I don't want a son who's a minister. And so Fran is having a bit of a crisis. He goes down to the basement to pray. The story is that in lieu of having the Urim and the Thummim, he took a coin out of his pocket and flipped the coin and said, Lord, if you want me to go to Hampton, Sydney, let it come up heads. And it came up heads. And he said, well, OK, let me try this one more time. If you want me to go to Hampton, Sydney, let it come up heads. He did that three times. and got heads three times in a row and went back upstairs and told his dad I have to go. So his dad storms out of the house and as he's on his way out slamming the door behind him he says I'll pay for your first half year at Hampton Sydney. So his parents were not Christians at that time they would later be converted But think about how difficult this must have been for this young man, 19 years old. He's feeling the call to the ministry. He had a profoundly meaningful, significant conversion not much earlier, just a year earlier. And yet, in his conscience, he's wanting to be obedient to his parents. And that's kind of what his dilemma was. He wanted to honor his parents, but he knew he was going to have to go against his parents' desires if he were going to follow God's leading. So that must have been a difficult thing for him to do. But off he went, enrolled in September of 31 at Hampton-Sydney. Where is that? Virginia. He had a friend drive him down there in his Model A Ford, 300 mile trip, and what might take a few hours for us was probably a pretty grueling trip on a Model A. Now there was a bit of a culture clash because Fran was a northerner, a Yankee, and he was attending a southern school And to make things worse, he was from a working class background, whereas most of those who were enrolled in the school were from well-to-do southern backgrounds. You have a comment? Just muttering that probably from the gentry, the southern gentry. Yeah. So he ended up, it was probably somebody's idea of a practical joke to put him in the jock dorm. He's still a small guy, he's only five foot six, but remember this is the same guy who worked in the ice house lugging 200 pound blocks of ice. So he's not, as it were, you know, a pushover. At any rate, hazing was common at that time, and there was particular hostility to those who were students of ministry. He had a roommate named Snurp, who was quite a bit bigger and considerably meaner than he was, and at one point they had a bit of a showdown. Snurp hit him on the back with a coat hanger, and Fran, demonstrating his hot temper jumped the guy and got him in a headlock. And his, I think the equivalent of the RA who was watching this, said to Fran, you're the biggest little man I've ever seen. So I think that put an end to most of the hazing when he demonstrated that he could stand up for himself. He did get the nickname Philly while he was in college. And he had a way of showing concern both for his studies as a very serious student, but also concern for his fellow students. And part of what he did as kind of an interventionist, you might say, is that he would sometimes help his drunk dorm mates find their way back to their rooms on a Saturday night. But the bargain was that if he helped you on Saturday night, you were going to go to church with him on Sunday. He did start a prayer meeting in his dorm. His goal was to keep it short and sweet. A couple of verses, a little exposition, a request for prayers. And I guess he kept this up for several years during the time that he was there. His favorite professor was a philosophy professor who used to regularly engage him in very spirited debates. They were not of a like mind in terms of their beliefs, so it was a good exercise for Fran to be able to defend his beliefs with somebody who did not agree with him, and yet somebody who was formidable in his ability to argue. Apparently, during his freshman year, he had dated a few girls at a nearby teacher's college, and it didn't work out so well. because he's a little too serious for the girls and even the serious ones weren't particularly interested in talking about the things that he wanted to talk about. So nothing much in the way of romance until, of course, the summer of 32. Now in the spring, January of 32, he befriended a black janitor named Johnny Morton, and that's how he ended up starting to teach Sunday school at a church called Mercy Street in a nearby town, a small black church where he ministered both to Johnny, as well as to a group of about 10 or 12 black children. And I throw some of these things out here to give you some some markers of things that I think are influential, or at least are gonna tie into the ministry that we see Fran undertaking later on. You might say early signs of his thinking in terms of ministry and where it may go. So he ministered to Johnny in his illness. I'm not sure what year Johnny died, but even after he died, Fran would still pay his respects by visiting Johnny's grave. So, close friendship with this man. So, summer of 32, after he finishes his first year, he's back home in Germantown to work for the summer, and then goes to this meeting at the First Presbyterian Church, where a Unitarian is there to speak and explain why he doesn't believe the Bible. So, at the end of that conversation, or in the end of that presentation, Franz stands up to refute the speaker, his defenses, let's say it was courageous, but it wasn't as full of content as it might've been. He basically said, I don't think you're correct in what you're saying and gave a short testimony of what Christ had done for him. And then he sat down and a young girl across the room stood up and gave a defense by quoting Machen and Wilson. And the funny thing is, you hear the story from each of their perspectives. Edith wants to know who's that guy that stood up over there. And then Fran wants to know who's that girl that stood up over there. And so at the conclusion of the meeting, they're introduced. And you might say from that point, the rest is history. But it was going to be three years from that point before they would marry. That night they discovered their mutual interest in the truth. And as it were, they met on the battlefield. So they spent quite a bit of time together that summer. The Sevilles were very accommodating towards Fran. Unfortunately, Fran's parents were not really hot about Edith. And Fran's mother, Bessie, was actually hostile towards the young lady. During the next three years, they wrote almost on a daily basis, sometimes more than once a day. Edith saw the greatness in Fran early on and wanted to be his companion both in life and ministry. And yet they came to a point, I think it was late 34, where they had to say to each other, if it's not God's will for us to be together, then we have to be willing to go our separate ways. So it was, you might say a bit of a difficult patch that they went through, but they came through that, determined that it was in fact God's intention for them to marry. And I think we can say in retrospect, that looked like a pretty good decision. Besides their letter writing, Edith suggested that they read the same devotional each day and to read it at the same time of the day so that there would be sort of a spiritual connection between them even though they were several hundred miles apart during the school year. And it's a practice they ended up continuing literally until Fran died in 1984. It was Edith who encouraged Fran to read Machen. Yeah, and I encouraged him to apply to Westminster. So while he was in school, kind of going back to the school story now, he earned a little extra, well it wasn't money I guess, but he earned some meals by doing some work in the cafeteria. And there's a story that he was involved on one occasion in what was a pretty, pretty raucous food fight. I can't say for sure, but I kind of get the feeling from what I read that he might have had something to do with starting it. Anyway, it had to do with the students getting tired of yams apparently. During his years in school, he was president of the Student Christian Association. He demonstrated his athleticism by running for the track team. It's said that he had so much energy that at times, just to burn off a little energy, he would climb the water tower on campus. He became president of the Literary Society, where he also engaged in debates. He was a member of the Ministerial Association. He did join a fraternity, Kappa Nu, and after completing his obligations to that fraternity, resolved that he was never gonna be part of another secular organization again because it was eventually going to press against his Christian beliefs. So again, I throw that out there because while it's not that significant per se, it shows something about his character and about his concern for his associations. So in the spring of 35, he applies to seminary He does receive a scholarship that will help defray some of his expenses. April 1935 is when Machen is put on trial. And in June, Fran graduates magna cum laude with his BA degree. He was a straight A student who finished second in his college class and honored it as graduation for being the most outstanding Christian on campus. So from modest beginnings and auspicious beginnings, he does very well in college and you might say finishes a lot better than he started from the looks of it. So in July, just a month later, he marries Edith. Edith's father, George, was the one who officiated their wedding. And it's interesting to see how their marriage combined Fran's working class background with Edith's cultural refinement. And if you think about how those are going to work together later on at Labrie, it's just interesting to see how they complement one another. They both shared an interest in foreign missions. I think at times, that Fran was expecting to become a missionary in China. So their thoughts in both cases were certainly on foreign missions as they were going through these years. Again, the Sevilles approved of the wedding, but Fran's parents were divided. Unfortunately, Bessie was rather hostile towards Edith. Does it say a reason Yeah, I don't know. Anything I say in answer to that question would be speculation. It may be that Bessie was still unhappy about Fran wanting to pursue the ministry, and now he's marrying the daughter of Christian parents. That's probably what I'd be guessing based on what I've seen, but I didn't see anything specific. So, what did they do for their honeymoon? They got in Fran's Model A Ford and drive 300 miles to Michigan to serve as camp counselors that summer. And again, this is formative in part because it shows from very early on, literally from the very beginnings of their marriage, that they're engaging in children's ministry. And we'll see that become very significant later on. In 1935, George was forcibly retired from the China Inland Mission. And of course Edith forgoes her senior year in college after she and Fran are married in the summer of 1935. So fall of 1935 is when Fran begins his studies at Westminster. He says that Van Til was one of his biggest influences. At that time, Van Til was writing pretty strongly against the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth, and Barth was apparently a topic of considerable discussion at Westminster and then later at Faith Seminary. Edith was his partner in the seminary. She helped to support them with her handiwork. making dresses and other kinds of items that they could sell, as well as spending late nights with Franz studying and learning just about everything that he was learning at seminary. It's said that she got the equivalent of a seminary degree by virtue of how much they interacted around his work. With the possible exception of Hebrew, apparently she didn't take very well to Hebrew. I can't imagine why. Edith was an avid reader, and she was also very energetic. I don't know how this is possible, but she was one of those people who only needed about three hours of sleep each night. So they might stay up to the wee hours of the morning doing their work. She spent a lot of time later on writing letters to their family, as well as to supporters of LaBrie, and sent us books as well. And Fran has described their works as a unit that ought to be read together. And I've read most of what Schaefer's written, but I haven't gotten around to reading what Edith has written yet. So that'll be, maybe I can put some of that on my summer reading plan. She wrote considerably more than he did in terms of volume. I haven't read that one yet. That's the short one. That's like 200 pages. The tapestry is 600 pages. And that's kind of the expanded version of their family biography. How many children did they have total? Are we going to get there? Well, we're going to get there. I'll tell you they had three daughters and a son, but we're almost, almost, I'll have to speed things up a little bit, but they'll have their first daughter here in 1937. So they start fall of 35 at Westminster. Part of what is formative for Fran And the separation that's taking place at this time is the tone of the separation. You're probably going to encounter some of that as you read Schaefer, that he looks back on this time with some regret in the manner in which these separations were taking place. He would say that they were necessary. It was necessary for preserving the doctrine of the church for there to be separation from the liberals. but that there also needed to be charity, more charity between those who left and the conservatives who stayed. So that was a sticking point for him. He said, we have to practice both the purity of the church and love between Christians. He described the doctrine of scripture as the watershed. and that's worth mentioning because I think it's still the watershed a hundred years later. It's the dividing point. The idea of a watershed, it's like, you know, the continental divide. If you're on the West side of the continental divide, any rain or snow that falls on that side goes to the Pacific. And if you're on the East side of the continental divide, all the rain or snow goes to the Gulf, okay? So it's the dividing point. Your view of scripture is either going to lead you into liberalism and basically skepticism, or it's going to keep you true to the Christian faith. So it's just an expression that means that this is a critical dividing point. Okay. Fran would later. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Today I see so many people say, we believe the Bible is the inspired inherent word of God, but I see so many people who hold that and say that actually in living reality, They actually deny it. I mean, you know, not willful sin, but the way that they, you know, the way that they enact the application of it. Yeah, I would put it like this. Part of what I've seen in visiting a number of different Reformed denominations over the last three years or so is that even those confessionally reformed denominations like the PCUSA, no, I mean the PCA, sorry, not the PCUSA, there's a disconnect between the doctrine and the life of the church. So I think that's the trap that we fall into. We say we're confessionally reformed. We believe the Bible, the Bible's authoritative. And then we kind of go fishing in the dark for the answers rather than turning to scripture for the answers. So I would say even in the reformed churches, that's a weakness, okay? All right, so I have two minutes to summarize the last page of my notes here for the first hour. 1936, they go to a summer camp in New Hampshire. that's here that Fran receives news that Meacham and McIntyre had been defrocked. Fran immediately resigns from the Northern Presbyterian Church. It's also the occasion where he met Harold Ockingay and he was disappointed later that Ockingay did not leave with the Conservatives at the time the OPC was formed. So fall of 36, Leland, Edith finds out she's pregnant That same fall, Fran is hospitalized with appendicitis. Back in those days, appendicitis was a two-week hospital stay, if you can believe that. They end up with an enormous $75 hospital bill, and they don't have the money to pay it. So here's another example of their reliance upon God's providence. Edith prays for financial help. She goes to the hospital and says, we don't have the money to pay the bill. And the administrator says, we have a fund over here for people who don't have enough money to pay their bills. And they had just enough money in that fund to pay Fran's hospital bill. So they left without having to pay. So God answering that prayer for them. So January 37, as we said earlier, Meechan dies unexpectedly. There's now a split in the OPC. And Fran is going to go with this next split as well. They found Faith Theological Seminary and the Bible Presbyterian Church. And along with a few faculty, the pre-millennials, there were 25 students who left as well. And part of Fran's reason for leaving was he was, even at that time, turned off by the cold orthodoxy that he saw at Westminster. For him, premillennialism was partly a matter of affirming the historicity of scripture and the literal interpretation of Revelation 20, just parenthetically. So, summer 37 was a busy summer. He was hired by Ellen McRae to help prepare for this new seminary that would launch in the fall. So Fran spent his summer break finding real estate, purchasing old homes, and putting those working class skills to work in fixing up the homes that would soon be the housing for students and staff. George Seville, having been let go from China Inland Mission, came to teach Greek at the new seminary. He ended up staying there for 17 years until he reached the age of 80. And meanwhile, his wife Jessie led a prayer meeting. So Priscilla was born in June of 37. And it was a scary moment because she wasn't breathing. And for half an hour, they were attempting to resuscitate her. And finally, they were able to resuscitate her by giving her mouth to mouth. And she didn't show any lasting effects of that. So it was, I might say, sort of a miracle. Schaefer graduates in 1938, is the first graduate and the first ordinand from Faith Theological Seminary, and gets his first pastoral charge in Western Pennsylvania in a town called Grove City. So the Schaefers will soon be on the move to Western Pennsylvania to start their first pastorate. And Fran will spend about the next 10 years in three different churches as a minister. For Edith it was going to be sort of a homecoming because her family had originally settled in that part of Pennsylvania. Thoughts or questions? What do you mean by everyone was asking the same questions just in different languages? What Fran found as he was talking to people with different kinds of backgrounds, whether of the educated class or whether of the working class, that the basic questions they were asking about the meaning of life and those kinds of things were the same questions, but they might be asking those questions in their own familiar language, in their own way of speaking. So again, this goes back to the idea tying back to Edith's experience in China. You want to minister to the Chinese. You learn the Chinese language. You learn Chinese culture. you understand their thought forms and how to communicate with them and then communicate in their language. So, Fran coming from that working class background, it was actually very easy for him to be able to relate to folks who were mostly working class. And because of his educational background, he understood the questions they were asking. And again, this goes back to some of the same struggles that he had as a teenager, asking questions, not finding the answers in philosophy, Not finding the answers in church, but only finding the answers when he picked up the Bible and started to read it. Okay? Other thoughts? Leland? Nada. Alright. Alright, well we are on break. So, we'll resume in ten minutes and talk about the remainder of the God who is there. Sections three through six. Right? enough attention to the schedule I'm going to ask this question and I'm going to confirm my ignorance. Is there class next week? Yes. Is there a class on President's Day? We're not observing the federal holiday next week. Good. Our first break will be March 20th which is our week of spring break. Got it. Okay? Unless there's a blizzard, which is a possibility. If we have to make adjustments for weather, I will let you know. Okay? All right. Back in ten.