It looks like you have the same printing, perhaps, of Kate. Turn to the end. Oh, this one? The book? Yeah, I don't remember exactly where I got this, but it's before I had the full set. So I'm assuming, you know, this is the original from 1970. 1982 so there might be a little difference between the original and the most recent but this is the copy that I'd read before it already had some marks in it and comments so that's what I came back to and this time the binding didn't survive yeah mine's starting to fall apart too but here's the solution for that I can help you with that if you want It's like glass and just falls apart. Well yeah, once the glue gets old it just falls apart. Yeah, if it's a paperback it's just... The thing that I said I was going to tell you that annoyed me was in this printing where he talks about Rutherford, it's printed Rex Lex. Oh, oops. That's like a splinter under your fingernail. Not just because it's a trivial thing, but Rex Lex means the king's law. versus Blacks Rats versus the Longest King. Yeah, you don't want to get those mixed up. That's the predicament that we're in. We'll talk about that more next week because he references Rutherford. What's the week that we have spring break? Two weeks. The 20th is our week off. So we have class tonight and then next Monday last quiz and then from that point we're officially on spring break until we come back and then right after spring break the book reports will be due. If you look in the canvas modules you'll see that I have made the due date the same for everyone. If you want to know who goes first I will tell you when we get there. I thought I was Well, I put everybody on the same night. So, it'll take two weeks for us to do the book reports. But I'd like for you to have your book reports done and ready to go after spring break and then we'll decide who's going to be the first two to go. I can decide to be the last. So, that's how we'll do that. And again, for the book reports, If you want to use a PowerPoint, you can. You don't have to. All I ask is for you to have something like a printed outline, a page or two, just so we can follow along with your presentation. It doesn't have to be 20 pages like mine. I get a little carried away. So, we are ready to discuss the church at the end of the 20th century. And interesting to notice, this was published in 1970. We might think a more appropriate title is The Church in the Middle of the 20th Century because it was a little closer to the middle than it was to the end. But of course, Schaeffer's anticipating where things are going based on what's happening by that time. And there's much in this book that seems prescient when we look back on it thinking that it was written 53 years ago. So just as a kind of touch point, as we reach this point, we finished the trilogy. Now we're moving into two kind of contrasting books, one having to do with the church, this one, and then the next one having to do more with the culture. So we're getting to that point where we've figured out where are we in terms of the flow of ideas and a pretty good idea of how we got here and also being able to see where it's taking us. And now the question becomes, as we start discussing these last couple of books, where do we go? What are we going to do with this? What should be our response? So there are a number of important issues in this book. But I also had a lot of red flags, quite frankly. And you'll see in your notes that I kind of took the big stick out for this Schaefer is making some statements that in terms of doctrine in comparison, especially to Westminster, they're kind of problematic. They're the kind of things that if a minister were coming up for examination, you'd want to talk about those things and say, Mr. Schaefer, there are some things we need to clarify about your statements. So we'll see some of that. He starts out by talking. about the roots of the student revolution. The irony that he points to is that by the sixties you have professors who are basically telling their students that they should rebel against authority and the professors are happy when they rebel against the administration and then the professors get a little upset when the students turn against them as if it was going to be any other way. I like what he has to say about the dangers of conservatism. This is something that has bothered me for quite some time to the extent that I don't want to identify either with a particular party or with a particular movement if it has the name conservative on it because that becomes problematical. The modern conservative can't explain what he's conserving or why. which is why conservatism, whether it's political or theological, ends up being a losing proposition. Why? Because you end up giving away your ground, maybe a little bit at a time, but the other side knows that if you're willing to compromise, then it's just a matter of time. And I think for those of us who have been around a while, observed politics for a while, If we think about the Reagan administration and what's called the Reagan Revolution back in the early 80s, the Republican Party and the conservative movement has drifted a long way toward the left in those intervening years. The problem with conservatism is that it doesn't really have a foundation of its own. And I've heard that criticism of the political conservatives What is it that we're trying to do? Are we just trying to keep things the way they are? Or is there a model or a vision that we're trying to accomplish? It goes back to Barry Goldwater. Really, I mean, in our era, in our age. Goldwater was even before Reagan. Go ahead. Is that a problem with conservatism or those inside. Because there are principles. And I'm not so much defending conservativism as I am just kind of probing what might be a kind of broad statement on your part. You did say that those, the shift from the so-called Reagan revolution to where we are today, but it comes from conservatives, so-called conservatives, stepping back a step at a time, compromising, hoping the other side will like them. Right. But that's not the, that's not the problem of their, their principles, it's the problem of how they live them out. The new, the new conservatives like Ben Shapiro, and, and, you know, the people that are out there now, you know, there, there is a basis for it that You know, family is one that you hear about, that preserving the family is essential. And he's an Orthodox Jew, but he stands against all of this transgenderism and this garbage that's coming down the pipe. You know, and I can appreciate that, that he's defending that. And Dennis Prager, he's defending that from his Well, in his case, it's a Jewish background and not a Judeo-Christian. Right, right. I rephrased that. I caught myself. Yeah, and that leads me to one of the things that kind of annoys me about Schaefer is constantly referring to the Judeo-Christian worldview or that kind of thing. Anyway, but that's a separate beef. I guess another way to pose that question to you Are we simply reactionary, or are we just jellyfish? Or are we just, like I said, backing up two or three steps at a time to get to where we are? Or it sounds like we don't know what we're... A conservative does not know what they are. What is it we're really trying to conserve? And the question is, if conservatism is our view, then where do we draw the line and say, we're not crossing this line? And I don't see that. I think the way that I would differentiate the parties, and this goes back to at least the 2008 election cycle, was that they're both taking us to the same place. One just wants to get there faster. Yeah. Politically, but again, and I didn't say, They haven't got a skeletal structure. They don't know what they're really all about. Well, they're saying, here's where we stand and we're going to stay here. If you work really hard, you might drag us out of our position. But think about it from this standpoint. What should be the mindset of the church? I agree with that. Here's what I'm getting at in terms of what is our strategy or what is it that we do? Are we trying to conserve what we've got wherever it may be? Are we willing to compromise a little bit here and there because you know we want to be liked? Or is it the case that based on scripture and based on the fact that we're in growth towards the perfection of Christ. That's how it's supposed to be with our individual lives, and that's how it should be in the church as well. And what happens if we say, just use this as an individual example, if we say as Christians, I've done enough. I'm happy with where I'm at. I don't need to know anymore. I don't need to grow anymore. I'm just going to kind of stick with what I've got now. What's inevitably going to happen? And I bet everybody who's been a Christian for a while knows what happens when you start getting that attitude. And they are out there. They are in Congress. They are in the Senate. And they will vocalize it. They don't get the mic enough, but they will vocalize. And they do pray for this nation. Serious godly prayers. They're out there. The question is whether that's enough to, you know, maybe it stops the slide a little bit. I'm thinking of how Schaefer's attitude was with regard to denominations, that once the bureaucracy of the denomination is taken over by the liberals, the battle is essentially lost. And we talked about the LCMS as the one example that he could cite So what do we do? Do we just take the left standpoint and burn it to the ground then? And then there's no more Mayflowers selling. Yeah, some of us have been wondering where can we go to get away from the madness and I don't think there's any place to go anymore. Just get the guillotine out, bring back the lions. Well, yeah. Maybe we'll enter into the new millennium prior to that. Maybe it is a real millennium. Some of us are concerned about another French Revolution because of where we're at. Anyway, the point is that Schaeffer makes, and this is in 1970, I think he makes a very prescient point, he says it doesn't really matter whether you call yourself liberal or conservative, if you're in a humanistic worldview, you're going to end up in the same place. And we tend to put those labels on ourselves and on others, but increasingly labels mean less and less. He talks about Christianity not as, you know, He uses the word revolutionary, and that scares me just a little bit because you can have a revolution in the wrong way or for the wrong reasons, even if you put a Christian label on it. There was a book published back in the 1960s by John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, where he says the culture should be directed by the academic and the scientific elite. Gee, does that sound familiar? Yeah, well, hey, Elon Musk for president, right? I say that tongue in cheek. Yeah, I hope so. He says, the problem is that you cannot trust the scientist just because he wears a white coat. Inside the coat, he is still a fallen man. And here kind of picks up on what Randy or what you guys were saying a minute ago. When we think about the destructive nature worldview that we're watching play out in front of us. He says, the students who believe things could not be possibly worse, quote, will destroy everything. And without reason, they will hope that out of the ashes of destruction will spring forth something better, simply because it could not be worse. Yeah, we told Greta Thunberg becomes head of the European Union. Yeah, I hope that's not any time real soon. Maybe she'll at least finish grade school first. He says, the anarchist is a romantic. He hopes something better will come, though he has no reason so to hope. And then I linked as well an article from Malcolm Muggeridge that Schaefer references. Muggeridge was at one time a reporter for The Guardian. And he says that of his, of his bosses, we were required to end anything we wrote on a hopeful note because liberalism is a hopeful creed. Well, and that goes right back to what we were reading in the first three books, that when you make that upstairs leap, you're hoping that there's something up there to be optimistic about. Again, more kind of prescient thoughts. Where Schaefer says that these university movements are only the pilot plan. What is happening on our campuses is not meant for the universities alone, it is meant for the total society. And we're starting to see that. Yeah, when they get out of school, they'll be ready to be the new professionals. Yeah, that's a scary thought. So what's new in the university these days? What is the pilot? What is about to hit us? Anybody know? Well, I came out of a place called Cal State University, Dominguez Hills, which I'm not really proud of it. I like to call it Dummy Go Hills. But anyways, the issue there was social justice when I left. Yeah, it seems like that's what's- They had a degree focus on social justice. that I was talking to this morning was basically saying the same kind of thing, that that's what's going around on the campuses today. I asked the question whether in 2023 we've now reached the point where the new left, which came out of whose ideology, Randy? Herbert Marcuse. Whether the new left has taken over the establishment It kind of feels like that's where we're at or where we're close to. So, chapter three. Interesting some thoughts here about, you know, as it relates to group identification. He makes the statement that if man is a zero, then putting men together in groups is just adding zeros. That the group can have no value if the individual has no value. But that doesn't really describe what we're seeing today. The dynamic that we're seeing today is that people who see themselves as zeros are joining the group in order to have some value. But the problem is the individual never really has much value in a system like that. So the group has value and it can give value to the one who's part of the group. but the individual is always less important than the group. And what does that mean in turn? That when it's expedient, the individuals in the group are expendable. And this is a phrase that should send chills down your spine, for the greater good. That's the kind of ethic that we're hearing about. And I think this helps explain at least in part the mania that we see today with people associating with groups And it's kind of a case of them looking for the universal, something that will give value to them individually, but still trying to maintain personal identity. And so again, there's this tension between the individual, the particular, and the universal. And joining the group doesn't solve that problem. I'm trying to think of the term that Carl Truman used in A Strange New World. There's not really a common value, it's just a common interest of some sort. And it's not a very strong interest. I'll have to look it up. Hey Randy, I'm going to give you a like on that. Thank you! Ding, ding, ding, ding. Now something that caught my attention in this chapter, and I've seen it elsewhere, I've got a couple of quotes in here. In this chapter, he says that a man is judged and found wanting on the same basis on which he has tried to bind other men. And it seems that he is implying that the man without the Bible, as he describes it, is judged on the basis of his own law, maybe not God's law. And I thought, wait a minute, I don't want to misunderstand him. So, I'm also reading Death in the City and he says something similar to that, where he says, there is no injustice in God's dealing with lost men because they are judged on the standard by which they have bound others. Did that jump out at anybody? That's wrong. It's wrong? That's a pretty bold thing to say. Would you like to explain that? There is no injustice. There is justice. Sorry. No. I don't know. I'm still trying to make sense of it. It's almost like thou art inexcusable, O man, who judges another. For wherein you judge another, you do the same thing. Yeah. So, Schaefer's picking up on that idea, and the question is whether that Not that that's not part of the basis for judging the man without the Bible, but is he trying to say that that's the sole basis? And I hope that's not the case, since one of our students is going to be doing a book report on death in the city in just a couple of weeks. Well, the death in the city quote is connected to church at the end of the 20th century, because there is that lengthy segment where if every infant that was born had a tape recorder attached to them, and then at the end of their life, before the throne of God, everything was played back. Because they would be judged against what they... were going to be found to come up short of their own law, whatever it happens to be. Yeah, so that portion of our text tonight is lengthier, but it's the same idea there. Well, give that some thought, because that was something that kind of grabbed me and said, hmm. I don't want to misunderstand him at this point, but if I take him at what he's saying, then it almost sounds as if each man, each unbeliever, is judged on the basis of his own individual law, rather than being judged on the basis of God's law, which is the only perfect standard. So that's what kind of didn't sit well with me about those quotations. He talks quite a bit about the importance of Christian community. We could linger long over this topic and lament much that our churches are not the kinds of communities that they should be. Studying the work of Labrie, part of what stands out is the way that they created a community. Literally, they were doing life together. I guess if we wanted to apply more of a 60s term, we would call it a commune, where they're living together, they're working together, they're gardening together, they're cooking together, all of that. But it's closer to a picture of what Christian communities should look like in the church, but regrettably, we are nowhere close to that. So here's another place where I found myself kind of chewing some nails with what he's saying. He says, there's no such thing as a Christian community unless it is made up of individuals, and this is my italics, who are already Christians, who have come through the work of Christ. And then he goes on to say that baptism represents man's acceptance of Christ as Savior, and then being baptized at that moment with the Holy Spirit. So I'm reading that and I'm saying, that doesn't sound like covenant theology to me. So is there a place in the visible church for the children of believers? So that raises a red flag. So here's where I go to my Westminster Confession. 28.1 says that baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament or only for the Solomon mission of the party baptized into the visible church. In other words, there's more than one person, or there's more than one way to be joined to the church. And in our covenant theology, we would say what? That it's either confession, profession of faith, 28.4 says, not only those that do actually profess faith and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized and therefore they are members of the visible church. So this is one of those things where if he were being examined for licensure or ordination, I think you'd want to kind of dig into those kind of things. I don't know the answer to that. Not from this quote. Yeah, it doesn't sound like it would be the case. I like his statement here. He says, all too frequently, as soon as we get together, in the church that is, we function like the board of trade. And I couldn't help thinking of my own experience at Presbyterian a few weeks ago. If I could say the one thing that disappointed me or surprised me the most, It's that it just didn't seem like it was very serious for the business that these men were there to conduct. I'm expecting something that just feels like, wow, there's such a solemnity to it because of coming together to do the work of the church, but it didn't come across that way. So chapter four, interesting chapter because this is where he spells out what he thinks are the non-negotiables of what makes a church. And I don't disagree with what he said, but I find myself thinking that maybe he hasn't said quite enough. So let's look at this a little more. I start out by saying, is he sloppy or is he wrong? It is the body of believers united by faith in Christ in the full biblical sense, whether or not they are members of an external organization. It includes the church today at war in the present world and the church of yesterday whose members are already at peace. It is the church universal." So he's making it clear. He's talking about the universal, the invisible church. And then I open up my confession and it says, under Christ, the head thereof, and as the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." So, wow, it looks like Schaeffer's definition of the invisible church excludes the elect that are not yet regenerate. That causes me some headache. Yeah, I'm sure that's what he's referring to. That's a good catch because the confession... It says outside the visible church there's no salvation. Yeah, there's not normally salvation outside the visible church. That's a good... We can add that to our critique of this statement. I think I penciled that on there that kind of caught my eye. Now, let's look at his eight requirements for the New Testament church. And again, I don't take disagreement with any of these, but I think there may be some shortcomings. Number one is that local congregations are made up of Christians, although he doesn't mention children again at this point, that the church meets, quote, in a special way on the first day of the week. Three, that there are to be officers responsible for the local churches. Four, there are to be deacons responsible for the material resources of the church. Five, the church is to, quote, take discipline seriously. Six, there are specific qualifications for elders and deacons. Seven, there's a place for form on a wider basis than the local church. And here he's referring to what we would call Presbyterian government, synods and councils outside of the local church. And number eight, that two sacraments are to be practiced. And then he says that within this form, there are vast areas which are left free. Now he says this in the finished work of Christ. And by the way, this book proves that Schaeffer's a saint because he published it a couple of decades after he died. Just thought I would mention that. I think Udo might've had something to do with that. He says, referring to Priscilla and Aquila's home in Rome, quote, to me, this is the ideal would have continued to function if the Holy Spirit had been allowed to work. Wherever Christians go, they proclaim the gospel and little churches spring up." Poor God, he just can't do anything. That kind of, yeah, I'm having to get out a stick to chew on at this point because I'm gnashing my teeth. He goes on to say this, and this is another concern, quote, anything the New Testament does not command in regard to church form is a freedom to be exercised under the leadership of the Holy Spirit for that particular time and place. And those italics were his in the original text. And then there's a footnote on this comment that says, and that should say it, it seems clear to me that the opposite cannot be held, namely, that only that which is commanded is allowed. And at this point, if your alarm bells aren't going off, then you're not reformed. What's the problem? Randy? Well, one of the things that does come into play is in terms of the regular principle doesn't say only what is commanded. It says that it can be derived from scripture by good or necessary consequence. So that it would allow things like church buildings, setting the time of day, things that you can't draw from scripture but not follow those. But he is, he sounds more Lutheran. If it's not forbidden, it's allowed. Yeah. Trying to see where, oh here it is. It doesn't say it's not forbidden, it's allowed. It says only that which is commanded is allowed. That is, normally understood as the regulative principle of worship. That's ultra-exclusive psalmody almost, you know? Like, you don't have musical instruments in the New Testament, so it doesn't mention any type of musical instrument, so you can't have them. Yeah, except in the book of Revelation, by the way. Well, that's all figurative. Yeah, I know, I've heard that argument. light instrumentation. I'm not sure, I think Leland, I don't know if I can give you a like on that one. Oh, you know, I'm being awful facetious here. I thought you were. You've got to look at the expression on his face, right, to know what he means. Look under, on the next page, under chapter 5, the third bullet point, I was looking for this quote when Randy was talking about this, Yes, the confession says that the will of God is either explicitly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequences derived from scripture, deduced from scripture. And this is another quote that kind of... He says, I would suggest that where the Bible is silent, it indicates and reflects a freedom within the scriptural form. Can we not believe that the Holy Spirit will lead us in the area of silences? And here's what I want to say, Mr. Schaefer, what do you mean by silence? Do you mean what the scripture doesn't explicitly say? Or are you also saying that we can't derive answers to some of these kinds of questions through necessary consequence. Because I've heard arguments along these lines, well the Bible doesn't say this, it doesn't say anything about this, so then that must be okay. That's not a good argument. That's often used to shut down the argument. Show me a chapter and verse. Yeah, there's a lot that scripture says, but it also says in that first chapter of the Confession that basically that that scripture reveals to us, and this was part of the Lausanne statement as well, everything that's necessary for faith and life. That's a really broad statement. So it has to be there, if not explicitly, by necessary consequence. And these are a couple places where I just, I'm kinda, I'm getting stuck on this a little bit. You know, Jesus, when he dealt with the scribes and Pharisees, he only seem to condemn their additives when they put men below them and cause grief to humanity in a sense that we can't do this, this is too hard, and it makes us actually have a barrier between us and God. And then he condemned them, but then he seemed to say the scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, whatever they command you to do, do it. There's some, there's latitude. You want to talk about ecclesiastical latitude? Well, there's some right there. I mean, he spoke of it. Let's apply it in this area. We have brains to think, and we can come up with reasonable solutions to the areas where the Bible's silent on, and we also have a So, with regard to the form of the church, there's always going to be a need, as Randy says, the scripture doesn't tell us everything. You know, we were literally having an argument in church yesterday about what color to paint the wall in the church behind the pulpit. Okay? It's kind of, you wish the scripture would just give you the answer. Okay, it needs to be this color. It needs to be brown. Okay, then that settles the argument. But there's obviously latitude in those kind of things. What bugs me about this is that he's saying that, yes, there are areas of freedom in regard to some of those what we'll call accidents, like whether we meet in a church building or whether we meet in a house and whether we meet at 10 o'clock or whether we meet at 1030, confusing that with the elements of the worship service. And that's where the regulative principle of worship says, So, you know, maybe it's a case, we can only go by what's written here, unless we have something else that he has said elsewhere that we can add to the discussion. But it leaves some uncomfortable gaps, I think, in his theology, his ecclesiology. A couple of things briefly, because I know we're probably killing your outline there, but slightly in his text, We've gone through the OPC, where Machen's warrior children were eating each other. And even the Bible Presbyterian Church. He left that mission because even those guys were just so much infighting. His letters talked about how grieved he was. And there was no love between Christians. And the second one is that he was an evangelist. So he was, he was probably, he was probably having to deal with things that were outside a more structured church life. I had some of the same, I still have some of the same concerns. I tried to highlight things on my own, but we kind of lined up on several of those. But, I mean, if you're talking about Him evangelizing a hippie who had been doing drugs last week, are you going to worry about whether or not... Yeah, you're not going to try to convince him to join such and such a church. You've got a lot of work to do first. He did make a statement elsewhere that says you don't want to teach things that they're going to have unlearned later. Alright, so we are coming close to our close. I'm going to have to skip a bit. You have the printed notes there. You can see that I relapsed this week and ended up with 14 pages of notes. Let me take a look at a quote from page 10 and you tell me if this sounds vaguely familiar. Even today men are on the verge of being able to make a new superweapons, viruses for which there are no cures. I underline that. Yeah. And I add that in 2020, we learned that fear of a deadly virus is enough. And this is his argument, that people will trade their freedom for the perception of safety. So you're giving more power to what he calls the establishment elite in a time where you are afraid Yeah, pull up your sleeve. He says in chapter 7, the future is open to manipulations that no totalitarian ruler in the past has ever had. That's a little scary. He goes on to say, I'm convinced that science as we have known it with a commitment to objectivity cannot now continue now that this Christian philosophy is gone. And again, prescient, on the one side, I think science will increasingly become only technology. On the other side, it will become sociological science and be a tool of manipulation in the hands of manipulators. So much of this just sounds like it was written the other day. And look at the last, well, not the last thing, but about a third of the way down, page 11, where he says, quote, the computer has entered a new age. It can watch you. And so I pulled, this is current, this is as current as it gets. I've got three selections from the news that I was scanning last week. Two of these are from PJ Media from the same author. The first says, the greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government, says Johns Hopkins professor, Dr. Marty McCary in a testimony to Congress. That misinformation was repeated, amplified, repeated again, and re-amplified across every available medium. And then here's one about AI. A Bay Area, that's your neighborhood, Lela, not Not your zip code, but pretty close. West Coast neighborhood, a Bay Area tech company wants to sell AI surveillance software to determine not only who you are, but to track who your friends are too. Ventra is a San Jose-based firm whose co-appearance or co-correlation analysis software can, quote, with a few clicks, according to the LA Times, take any individual on a surveillance camera and backtrace him to those he's seen with most often. From there, the software can take people deemed, quote, likely associates and locate them on a searchable calendar. That's a little creepy. This is kind of the age that we're living in, and this is the kind of age that he predicted. I'll leave you to read the comments that Ted Cruz made to CPAC about Anthony Fauci. In chapter 80, he says, where are we? He said, this is the end, the big lie. Our generation is more ready to believe the big lie than any in the history of Western man. All right, I'll give you 30 seconds to make any last comments or ask a five second question. Everybody except Leland. OK. I have a question about social justice. We don't have time for that. The answer is probably no. All right, let's wrap this up. Randy, would you mind praying for us this evening? Almighty God, You are on the throne. You rule and reign men and nations. And the things that we've talked about this evening don't surprise You. Help us to rest in You, to have our confidence in You, obey you according to your word and your spirit working within us and not be afraid because Christ has settled everything. We do thank you for this opportunity to read and to learn and to discuss our brother Francis Schaeffer. things that he warned about and put them into place here. Help us to speak truth into our own culture these days and be glorified