As I got into the reading of it, preparation of it, the copyright date was 1969. The guy who was there and Escape from Reason were published in 1968. And the lectures that got in the city were based on, were given at Wheaton College in the fall of 1968. Well, sorry, that's, yeah, he does base a lot of his books on lectures and they're transcribed. We hear the story how somebody stuck the microphone in the plant and he's talking away and sometime later he finds out how they're spying on him and he gets so angry that he's being recorded without his time to time as well, is to urge his readers to include other, other books to maybe make connections and to, to fill out the picture of what he's getting at. So in, in this early stage of his work, he urges his readers to read the Labrie story, which was kind of interesting. That was one of Edith's, Edith's book. And it was a story of how Well, the purpose of L'Abri itself and how it came about, the back and forth on how they became more established, and started drawing people to that ministry of L'Abri, which you may recall in French is the shelter. And it actually did become a shelter to quite a number of people. Questioning people, people who had left churches because of poor and abusive church relationships, intellectuals, college students, graduate students even, who, who were questioning what life was about. And, and so then, as well as, as well as Labrie, he included the guy who was there, of course, and escaped from reason. Those first two books of his, and then, and then, Death in the City. And his, his reasoning there was, So he addressed the cultural issues in God Who Is There, and Escaped From Reason, how philosophically and historically, culturally, we had come to where we had been, or where we were at that time, with the changing thoughts and processes of Western man. The day-to-day living and the reality of lived ministry was the story of Labrie. So he wanted to say, I've approached this culturally. I'm presenting it in Labrie as this is how we live it out. And then with Death in the City, he said, this is my exegetical basis. This is a scriptural message to Western man. without the Bible as we heard in some of his other, one of his other books, I think it was Church at the End of the 20th Century, where he addressed man without the Bible. But he is going to address very closely the state of the church and where we are, the failure of the church in culture and its witness ministry. He opened the book in The very first sentence in the first chapter, we live in a post-Christian world. That's the very first time he's used it. Of course, he's only got three books to draw on from, but right off the bat he says, we are now in a post-Christian world. And he'll go ahead and explain what that means and how we as Christians and as a church, and so on, can live and function and address our culture in light of that. His plan, beginning, is to address two questions and one proposal. Well, actually a number of questions. What should our perspective as individuals, institutions, and Orthodox Christians be toward this post-Christian world that we're in? Do we just throw up our hands and give up? Do we think it's okay? What do we do? Is there a way to address it and do some recovery? He'll assert a proposition about the basic need of the Christian church. And part of that proposition will say that we need two needs. A biblical reformation, which he says is a return to orthodox Christian doctrines. The other is a revival, a renewal of spiritual life among the people, both in the church and within culture, bringing newcomers to historic Orthodox Christianity. And he's going to do that biblically in the context of the book of Romans, or at least the beginning book chapters of the book of Romans, especially chapter 1 and chapter 2. And then picking from Jeremiah and Lamentations. And he did that very purposely. Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet. And the prophets are considered, we often say that they are the incumbent prosecutors. So when Israel would fail in their duties, and fail in their living as they were meant to do, God would raise up prophets. And the prophets would say, this is the case against you. This is what the covenant says. This is what the law says. This is how you are breaking it. Come back. in even stronger language than that. But Jeremiah and Lamentations are two books, both attributed to Jeremiah. And Schaefer's going to take some of the teaching from both of those books to address us in the late 60s on here in the post-Christian world. And again, that contemporary situation that we're in. I think that what he did there with Reformation and Revival is a strong point of the book. A lot of times, perhaps reformed Christians will say, we need to reform the church. We need to get back to good biblical doctrine. And that's a good thing. But it's only half the story in Schaeffer's proposal. So it does have to be in proper relationship to the Word. And we can't be weak on our doctrine. But we also need to make it a heart religion. a lived out religion, a reality that our life has to be brought into a proper relationship with Jesus Christ and in relationship to the Holy Spirit who is guiding and teaching. So I think it's true and again I think it's a strong point in his introduction that we can't have true revival without reformation and we can't have true reformation without revival. little sidetrack here. After the canon, after the Senate of Dort in the 17th century, 1618 to 1619, so we had Orthodox Reformation theology. That's where they affirmed the five points of Calvinism and against Arminianism. Well, within just a few years after that, you had all these Orthodox Christians in the Netherlands and parts of Europe, but they're spiritually dead. So along comes what's known as the second or the further Dutch Reformation. So here, in this case, there's piety being re-emphasized in the church in Europe at that time. And it did spill over into the particular. One of the reasons I remember it is because in our winter American church history, was death reform, and he was here in America, and he had influence. And that was sort of a forerunner of the first Great Awakening. Theodore Framinghausen. Oh yes, yes. Very interesting fellow. Now, his proposal, or his conclusion, or his third need there, is that this combination of Reformation and Revival would end up being revolutionary in the life of the church. He doesn't really expand that very well. That might be something that I would like to see more, or some of his later books, The Church Before the Watching World and The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, the works and the other books that he has in terms of the life of the church and the doctrine of the church, he'll go ahead and expand on that. We're not merely, again, I'm sort of repeating this point here, but the lived out reality of that biblical doctrine and that relationship with Jesus Christ is what will make us, and we live that out consistently, that will make it a revolutionary change in the church before a man who is now post-Christian. Let me just toss another kind of quick like. Can you think of any other ways, perhaps, that a reformation and a revival might be revolutionary in the life of the church? You know what? You look at the Old Testament. It was more coerced, like under Josiah. You think it would be more free, freely given? probably, those were probably scrolls, but they were to be read yearly by the king. So it was a covenant renewal sort of process. But if we were to be talking about the new covenant in Jeremiah, the law will be written on people's hearts, not like the old covenant where it's constantly and then he heals. Okay. Well, when you say you've left out reality, are you thinking individual or church or both? Yes, both. All three. So, if I go to work and I walk in and cuss out my boss, Or if I say that Jesus Christ is the only way, but I'm thinking that there might be, I can't think of something real concrete, but if I'm kind of fudging on those answers, or if my, let me go ahead and mention a church that won't be named, if there's harsh division there, is that church body really showing Things like that. If our values are more monetary, or the world is success-oriented, versus realizing we have these things as a blessing, but they are temporary and they'll fade away. What does that say to? Leland's presentation last week talked about middle class value. You're urging your kids to go to college so they can get a degree, so they can make more money. And so they can send their kids to college to perpetuate this, but continuing to live in it with material values. So, church does have to live it out, corporately. and individually within the church. So, like I said, in this book, he did touch on it, I think at the end of Chapter 2, and I think perhaps in Chapter 8 or 9, he does go ahead and talk about some of those revolutionary impacts. But he didn't quite fill it out as much as I would have liked, but kind of gave him some slack because they were talks and it was early on in his life. In fact, my next point there says that he simply says that it would be revolutionary regarding the liberal church and constructively revolutionary regarding the evangelical orthodox church. So we're also hoping to set the liberal church back on its heels and not be the only message out there. So it's both. He's defending orthodoxy of a doctrine and orthodoxy of He ends that introduction there with what I thought was perhaps a prayer. He says, May we be those who know the reality of both Reformation and Revival, so that this poor dark world may have an exhibition of a portion of the Church returned to pure doctrine and spirit-filled life. So it's a desire that God would work these things out in his generation and I think in ours as well. He does begin his biblical exegesis in Romans chapter 1, verses 21 and 22. And that reads, because when they knew God, they did not glorify him, not thankful, but became vain in their reasoning." That's a condemnation of all of mankind. As Romans goes on, we would see that happening. He does start with pagan men or Gentiles, and then in chapter 2 he goes on to Israel. kind did not glorify God and they were not thankful. Therefore, they became foolish. It's not only religious thinking, but other things. If we race forward in time, we can think about how silly our reasoning is these days. loudly for and advocating show us, kind of spill the beans here, I think we're worse off in that regard. We have gone down the road farther into death in the city. But we know from his other books, and we'll see some stuff here, we can't live consistently in that vain reasoning, that point of tension that he comes up with in the guy who was there. He addresses the original fall and then also any period afterward. I think that was kind of an interesting point. He says, even after the gospel came and it spread into the known world, some of the apostles went to India. They went to different parts of Europe. They went to different areas. There was a time in that culture and in that civilization where the gospel was held. And then they started getting weak. They started getting compromising. And they became vain in their reasoning. And, and there was death in their city as well. Sadly, I mean it's, sadly, I'd be curious to wonder what Schaefer would have said these days. But I have a note there that says he died before he saw how the situation would get worse between the late 1960s, and here we are, 2023. Nearly, nearly 55 years after his book. I'd love to take his brain now. He would probably say, I tried to tell you, you aren't listening. Part of what strikes me as so forceful in the opening chapter of this book is how he just comes right out and says that we're under judgment. We're under judgment. Our country is under judgment, under the wrath of God. And he goes on to say, it will not do to say how great we are. We are currently signed out. Say, just click OK. It says it's recording. Is this a touch screen? Yeah, touch pad. I love touch screens, but I don't know what that one is. You've been signed out because you're currently signing in on another device. Oh, OK. OK. It says it's recording. Leland's on the line. The culture infiltrates the church. I was thinking about this yesterday. I was driving away from church and out on the sign in the front we have an American flag. I'm thinking, you know... At least it's not on your podium. Yeah, at least that. But we so conflate patriotism and nationalism with Christianity and we think that's virtuous And we're not prepared to hear this kind of a statement because we think America is God's country. How can we be under the wrath of God? Especially when we look around at all the blessings that we have, how could we be under the wrath of God? and the equation of Americanism with blessing and things like that. But yes, I'll go ahead and jump to that. In fact, my statement is in bold on page three. This is a very significant time at this time in our American history. Freedoms are indeed eroding. Many patriotic Americans are working and striving to get America back on a sound footing. But often those efforts focus on merely improving conditions without addressing root causes. I remember an instructor recently that, he said he didn't really start out caring for Donald Trump, but watching the positive impact of his administration, change the person's mind. And a lot of people are still thinking, well, we just get President Trump back in office. And yet, so many of the things that President Trump did do, there were, there were a lot of positives. I agree. But there were also a lot of things that put us in a whole lot of turmoil too. I don't know that he was necessarily as corrupt as other administrations could be, if we knew more. But, But still, he was, you know, things were problematic and we're equating his political success and the economic improvement with godly blessing. And it might merely just be diverting our attentions and our convictions. It says, we also accept leaders who affirm, actually this was something I hand wrote, we also accept leaders who affirm the wrong message. No, not condemning Donald Trump, but saying our focus is not where it needs to be. I recall even in Christian Manifesto, he talked about how the 1980 election was really mostly, for most people, it was about improving their economic conditions. Yeah. Yeah. That personal peace and affluence. Mm-hmm. So a lot happened. One thing that Donald Trump did do, though, was allow Christians to have the freedoms that we're supposed to have. Sure. And that's going away rapidly. Yeah. That's not where I said freedoms are eroding. Again, that was a penciled in addition. But yeah. And my comments about Donald Trump are not to say bad things about it, but just kind of be realistic about what my thoughts are. That's realistic. I'm pretty sure. Tell me if it's not. If America is under the judgment of God, if, and Schaefer is clearly saying that we are, he was saying that 50 years ago. If America is under the judgment of God, how much difference does it make who's president? That's a realistic question. of judgment on in your lifetime. He would promise different kings that because they had worked and labored to turn things around. And he made them somewhat of a abbreviated type of covenant of saying, I won't do it at your gates, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to smite this land. Yeah. So the best case is you might get a little bit of a reprieve. Yeah. My pastor preached last night. It's all in what meaning you pour into the word Hosanna. To the Jews, it was freedom from Rome. But it should be, save us from our sins. Save us from you, God. Save us from your wrath. That's what it should be. You pour the wrong meaning into the Hosanna. My wife went to a Bible study with her father. His health was declining, but still well enough to go to church when she was back there with him last week. And not so much the content of the Bible study, but the text was Luke 24 and the disciples on their road to Emmaus. And they were thinking that Jesus was going to come and rescue Israel. It wasn't about sin. It wasn't about redemption. And so many questions. The apostles and the disciples clear up until Ascension Day. Will you now establish new Israel or free Israel? So again, Schaeffer will draw from Jeremiah Lamentations, and I think he tends to touch, kind of a touch point, touch points with Romans, but very significant references from that first letter. Now, let me go ahead and, I should, maybe, I don't know if this matters to anybody. Chapter one establishes so much, so most of my, longest set of notes is on chapter one, establishing that basis and where he's going to go, the theme of his book and the point that he's trying to make. So, once I get to the following chapters, it won't be quite so much on chapter one. Now, a couple of, I also really did not find There came a point where I just said, I'm not going to look for weak points in this book. This is probably, probably, of his first three books, I think this is an extremely strong book. It's exegetical, it's biblical, it talks to the church about where they are, and talks about our culture. We're under judgment. It's not that we don't do good art anymore, or that we don't make good music anymore, or that we think funny philosophy these days. It is that we're under judgment. We are not post-Christian. I did make a note here where natural cause and effect or chance or that God has entered into significant history. That seemed a little weak. I don't think he's saying that there is anything out there that is not under God's ultimate control. I think he might be just trying to draw us to the point that things that happen in any country or any civilization, it's not always God's direct intervention. He does use means. He does use military, political, economic consequences and decisions that we make to go ahead and to But still he's But then there are times when God, of course, will directly intervene. And especially in the Bible, he tells us when those things are. Israel, northern and southern Israel, were invaded and sent into exile by the Assyrians, and by the Babylonians, and ultimately by the Romans. And then, of course, pretty much dispersed by AD 70. chapter one, he said that the city sat solitary. Jeremiah said the city sat solitary when it was once full of people. It was once close to God, but had changed because significant men turned away from God. The city was under siege and there was death in that city. So that the phrase in there, I think I had most in mind, it was once full of full of city, but significant men had turned away from God. So when the church, Israel being the church of that age, turned away from God, then bad things started to happen. It's an understatement. So one of the reasons I cut him some slack, I think we'll see at times, if you were to read this whole book, that he does read the Bible in a normal literary form. Poetry is poetry. History is history. Prophecy is prophecy. It is also doctrinal and teaching and instructive. So when he says things, some of the things that I think might have been, somebody might have found to be weak statements that he would If it were an actual text he was writing and not talks he was giving on a college campus, he probably would have tightened some of those statements up. Some of the language that we would see in Jeremiah in Lamentations, Lamentations 1, Jeremiah said that the betrothed of God had become filthy. She was filled with spiritual adultery and did not remember her last year. There are two factors. First of all, she forgot what her purpose was, to be God's people. Covenant promise, the covenant statement was, You will be my people, and I will be your God. And when they fail that end of it, then again, bad things happen. She also forgot or ignored the consequences that God had warned her about. The book of Deuteronomy, a significant portion of that second reading of the law is the consequences of breaking the covenant, that he would send them in exile. He would send nations in to attack them and to punish them. And when they repented of their sin, when they repented of their adultery, that he would restore them. but they would in fact go through this judgment of God that was foretold. Adultery of Israel and apostasy are equated in this book as they were in Eli's book report last week, The Church Before the Those are full chapters there, and I think they're pretty much, very close to a full chapter, I think, in Death in the City. But equating that when the church apostatizes, it is actually the church committing adultery against its husband. Toward us, the last statement I've got on this first chapter is, the freedom of the Reformation, this is page four, the freedom of the Reformation brought to our culture has eroded. Now we are living in a world seeking freedom without form. Instead, there is death in the city. We saw things, other statements in, again, I think church at the end of the 20th century, the forum of freedom, where we've got the boundaries, the doctrinal boundaries, the biblical boundaries that keep us in relationship with God. And within those boundaries, there is a certain amount of freedom. But, now Western culture is saying, I just want to do what I want to do. Nobody can tell me what I want to do. And I think, I think, it was either, somebody's presentation, somewhere in the worldview classes, one of the quotes that somebody picked up was, the heart wants what it wants. And the heart wants what it wants now. So we're kind of like spoiled, badly spoiled children. Not only is modern man hungry for the significance of love, beauty, and meaning, and that's because we're made in the image of God, but he begins in chapter 2, he says, man is also yearning for an adequate comforter. ingrained in us, made in God's image, is the desire and the need. And more than just mere words of desire, more than just mere needs. I mean, these are critical to us as people for significant, adequate comfort and relationship, and it's meant to be with God. But in our day and age, we find it elsewhere, and it's outside the bounds of the form that God has built us into. In Lamentations 1, verse 16, Jeremiah says, For these things I weep, because the Comforter who should relieve my soul is far away from me. That desperation in that voice. Again, Jeremiah being the weeping prophet before his people. What I do is I set an alarm so that maybe the last five minutes or so would open up to more discussion. I think I'll probably just go ahead and press on for another five minutes and we'll take a break. Sometimes I get on a roll, I'm like a go-kart going downhill without brakes, and I don't know when to stop. But it isn't really God that's far from us, it's we are far from Him. True. And that's a good point to bring up. He's there. He's right there. We would only look for Him. And the desperation is very real, but we've done it to ourselves. When we do come back, we come on our terms. We try to come back on our terms, not his. We try to. All kinds of strange doctrines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe another weak point, just to mention briefly, is that here in the second chapter, Schaeffer said that we quote the shorter catechism, question one, man's chief end is glorified God, only the first half. I think he's just doing that to make a point, that he's going to emphasize the fact that it is a full orb question and answer. Achievement of man is glorified by God and to enjoy him forever. The larger catechism expands on that just ever so slightly. It says that man's chief and highest end is to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever. And that just, again, that expands that relationship between God and man, where we do glorify Him, but we have the benefit of fully enjoying Him when we're in a relationship with Him. I think it is question 38 of the Shorter Catechism, the benefits that come to believers at the resurrection is in eternity, we fully enjoy them forever. 36, 37, and 38 are three very wonderful questions. This life, in death, and in the resurrection, the benefits. So, like I said, I think it was perhaps a speaking device or a literary device he used just to say, there's two halves to the equation, keep them in mind. But he does say the church cannot, and we ought not, say that human life is negative or that it's meaningless. He does want to stress that we are meaningful people. And he has a number of, we saw a number of examples in the earlier books, earlier books that we've read in the semester, that how significant man really is. He had quotes that I didn't want to write out and I didn't want to clutter your notes with. Nine pages is about enough, I think. Okay, Leland, you just lost points with me. Just kidding. This might not be the right one, but it's a good one. Very simply, that it is ingrained in us, in our human nature. I'll just go ahead and leave that there. Another thing for me to think about in terms of what he was saying in his talk, he said, although ancient Jews turned to false gods, Schaeffer says a modern post-Christian man is worse off. The question is that ancient Jews Ancient Jews still knew something was there. I kind of question that. A modern man is bad enough, but God was very, very much present in the life of Israel. And God did act into. The reason we know that is because we do have the written word. It's a very real possibility, a very high likelihood that God is now interacting into our world now, in judgment. We just don't have the written word to say, here's God doing this. So our eyes need to be open. But the distinction that Israel was better off, I think, might be a false dichotomy. They might think somebody was out there, but they thought that somebody was not a chunk of wood that they had carved into a cool shape, or a piece of clay that they had baked into another cool shape. Again, not too big of a point, but just something that kind of stood out to me that maybe he's, again, trying to make a point to stress that we are in that shape. It does go ahead and tell us the reason for our loneliness. It's the same for both cultures, ancient Israel and modern man. turned away from God. His reaction, he says, we should have two reactions. We should weep. Jeremiah wept, and we should too. And Schaeffer Schaefer was sort of a weeping prophet. If you listen to his recordings, or read further of his works, you'll probably run across statements in there where he calls us to tears. That this should break our hearts. When, I think it was, I'm going to refer, well there were two occasions, at least two occasions, When the Bible Presbyterian Church came out of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and then when the PCA formed out of the Southern Presbyterian Church, men broke relationships with each other. And it was a breaking of the church. And it was, I mean, sometimes you do have to break away from false doctrine. You do have to go ahead and say, we've crossed this line, we need to do something. And he said, people left weeping, and they should have, because it was breaking the fellowship of the church. He also said, there were times when, say during the PCA, the formation of the PCA, men who had been estranged some time in the past, came back together. And they came back together in prayer, weeping together, because they were united again. So, Francis Schaeffer was a very sensitive man. I think the more, the more you get acquainted with his, with his writings, he is just, just a very big-hearted man. I'm going to go all John Lief on this here. No extra credit for crying. Okay, well then, forget it. There's a box of Kleenex right next to you if you need it. All right, all right. But the second thing he says we should realize our culture was indeed built on biblical reformation. He says the generation before Schaeffer is the one that turned away from reformation, truth, and structure. It's continued downhill since. I tend to think that it goes further back. The history of, the history of American Presbyterianism is, is, it's enough to make a person cry. They, and again, who was there. The changing steps, the progress of philosophy, art, history, metaphysics, and finally theology following down, following down that descent. But it went on for several hundred years before we got to where we were in the late 60s, or the generation before, in the early 20th century and the present up or faded into meiosis. And part of what we need to understand today is even though things seem to be changing very rapidly, and in some ways they are, the stage has been set for a long time. Yes. And what we're seeing is really just the outworking of what's come before this. Yeah. Well it's like a snowball rolling downhill. It starts very slowly. Yeah, your two thoughts have been part of the conviction of this book in my thinking since I've been reading it. I graduated high school in 1972. And I was introduced to Schaefer, I'm pretty sure it was Death, not Death in the City, but The Mark of the Christian in 1973. And just kind of kept picking at it at least a little bit through those years. I was reading similar things. And I was thinking, we've got time, you know. Generations don't change overnight. But in fact, they do. And here we are. And I'm thinking, 50 years after my high school graduation, a time that I probably ought to have put to use. enough to take that message to heart. And this book has kind of reminded me of that, and you guys have brought that up in your comments. To me there's an elephant in the room though, and I don't think There's a little bit of context to it, okay, I want to say this Randy. I want to say are you are you an ombud? No, no, okay? I appreciate their their service and their heroic sacrifice for their country they did what they were supposed to do They monitored Ho Chi Minh. When a Japanese fighter plane or aircraft gun shot down an American pilot, Ho Chi Minh would rescue them for us and make sure they got back to safety. When the war was over, Ho Chi Minh had a constitution drafted up that was much and help him inaugurate his new government. Intelligentsia said to the White House, drop the commie or ditch the commie or something like that. So they allowed Britain to come in as a peacekeeping force for the UN or whatever was in existence at that in France to make it a colony again. And there are people who really believe, and based on what Vietnam is now, it's not really a full-blown communist state. It is very much meaning, they like to make money and it's more, there are some pictorial aspects to it, but it's not like a North Korea, and it's not even like a China. And so what I'm saying is, after we go in there and kill 850,000 of them, that's their statistics, at a loss of 58,000 of our boys, we did nothing but lose. We gave them money. We gave money to a corrupt South Vietnamese government that they pocketed. towards the war, there were vets, I heard them talking and saying, you know, we'd be out on the front line fighting our hearts out, and the South Vietnamese troops would say, break time, coffee time, and leave them on the front line fighting. You know, and like I say, we pumped in all kinds of money, and we lost all kinds of gear, and we didn't get anywhere with that war. We only got a black eye, and I think You know, Martin Luther King Jr. said it was an abominable war. Of course, Jerry Falwell called him a comic. So, the point I'm making is, I see things with that war also, that a major threshold was crossed. generation to generation also. It was an unjust war. And, you know, I don't know how to harmonize it with the heroics of the people, and I don't want to sound like a Hanoi Jane, but it wasn't right what we did. That's a bigger subject. Yeah. I mean, there's more there. And also a judgment of God on our nation. It sounds like you're attributing maybe more than I would, but it's a black eye at a number of points along the way. Well, I mean, our ideology caused us to kill 850,000 people. And we, and give up 58,000 of ours. It was a waste of life. It wasn't, it was not an event in isolation. We ended, we ended World, the Second World War in 1945. We were, we were, we demobilized, this country demobilized quickly. There are people who try to give us a black eye for, for instance, deposing the leader in Iran and installing a Shah in the 1950s. were misjudged threats. But Iran, for instance, in the 1950s was, was cozying up to Russia. Russia was also inching into, closer to the to the Middle East. So here along, here along we've got this, this perceived threat in Southeast Asia. So it's, it's, my point is that it's not, Vietnam was not an isolated I suppose if he'd have kept his mind on his politics rather than on every, every other two-legged vixen that ran around in front of him, I suppose he'd have been a better president. Well, that's a, that's a significant part of Western culture. In the 50s and 60s, where Schaefer was, where Schaefer is now a Sorry, let's take a break. And come back at, I've got 6.33 right now. What's more at 6.40? How's that?