The Importance of KNOWING Jesus Christ
"That ye might walk worthy of the Lord
unto all pleasing,
being fruitful in every good work,
and increasing in the knowledge of God."
(Colossians 1:10)
unto all pleasing,
being fruitful in every good work,
and increasing in the knowledge of God."
(Colossians 1:10)
Conference recordings are now posted on a variety of platforms for the recent conference The Church in the 21st Century. We appreciated the opportunity to share our personal testimony in the Lord, answer questions, and present some of our research. (See the end of this post for links to the research we cited.)
When Pastor Marco Quintana invited us to speak, he mentioned the conference theme was inspired by Dr. Francis Schaeffer's 1970 book The Church at the End of the 20th Century. Providentially, it was a book that we had recently pulled off the shelf and dusted off. In fact, this book inspired our recent apologetics article series on the freedom of speech found in the Gospel, and we quoted it in our previous post. We have included a few excerpts from his book in today's post because it is so relevant to the subject matter discussed at the conference.
The Rise of the New Left
In a chapter titled "The Threat of Silence," Schaeffer predicted the rise of a New Left, which would exhibit its own brand of Dominionism (he called it totalitarianism) over free speech. We now recognize this as Cancel Culture. Schaeffer was prescient in the following descriptions of the times:
Here we are, then, the historic, Bible-believing Christian minority.... As the New Left and the anarchists come forward, more chaos will result. And as more and more chaos comes, the majority of the Silent Majority will increasingly tend to strike back. To do so, they will increasingly accept the Establishment elite.
Dr. Schaeffer warned the Church to NOT cozy up to the State patriotically because Big State could suddenly turn its fangs on the Church. We have now witnessed this shift with this past year's shutdowns and mandates. When one part of the Church compromises, it will become a persecutor to the remnant that do not cave in. We are already seeing evidence of this compromise:
What about the church in this situation? Certainly, at least at first, the Establishment elite will be less harsh on the church than the Left Wing elite if they should come into power. But that is a danger. The church will tend to make peace with the Establishment and identify itself with it. It will seem better at first, but not in the end....In the United States many churches display the American flag. The Christian flag is usually put on one side and the American flag on the other. Does having the two flags in your church mean that Christianity and the American Establishment are equal? If it does, you are really in trouble. These are not two equal loyalties. The state is also under the norm of the Word of God. So if by having the American flag in your church you are indicating... that there are two equal loyalties or two intertwined loyalties, you had better find some way out of it. The Establishment may easily become the church's enemy.... There are not two equal loyalties--Caesar is second to God.
Dr. Schaeffer wrote books for the Baby Boomers, the first "full post-Christian generation," and we testified that as new believers he helped us learn that the Gospel was both Truth and Fact. He predicted:
In government and in morals the [Christian] base is gone and the hedonistic, subjective whims of a 51% majority or an elite, are all that is left. Only sociological averages and arbitrary judgments remain.
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| Watch Session 5 Q & A with Sandy Simpson, Pastor David Gonzales, and Lynn & Sarah Leslie on YouTube, Rumble or BitChute |
The Erosion of Truth
Schaeffer warned of the rise of FAKE Truth and dialectics, a topic that was discussed by Sandy Simpson of www.deceptioninthechurch.com at the conference (linked to above):
...[M]odern men no longer believe in truth. They no longer believe in antithesis. Modern man following Hegel believes only in dialectical synthesis.... "Truth" for today lies only in a synthesis. And even that synthesis is not true forever, for tomorrow there will arise another thesis different from today's and out of the combination will come "truth" for tomorrow. But in no case will any of these "truths" be absolute. Truth in the classical sense of that which accurately represents what is real for all time and all places does not exist--not even as an ideal.
Francis Schaeffer predicted the rise of mind-altering drugs, which numb people's brains so they can no longer discern Truth. And he warned about the changes in language -- which we now see happening before our very eyes with new rules for new terminologies, new pronouns, and the forbidden words now banished.
Drugs, of course, add to the sense of the loss of truth as truth. And the destruction of normal syntax and normal language in the Theater of the Absurd, etc., is meant to hack away still further at any hope of truth.
As a consequence of the erosion of Truth he warned about the logical next step -- the rise of FAKE Science -- a science not based on truth, nor fact, nor morality:
Modern man no longer expects that truth exists even in the scientific world. All we are left with is statistical averages....
And with the corruption of science he warns about biological and genetic engineering -- even transgenderism -- and man's creation of deadly new viruses:
Modern man has no moral imperative for what he should do, and consequently he is left only with what he can do. And he is doing what he can do even though he stands in terror. And the biggest terror of all is: Who is going to make the babies? Who is going to know what kind of babies we need to make? Who is going to shape the human race?It will not be just a matter of male and female....And with the development of the biological bomb, even today men are on the verge of being able to make new deadly viruses as super weapons, viruses for which there are no cures.
For Further Study:
Below are some of the articles, books and publications we cited in our testimony and during the Question & Answer session at the conference.
This is our testimony of enduring a time of persecution in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many of our articles are archived on this website.
the deliberate dumbing down of america: A Chronological Paper Trail (1999, 2011) by Charlotte T. Iserbyt. This book chronicles the history of education reform, its system and its methods.
Rick Warren - Is He Scary? 10/20/06 documenting the financing of his global databank by Bill Gates. The implications of this are staggering given what we now know after this past year.
The Pied Pipers of Purpose: Part 1: Human Capital Systems and Church Performance, by Lynn D. Leslie, Sarah H. Leslie and Susan J. Conway (2004). This monograph helps to explain human capital and how the "system" works. After we published this monograph we ran multiple articles on Herescope about Peter Drucker, Rick Warren and Leadership Network and the concept of a 3-legged stool of governance by Corporate - Church - State. See also our article "Dominionism and the Rise of Christian Imperialism."
This article series documents the role of Leadership Network in the formation of the Emergent and Neo-Calvinist movements:
The Culture Which Gave Rise to Mark Driscoll
Part 1: "We Are Not ABANDONED"
Part 4: The "Visionpath" Bus Route
Dancing With the Stars and Doing the Templeton Twist by Pastor Larry DeBruyn and Sarah Leslie describes the money trail and Tim Keller, and the eradication of biblical Creationism.
NEW EVANGELICALISM: The New World Order. Paul Smith's book documenting the rise of New Evangelicalism. Research conducted by the Discernment Research Group was included in this book.
"That I may KNOW Him,
and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
being made conformable unto His death."
(Philippians 3:10)
Endnote:
1. The quotations in this blog post come from Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the 20th Century (Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), pp. 82-88. Bold emphasis added, italics in original.