Here, Schaeffer examines whom Jeremiah was speaking to. It was not merely to the ordinary man on the street, but included the leaders, to kings, prophets and religious leaders anyone drawing the people away from God. His audience included even the land itself.
An example: “The princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf; I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life: and their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and to the beasts of the earth” (Jer. 34:19-20).
But his sharpest criticisms were aimed at the religious leaders who were leading the people astray. Jer. 2:8 – “The priests said not, ‘Where is the Lord?’ and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.”
Just as then, so today many religious leaders are leading people astray, away from God’s truth. Many try to treat people with love by toning down the message of Scripture. Today’s leaders and yesterday’s prophets are not speaking for God. Schaeffer says they are merely “taking the social consensus of their day and speaking as though that was the Word of God”. Their message is just an echo of those in society, those whom we could call secularism’s priesthood, such as unbelieving philosophers, scientists and sociologists. They merely couch the message in theological jargon.
In previous generations, even if the culture at large was mainly deistic, one could still walk into a church and hear the truth. This is not the case anymore in many churches. What you hear today are echoes. Jer. 23:30 – “Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbour.” One prophet repeats a message he heard from another prophet. The theology of today is likewise merely an echo, an echo of what “man says, what materialistic society teaches, what materialistic psychology teaches, what materialistic economics teaches, what materialistic philosophy teaches.”
Schaeffer asks, “Do you expect God to sit there and just…say, ‘Isn’t that nice?...And if such a god existed what…would be the use of having him?”
Men of today are no different from those of Jeremiah’s day. Schaeffer says, “Men today do not perhaps burn the Bible…But men destroy it in the form of exegesis; they destroy it in the way they deal with it. They destroy it by not reading it as written in normal literary form, by ignoring historical-grammatical exegesis, by changing the Bible’s own perspective of itself as propositional revelation in space and time, in history….You who call yourselves Bible-believing Christians…should be filled with wonder and amazement that men dare so treat God’s Word.”
3 comments:
Strong words. I wonder if the book has been translated into French. I'm trying my best to read only French material while I'm in France. I've just started reading a translated book by Rebecca Brown: "He Came To Set The Captives Free." I've only read the first chapter but it certainly makes you think. Have you heard about it? I looked it up on Amazon to read the reviews and some of them are pretty scathing. If you know anything about it, I trust your opinion more than anyone else's.
I haven't read that book. Judging from the reviews it has something to do with satanic possession and demonic activity in the church. My reaction to claims of this sort is: prove it with reliable forms of documentation/testimony (ie. video or eyewitness accounts by people who have no axe to grind on this issue), and prove it by scripture (1Jn 4:1-6 and 1 Thess 5:21 are instructive).
There are a lot of Christian urban legends floating around such as Proctor and Gamble being the tool of the devil, or that scientists have found Joshua's lost day, or that a man was swallowed by a whale back about a hundred years ago (and survived to tell the tale). God gave each person common sense and the ability to discern truth from error. If we're to shake the stereotype of "gullible, dumb, easily led, evangelical Christians", then we'd do well to follow St. Augustine's admonition: (paraphrased):"Heaven forbid that we despise the very faculty that separates us from the rest of God's creatures".
OF course that being the case, don't ask dumb 'ol Son of Puddleglum any hard questions.
I like that Augustine quote. Yeah, I've been doing a little more research on it myself and the book's claims seem a little too outlandish, coupled with the fact that, according to numerous sites, the author's credibility is apparently in question. I think I'm going to read something else. :-P
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