Tag: Peace

21 November, 2015

Peace, Affluence, and Liberty Compromised

The largest block of people are those who in the 1970s were called the “silent majority.” They are the majority in the United States, England and many other countries. They can elect whomever they will under our present democratic voting procedures.
These, however, must be clearly understood to consist of two unequal parts: (1) the Christians, standing in the stream of historic Christianity, living under the propositional revelation of God as He has spoken in the Bible, and therefore having absolutes; and (2) the majority of what was called the silent majority, who are living on the memory of the practical advantages that Christian culture gave, but without a base for these advantages. Their values are affluence (they are practical materialists) and personal peace at any price. Having no base, no absolutes, most of them will compromise liberty if they are finally forced to choose between their affluence and personal peace on the one hand and giving up a piece of liberty on the other. They are no closer to the true Christian than was the hippie community and the New Left. In fact, they are probably further away, for they have no values that deserve the name values. Affluence and personal peace at any price as the controlling factors of life are as ugly as anything could be.

Francis A. Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, vol. 4 (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), 28–29.

12 July, 2014

The Perfect Peace Plan for the Middle-East (and everywhere else, too)

There is only one way there will be peace between warring nations, tribes, and families, and that is for the combatants to accept the fact that they are indeed at war with the Lord of Lords. It is in His household, and nowhere else, that peace is possible:

Ephesians 2:11–22 (ESV)

¹¹Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— ¹²remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. ¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility ¹⁵by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, ¹⁶and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. ¹⁷And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, ²¹in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. ²²In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

There is only one people of God.

Colossians 3:5–11 (ESV)

⁵Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ⁶On account of these the wrath of God is coming. ⁷In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. ⁸But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. ⁹Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices ¹⁰and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. ¹¹Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Note then, that the new self, always being renewed, is a place where tribal, national, political, economic and ethnic differences melt away. Religious differences (Islam, Judaism, Baha’i, and Christianity, for example) fade away as it is only in Christ that this renewal is possible. Muslims and Baha’is must reject their false prophets; Jews must cease rejecting their Messiah. All must bow to Jesus as Lord (Philippians 2:9-11, ⁹Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”)

Without submission to Christ, there will be no peace.

14 June, 2012

"My Religion is the Sermon on the Mount" = nonsense.

“All of this points us back to something we discovered at the very beginning of our studies, and which has become increasingly obvious as we have gone along, namely, that the Beatitudes are not directions on how to become a Christian but a multi-faceted description of what a Christian is and how a Christian behaves when the Holy Spirit governs his thoughts, words and actions. The unbeliever who says ‘My religion is the Sermon on the Mount’ is talking nonsense, because he is condemned by the very words to which he looks for salvation. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones rightly says, ‘There is nothing more fatal than for the natural man to think that he can take the Beatitudes and put them into practice.’ The Beatitudes are not a programme but a portrait, not a directive but a description.”

John Blanchard, The Beatitudes for Today (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 1996), 216-17.