Covenant Worldwide -- Francis A. Schaeffer: The Later Years

Site navigation: Covenant Worldwide > Francis A. Schaeffer: The Later Years > : Lesson 25

Francis A. Schaeffer: The Later Years

Instructor: Professor Jerram Barrs

Audio Transcription for Lesson 25: In Defense of Schaeffer

Father, we want to thank You for this time together. We thank You for all you are able to do in a person's life. As we have thought about Francis Schaeffer in this course, we praise You for the way You were able to take him, a man who was sinful and had all kinds of weaknesses just like each one of us, and use him for the upbuilding of Your kingdom. We pray that we may be prepared to offer ourselves to You as he offered himself that we might be instruments of righteousness and of Your truth in this world. That is our desire, Father, and we thank You for the confidence in which we can ask that, because You are so full of grace and kindness to us. You do not judge us as we deserve or look at us as we should be looked at, but You look at us rather with complete love and acceptance in Your Son. Father, we thank You for the wonderful confidence that gives us, and we commit ourselves to You. We pray You will be with us today in this class hour. In Jesus' name. Amen.

We looked at the issue of whether there was a dramatic change between the Schaeffer of the early years and the Schaeffer of the later years. Last time I answered some of the things that were said about his early years, and we began to consider the criticisms of his later years. I want to pick some of these criticisms up, point by point.

The first is the criticism that he became fixated with political action and social justice. Even to mention such a thing seems to portray an ignorance of the person and his life and ministry. Just as with the rest of his life, in the last few years of his life he spent most of his time living either at his home in Switzerland at the Swiss L'Abri or at their home in Rochester, Minnesota, where they settled for six months of each year for his treatments at the Mayo Clinic for lymphoma cancer. He spent most of the last few years of his life either in Switzerland or in their home in Rochester doing what he had always done. He welcomed people into his home, both Christian and non-Christian. He spoke the truth to them, answered their questions, prayed with them, and showed his concern for them as individuals. Certainly he did plenty of speaking in connection with the two films series, How Should We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? He died in May 1984, but in March and April 1984 he went on a 10-seminar tour when he was desperately ill, speaking about various issues, particularly the issue of abortion. So it simply is not true to say that he developed a fixation with political action and social protest. Much of his work was still preaching and lecturing over a wide range of subjects and talking to individuals with all their particular needs, questions, and struggles. He also worked as the chairman of L'Abri fellowship, led the work of L'Abri, and pastored the church in Switzerland when he was there. I do not think his life really changed in that sense at all. He spoke about social and political issues in his early years as well as in his later years. The difference was that after 1973 and the passing of the Roe v. Wade decision, in the Supreme Court abortion became a major issue in the United States. He most certainly devoted a considerable amount of his time to speak about that issue. I will come to that in a moment. He saw it as absolutely related to everything he had been doing the rest of his ministry.

Second, there was a criticism that Schaeffer simply accepted the agenda of the moral majority and consequently became a fundamentalist. Those two criticisms go together. If you read through his books and listen to his tapes from those last three or four years of his life, I do not think it is possible to suggest about him that he simply accepted the whole agenda of the moral majority. The reason he is accused of this is because he spoke so strongly about abortion and some other issues like that. It is also because he appeared on various television and radio programs of some of the leaders of the moral majority movement. This, of course, led some people to criticize him very strongly. I know what his response would have been, because it was something I heard him asked about on several occasions. He certainly did not accept the whole approach of the moral majority; however, he felt that their strong stand on abortion was something that he agreed with and wanted to stand with them on. He recognized, in addition, that in the moral majority movement there were many fellow Christians. He had no sympathy whatsoever with what one might call the neo-evangelical movement that wanted to separate itself at every point from the moral majority because it did not agree with everything they said or their style. He felt it was tremendously important to recognize where fellow Christians are working and to stand with them where one agreed, even if there were a vast range of issues on which one might have differences of opinion, substance, or style. He had no sympathy whatsoever with the kind of Hollywood style of some of the televangelists and some of the materialism that sadly went along with that. At the same time, he was prepared to use any platform where he could speak on the issue of abortion and other related issues.

The term "moral majority" is used in two senses. First, it is used of a particular movement with Jerry Falwell at its head. The other is used more generally of any Christians on the right wing of the political spectrum who suddenly started to speak up when they had been silent during the 1980s. They took stands on various issues that were perceived as being conservative issues. These were issues like abortion, prayer in the public schools, and defense issues. There is a whole range of issues included. The word is used in both issues, and Schaeffer was criticized in both senses. He appeared with Jerry Falwell on his television show, so he became identified with the moral majority because he appeared there. Second, he spoke about some of the same issues and did not hesitate to stand shoulder to shoulder with many of the people in it. But if you read through him carefully, you will see that he distinguished his stance at many points.

One of the areas where the moral majority would be criticized is that in demanding the right of prayer in the public schools or protesting against the hidden censorship of the media against a Christian voice, there were people in the moral majority who did not support freedom of speech as such. They simply wanted freedom to express their own position but would have liked to silence others. Without any doubt, in some of the more radical elements of the movement there was book burning, protests against certain books being used in the public schools simply because they had swear words or violence in them. At that point, Schaeffer would have absolutely no sympathy at all. He believed very passionately in freedom of speech, not just for Christians but for everybody. He had no sympathy whatsoever with book burning or attempts to ban books from public schools. He did not agree with having a very narrow selection of books in Christian schools. I remember visiting one Christian school that had such a very narrow understanding of what the children of Christians could read. It had fewer books in the whole school than I have in my home for our children. They would not allow the kids to read Shakespeare because they did not like the language, jokes, or violence. There was a whole range of things that children of Christians were not supposed to read. Schaeffer had no sympathy with that kind of thing. I think when people use the term "moral majority," they think of those kinds of radical restriction on freedom of speech. But Schaeffer did not have any sympathy with that at all. I would say that there are many points where Schaeffer was prepared to stand up with the moral majority and say that these were issues on which Christians ought to speak out. And he was glad to use those platforms to speak out, but there were many points where he would have said that he was not in agreement.

A third issue in relationship to that is that Schaeffer was accused of becoming a follower of single-issue causes. The issue that is thought about specifically is the issue of abortion. Let me read some of what he wrote in one of his public addresses that he gave in many places in the last couple of years of his life. It is called "Priorities," and he explains in it why he spoke so strongly about abortion. This is why people will accuse him of being a single-issue person, though I do not think it is appropriate to do so. He also wrote in his book Who Is For Peace? on the issue of disarmament, and he wrote on other issues elsewhere. This is what he says about abortion and why he considers it to be so crucial. He talks about priorities for Christians in the 1980s and says,

The first priority I would stress is that of human life, and I would put this above everything else, the crucial issue for which Christians must stand. We must understand that human life stands at a unique place. Human life stands at a crucial place, because there is an unbreakable link between the existence of the infinite, personal God and the unique intrinsic dignity of people. This is an unbreakable link. If this personal God does not exist and He has not made people in His own image, there is no basis for an intrinsic, unique dignity of human life. This includes your life. This cuts in two directions. If we do not believe in God, we remove the value of human life, but if we take away the unique dignity of human life, it is also a blow against the existence of the infinite, personal God. That is the fundamental issue. There is nothing more basic, really, than human life. If the Christian cannot stand for that, where are we going to stand? To allow the devaluation of human life as it is accepted is wrong in principle. And if that is not enough, then pragmatically you must realize that it is your human life that is being devalued. It is not just the unborn baby. It is all human life. And it is not just abortion. Abortion should never be discussed as an isolated issue. It is the devaluation of human life which is the issue.

He was happy to say that he regarded the issue of human life as basic and as the crucial issue. It is a watershed for Christians in terms of our responsibility in society. He saw this as a crucial issue, both because of what it does to the human person and because of the blow that is struck against God Himself.

Schaeffer goes on to point out that abortion necessarily flows into infanticide. He says when Dr. Koop and he started on Whatever Happened to the Human Race? the second episode was about infanticide. They pointed out that infanticide would come very quickly. Schaeffer said many people thought that was ridiculous and thought they were kooky for saying this. He points out that very rapidly there were a whole series of court cases that legalized infanticide. George Will wrote quite a bit about a famous case, particularly because he has a son who has Down syndrome. In this case the parents of a boy named Philip Becker with Down syndrome would not allow him to have an operation. The parents had not looked after him, but they still had legal control over his life. He needed an operation to carry on living, but the parents wanted to refuse him the right to have the operation. The court upheld them at first. There are a whole series of court cases like that. Infanticide is quite widely practiced in many hospitals in Britain. Many children who are quite capable of having surgery and living with Down syndrome or spina bifida are simply allowed to die. They are sedated with Valium and water and left to die in the hospitals. That is a reality, and it has been that way for several years.

The point is that it is not just abortion, but it is a much more fundamental question of human life itself. If you devalue one human life, you devalue all human life. If you devalue one stage of human life, then you devalue others as well. Schaeffer goes on to speak about euthanasia. There has been quite a lot of discussion about that recently in the press. There have been a couple of examples of it in the last few months. There was a big article about euthanasia and the Hemlock Society in The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch a couple of weeks ago. Schaeffer says, "You may think that this is far fetched, but those of us who are in our twenties, thirties, or early forties now, by the time we get to be in our seventies and eighties, it will not be far fetched at all." The issue that is discussed more and more with the idea of a living will is the decriminalization of euthanasia and the attempt to decriminalize the assistance of euthanasia. These things will be discussed and practiced more and more in our culture. This was Schaeffer's reason for speaking so strongly and frequently about the issue of abortion. The whole time he was actually speaking about the fundamental value of human life. The Christian has to stand there. If we will not stand there, where will we stand? It is very easy to dismiss people for single-issue things, but there are moments in history when there are single issues that stand out. They are the cutting edge of where the society moves. In our day, one of those issues happens to be the issue of abortion and the value of human life. In another day it might have been slavery or Jews. He makes those points in the film Whatever Happened to the Human Race? There are moments when certain issues stand out with tremendous importance.

You can look back in the past and find various points in history, going right back to the time of the early church going up until the present, where there has been a weak stand on the issue of abortion at various moments. I think it is fair to say that the solid movement of law, wherever the church has shaped it from the earliest centuries onward, has been anti-abortion. In most societies, infanticide was practiced rather than abortion. This is because in previous ages abortion was so very dangerous to the mother and could not be carried out with any certainty of practice. In many cultures they just disposed of unwanted children. In The Early Years class we talked about Edith Schaeffer growing up in China and seeing the babies abandoned in the boats in the river. There was a junk heap in each town with thrown-away babies that people did not want. People did not practice abortion, but they practiced infanticide. The same thing has happened in Nepal, and it still happens in the remote mountain communities. If a child is weak or unwanted, the parents simply drown the baby in a river. Under Roman law, a father had the right of life over his children. It would be infanticide that was practiced rather than abortion. It is only with the development of modern medicine that abortion has become both safe to the mother in almost all cases and always effective. There were ancient societies that banned abortion. Part of Hammurabi's Code bans abortion, and a woman who practiced abortion had to be speared and stuck on the city wall. It is not only within the Christian tradition that abortion and infanticide has been rejected, though it is perhaps seen more strongly there than anywhere else. In the early church there are a lot of statements against abortion and infanticide. Christians tried to take in the children who were exposed by their parents. When Amy Carmichael went to India around the turn of the century, this is how she started her work. She took in exposed children and rescued them off the garbage heap. The same thing still happens today. Anky Rookmaker from the Dutch L'Abri started an organization called Help a Child. One of the things she does at the moment in India and Burma is start homes for baby girls whose parents would have them killed. They might have wanted a boy or did not want to pay a dowry for the girl. They started several homes in India and Burma for baby girls like that. Infanticide is still very widely practiced, particularly in a Hindu society.

A good question is what we can and should do in standing against this issue of the devaluation of human life in abortion and infanticide in a society where Christianity no longer holds the consensus. We always have to fight on several fronts at once. We need to work in the area of legislation to change it. But that is not the only thing we have to do, particularly in a moment like ours when we are in a society where democracy is understood as being what the majority of the people think. That is the way people understand where we are now. If 51 percent of the people think that abortion is right, then it is right. We have to recognize that is where we live, though that is not how democracy has been understood historically, and it certainly is not how democracy ought to be understood now. The will of the majority in moral issues is not a necessary part of American democracy. That is not what democracy should mean anywhere.

The first front on which we need to fight is the issue of education. We have to teach people in the churches, first of all, that this is not just another issue, but it is an issue of human life. This is something really fundamental, and we have to get that idea across in society as well. Christians have not done very well at that. At the moment, most of the work that has been done has been simply confrontative and shouting opposition. We believe it passionately, as we should, and it needs to be stated loudly and clearly, but there has to be teaching. I gave the example before from my son's school where his teacher asked them how many of them were pro-life and how many were pro-choice. Only two of them were pro-life, my son and another boy, who is a Christian. They were the only two in the class who were pro-life, and everybody else was pro-abortion. If we want to win this battle, we have to win the battle of how people think. That is why it has to be dealt with at the level of principle. We are talking about human life, not just about the issue of abortion. We have to convince people that this is an issue of fundamental concern. You cannot tinker with the dignity of human life without endangering everybody's life, whether it is newly born children, handicapped people, elderly people, or some other group in this society who are not wanted. We have to fight on that level.

We also have to fight on the level of legislation. We should challenge people who are standing for office, work in the courts and fight right to the Supreme Court, work in the congress and senate, and challenge the president. At the local and national level, Christians should work in the area of legislation. By itself it will not be sufficient when you live in a moment when democracy is understood as the will of the majority.

It is instructive to look at Wilberforce and how he undertook the battle against slavery in the nineteenth century. He saw himself as having two works that he committed himself to. One was slavery and its abolition, and the second was the moral reeducation of the English nation. He saw both of these side by side. That is what we need at the moment. We need to stand against the devaluation of human life in abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, but we also need to undertake the moral reeducation of the nation, which means teaching God's Word. That is how Wilberforce understood it. We need to teach God's Word both in what it says about who God is and the nature of salvation but also about what it says about the human person. The only basis for the value of human life is found in the Bible. Hinduism, Buddhism, the Greek city-states, and modern humanism do not have it. Christianity gives us the most solid possible basis for the unique dignity of a human person. There is nothing higher that can be imagined than to say that every individual is a person made in the image of God. You cannot give someone a greater value than that. That is the position of strength from which we have to fight.

Let me give an illustration from Britain of a wise way to undertake this issue of fighting against abortion in the area of human life. There is an organization there called CARE, which stands for Christian Action Research and Education. This is the evangelical group in Britain that fights against abortion, among other moral issues. They have three arms. One arm of their work constantly lobbies members of their parliament. They provide Christians and others who are sympathetic across the whole political spectrum with solid information so that when they stand up and speak in the House of Commons or make any political speeches they will have solid information about the issues they will address. These issues include family, human life, pornography, and others. They constantly work to encourage and strengthen the arm of believers working in parliament. Their second work is a work of education in all the churches across the nation. They teach Christians on human life, family, pornography, and obscenity issues, and they challenge them to take a stand in the local community. They encourage them to get involved in local pro-life groups, as governors in the public and state schools, in local politics and run for office, and in closing shops that sell pornography to kids. In other words, they challenge Christians to get involved at the local level. They try to create a model army of Christians all over the nation who will actually be involved to be salt and light in their local community.

I did a lot of teaching for them when I still lived in England. They are a wonderful organization. They appeal to Christians across all denominations. Every one of their conferences has people from every kind of evangelical church you can image working together to try to do something in their local community. Their third arm is action and care. They have established an AIDS hospice and many homes for unmarried mothers who are expecting. They challenge Christians everywhere to get involved on the local level of caring for people who have handicapped children, for those who have more children than they can handle, for old people in their vicinity, and to take in unmarried mothers. It is a work that has very carefully set itself out to deal with all of the issues that need to be dealt with. It addresses the issue of the education of the nation and being involved in the legislative process. It challenges Christians that if you are going to speak about abortion, you have to do something personally. You cannot just speak about it; you have to care for people. We are not called into the world to judge the world but to care for it and to bring salvation to it. That has to be expressed in the way we deal with an issue like that as well as in every other area. We have to work on all of those fronts. Schaeffer most certainly would have said that. It is not just legislation, but it must be that with education and care by the individual Christian.

To add on to the defense against the third criticism of Schaeffer, the human life issue is not the only one that he spoke on. In this paper on priorities, there were two issues that he dealt with. One was abortion, but the other was the family. It is interesting that when he deals with the family he does not deal with it just as an issue of pointing out the problems in the culture in terms of its view of sexuality. First of all, he challenges Christians and the church where it is adopting the culture's understanding of easy divorce and slight understanding of sexuality. Even when he gets to the practice of immorality in the culture, his way of dealing with it is so very different from the way Christians often deal with it. He does not deal with it as an issue of judging people harshly. He deals with it in a very different way and says it is really a matter of compassion. We know, because we have God's Word, what gives people sexual fulfillment in their lifestyles. When we look at people around us who go through three or four marriages or through a dozen short-term marriages, though they may never formally get married, we have to recognize that people damage themselves. Simply out of compassion for them, we need to share with them what we understand about the nature of sexuality, sexual fulfillment, and human fulfillment as men and women as God has made us.

So much of what is important here is the way we deal with an issue. Do we just stand up there and shout at people, condemning them, or do we display real concern for people even when we have to say that what they do is wrong?

Let us quickly move on to some other issues. There are several more issues, but I want to deal with one in particular. Schaeffer is charged with that virulent person disease of Anglo-Saxon anti-Catholicism. People say that he endorsed this, but it is hard to see how they could have made that criticism. His last speaking engagement in England was when he stood up and spoke with Mother Teresa, Malcolm Muggeridge, and John Stott. Here was an Anglican, two Roman Catholics, and Schaeffer as a Presbyterian speaking against abortion in a big rally in Hyde Park. Schaeffer's book, Who Is For Peace?, was written together with James Hitchcock, who is a Catholic at Saint Louis University, and Vladimir Butchofsky, who is not a Christian at all. He was an exiled Russian dissident. Schaeffer repeatedly made the statement in the last few years of his life that there are many moral and social issues in our culture where evangelicals and Catholics stand shoulder to shoulder against the drift of our culture. He certainly spoke clearly against the teaching of Catholicism on some central issues like justification and the authority of Scripture. But it is quite absurd to accuse him of anti-Catholicism in the way that this article did so. There were some evangelicals who accused him of ecumenism precisely because he was prepared to speak on the same platform with Roman Catholics and others. He could not win on that one. There were many other evangelicals who criticized him very strongly because he stood up and spoke with Roman Catholics. His response is that he is prepared to speak with anyone who stands for what it right. Whether they are a Catholic, humanist, Muslim, or whatever they are, he would speak with them.

It is naïve criticism. What do I think when I go and vote for someone in an election? Does the fact that a Roman Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, or a humanist has voted for them mean that I should not vote for this person? You have no alternative but to stand with whoever stands on an issue where you are convinced that God's Word calls you to stand. You should be very thankful that there are other people who stand with you. You recognize when you stand with someone else that you are not saying that we agree on everything.

I heard a very fine lecture in Saint Louis earlier this year from a Jewish rabbi, David Novak. He spoke in one of the synagogues, calling for a Christian-Jewish dialogue and particularly for Christians and Jews to stand shoulder to shoulder on the moral issues that are up for grabs in our culture today. Like Schaeffer did many times, he said very carefully, "I am not talking about ecumenism. I am not talking about pretending that we are all the same or having joint worship services. We disagree at some very fundamental points; however, we stand together over against the forces of secularism and the moral drift in our culture. We share Judeo-Christian tradition and the Law of God." He gave a wonderful lecture, and he has written an excellent book on the Jewish-Christian dialogue. He is a rabbi who teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. We ought to stand together on any issue where we can and be thankful that other people stand up and speak on it.

Finally, let us come to one last criticism, which is that Schaeffer gave in to the siren song of media popularity and the slick programs of production companies. People said he became a media personality. I think it is an extraordinary criticism. I would not call How Should We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? slick films. Without any question, there are elements of both of them that one has to say are amateurish. He would have recognized that. I have just read Franky Schaeffer's recent book Sham Pearls for Real Swine. Franky was involved in the production of both of those film series, and he points out in his book some of their technical weaknesses. He was very aware of them, and his father was very aware of them. There were all sorts of budget constraints apart from anything else, and I do not think there is any way that you could accuse them of being slick films. The more important charge is whether or not he gave in to the siren song of media popularity. I can testify on the personal level that he absolutely hated the whole business. There was nothing he disliked more than having to be made up to be filmed, whether it was on a television program or anything else. He really disliked it enormously, and he would much rather have had absolutely nothing to do with it. It took a great deal of challenge by his son and others, and in the end he felt from the Word of God to be prepared to make those films. He points out that it was as he read Ezekiel about the watchman on the wall that he felt convicted by God that he had to be prepared to do this. He had to stand up and sound the warning trumpet to our culture and the church about where our society is headed. Like Ezekiel, he was very reluctant to do so, and he only did it because he felt he absolutely had to. Working with him all through those years in which he was involved in making those two films series and the various occasions in which he appeared on various television shows, I can say that I do not think it changed him at all. He certainly did not become a media personality. It did not change his commitment to being concerned for little people. To the very end of his life, he was happier to talk to one person than to speak to 1000 people in Washington D.C. The popularity that came to him in the last few years of his life really made no difference to him at all. It is an extraordinary criticism to make that he became a media personality. Anyone less like a media personality would be difficult to imagine.

Schaeffer used to say, "You do not understand me unless you read my wife's books. We stand together on everything that we speak about, and many of the areas where I have been silent are not because that is not where I am passionately involved. But Edith has expressed these. It is important to read what both of us say to understand either of us." In fact, she has written far more pages than he did, which you might be surprised to hear. She is certainly a more prolific author than he was. It is very important to look at his sermons. When you listen to his sermons, you might be amazed because you get a completely different side of this man. He is a man who is a preacher with fire in his heart. This side of him does not come out so strongly in the books and the lectures that you listen to, but he saw himself first and foremost as an evangelist and a preacher. He saw that in his calling, and it comes out very powerfully in his sermons. Going back to the first class, he prayed, and Edith prayed for him throughout their ministry that God would give him tongues of fire to proclaim the Word. The Lord significantly answered that prayer. You need to read Edith's Letters and listen to his sermons to understand who this man really was.

As we come to the end of this course, and there are so many things that we have not talked about, let me try to make some summary statements about him. One thing that is important to remember is that from 1975 when he made How Should We Then Live? until his death in May 1984, he struggled with lymphoma cancer the whole time. Much of the time he was very seriously ill. If you go back sometime and watch the last episodes of How Should We Then Live?, you will notice that he was often short of breath and he looked rather haggard. That all shows through the makeup. At that time he did not know that he had cancer, but he did. It was just at the end of the making of that film series that it was discovered that he had cancer. It is evident now looking back at them that he was quite ill when those films were being made. What is amazing as you look back at those last nine years of his life is that all through those years, he constantly underwent very heavy courses of chemotherapy. If any one you have ever had chemotherapy or know someone who has had it, you will know how dreadful it makes you feel. It makes you, for several days at a time, very depressed. At other times it can make you elevated emotionally. It seriously affects you physically quite apart from the illness itself. All throughout those years he really struggled with illness. Yet it was during that time that God gave him a voice that was very much wider than it had ever been. He used to quote with real feeling that passage that I referred to from John's Gospel. In looking at their whole understanding of the ministry, they believed that it is necessary for a grain of wheat to fall to the ground and die before it can bear fruit. This is true, not just of Christ Himself, but it is true of us, His people. If we understand that we are called to serve Him, we have to be prepared to follow Him and suffer like Him. Paul says in Philippians that he will attain unto the resurrection if he is prepared to share in Christ's suffering. Elsewhere in Corinthians Paul says that he carries about in his body daily the death of Christ that His life may be manifest in the Corinthians. As you look at those last years in Schaeffer's life, that became true in a way even more than it had always been true. They always saw the need to put themselves on the line and to count the cost of what it meant to serve people, love them, and speak God's Word into people's lives and hearts.

In the last years of his life when Schaeffer got older and suffered from cancer, many Christians would have simply retired, but he worked harder during that period. If you spoke to anybody who saw him at all during those last seminars he gave during those last couple of months before he died, he was hardly alive then. He was basically kept alive by chemicals, going around from one city to another. As soon as he got a platform where he spoke to people, he would just collapse totally and completely. He believed very passionately that the Christian has to be prepared to give himself to the point where you feel where you have gone far beyond what you can give. It is only as you do that and recognize that you are very weak and totally incapable of doing what God calls you to that you find that you actually do it. God's power is made perfect in our weakness. I would suggest the last 10 years of Schaeffer's life in particular are a remarkable illustration of that. God's power was displayed in his weakness. God was able to take a very ordinary man with all his weaknesses and frailties that come out so clearly in Edith's books and a man who, in those last years, suffered very severely, and He was able to do some wonderful things.

Schaeffer always said about himself that he was a very ordinary person, and he stayed very ordinary until the day of his death. God used him to bring many people into His kingdom, and he had a very dramatic impact on the church. I would suggest that he had some impact on the culture as well. Right up until his death, even when he was semi-conscious some of the time, he would wake up and say to Edith, "Take this down. This is important." He still thought about things that he wanted to communicate. All of these things he spoke about, whether it was human life, truth, or antithesis, were things of passionate concern to him. They were not abstract ideas of little significance. For him they were life-shaping and life-changing issues. Right up until his death he got Edith to write things down. There are many sins and weaknesses that one could point out in a person like him, at the same time I think he demonstrates a remarkable example of a person who really yielded himself to God and lived by the grace and power of God.

Site navigation: Covenant Worldwide > Francis A. Schaeffer: The Later Years > : Lesson 25