On The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984), By Francis Schaeffer Bernard Pyron
When I first became a Christian I began to read the books of Francis Schaeffer. I read almost all of them, and corresponded with him briefly when he was still in Switzerland, before he died. Schaeffer was Reformed, but I do not remember anything in his books about Five Point Calvinism.
He was not a dispensationalist, but I don't remember him being critical of dispensationalism. He is said to have been historical premillennialist, but again, I don't remember him writing about that. Schaeffer belonged to a small Reformed denomination, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod which I think became the Presbyterian Church in America. During his lifetime, the falling away had not become as evident as it is now.
His last book was The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984). Schaeffer was concerned that evangelicals were no longer standing up for the truth, and that Christianity had lost much of its influence upon the world, which says in the words of Daniel 12: 7 that the power of the holy people had by 1984 been scattered. The spiritual power of Christians had been reduced, and had Schaeffer been younger (he was born in 1912), he might by now understand that the great number of English translations of the Bible, almost entirely based on the Alexandarian or Egyptian Greek texts, meant to replace the Textus Receptus, has been one cause of this, along with the almost complete takeover of the Evangelical church by the dispensationalists.
|