Francis Schaeffer - Premil.

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JM

Puritan Board Doctor
Title should read Francis Schaeffer - Premil.


Just an outline in the video.
 
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Title should read Francis Schaeffer - Premil.


Just an outline in the video.

He was a Historic or Covenant premil in the sense that he upheld the unity of the Covenant of Grace. But he wasn’t a Historic premil in the sense that people normally understand that today, with it equating with post-trib and a rejection of Zionism.

He was pretrib, as were many others in the Bible Presbyterian Church. (He left the BPC in the 1950s, but that had more to do with disagreeing with Carl Mcintire’s approach than it did with any change in theology.)

Most of Schaefer’s teaching on eschatology is found a couple of long teaching series that are available on the L’Abri Ideas Library site, which contains hundreds of lectures, (the old L’Abri tapes) some of which run about 2 hours. One series is on eschatology and one is on the book of Revelation. I haven’t listened to these, but I’ve listened to some others, including some that were the basis of books like “True Spirituality.”

Unlike the Romans series, which was published posthumously, I’d be surprised if any of these are ever published in part or in whole. While I haven’t ever come across any firsthand evidence that his views changed, it does seem that this issue receded somewhat into the background for him as time went on, perhaps especially once he turned his attention back to the USA and developments there. He seems to warn against an excessive fixation on the subject in his short book “The New Super-Spirituality.” I wonder if that was perhaps in part a jab at people like Hal Lindsey? Like many others, I suspect that Franky Schaeffer is an “unreliable narrator” when it comes to his family, but for what it is worth he has said that there was a lot of speculation among the students (or workers) about things like the Antichrist at L’Abri.

Here is something that I posted a few years ago that may be of interest. It has to do with how his premillennialism and views of Israel’s future fit in with his covenant theology rather than with going into eschatology in any detail. This nuanced way of seeing things as “both and” rather than “either or” when it comes to national and spiritual promises in the Abrahamic Covenant has something in common with Progressive Dispensationalism, which is why PD was considered to be little different from covenant premil by more traditional Dispensationalists. (Since PD rejects covenant theology, they can’t be said to be the same.)


He also delves into covenant theology a little in “Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History.” Those lectures are also online. http://labri-ideas-library.org

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