He was Wounded for Our Transgressions

by Mike Ratliff

13 Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
14 As many were astonished at you-
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the children of mankind-
15 so shall he sprinkle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which has not been told them they see,
and that which they have not heard they understand. (Isaiah 52:13-15 ESV)

In his fine book Escape from Reason, Francis Schaeffer analyzed 20th Century philosophy, science, art, and popular culture to get to the “cause,” if you will, of the decline of reason, which was and is still shaping our society. Modern thought in our time, it seems, has been diverted from an eternal, heavenly focus to one that is entirely geared to the temporal. Part of his thesis is that the advent of humanistic philosophy and reason began with Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). He contends that prior to Aquinas, the heavenly things were all-important, but since his teaching and discussion of “nature and grace,” the focus of human thought has made the temporal all-important with the heavenly becoming only an abstract “unreality.”

The Voice of Deception

This post by my friend Loretta at Witnessing. Encouragement. is right on. Make sure you watch the video at the end. As I listened to that young man’s “dream” the words from John Lennon’s song “Imagine” kept coming into my mind. – Mike Ratliff