Francis Schaeffer was one of three writers (the others being Lewis and Tozer) who influenced me most profoundly when I was a new believer in the early 1970’s. I remember like it was yesterday reading his The Church Before the Watching World, where he said this:

When those who claim to be God’s people turn aside from the Word of God and from the Christ of history, this is more heinous in the sight of God than the worst case of infidelity in marriage, for it destroys the reality, the great central bridegroom-bride relationship. I have taken care to emphasize that God does not minimize promiscuity in sexual relationships, but apostasy – spiritual adultery – is worse. And the modern liberal theologian is in that place. How do we look at it? I would suggest we must be careful to look at it no less clearly than God does. Consider the liberal theology of our day. It denies the personal God who is there. It denies the divine historic Christ. It denies the Bible as God’s verbalized Word. It denies God’s way of salvation. The liberals elevate their own humanistic theories to a position above the Word of God, the revealed communication of God to men. They make gods which are no gods, but are merely the projection of their own minds.

—Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p 53.

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