The New Man by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 25, Mere Christianity, Bk 4, Chapter 3 & 11)

Transport yourself back to the 7th April, 1944, with a broadcast with C.S. Lewis' actual voice. This was his final broadcast to the nation in the very nervous days before D-Day. The nervousness was quite understandable, as success was by no means guaranteed, & the consequences of failure were so very dire. Lewis addresses time, & those things beyond it, & also the ‘New Man’, the birth of Christ's personality in you.

Some creative license has been taken with the introduction of a soundtrack of an actual Nazi German newsreel & the Churchill broadcast around that time in order to give you some context to the time period. This is the listed music that night that troops heard in Southern England gathering en masse for D-day, & what the armaments factory workers heard preparing vehicles & planes for the D-day invasion.

You can find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christiani...

This talk was turned into two separate chapters in book 4 of Mere Christianity’ – ‘Time & Beyond Time’ (Chp. 3) and ‘The New Man’ (Chp. 7). Some differences between the radio & book versions are in the comment section below, where Lewis clarifies, limits, & adds a few additional examples to the very short broadcast (but for a complete understanding read the complete chapters).

(0:21) Winston Churchill's full speech can be found here:
Audio - https://archive.org/details/Winston_C...

(3:25) Time & God was discussed by the ancient prophets (Gen. 21.33 "The Everlasting", Jer. 2.32 "Days without number", Dan. 7 "The Ancient of Days") & by the New Testament writers in the same Spirit (illustrated - Moses' Psalm 90.4 & 2 Pet. 3.8). Time was also discussed by the ancient Greek philosophers (illustrated), & by the Christian philosophers Augustine & Boethius. The modern philosophers culminated with the popular Idealist, McTaggart, who thought time was unreal, & therefore there can be no creation. This conception of time died with the fall of Idealism, the discovery that the universe did indeed have a beginning (this was a shock to the secular philosophic world) & that entropy gave time a direction. (Biologists now had a tight time limit for evolution to work). The physicist Einstein (illustrated) showed that time flow is affected by velocity. If one clock remains stationary while another is placed on a supersonic jet which flies around the world, they will no longer register the same passage of time.

Lewis' view was that: God stands outside of time; time is created & contingent; time is intimately connected to the mind; & time is intimately connected to eternity.

(5:48) Regarding the ‘New Man’, see Eph. 4.24 “& that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness, & true holiness. Col. 3.8 “Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds.” See also Col. 3.10, 2 Cor. 5.17, Rom. 7.18 & Rom. 6.6.

(6:52) “The United Nations” was what we know as "The Allies" today that joined in the fight against Nazi Germany – it was a ‘coalition of the willing’, not the supra-nation organisation we see today. (‘The United Nations’ as we know it today, was yet to be formed). See a 1944 poster - https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/41883483... .

(8:44) The Brécourt Manor Assault (6 June 1944) during the U.S. parachute assault of the Normandy coast in WW2 is often cited as a classic example of small-unit tactics & leadership in overcoming a larger enemy force. A small force ambushed a larger German artillery unit, permanently disabled the artillery firing on the D-Day beaches, & then withdrew before German reinforcements could arrive.

(9:38) For C.S. Lewis' views on popular evolution see this doodle: http://y2u.be/2GCWGyWCLTo

(14:18) Instead of thinking of all the things you would like to achieve or be, you instead submit them to God & let Him decide what it is He would like you to do, or walk towards.

(15:35) The crossroads charge was made by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, led by Dick Winters as shown in the series “Band of Brothers”. Finding themselves in a position which would eventually lead to them being outflanked, outgunned, & surrounded, they abandoned the position & charged across an open field. What seemed to be a suicidal charge, caught the Germans off guard. The SS unit & another Company fled, & were destroyed or captured in what turned out to be a turkey shoot. But the U.S. soldiers had first to ‘lose their lives’ & charge WW1 style across open ground, in order to save their unit.

(15:23) “Apparently the world is made that way. If Esau really got the pottage in return for his birthright (Gen. 25), then Esau was a lucky exception. You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first (Lewis, 'First & Second Things'). “Esau selfishly wanted God’s blessings, but he did not want God...” (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary on Heb. 12).