Studies in Early Genesis

The Society of Satan Part II

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 11 of 11

Track: #56

Dictation Name: RR115F11

Date: 1960-1970’s

Almighty God our heavenly Father we give thanks unto Thee that we can begin and end our days and our years with Thee. That our times are in Thy hands and Thou doest all things well. Make us ever mindful our Father that our destinies are not governed by the enemy, but by Thee. Teach us therefore to turn to Thee in confidence, to wait on Thee, to obey Thee, and to walk with Thee in the confidence that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. In Jesus name, Amen.

Let us turn to Genesis eleven verses one through nine. This is the second installment of our study of the society of Satan. Genesis 11:1-9

1And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

This is one of the most episodes in history. And one of the most revealing passages of all scripture in understanding the enemy, in understanding what we have to deal with. The sin of man as so clearly described for us in Genesis is that he seeks to be God. To be his own God, and to determine for himself what shall be right and wrong. Out of his own wishes shall all his ethics or morality come. And he asserts that his own Godhood is all that he needs. This is the basic concept of the society of Satan. Man seeks to be his own God and tries to create a paradise apart from God, a one world order in which paradise will be obtained and God will be unnecessary.

The culmination in ancient history of this attempt was the tower of Babel, and the tower of Babel laid down the pattern which all history since has seen revealed repeatedly as the attempt of the society of Satan to establish itself. The tower of Babel was the focal point of this society. There were many such towers and one central tower. They are known as ziggurats, very well known to archeologists. All of them have a common design and a common faith. And the great tower was the central one of all. The builders began by saying “go to; let us build us a city”. Now the term city is one which we today have only a faint knowledge of because although ours is an urban civilization and once again dominated by cities, as no other civilization has been since Rome fell, yet sometimes the things that are nearest to us are hardest to define; especially when their meaning is gone. A city essentially is a community, and a community established in terms of a common faith, a common background, a common culture, and often a common blood.

Originally cities represented a family or a clan, every member of it had a particular faith, and if they broke with that faith or with the family they were no longer apart of the city. This in its origin was the significance of a city. But the city has long, long since lost that meaning, and it has lost that meaning certainly and at least since the tower of Babel. Although periodically again we have had the idea of a city revived. And of course the Bible gives to us, in essence, the city as the goal of history, the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city which is from above. Where there is a perfect community, it is both garden and city so it gives us an idea of a world which is thoroughly Christian, but the essence of it is true community, and this true community is established in terms of a common faith. But the city as we know it now, and the city today is fittingly a symbol of the society of Satan, does not have true community in terms of faith. Instead people come to a city, not to find community but to escape it.

Having grown up in a small town I know one of the most commonly heard reasons why people in a small farming community wanted to go to Los Angeles or San Francisco, to the city, was that they wanted to go somewhere where no-one knew them. Where everybody didn’t know what everybody else was doing. Where the moral government of the community wasn’t exercised upon them so that wherever they went and whatever they did everybody knew all about them. They wanted to escape into anonymity, to be totally anonymous, and to have no-one impinge upon their lives who lived near them. There is one city in California where I know for a fact that realtors make a point very often of advertising homes on a particular block being especially desirable, no cats, dogs, or children on the block. And also neighbors were not in the least interested in you.

The modern city is truly therefore a Babel, confusion; a search for anonymity in sin. And this concept for a city is designed to be the city of man as against the city of God, to be a one world order, a paradise apart from God in which men are responsible to no-one except to themselves. In which each man is his own law and his own God, no man’s eyes upon him and certainly and supremely not God’s eyes. “Go to; let us build us a city whose top, or/and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven”. Here we come to the heart of the tower of Babel, a tower whose top may reach unto heaven. What was the architecture of the Tower of Babel? All the ziggurats had a common architecture, they were stepped pyramids. The represented the idea that is common in all occultism in the pyramid, except that these were stepped pyramids.

The first story of the ziggurat and supremely of the tower of Babel would be built, as would every floor, a perfect square; and in the great tower a great square covering of considerable acreage. The second floor would then be built on top of the first but recessed a certain number of feet in. depending of course upon the dimensions of the total building, perhaps 10, 20, 40 feet. Then the third story would be recessed the same number of feet in, and each successive story until the top story would be a single room. Thus from any area as you approached the tower it would have the appearance of a great stepladder reaching towards heaven with each story recessed above the other giving the appearance of a step-ladder reaching up to God.

Now the tower was not only a religious center, it was also a political and a scientific center. And the top story, a single room affair was also very often an observatory. As people came to worship in the tower they worshiped according to their station, their status. Those who were of the common herd worshipped on the bottom floor, they were only first degree worshippers. Then there were second degree worshippers, third degree, fourth degree, and on up to the top degree. Where the ruling hierarchy, the elite, those who were to rule the world in terms of this one world order alone had access. The idea at the tower of Babel was imply this; that man was basically divine; that there was a bond of unity between heaven and earth, the continuity of being between God, or the gods, and man. And man could arise step by step on the ladder of being and become progressively more and more divine and so as he ascended the degrees in the tower he ascended in his deity. He became more and more divine, more and more a god until he became on the top story, in the highest degree, one of the ruling gods of the entire earth.

This of course is in direct violation of all that scripture teaches. For scripture teaches the continuity of being is false, there is a discontinuity of being between God and man, God is uncreated infinite being, and man is created finite, sinful being. Sinful by virtue of his fall, potentially good as he submits to God and to his word. And the only communion between God and man can be one of God’s own creation, God’s own establishing. So that the day that there be any ladder between God and man it is of God’s establishing. And this of course was the meaning of Jacob’s ladder. From the vision that Jacob had God himself established to ladder, prophetic of the coming of Christ, and the angels descended unto him and ascended again. And our Lord, according to John, declared that Jacob’s ladder was fulfilled in His time. He was that connecting link between God and man, one of God’s establishing, not man’s.

“Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven. Let us make us a name.” Here again we encounter the name, literally “Shem”; Shem as the forerunner of the Messiah, of the destined one, he through whom God’s appointed redeemer would come. And the significance of the name Shem was widely known. Shem stood for the Messiah, and the Shemite or the Semite people were truly the people of the Messiah. Therefore we truly are the only Semite’s who believe in the name, in Jesus Christ, and in the Biblical sense Arab’s and Jews are not Semite’s they are anti-Semite’s because they are against the name, against Jesus Christ. But the builders of the tower said “let us build a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name” let us be our own Messiah, our own savior. We who shall rule, who shall be the gods upon earth, who shall establish ourselves as the highest degree, as the enlightened ones, those to whom illumination has come. As to the true meaning of man, we will be our own name, and our own Messiah, and we will establish salvation. “Let us make us a name, let us be our own blessings, our own savior, and our own God.

“Lest we be scattered” and here we come to the heart of their fear, and of their faith. “Lest we be scattered” this is the great evil to the society of Satan, not sin, not moral evil, not separation from God, but disunity. “Lest we be scattered” This is the worst thing they felt that could happen to man. There was no inner unity, and every city built upon the pattern of the society of Babel is indeed by its very name confusion. And a man lives next to his neighbor and has no part in him because their hearts are alienated. But to them the greatest evil is disunity; this is the evil to man’s society of Satan. And every world order they create is a world order designed to create some kind of remedy for this evil. And so it is as they set about over, and over, and over again from the days of the tower of Babel to create their one world order apart from God, their paradise without God. They seek to create a order, not one that deals with moral evil and depravity but simply with the face of disunity. Let us bring all nations together in our tower of Babel, let us bring all races and peoples and languages and tongues together and integrate them. Let us integrate all churches and all religions, let us make all one, that we may overcome this, the greatest of evils, lest we be scattered.

A few years ago Dr. Orval Watts in his study of the UN wrote and I quote, “ Clearly one weakness from which the United Nations suffers is that it is not selective, either in aims or membership. In political terms, it is not limited. This defect is written into the very nature of the United Nations by its charter. It was planned in that way, and there is no prospect that its members will try and change it”. Very well said, the United Nations is dedicated to the principle that unity is the greatest, in fact almost the soul virtue, peace being included as a part of unity, and therefore there must be peace or unity at any price, and no disunity. Therefore if we are to have unity between various factions in the Congo, there can be no question of principle because the most important thing is unity. And therefore, as between communism and freedom, there could be no problem; there could be nothing that is more important than the fact of unity. Because disunity, to the society of Satan, is the greatest evil, “lest we be scattered”, the only true virtue is unity; and unity is non-discriminatory if it has no other standard above it. And this principle works always in favor of evil, in that it forbids truth and justice to prevail, and declares that unity must prevail.

This then is the society of Satan. Its principles were first clearly spelled out in the tower of Babel. They were set forth in the symbolism of its architecture. And this city is now again in construction, to be a one world order. Its symbols are all around us. In New York City most of your skyscrapers are topped with the tower of Babel. Here in Los Angeles the City Hall has as its tower a tower of Babel structure. We meet its symbolism on all sides, the pyramid or the stick pyramid. Its goal is paradise apart from and in contempt of God. But God declared “Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them.”

When the Lord look down and saw them He recognized the implications of the tower of Babel, and he said “if they succeed then nothing will be restrained from them” if they succeed in their dream of this One World order, if they succeed in riveting its powers firmly upon the nations, this order that they have created and which now rules, and whose great tower is arising, nothing will be restrained from them. For it will mean absolute dictatorship and total power. The utter, the absolute tyranny of evil, and this God never permits. Hence confusion is visited upon Babel, the name Babel is significant, it is God’s name for the tower. The name is given and as it survives among the Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions is “balel” the gate of God. This for them was the order, the World Order that was going to open up the gates and make humanity divine. This was going to bring about the fulfillment of everything man should become. But instead that dream was their Babel, their confusion.

To Babel its name meant “the gate of God”. To us and to God the true meaning remains “confusion.” And to everyone world order, and one world dream apart from God the divine answer remains “confusion, scatter”. And we can be certain of this in our generation, that God no more intends to permit this order to triumph now, then he did then. And the consequence of the new attempt to build a one world order apart from God will be Babel, confusion, scattering. For God has established His principle of unity, the truth, even Jesus Christ. And as witness against Babel at Pentecost he gave to His people the unity of the spirit, of common understanding. And established there in that gathering at Pentecost his true city, the New Jerusalem; transcendental and the only source of truth and to the guilty {?}. And the struggle today between Babel and the heavenly Zion, the New Jerusalem, the answer of God is sure “confusion and scattering” but God’s kingdom shall prevail. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, so speaks the scripture. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that we have the assurance as we face the towers of Babel round about us that judgment is gone forth, but in Thy own good time the decree which has been passed will be executed. And this city of man, this society of Satan shall be confounded and scattered, and destroyed. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us citizens of that city whose Builder and Maker Thou art, and hast given us the assurance that Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us, so that we may boldly say “The Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man can do unto me”. Take away from us the fear of man and confirm us in Thy faith, in Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions at this time?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well first the UN symbols so far are not to prominent so that’s a little difficult to site but there is a book that’s been published in the last year or so on the symbols of the world order. And which of these will predominate to be the particular symbol is hard to say. But it is a collection of all the occultist, pagan, esoteric symbols imaginable and the absorption of them into this UN dream. Now which particular symbol will ultimately be the chosen one and will become more prevalent I don’t know, but certainly they are collecting some of these thinkers for the UN, all these symbols and are declaring that they are fitting symbols of this order.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] The six pointed star is a double pyramid, it is basically a Gnostic symbol going back to the ancient world, it is a double pyramid. The bottom pyramid represents man rising up towards heaven, and becoming God; and the pyramid pointing downward represents the deified ones who have gone before and have become gods. Coalescing and you have the perfect order when the two pyramids coalesce to form the six pointed star. Now this can be traced clearly to the Gnostics and certainly into the ancient world. It became a symbol of this type of order from ancient times and throughout the medieval area was prominent in all kinds of occultist thought. It is called, erroneously, the Star of David but it has no connection with David. It had no connection with Judaism except some who became involved in these esoteric groups; until Zionism adopted it in the last century, and it has become only in recent years predominant in Jewish circles. It was introduced after the early eighteen hundreds. The first use by any Jewish is from about the third century AD, and it is extremely rare until after eighteen hundred. And those groups who did use it were invariably connected with Gnosticism and the faith of Gnosticism and of course I believe, is very closely linked to a tower of Babel concept and tradition.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] The quiet city for New York, well it’s going to be as quiet as a graveyard if they don’t do something soon.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Michelangelo’s works were done on commission for the church and hence the prevailing Biblical theme. Both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were tormented men; unable to believe fully anything and yet unable to accept their doubts. This self torment went so far in Leonardo that it made him a thoroughly indecisive person; unable to work effectually and although a man of tremendous genius and versatile talents very limited in his total production. Michelangelo was basically a Platonist in his thinking and what he was in his heart of course I won’t attempt to say; I’m describing his thinking. He was very strongly moved by the Biblical faith, never fully at home in it, also there was a strong strain of homosexuality in the man, which one or two of his sonnets clearly indicate. So that he was really a tormented man, far beyond I think, anything that the film would describe.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well in his work you do find this tremendous sense of {?}

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] This was being worked on {?} if they were temperamental it was only about one thing, price, and they would explode and haggle endlessly about the kind of fee they were going to get but the later concept of the artist {?} I’ll come to that in a moment because that’s a very important concept. But the artisan was a business man who sold his craft on order, and therefore they don’t {?} and since the church was going {?} Now this did not prevent them from working on things they wanted so that very often when they portrayed a Madonna it would be there mistress. In this way they satisfied her with a good way of paying her off cheaply because “look, right there in the church, what more do you want?”. And it was also means in terms of their contract. These were hard calculated {?}.

Now this business of the artistic agony, we’ve come to it in its fullness in the Romantic poet {?} and Shelley are the epitome of this and they turn my stomach frankly. Although I enjoy poetry but those two {?} and Shelley especially turn my stomach. Because what is the essence of this agony of inspiration? The idea is that there is of course no Bible, no God, only the imminent divinity in the universe and it’s struggling to be born. And to whom is it going to be born? Why {?} artists. And therefore since this tremendous birth is taking place in him he is like clock, he’s got to go through all the motions of being inspired. And this is the whole artistic prose.

Now as I say the romantic poets made quite a production of this and they enjoyed being sick, it was fashionable for a time to have TB. It meant that you were not physically because you were so fully spiritually of all the vague divinity in the universe that was trying to be born in you. If you want to read a book that goes far deeper into this and says more than I dare to go into this afternoon read Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony it’s out now in paperback, and it will describe for you very vividly what some of the poets of the last century went through as they went into the throws of inspiration.

But at the Renaissance while this was in the background they were still primarily business men and their real torment was the fact that they had grown up in the church, they still had a Christian conscious but they had a thoroughly Renaissance Humanistic mind.[43:02]

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} Regressing momentarily back to pyramids and occultism and such would you care to comment a little further on the reverse {?} the very bill of the United states

[Rushdoony] Yes the reverse {?} seal which began in the middle 30’s to appear on our dollar bills is an ironic thing. First of all the idea of a seal having a reverse side is fantastic. Have you ever seen a seal that has, such as notary seal, there is only one side possible, how can you cut a reverse side? Second it is clearly an esoteric occultist symbol and when it was first proposed and they tried to sneak it in very early it was rejected, emphatically rejected as nonsense. They wanted to part of it. And incidentally the seal itself has been altered, the original seal as in George Washington’s day and for some decades thereafter simply had thirteen stars on the field there, scattered out. Then, without any authorization or anyone’s knowledge it was quietly changed and the thirteen stars behind the eagle now form a six pointed star. This clearly is an infiltration by occultist into high places and their determination to use these things to indicate “See where we are, we are pulling the strings”.

Now the reverse side of the seal was cut and instituted at the request of Henry Wallace who was acting in very close conjunction with Nicholas Roerich, a leading occultist, one of the most important figures internationally in occultism and a man who while spending most of his life outside the Soviet Union nevertheless had close connections with the Soviet authorities.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] We don’t know for sure about Leonardo although their seems to be some hint of that with regard to him also.

[Audience member] Plato?

[Rushdoony] Oh Plato very pronouncedly so, and Socrates. Plato and Socrates were very pronouncedly homosexual, they gloried in it. And one of the charges against Socrates of course was corrupting the youth, at his trial. And many of the Renaissance figure of course went into homosexuality because they were such worshippers of Greek culture that they felt “Platonic love” that’s the real meaning of Platonic love, was something to indulge in literally if not spiritually, simply because it was such an ideal thing. And this became quite a fad so that you don’t know how far to go with some of these men because some of them wrote poetry that was clearly homosexual just because it was the way to present yourself Renaissance man. As someone who believed in the great culture of the Greeks, which as far as I’m concerned was a degenerate culture.

An instance of this where we really don’t know how far to go, you can find in a couple of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which very, very, openly indulge in this kind of talk. And it’s been quite a moot point with scholars what this means, was it actually something real? Was it something affected? Or did he write these sonnets for somebody else as a paid job?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes the Masonic orders and degrees have a very close tie with the whole ziggurat structure, faith and symbolism. I think one of the best evidences for this is Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma

because certainly in that, the official work of a Masonic order of which most Masons are ignorant you find this basic faith in unity, and unity is the one great virtue and all the symbolism also very fully worked out.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well the origin is in the tower of Babel, but certainly you find it in developed form in ancient Egypt, and of course in ancient Egypt the pyramids were built, and one way of showing their faith in this kind of system. Of course your greatest pyramid in the world is not in Egypt, do you know where it is?

[Audience member] Mexico.

[Rushdoony] Mexico, yes. And the culture there was essentially the same thing. And of course it always means total Statism, a total control of man.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} Is there any relationship to this steeple idea and church and towers?

[Rushdoony] No the towers on churches, the steeples, have no connection with this. They go back basically to gothic architecture. Now you might say that gothic architecture had in some respects a faint spiritual affinity, but I think that’s stretching it.

Gothic architecture developed in the later middle ages, in the early and Middle Ages which were far more Christian than most people are aware of, there were very few great churches. Virtually all churches were small Parish churches, churches built for two, three, four, five hundred people at the most. But later on as there began to be a concentration of power in the church there became a concentration of peoples in certain churches.

After all if you are, say a pastor or a priest, you know this, that the best church is the church which has a membership of two or three hundred. It’s a community, everyone knows everyone else. There is enough support to take care of the work of the church; any necessities, missionary work and so forth, and you have a community. Once you pass four hundred you reach the point of diminishing returns in church life. In a small town where people have grown up together and know each other well you can have as many as six hundred and still not reach the point of diminishing returns. Then the larger the church gets, the less people get when they are present. You learn more on the average, some people will always get the maximum amount that is possible out of every meeting, they are good listeners, but for the average person the more people there are the less he retains, and the less he gets from the fellowship. So beyond six hundred anywhere the church begins to be progressively sterile; of course it’s when you get past four, five, six hundred that as far as a pastor or priest is concerned, he begins to arrive, now he’s somebody. He’s building up a little empire, the money is rolling in and he has some power in the church. So empire building was one reason for these larger and larger and larger churches, then as now. And as these churches were built and they concentrated and killed off smaller parishes to build a large one a new style of architecture was necessary for this.

Now the style of architecture that was used in the gothic churches was basically an ancient style, it came from the Middle East, from {?} in a series of work has traced its ancestry. But now what it represented was a very marked change in that the high-vaulted roofs became higher and higher and everything in the church seemed to strain towards heaven. The reason for this was that mysticism began to predominate it in the church. And mysticism of course agrees with the tower of Babel thinking in that affirms the continuity of being. All men are potentially Gods, the mystic tries to throw off this earthly aspect and to merge into God, to lose himself in God.

Now in the gothic architecture the people are nothing there. The congregation is lost, the thing that is imposing is this tremendous structure that seems to reach out to the sky, almost to take off for the sky. And if you go, for example, to New York City to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and look at the tremendous roof, and all the stained glass; everything designed to point upward. Everything designed to make you lose your sense of individuality and become a part of this tremendous thing in which you are nothing unless you forsake your individuality. Then you began to understand what the gothic style was striving for and it’s no wonder that the believer became lost in more ways than one in the gothic church, he was nobody. What he felt, what he thought, was nothing. And of course the style, the gothic style was symptomatic of the faith of the later middle ages and it collapsed ultimately and you had the reformation and the counter-reformation and a different style of church architecture developing.

A New England meeting house leaned over backwards in the other direction. It called itself a meeting house because it was a place where you could meet people, people were the obvious things as you went in, the architecture didn’t try to overwhelm you and you had in the center the pulpit and the word of God to make known the centrality of the scripture. Church architecture is a very interesting commentary on our history. You do find now, in many of these ultra-modernistic churches the pyramid style appearing in the scripture which may or may not have significance. But certainly it’s quiet interesting how commonplace it is becoming.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, not necessarily. But we aren’t limited to the architecture of the tabernacle. And the synagogue really had no system of architecture in ancient times; it just borrowed from Roman and Christian styles. So its style was basically derivative rather than determinative.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] It would be very interesting to go back and study the various forms of synagogues because it shows to what extent Judaism at the time of our Lord had been completely taken over by alien forces. Now one of the things that caused quite a shock a few years ago was to discover a synagogue, I believe one in Capernaum, from the first century; in other words either from our Lord’s Day or at least from the time of the apostles. And it had all kinds of murals on the wall; it looked very Greek and Roman. And so at first they were bound and determined this couldn’t be a synagogue but of course it was. The more work they did on it the more obviously it proved to be a synagogue. So that Judaism had ceased to be a Biblical Hebraic faith and had been taken over by Babylonian, by Roman, and by Greek and Egyptian influences, and the synagogues show this very, very clearly.

But it would be interesting to… [Audience interruption] Well the synagogues today are among your most experimental types of buildings. Well our time is up and we stand dismissed.