Studies in the Incarnation

Bethlehem Vs. Assyria

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 2 of 7

Track: #64

Dictation Name: RR116A2

Date: 1960-1970’s

[Rushdoony] Almighty God our heavenly Father we thank Thee that Thou art mindful of us; that Thy word is directed to our every need and our every condition. Give us grace therefore to hark unto Thy word that we might be blessed; that we might know the way and walk therein. Establish us in the confidence in Thy sovereignty that with boldness and with strength we may face everything this world has to offer in the assurance that we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is Micah five.

1 Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.

2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

3 Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel.

4 And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.

5 And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.

6 And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

7 And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.

8 And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.

9 Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off.

10 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots:

11 And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strong holds:

12 And I will cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsayers:

13 Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands.

14 And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee: so will I destroy thy cities.

15 And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.

Yesterday morning I was to have left at 6:45 from Redding {?} by plane for San Francisco to catch a plane there at the airport and return home, but the weather was very very bad in Northern California and so the flights were cancelled and the only way to get to San Francisco and get a plane from there home was to ride three buses for seven hours, from Redding to San Francisco. I got out of the bus planning to do some thinking about Micah five so that I might be ready since I knew I would not be home until quite late at night because of the change in schedule, and I found myself surrounded by quite a babble of tongues on all three buses. A couple of gabby men in back of me and two very talkative women across from me and four in front of me, all of them talking quite vocally about everything under the sun. So I had a good opinion poll by the time I reached San Francisco. And the thing that was interesting to me that in the course of their conversation almost every subject under the sun was discussed, it was Christmas so they discussed Christmas and their churches and Christmas programs, the schools, the news and the newspapers they carried in their hands and it was quite apparent that they thought they world was wonderful as it is, and the religion they were getting from the churches made them thoroughly at peace with the UN and with Washington, with just about everything going on. The world in other words was about as close as to being perfect as possible, and there were oh some things they didn’t like, but not many.

I thought it was a good commentary on the condition Micah was talking about. Micah addresses the fifth chapter to three groups. First he deals in the first verse with Assyria, “Now gather thyself in troops oh daughter of troops, he hath laid siege against us, they shall smite the judge of Israel, (that is the royal house) with a road upon the check.” Assyria was gathering its power for an assault on the kingdom of Judah. And Micah said that they would indeed very severely hurt the kingdom of Judah, not overwhelm it but extensively cripple it. Thus the first power addressed by Micah is Assyria. It’s important for us to understand the significance of Assyria in scripture. Assyria was a tremendous power, one of the greatest empires of all history, but the Assyrian themselves were a numerically small people. It seems staggering in retrospect that a handful of people could have established so vast an empire and maintained it for so many centuries.

The Assyrian program was the essence of simplicity. A powerful and a military people they believed firmly that the world should be a one world order. They were ready to be friendly and gracious to any people or nation that would accept their sovereignty and their rule that would cooperate with this ideal. But if any nation resisted them and this program Assyria dealt with them with utter and absolute ruthlessness. And the Assyrian rulers boasted of leaving mountains of skulls among peoples who resisted them. Of the utter savagery with which they dealt with any rulers, skinning them alive for example, who dared act as an impediment of this idea. When they conquered a country that resisted them, after killing off the rulers they then systematically re-located the entire population, moving them throughout the Assyrian empire. Scattering them here, there and everywhere in order to break up their national loyalties and to destroy their language; so that scattered among many people, finding it necessary to speak the language of the area, and too few of their own in their particular community to make it worthwhile to maintain their language and their tradition, these people speedily became a part of the Assyrian empire, this one world order that Assyria dreams of.

We have our Assyria today, the United Nations is a modern Assyria having the same ideals; demanding in its charter an end to any discrimination with respect to race, color, or creed, in other words obliterating any and all distinctions, to make all men one. At least at that day people were aware that Assyria was a menace. Today too few are aware that the modern Assyria and the heirs of Assyria, the United Nations is a menace. And it is ironic that in the Christmas season so many Christmas cards are sent by people with UN symbols on them, nothing could be more contradictory to the meaning of Christmas. The one celebrating a pone world in sin, a one world based upon nothing but the idea of unity, the other Jesus Christ coming declaring that he came to divide men in terms of himself, and he that is not with me is against me.

This was the first power, Assyria. The second was the kingdom of Judah, Jerusalem. And Micah in the third chapter, the first three verses speaks of the condition of Jerusalem the capital and of the kingdom. And he summons the princes of the house of Israel, the rulers, the heads of Jacob and said “is it not for you to know judgment (that is, justice)?” “But they are” he said, “Men who hate the good and love evil, who also eat the flesh of my people and flay their skin from off them, and they break their bones and chop them in pieces as for the pot and as flesh within the cauldron, then shall they cry to the Lord but he shall not hear them”. Micah says that his own people as they are faced with this threat, that instead of having any character, instead of standing in terms of that which they had been called to be, God’s people, they were instead weak towards the enemy and cannibalistic towards their own people, the Godly people within them. So that he compares them to cannibals who eat the flesh of My people, God’s people. Who are tolerant towards the enemy who has sworn destroy them, but savage towards the best within their borders. This he says is Jerusalem.

And we could say again this also is Washington D.C. today and this is the United States. Have we heard men in high places in Washington in the last few years speak of the Soviet Union, of international communism, with anything near the severity they have spoken of conservatives? Have we seen them deal with communist in our country with anything near the severity they deal with children who have bowed their heads and said a simple prayer in kindergarten? Micah’s words concerning the cannibalism of his nation again fit our day.

But there’s a third power that he speaks about. “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah” Bethlehem, a very common name in Palestine those days, though he might identify it as “Bethlehem Ephratah” one of the many little villages among the thousands of Judah, “though thou be little”; Bethlehem then was a common name even as mountain city and mountain home are common names. And if you spoke of mountain home you’d have to identify whether you meant Idaho or some other state because there are so many mountain homes across the United States. Bethlehem was thus an insignificant place, insignificant not only in the nation at large but insignificant even in Judah. But he declares “ yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” He who shall be born in Bethlehem is God, very God of very God and very man of very man, the son of God whose going forth has been from of old, from everlasting, the eternal one shall be born in Bethlehem. There was no mistaking the meaning of this prophesy.

Well over seven hundred years later when wise men from the East came to Jerusalem asking “Where is he that is born the king of the Jews?” there was some question in the minds of the people whom they asked whether such a one had yet been born, but there was no question as to where he would be born. And so they immediately turned to Micah 5:2 and cited it to the wise men, and said “if this has taken place let us know”. Everyone knew, this mean that the Messiah would be born there. And so Micah says to the saints of old, fix your attention not upon Assyria, not upon Jerusalem the capital because it is rotten to the core, but upon Jerusalem, upon the Messiah who shall there be born. For he shall be very God of very God, and this man shall be our peace. No peace possible from Assyria because its peace means death, no peace possible from Jerusalem the capital because everything it is doing in its blindness is inviting disaster and disaster shall overwhelm them. And although Micah makes it clear that the Assyrian shall not overwhelm the land totally that ultimately Assyria shall be destroyed, yet great havoc shall be worked in the kingdom. We do from history that they took virtually every city for a time before God miraculously overthrew the power of Assyria at the very gates of Jerusalem. The captivity would come to them. And although Micah does not specify Babylon, and Isaiah later did they did go into captivity.

Why then should they fix their eyes on Bethlehem? Because Bethlehem represents not only Jesus Christ but His true body, His true church, those who by faith are members of Jesus Christ. And so Micah then declares to them who look to Bethlehem, who look to Jesus Christ what their destiny shall be and he is speaking here to the Judeans who went into captivity, first of all and is speaking also to us, who face in every age the same kind of world, the world of Assyria and the UN, the world of Jerusalem and of Washington. And these believers of Micah’s day and their destiny are a type of that which is our destiny. “And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men. And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off.”

What was the remnant of Jacob, and what are we today who truly believe in Christ and place our trust, our confidence in Him concerning the future? Who fix our eyes not upon the Assyria or the UN or Jerusalem and Washington, but upon Jesus Christ. Micah says that we are the principle of judgment among the nations. That those who hear us and receive us and are friendly to us, unto them we shall be as the dew, the refreshing dew, and no man he declares can stop the dew and declare “it shall not fall”. It is of God, and when we are member of Jesus Christ we are of God, we are born from Him and of Him. And therefore we are in His power rather than the power of man. And so we shall be as the dew, as the showers upon the grass that tarrieth not for man nor waiteth for the sons of men. But those who reject Christ and will not heed our warning, Micah declares that we are unto them as a ravenous lion. We are to them a principle of judgment and even as the lion goes through a flock of sheep and if he is unhindered kills them from the one end to the other, and kills for the sheer love of killing so that he kills not merely to eat but he lays waste the flock, so the Lord declares that “We shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of them as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down and teareth in pieces and none can deliver.”

We are therefore given unto the world as a principle of judgment, and though indeed we may suffer at the hands of the world let us remember this, God is declared it is the world primarily it is the world that is going to suffer in terms of us. In terms of their hearing or rejecting the word of Christ as we declare it, and as we stand for his truth and for His order; and we should therefore face the world with our eyes fixed upon Bethlehem. With our confidence not in the UN nor in Washington nor in their power, and in the power of God unto salvation, as John Calvin said, we should learn therefore to expect from Christ just as much salvation as there is power in God. This is well for us to remember, we so easily and so often become discourage because like the remnant then we look at Assyria and we look at Jerusalem, we look at the UN and we look at Washington, and we are awed by their power. But the sovereign and the almighty God expects us, as Calvin said, to expect from Christ just as much salvation as there is power in God. So the gospel can be detained and hindered by no human power, Christ is our peace because through Him we have peace above with God the Father. And within us, in our conscious and around us we have the protecting power of God as we deal with other men. This man shall be our peace.

Thus as we rejoice in the glory of Bethlehem at this season, let us be mindful that Bethlehem according to Micah is a witness not only to the coming of Christ, but to his continuing power. And God who has redeemed us has declared that He will defend us, and if be for us, who can be against us? Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father we thank Thee for this Thy gracious word. And we confess and acknowledge unto Thee that to often our eyes have been not upon Jesus Christ but upon Assyria, upon Jerusalem and the powers of this world. Grant our Father that as we celebrate the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, we look unto Him knowing that He commands us to expect as much salvation from Him as Thou hast power, and Thy power oh Lord is infinite, total, and all-powerful. Give us grace therefore that day by day we commit ourselves into Thy keeping and trust in Thee and in the strength of Thy so great salvation. In Jesus name, amen.

Do we have announcements first of all?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Any questions, yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Dr. Spock has made certain statements recently, and I’m asked to comment on them, during this past week back when I was flying up to Redding I read an address by Dr. Spock at the Vietnam Day, and I would say that Dr. Spock is scarcely an authority in any field [general laughter]. Dr. Spock clearly is a left winger and this business of not giving children gifts, or limiting our gift giving and so on, basic to his perspective is a desire to center the minds of children and youth as well as giving to a one world order, thinking about others and world brother hood, and so on. Now he is trying to inculcate an unselfishness of a kind among the humanistic followers that he has. And I frankly think this business of trying to make children be unselfish in these humanistic terms is a self-defeating matter. And I think it is carried to absurdity. First of all, children are children and we do not make them unselfish by depriving them of gifts. We make them thoughtful of others by giving them a Christian faith and through the daily discipline of the home by teaching them to be thoughtful of other members of the family. This business therefore of coming to Christmas and saying now “we’re not going to give kids any presents because they should learn to be thoughtful of others” instead of being nobility to my mind it’s just sick. I think it’s abusing the kids, children universally expect this to be a season of gifts and I think they can best learn to be thoughtful, to be mindful of the needs of others not through being deprived, this is going to make them resentful, but through a Christian faith. So that I’m very hostile to this idea of giving the kids a lesson on Christmas day, or just one or two things and telling them “now remember the poor hot-in-tot and the viet-kong {?} and a few other things like that which apparently is what Dr. Spock has in mind.

Then with respect to Santa Claus I think we would do best to forget him altogether. We don’t need him, the Santa Claus story, we are told, is ages old. But actually the Santa Claus story is fairly new, and it was in the last century as so many of these customs came into practice primarily from Unitarian sources, as some of you know. And the whole purpose was to supplant the Christmas story with a lot of mythology. And I think it is unhealthy to give the children what is nonsense and expect them to believe it and there will be repercussions. As I told some of you I’ve seen this sort of thing, I never have believed in it I’ve always regarded the Santa Claus story and a lot of things like that as utter nonsense and distasteful nonsense. My sister whose perspective is rather different from mine taught her children the Santa clause story, and at a certain point when they found it wasn’t true they made a logical conclusion. They said “well the story about Jesus and the Bible is a fairy tale too, isn’t it?” And I think that’s a logical conclusion, and I think that’s been reached by millions of children because I’ve heard it from parent after parent that their children have asked that question. So I’m against Santa Claus. He’s red [general laughter]

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, I refuse to give anything to the Christmas seal {?} First of all these are humanist and they are full of brotherhood and love, but very little of that money over the years has gone to minority groups. The fund has been very discriminatory although they don’t talk about it; and tuberculosis, which is their purpose, is most common in this country among Indians. And the Indians have not gotten their proportionate share over the years. Second very little of the Christmas Seal money gets to the people involved, most of it goes for administration and other funds. Now I understand Los Angles is one of the few areas in the country where there is some kind of county committee that gives approval of various groups. However this approval that they have to have a limit to what their administrative costs are, I believe applies to the funds that are collected in this area for use in the area, doesn’t apply to the national organization necessarily.

Most of these groups that collect money use the major share of it for administrative costs, very little of it gets into the research purposes or the charitable purposes to which it is ostensibly donated. As a result, as a matter of policy I give to nothing except through my church, or as I know a particular group and have seen their report. I have with some of these groups asked them if they will give me an auditor’s report of their use of funds. I’ve written to some of them and I’ve always gotten a long letter stating why this is not practical, and with good reason. They prey on your kindness and on the worthiness of the cause, cancer or TB, or whatever it may be, crippled children and so on. And you give because you are moved by the cause, and they refuse to give an accounting of what they do. I think this is very wrong.

And I think we need to maintain a similar supervision over church funds. Now I have gone over the reports of many, many churches as to how, that is denominations, how they use missionary money, and it’s appalling. Because when you check out the statements in their yearbooks you find that a very sizable percentage, for example of missionary funds, actually goes for various promotional administrative cost so that a very small percentage of it actually fulfills its destined purpose, so I think we need to be very careful when we give.

[Audience member] {?} Along the same line Dr. would you comment on the, perhaps some specific instances carried on an international scale as they do orphanages within Korea by a group which would be, let’s say against the groups of {?} violence. But in the connotation of giving outside the country as compared to a branch where the cause is in country

[Rushdoony] Yes there are many appeals, you mentioned orphanages in Korea. Now it so happens that the church of which I’m a minister, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, has quite an extensive work in Korea. Korea is perhaps right now about the poorest country in the far east, because South Korea has gone through a fearful war, it has had a tremendous migration of peoples from the North before the communist took over and when they first took over, and South Korea was the rural area and North Korea was the industrial. So to have this tremendous influx with no way for these people to make a living they had {?} problems. Now the church that our missionaries are associated with, which is a thoroughly orthodox group over there, is quite a large church, well over two thousand congregation. They maintain a college and a seminary and 18 orphanages and I believe two homes for veterans, disabled veterans. These are men who are armless or legless or blind, they maintain their own farms and it’s an amazing thing that these people help each other, feed each other, do they work on the farm and support themselves after a manner.

Now we are sending over three missionaries and are cutting back steadily, we had four, it’s down to three and we will drop down to two because the church there is self-supporting .The Korean church has sent a missionary to quatomosa {?} For these 18 orphanages they receive, I believe, a total of thirty six thousand dollars from this country. And these are crowded orphanages, a doctor friend of mine who visited over there said he didn’t know what poverty really could be like until he was in Korea and he said the tremendous amount of theft there is simply based on the fact that so many people placed in situations “steal or die”. And he visited one of the orphanages and he said that while he was there a young mother came in with her baby, the family was already on the verge of starvation there was several children and it was either a question of leaving the baby there or it was going to starve to death, they couldn’t feed another mouth. And he said it was a very moving and heart-breaking sight to see that mother put that baby down when she walked into the orphanage and turned around to the door, and then start back, pick up the baby, and then start crying and put it down because she knew to take it would be to condemn it to death. Go through the door, and then he watched her through the window, and as she would walk down the street and start back, it took her about a half an hour to go to the corner and round the corner and go. That’s the kind of situation they have there. I’m telling you this so that you will realize that these people are nonetheless with this abject poverty, bearing most of the support for those orphanages. This is one reason why the church in Korea is such a powerful church.

Now I’m suspicious of some groups who are spending a great deal of time and money soliciting funds for Korean orphanages. And I think there is good reasons to believe that in many cases they don’t actually have any orphanages there, that they give a portion of the funds to these 18 orphanages, and so are maintaining in that sense orphanage work. So I would say you’ve got to know the group because con artists today have moved out of the traditional fields into the charity fields, and you can buy if you want to, from companies that sell names. Huge mailing lists of people who are soft-hearted and will appeal to anything. A lot of charities are set up with no purpose except to solicit funds. One reason why this problem is so complicated in our area is simply because the churches have mostly broken down. They’ve departed from the faith and when you give your money may end up in Mississippi fighting against the people of Mississippi, or in Selma, Alabama. So that the church who through the centuries have handled most of the charity in the world, 99% of it, and have done a tremendously responsible work, right now in most instances cannot be trusted, so that we have a problem.

Any other questions?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] I think that’s a fine thing. And whether we are for or against the war in Vietnam is beside the point, in fact the very fact that I feel that we have no business in Vietnam, I don’t believe we’re fighting communism there because if we were interested, as I’ve said, in fighting communism we’d fight it at home. A government that won’t fight it at home is not interested in fighting it there. Now I think those who know this best, many of them are service men and they need our prayers, they need our help in any way we can give it to them because they had a very bitter and a difficult time. A friend of mine talked not to long ago with an officer who returned from Vietnam, and he painted a very grim and bitter picture of the situation there, and they certainly need every help we can give them. Materially and spiritually, we should pray for them, we should send things to them by all means.

Any more questions? Well if not, we stand dismissed.