Studies in the Incarnation

Salvation: Rome vs. Christ

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 3 of 7

Track: #65

Dictation Name: RR116B3

Date: 1960-1970’s

[Rushdoony] Glory be to Thee oh God the Father, glory be to Thee oh God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We praise Thee oh blessed trinity that Thou hast called us and set us apart to be Thy people. That Thou has made known unto us Thy so great salvation and Thou hast made us temples unto Thee. We pray our Father that in this blessed season and always we may be mindful of how great Thou art and how sure is our victory in Jesus Christ, in His name we pray, amen.

Let us turn to the gospel Saint Matthew, the second Chapter verses one through fifteen.

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,

6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.

8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

The story of the wise men is an exceedingly important one for us to understand. When the wise man arrived in Jerusalem and declared that they had come in search of the Messiah king their words caused consternation. No one asked “Who is this Messiah king?” for all the world was expecting Him. The belief was wide spread in the world at that time, that the epiphany, or coming of a God in human form on earth, was imminent. Moreover it was widely believed throughout the civilized world that the coming of this God King was necessary to save the human race from the destruction which the sins of mankind deserved and had brought nigh.

This belief was everywhere and in Asia as well as in Europe and North Africa, peoples who did not believe in the God of the Old Testament nevertheless had searched the scriptures of the Old Testament in terms of this expectation, and thus the messianic prophesies of the Bible were very widely known. They are apparently echoed in the fourth Eclogue of Virgil and in the second Ode of Horace, but more than that they meet us on every side. The world felt desperately the need for salvation the world felt itself to be in a kind of dead-end. It had to be rescued; it had to be rescued by a God-King. And everything that the Hebrew scriptures said they took and adapted in terms of their own faith, their own situation and sat back to wait for this God King who would save the human race.

For Virgil and for Horace as well as for other Romans it meant the glory, the triumph, and the furtherance of the Roman empire, it meant for them that the West should rule over the east, a new Trojan war would be fought and a new European {?} leader would conquer the representative city of Asia, and the Parthian, the Medians and the other menacing peoples of the East would be over-thrown. East and West, each hoped that the coming God would be its King. The East looked for it to give it victory over the West and the West looked for it to give it victory over the east, and the Jews looked for it to give them victory over the entire world and to establish them as the central political power in the world. They looked for salvation on all sides.

The word salvation comes from the Latin “salva”, meaning health. But their conception of salvation is very, very different from the Biblical conception of salvation and the Roman doctrine of Salvation is the Roman Imperial doctrine closely linked with emperor worship. Now the history books tell us that emperor worship was an official cult fostered by the Roman emperors in order to consolidate their power in the empire. This is a half-truth, indeed later on emperors extensively used and promoted the Emperor cult, but in its early years it was not something that emanated from the court, it was not promoted by the emperors and the early emperors were hardly interested in it, it was something that grew up among the people themselves.

What was the Roman imperial doctrine of salvation? This popular religion began on the imperial estates and it spread from there throughout the empire. The Roman estates were everywhere in the empire, the imperial estates. They were lands owned by the Emperor and virtually every citizen was within reach of such an estate and so all the citizens very easily and all the subjects of the empire very readily learned of this faith that sprang up among the subjects who were on the Roman imperial estates. Everyone who lived on the emperors estates was under the emperor and totally dependent on him. They had protection from the perils of free life, they had cradle to grave security, they were the Emperors men. Therefore they had none of the problems that confronted other peoples. This is the origin of serfdom. The history give the books that serfdom was a product of feudalism and of the Middle Ages and of Christianity and nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact Christianity and feudalism and the medieval period worked steadily to weaken serfdom and eventually eliminate it. But it was a product of the Roman empire and of the roman imperial estates, serfdom was a product of the Roman imperial doctrine of salvation.

Originally the serfs were not, as they later came to be, full-fledged slaved to all practical intent. They were people who lived on the imperial estates and surrendered personal liberty in return for security. And this to them meant salvation and they hailed the Emperors as their God’s and Saviors; progressively as the centuries passed, and by the middle of the fourth century they were serfs bound to the soil, to their job and to them emperor.

But this to them, and this increasingly to all of Rome, meant salvation. Thus the Roman imperial doctrine of salvation meant that a man was saved when he was saved from liberty. When he was given cradle to grave security by the emperor. And this was the doctrine of salvation in the East and this was the dream of salvation that the Jews also had, it came certainly to its full flowering in the Roman empire and in the Roman imperial doctrine of salvation. But the doctrine of salvation as they had it was to be saved from liberty and to be saved for cradle to crave security. It was for this reason that the Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the minor prophets over and over and over again denounced all the empires and nations of their day as false prophets, as rivals against God, as pretenders because every one of them was offering this doctrine of salvation. Salvation for man was to be saved from liberty into cradle to grave security. Salvation in other words was slavery, the political life, slavery. But the salvation of Jesus is salvation from the power of sin and of death.

They took no note, these Imperial powers of Bethlehem, and of the babe there except to seek to destroy it. This was the Roman world; this was the Roman doctrine of salvation. This was the world wide doctrine of salvation and this was the essence of politics in the ancient world, and again in the modern world. Salvation means cradle to grave security, or slavery. And you are saved not from sin but from liberty.

Into a center of the Roman empire, and into the capital of the Jewish kingdom which was under the Roman empire walked these wise men from the East asking “where is He that is born the King of the Jews?” They were probably from the region of ancient Babylon and in that area the prophecies of Daniel had clearly lingered on, and clearly too the prophesies of Isaiah were known. And these men as devout believers of those things, true believers had come no-doubt with a particular revelation from God as well. “For we have seen His star in the east and are come to worship Him”. The result of this announcement was consternation, they had hoped that this God King, the Messiah King, would be born in the Roman Empire, certainly in Rome and of Caesars household and Herod indeed expected that it would be born of his family. And there was no question that in the east there were expectations similarly that the God king would be born of the various royal lines. But here was announcement from men of learning and of scholar ship, men who had come from a distance, men of means and substance. Where is He that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East and are come to worship Him. The only question in their minds was “Are these men on a fool’s errand or has this really happened?” They were all expecting it, but not where it happened. They wanted political redemption.

Herod inquired diligently of the wise men as to when they had seen the star, and in terms of that star he killed all the infants two years old and younger. It had been some time back, and we know that the census and registration had come and gone, the crowds had left Bethlehem, they were now when the wise men found them, in a house, no longer in the stable. And Joseph apparently had found work locally so that it could have been six months, a year, a year and a half. We don’t know for sure, but what is obvious is that Herod knew that sometime had elapsed as a result of his conversations with the wise men and to be on the safe side and to make sure he killed this Christ child, he slew all those in the area two years old and younger. And when they were come to the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother and fell down and worshipped Him, the Christ child. And when they had opened their treasures they present unto Him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

These gifts are most revealing. In the ancient world gifts always had a symbolic significance. Gifts were given in relationship to a person’s status, his rank, his authority. Gifts were given according to a strictly established protocol and etiquette. We have faint traces of this even to our day, for example when I was in my teens it was still a matter of etiquette; it seems to have disappeared since then, that a young man did not give any gift to a young girl unless they were engaged, except candy and flowers. In those days a King had to be approached with certain gifts only, gifts fitting for his status. And chief among these and primary was Gold. And so they brought him gold to indicate that they recognized him to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the God King, He who had come in fulfillment of all the prophesies of old. They gave him also frankincense because they recognized according to the prophesies that this was the great high priest of God, the true priest, the mediator of man with God, the Priest, King, and the Messiah. But they also gave him Myrrh, myrrh which was used for embalming, for having read their scriptures well they knew that this was the suffering servant of whom Isaiah spoke who had come to give his life a ransom for many; and that through his atoning death He would save His own from the power of sin and the penalty of death.

Thus they recognized in Him the priest, king, and the Savior; He who had come to set His people free from sin. And the slavery to sin is the basic slavery, and it is this slavery that produces every other form of slavery. And it was this slavery that had led to the imperial doctrine of salvation. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And where Christ sets men free from the power and penalty of sin and death there you have liberty abounding, spiritual liberty; and out of it flows political liberty, and economic liberty, and every kind of liberty. The salvation of the imperial system was serfdom, or slavery. It was salvation from liberty. And the salvation that our Lord offered was salvation from slavery, the slavery to sin. No two doctrines could have been more clearly opposed the one to the other.

Today throughout this nation in thousands upon thousands of churches the Roman Imperial doctrine of salvation is being preached, and blasphemously in the name of Jesus. He who came to set his people free from the power of sin and from all bondage; “Heard not,” Paul say “Ye have been bought with a price, be not ye servants of men”. In the name of Christ blasphemously they’ve preached the Roman imperial doctrine of salvation, salvation from liberty - Statism, Socialism. And in only a remnant of the churches, a handful, is that gospel which is the only true gospel, preached. That Jesus Christ has come, our Savior whose name “Jesus” means Jehovah Saves, and He saves us not from liberty but He saves us from the slavery of sin. And He has called us unto liberty, and He has destined that we who are members of His eternal kingdom shall bear witness to that glorious liberty and that we shall prevail. Concerning His true church our Lord declared that the gates of hell cannot prevail. And the word prevail there has in the original text the force of withstand, cannot withstand the power of the assault of the true church, of its forward march. Again the two doctrines of salvation are being brought face to face dramatically in our day. Salvation as slavery and salvation as liberty through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. In this struggle we have the assurance of victory for our Lord has called us not to defeat but to victory; and has declared in His word that we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. That if God be for us, who can be against us?

And today if the world seeks salvation from liberty, and eventually this means salvation from God in the hands of the all-powerful state. Salvation from manhood and the responsibility of man-hood, the judgment of God is as surely upon this generation as upon imperial Rome. And the blessings of God which are “Yea and amen” are upon us who stand in terms of His so great Salvation. Therefore in this blessed season we should rejoice for the message of Bethlehem is to us gospel, good news, the assurance of victory. That into this world of slavery the liberty of God through Jesus Christ has been proclaimed and that none can stay His hand or resist His power. And we have been called to citizenship in His eternal kingdom. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for Thy so great salvation. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us into Thy glorious liberty, and though we indeed today in the face of the overwhelming powers of evil around about us are like little David facing Goliath with only a slingshot in our hands, yet oh Lord by Thy grace we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us and we shall prevail. Make us bold therefore unto victory, resolute in Thy word, joyful in this blessed season knowing that it is unto us that the angels sang their song. That it is unto us that a Son and a Child has been born and has been given. The everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace of whose government and the increase thereof there is no end. Our God how great Thou art, and we thank Thee, in Jesus name Amen.

Are there any questions at this time, yes?

[Audience member] I noticed an anomaly here that I hadn’t noticed before and I’m curious to know what you say about it. It’s in here that the wise men saw the star in the east, and yet they came from the east. They came from the east of Bethlehem and therefore they were following a star from somewhere in the West.

[Rushdoony] Yes the sense of the text there is that when they were in the East they saw the star, and they followed it so that they didn’t see it to the East, but in the East where they were they saw the star. We shall, by the way, next Sunday afternoon continue with this chapter and the slaying of the innocents and the Egyptian sojourn of our Lord, an exceedingly important passage.

Any other questions?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes quite a few of the prophesies do and we are told that in the days of the fourth empire, Rome, there shall come the Son of man; and our Lord deliberately used that title given to Him by Daniel that He should be. He is pictured in one instance like the small stone out of the slingshot striking the great image of the empire and shattering it, and the small stone growing to be a mountain that covers the entire earth. There are several passages in Daniel that clearly speak of the coming of Christ, and of His work and of His atonement and of the end of the temple worship.

[Audience member] All those who remember it to today is that pre-millennial or post-millennial? There’s a lot of the prophesies in Daniel are related to today’s society {?}

[Rushdoony] Well yes there are differences of interpretation as to how they relate. I do believe there are passages in Daniel that do relate to the present. And I have written a study of Daniel and Revelation which I have not yet gone over to put in its final form and if I had a few months unhindered time I could do so, in which I do give these interpretations which I believe are Biblically sound concerning the meaning, the interpretations of Daniel and of Revelation. I also deal with Matthew 24 and the Thessalonian passages. It’s about three fourths finished but I still need some time to complete the balance.

[Audience member] May I ask another?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well at this point I think we need to recognize that Mariolatry is something we cannot accept; that the adoration and worship of a virgin are unwarranted in scripture. And of course it is clear cut in the text that they came and they saw the young child with Mary his mother and fell down and worshipped Him, not Mary. On the other hand we have swung to the other extreme as Protestants and we’ve just avoided the Virgin Mary. So that we have failed to appreciate her character and some of the most beautiful passages of scripture are those that deal with Mary and with the announcement of the angel to her and her song as she rejoices in God her Savior. I had thought of dealing with those passages but I thought it would be better this year since it’s the first time we’re going through the Christmas story together, to confine myself to the broad outlines of the story. But we do need to recognize that Mary’s position is a completely human one, a very important one in scripture and she speaks as a prophetess very clearly; and her prophetic utterances we do wrong to neglect.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well I think if it is done for religious purposes yes, if it is done for purely artistic purposes I don’t believe it’s at all permissible. Thus I think it is fine for an artist like Rembrandt to paint pictures which were not intended for religious use and to set forth his very devout and thoroughly Bible believing conception of these events. I think it is wrong however to put them to religious use because this is particularly forbidden, and therefore I do not believe in having them in a place of worship, in a church. I think also that one of the weaknesses of much of our religious are is that it tends to sentimentality. So many of the pictures of Christ are clearly sentimental and I think its one point where art is going to fail irrespective. It’s not going to succeed and so I think the attempt is so ambitious it’s doomed to failure and can only do wrong.

Yes?

[Audience member] I’d like to report to you that Christmas is gone. My daughters school, public school. Now last year they called it holiday season but threw in a little remnant of Christmas, this year it is gone. It was referred to as, called Happy Holiday season and the Hanukah songs were rated as such, but when they sang silent night they referred to it as “Love and peace” which is what we’re celebrating this holiday season. Now this is what they did in our huge school. And also instead of the beautiful red or green {?} it was blue and white. Which in this area is colors that they very often choose to put on their houses.

[Rushdoony] And the UN insignia.

[Same audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well I was very interested since I was out of town steadily this year I didn’t get around to, and I was out of town part of the time this week, to shopping for Christmas cards until this week and as a result they were pretty well picked over and yesterday I was talking to this one sales woman who apparently was the wife of the owner. And I found just one lone cared with a Bible verse on it, and she said we get so few of those and they disappear almost immediately and she said “we cannot get more than a handful and they will not put good ones in that fashion, with a Bible verse and clearly Christian theme.” So that if you are looking for a lovely card you will tend to pass over these and they will be in short supply. She said emphatically “They are avoiding anything religious in Christmas cards”. Now she made clear that there was no lack of demands, this was a deliberate attempt to eliminate Jesus Christ and Scripture from Christmas and Christmas cards because the minute I told her I what I was interested in she knew what I was going to say before I finished because this was a routine request and it wasn’t any lack of desire on her part of fulfill such orders, they had them all the time and couldn’t begin to meet them so that we face very clearly a systematic subverting of the meaning of Christmas.

I was interested this past week to get a couple of things. One is the War Cry Salvation Army weekly for Saturday October 23 and the cover is very interesting, the UN and United Nations day and the poem that is put here is to celebrate of course the UN. The editorial “Get Back of the UN” and it begins by saying we have little or no patients with the many people in this land who apparently get a lot of pleasure out of panning the United Nations and instead of believing the dog and a sins incidentally they quote Uthant {?} at length; they believe in the goodness of man and man’s desire for one world peace and so on. “We’d rather we inclined to the belief that men and women in every country under the country are dominated by a passion for hope or peace and security. They seek a world in which men may grow in strength and in dignity, they want no world in which Mars {?} periodically tears the ribbon, the bright promise of the future. Mankind is conscious as never before of common roots, common basic desires, common interests and so on.” And the concluding paragraph “it is too, no time for Christians to fail in their support of the world organization whoever else may lose heart. It is no time for Christians engaged in the cause of peace to waver with every variation of fortune or like those who have no faith in God and His Son to make varying opinions and unfounded reports about the United Nations the criteria of their confidence and loyalty. We are the disciples of a Lord who is crucified and triumphant, we move in the tradition of men who have stood steadfast in season and out of season. That kind of courage, faith and courage is called for now.”

In other words what this editorial says here “you’re not a believer in Jesus Christ if you don’t believe in the UN” and this is what the Salvation Army is become. [Audience interruption.] Yes, the War Cry the weekly of Salvation Army.

Then this through the mails from the American Bible Society The Gospel for Ghana and as the question and answer thing about Ghana where they are, of course, placing Bibles. Now this statement appears in the course of the question and answer. “What kind of government does it, Ghana, have? It is an independent Republic under the leadership of President Kwame Nkrumah, who has stated his belief that, quote “Man is regarded in African as primarily a spiritual being” end of quote. Now you can understand that they would want to say nothing unfavorable about Ghana lest they be barred from working there, but why make a statement like that and quote Nkrumah who has declared himself to be the Messiah? And the people has to hail him as the savior and to make that kind of a statement is uncalled for and indicates of course thoroughly unchristian bias on the part of The American Bible Society.

And I think to their own confounding is the verse they have on the cover, Psalm 127:1 “except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it”. And I think everything that the Bible society is doing now is in vain.

Are there any more questions, yes?

[Audience member] Along that line last week you were talking about the orphanages in Korea. Did you approve Tom McIntyre’s work in that or did his offering for the Korean orphanage not right?

[Rushdoony] His is legitimate to the best of my knowledge.

[Audience member] His gift is tremendous.

[Rushdoony] He has I believe legitimate connections. That is my information, it’s limited information but I didn’t refer to him in my statements.

[Audience member] I was hoping you weren’t.

[New audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes feudalism has a long history of course, a thousand year history. And a thousand years there are bound to be unfortunate periods, especially when you realize that feudalism incorporated in it all kinds of things including serfdom. Feudalism was not serfdom, but serfdom was a part of the world as feudalism found it. Now if you get into a discussion of issues and of history you can go to any history and find a great deal that’s {?}. You can discredit the United States just by going to the scandals in Washington in the last ten and twenty years. But you cannot lay these things to the charge of constitutionalism because they have been governed by completely anti-constitutionalist movements. The essential element in feudalism was local self-government, de-centralization. And feudalism and federalism are basically one and the same thing. This is the thing to emphasize.

And to concede at the very start there’s a great deal in the history of feudalism we cannot agree with. There’s a great deal that we deplore. Just as there’s a great deal in American history we are not going to try to defend, but the meaning of American history and the meaning of feudalism is not to be found in these events and episodes and periods that are deplorable. The meaning is in a particular faith, a principle. And the basic principle of America is constitutionalism and decentralization. And the basic principle of feudalism was decentralization, local self-government, and Christian law as the higher law, Christianity as the higher law.

Yes?

[Audience member] On the same context, it is interesting to note that the latest polemic of the veritas foundation the great deceit, tends to spend much time in arguing and proving the connection between feudalism and socialism….{?}

[Rushdoony] Well that is a very unfortunate fact that they did associate feudalism with socialism because of course one of the major targets of the Marxists was feudalism. Marx savagely condemned feudalism and capitalism and one of the major targets in World War I of all the socialist, and Free Masons and that must emphatically state, was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because the Austria-Hungarian Empire, which was a very important empire, was a feudal empire, it had a king at the top, or Emperor Franz Joseph. But the various portions had a great deal of autonomy. The Hungarians had their own parliament, each area had its local self-government and every part of the empire had this very large measure of autonomy, the preservation of local cultures, the feudalistic local self-government. It was a feudalistic empire; it was the last major relic, as it were, of feudalism. And the hatred of the Mason’s for it was intense. And hence was the first purposes of the Versailles conference was to destroy the Austro-Hungarian empire, to destroy this bit of feudalism. And the irony of it is at the same time they were talking about creating a United States of Europe, which was nonsense. They had a United States of central Europe in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and they destroyed it. So this business of preserving local cultures and local self-government was simply so much nonsense on the part of the socialist.

Yes?

[Audience member] What is the intrinsic meaning of the word, or the origin of the word feudalism?

[Rushdoony] It is related, my memory is a little fuzzy here, to the same word as “Confederation” linking together, an alliance; loyalty to someone close by, a personal relationship in the local situation. As I say my memory is very fuzzy at this point but I vaguely recall this was something of the meaning. We have time for perhaps one more question. Well if not, next Sunday even though it is the day after Christmas and the attendance may be limited, I think it’s best to continue with regularity of the meetings and we shall deal with the later part of this chapter, the very important passage on the slaughter of the innocence and the prophesy of Jeremiah, “I will call my Son out of Egypt.” Well we stand dismissed.