Studies in the Incarnation

Shiloh the Lawgiver

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 6 of 7

Track: #68

Dictation Name: RR116C6

Date: 1960-1970’s

[Rushdoony] Glory be to Thee oh God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost who’s called us to be Thy people, and endowed us so richly in Jesus Christ. We come to Thee with glad hearts acknowledging that indeed Thy hand is upon us for good. We thank Thee that Thou has beset us before and behind with Thy mercies, and so our God we praise Thee and we come to Thee to cast our every care upon Thee, knowing Thou cares for us. In Jesus name, Amen.

Our scripture is Genesis 49 verses 8-12.

8 Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee.

9 Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?

10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.

11 Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes:

12 His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.

An amusing and telling little story which I think illustrates as well as anything our condition in the world today was passed on to me the other night by Wally Welch. It concerns an airline pilot flying across the Atlantic, and he said, with a severe storm, the lights flashed fasten your seat belts, no smoking please, and then the intercom was flipped on and the Captains voice was heard saying “This is your captain speaking, we regret the inconveniences caused you by the storm, we have both good news and bad news for you. First of all the bad news, we have no communications and we are completely lost. But now for the good news, we are proceeding with maximum speed on our course.”

Today the intercoms, as it where, are being flipped on in pulpits and platforms around the world. And preachers and politicians are getting up to give the same kind of good news and bad news, they are lost but they are proceeding with maximum speed on that course. They are lost as all men are lost apart from Christ, and be they never so wise they remain lost as long as they are cut off from Him. But the meek of the earth can know their destination and can know the course if they move in terms of scripture, by faith. Scripture gives us a number of prophesies concerning the coming of Christ, one of the earlier of these prophesies is the prophesy of the dying Jacob concerning Shimon. These prophesies were possibly because the God who spoke, spoke infallibly and inspired His servants, the God who spoke was the God who ordains all things, who knows the beginning and the end, who is the Alpha and Omega of all things, and therefore can speak authoritatively, and with certainty, infallibly, concerning the things that shall come. And so Christians do not move with maximum speed on a course to nowhere, completely lost, but move in terms of the sure word of God.

When the dying Jacob called his sons and said “gather yourselves together that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days, gather yourselves together and hear ye sons of Jacob, and hearken unto Israel your Father.” He spoke not out of his own heart, but out of the Holy Spirit. Joseph was his favorite son, and after that Benjamin, but in the prophesies that he gave Judah was singled out; because it was through Judah that God had chosen to bring forth His only begotten Son into history. And so he declares to Judah who is the forerunner, and in that respect a type of Christ, “Judah Thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise, thy hand shall be in the neck of Thy enemies, Thy father’s children shall bow down before thee. And then Jacob compared Judah to a lions cub, quick and certain in stalking his prey, and like an old lion couched, king of all he surveys whom none dare challenge, who shall rouse him up?”.

Then said Jacob “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come, and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” The scepter, royal authority, kingship, shall not depart from Judah, and Judah shall be the lawgiver until Shiloh come. Shiloh means “He to whom it belongs, He whose right it is” so that Judah is seen as a type of forerunner, one who is a stand in, so that the entire house of David as it ruled Judah and the nation stood for the authority of Christ and as a representative of that authority. Until Shiloh come, until He come whose right it is, and unto Him shall the gathering of the people be. The word “gathering” can be translated with equal validity as “obedience” the people shall be gathered by obedience, they shall be brought under his sway, his authority, they shall render him that honor and that obedience that is due to a king.

Then Jacob continues with imagery that is foreign to us in this day and age but vivid and telling in ancient times. “Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes.” Now grape vines are among the choicest of agricultural properties, vineyards have always been highly prized in every civilization, and grapevines are tender and easily bruised, easily destroyed, very brittle. So that they are jealously guarded against bruising by livestock as well as brusing by people, they must be dealt with carefully. And so this image is one of supra abundant wealth and prosperity, so rich that he can bind his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; so prosperous that he can wash his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes. And then with the same ancient imagery Jacob continues “his eye shall be red with win and his teeth white with milk”. Again a symbol, not only of wealth but of relaxed prosperity, the word “red” can also be translated, and better be translated, as “sparkling”. His eyes shall be sparkling with wine, and his teeth white with milk. The imagery there is of one so rich and so prosperous that he is completely relaxed in the possession of his wealth, and his eyes sparkle as wine bubbles; comparison here is almost to a type of champagne. And so the picture is one of a ruler in prosperity.

This is a prophesy of the coming of Christ. It gives us a very different picture of Christ from that which has been for a long time, so popular in the pulpit, and which comes to its full fruition in the hippy movement. Christ has been portrayed endlessly as only a person who taught love, endless love, and the hippies have carried the love bit to its logical conclusion. They have declared Christ to be the great hippy, Christ has been portrayed as a demonstrator against every kind of force and power and authority, who believes in ruling only by love. But this prophesy reveals Christ in a very different perspective, until He come whose right it is, Shiloh. Shiloh has the scepter, he has the authority, He is the king, king of the universe, king of the earth. So that this prophesy first of all reveals Christ as king and second, and logically so, as the great lawgiver.

As Psalm 2 declares “He shall rule the nations with a rod of iron, He shall break them in pieces as the potter’s vessel.” This is the great king as He deals with the enemy, as he deals with those who refuse to submit to His word and to His authority. Christ is the great king and the lawgiver, His purpose in His coming thus is to rule with law, to demand obedience as His due. But third the imagery of the 11th and 12th verses manifest the prosperity of His reign, it is a relaxed rule. It is one that is so wealthy and so rich that he can be careless in the possession of his wealth. Ezekiel echoed this prophesy in the 21st chapter of his book, and there he speaks of Christ as the great king who by His kingship becomes the peacemaker, He is the peacemaker because He is the great ruler, the bearer of the scepter, whose power is such that He can subdue the enemy. And God declares through Ezekiel as he speaks of the coming of His son “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more until He come whose right it is, and I will give it Him” the 27th verse of Ezekiel 21.

So that in Ezekiel we have the deceleration that all those who set up their authority in defiance of Christ, who attempt to rule apart from Him, are to be overturned, overturned, overturned. Because Shiloh, he whose right it is, bears the scepter, and is the lawgiver, He shall destroy all those who stand up against Him. But those of us who in faith and in obedience submit to the virgin born king, unto us is the glory of His reign and the blessing of His prosperity. And so as we rejoice in this blessed season we need to remember our king is Lord. He is Shiloh, whose right it is to rule, and none can dare say Him “nay” and His enemies shall be overturned. Therefore we can echo the joyful song “Joy to the world the Lord is come, let earth receive her king.” Let us pray.

“Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that our King is come, that He is the great lawgiver, and that his reign is a reign of prosperity and of peace. And we thank Thee our Father that our King is now overturning the powers that be, so that His power alone which is unshakable, may remain. Make us strong therefore in the day of shaking, confident in our king, and joyful in His prosperity. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there are any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson. Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, He is the prince of peace because He effects reconciliation with God, He is the Prince of peace in relationship to the enemies of God in that He subdues them and overthrows them. So on the one hand His peace to us is reconciliation through the blood of Jesus Christ, on the other hand it is peace by means of His judgment of those who are His enemies.

Any other questions, with respect to the lesson? Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are three words in the Greek for love. “Eros” for erotic love is one, then the second is “philio” as in brotherly love Philadelphia, this is human brotherly love. Then the third “agape” is for, in a sense, divine grace. Now as Greek scholars have commented the word agape was in Greek, and yet it had virtually little use in Greek, it was not a commonly used word, but it was exactly the word that was fitting in terms of the writers of the new testament. Agape is not something that we ourselves are capable of showing, it is the Grace of God, and we show it only as the grace of God is reflected and shines in and through us, it is primarily of God. But to speak of ‘love” as some of these men of the agape school do, as though it were against nomos, law, is wrong.

Now the founder of this whole agape school was Anders Nygren, a Swedish scholar at Lund, a very brilliant scholar, very definitely a liberal but some of his research is very interesting, and sometimes rewarding reading. But for him agape was made so exclusive a thing that he opposed it to nomos, law. And he spoke of it as something that was a denial of nomos law. Well this of course is to destroy the whole meaning of scripture, because the scripture says love is the fulfilling of the law, and yet this was supposed to be a kind of a higher way in terms of these agape thinkers, and they felt that they could dispense with the whole idea of law. Well the logical end of that is of course hippie thinking. Now some of the early thinkers in this agape school were well meaning and misguided, some of them were definitely Christians, but foolish Christians. But the implications of it were totally heretical, and it has reached its logical conclusions now.

One of the men who very early made a great deal of the idea, and I’m trying to think of his name, a Methodist theologian, also Scandinavian background, quite infamous for some of his statements, can anyone think of his name now, it was on the tip of my tongue…[audience interjection]…Nels Ferry, yes Nels Ferry, he of course has carried it to its logical conclusion and has made it a doctrine of radical socialism.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} Some of the new religionist interpret the fact of Jesus coming as taking them out from under the law as God declares, but it means relieving us of this curse of death, but then they interpret that is it love, that you don’t need the law that you’re released from the law.

[Rushdoony] Yes, now what the Bible says with regard to our relationship to the law is this, all of us are, apart from Christ, under sentence of death by the law. But a man who is legally dead, is dead to the law. But having died to the law in the old Adam, and being alive now in Christ as the new man in Christ, we are not thereby dead to the law in that we are free to break it, we are dead to the law only as an indictment against us. We are now to live in terms of God’s law, by God’s grace.

Perhaps I can illustrate this a little crudely, but it might convey the point, a time or two in the last century we had some curious episodes where-in men, in various parts of the West who were sentenced to death and were hung, and then were taken down and legally pronounced dead, proved a little later within an hour or two as they were preparing them for burial, to be alive. However since they were certified as legally dead when the matter was taken before a judge, the judge said they were free men. They were dead to the law, now if they went out and committed another capital offence they would get into trouble with the law, or if they broke any law, they would be in trouble you see. They were not given by that a license to go out and act as though there were no law, but they were dead to the law as far as their past was concerned.

Now that’s a crude illustration, but it does convey the idea. The death penalty has been paid, we are now dead to the law as an ordinance. The law is now written, and this is the prophesy concerning the new covenant, on the tables of our hearts. The law is the righteousness of God, and now with Christ our new man this righteousness is a part of our being, of course we are not perfectly sanctified so it is not perfectly a part of our being, but the more we grow in Grace, the more we are sanctified, the more fully the righteousness and the law of God becomes our second nature as it were, our true being.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] John 3:16 is one of the greatest verses in the Bible, and it does have to be taught, and it should be taught. However it should never be taught apart from the sovereignty of God. Now unfortunately some people teach it as though it were not God who saves us, but we who save ourselves and it was not God’s love but our love for Christ. And I think this is important to convey to children, it was God who loved us, God who saved us. It’s God act from beginning to end, it is manifested in Jesus Christ and the very faith to believe is, Scripture tells us, the gifts of God. SO the verse must be taught, but unfortunately in some instances it is taught in terms of a humanistic context, and in that context the wrong inference is gained.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes the dove is the symbol of course of the grace of God, and the grace of God is our peace. This is its meaning in Noah. Of course in the descent of the dove it signifies of course the Holy Ghost, so it’s a symbol of peace, but it’s also a symbol in the Bible of the Holy Ghost. Now this in itself makes it clear that the use of it by humanist is absurd because the Biblical doctrine is that there is no peace apart from Christ, apart from Christ as very of God of very God, as well as very man of very man. So in trying to make use of it they are trying to make a humanistic concept of peace equivalent to the Biblical doctrine of peace. Now when the angels sang “peace on earth, goodwill among men.” They were saying you might almost transpose it “Christ is now on earth, and the goodwill of God unto salvation is now among men.” And we can never speak of peace on earth and goodwill among men apart from Christ, because the angelic song then is completely perverted. There was peace because Christ had come who was to make atonement for mans sin. The goodwill of God was manifest among men in the person of Jesus Christ. But today that angelic song is often used as something that mans goodwill, and mans yearning for peace is going to realize.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Christmas has become increasingly a kind of a humanistic holiday and its made almost into a fairy tale story for children, and a children’s holiday. So it is understandable that there is a reaction against Christmas. Of course you remember the puritans reacted against Christmas, not because they were against enjoying things, because the puritans were in some respects far more given to an enjoyment of life, of music, and of good fellowship, then most the people of their day. But Christmas degenerated to a point where it had become a season for drunkenness, and Christmas was a time to get drunk. So the puritans for a generation or two simply felt they had to bar the observance of Christmas. I think it would be tragic if we had to come to that again. That would be very unhappy. We do need to get back to a more Christian observance of Christmas, with the emphasis on the incarnation and the virgin birth, and we need to recognize and emphasize more and more the historicity of every aspect of it.

I pointed out, I believe two years ago, that the great Jewish scholar Edersheim some years ago pointed out that there was evidence for December the 25th as the birthday, and in the early centuries and through the medieval era it was a day of mourning in the Jewish calendar, and they would not say what they were mourning about. Well that in itself was a giveaway, because Christ was always left unmentioned, He was the unnamed one, and so was a day of mourning because of His birth. So we need to try to restore Christ into Christmas, and we need to recognize there is the deliberate paganization of this day progressively. And there is an attempt to absorb it into all kinds of other religious concepts.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] The translation “among men of goodwill” is from the American Revised at the beginning of this century. And I prefer the King James reading because the emphasis there is not on the men, but goodwill towards men. This is something from God to man, but “among men of goodwill” puts the emphasis on the men, as though something special among men is the focal point.

[Same audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] A good humanistic interpretation.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, but increasingly this is taking place in various parts of the country and I would expect in a very short time, in a few years, that Christmas will be illegal in the schools as far as any reference to Christ is concerned. It was in the late 50’s that some schools in Southern California began to change some of the familiar carols. I forget the exact wording but I did hear in one school program “Silent Night, Holy Night” in which it was not a virgin and a child, but I forget the exact wording, it was love. In other words the person had been taken out and love was somehow the focal point.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] I would oppose it very definitely because first of all the whole attempt is an artificial one. Of course we see today this case of the transplanted heart mentioned in the papers. Now this type of thing is wrong, because as they themselves admit, the transplanted heart rejects the body into which it is transplanted, and the body into which it is transplanted rejects the heart that has been put into it. They are alien organisms one to the other. The only way they can get each to survive with the other is to give the man drugs that destroy the natural immunities of the body. As a result what the man has contracted now is pneumonia. They are totally susceptible therefore. Now they have an artificial life and sometimes because they surround them with attendance, drugs, daily check-ups, they can perpetuate it for a time, but the fact remains there is no way of overcoming that rejection. They are trying to play God, they are trying to destroy that rejection, but nothing they can do prevents each organism from rejecting the other. And so it’s a highly artificial kind of existents, and I have heard from one or two cases where this sort of thing has been done from the families what a hellish experience it is, and a costly one, they’re bled white all so that these doctors can try to play God.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well I think he’s a fraud. This sort of thing we’ve had announcements of for about ten years, and they aren’t even remotely near it, and they are not honest in their reports.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, the new science of politics is the only one of Voegelin’s spokes {?} that I would say has some merit to it in that it is intellectually respectable, that is it has caliber. But Voegelin is anything but a conservative. Now he has been highly touted by the national review, and hailed as the thinker that’s conservatives should bow down to, as it were, but Voegelin’s thinking is basically relativistic. For him history is a progression of leaps of being, that is there is one truth for one age and another truth for another age. The Old Testament prophets represented the truth for their age, and then the Greek philosophers represented the new truth of being, and then of course the new testament represented another truth, and so on. So that for him there is no truth, this is fundamental. He is especially hostile in his thinking to the reformation and in particular to Calvin for the emphasis on an infallible word, and he treats this as a kind of Gnosticism. In actuality he is a Gnostic. But this is the kind of thing you have today, terminology reversed. Basically Voegelin is dangerous reading.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, it wouldn’t be a modern book. There aren’t many modern books in the area that would be valid but there are a number of the older classics, it would good reading in political science, yes.

There are just a few minutes left and I’d like to comment on that time on the monetary situation, if I may. There was an interesting book review in the December 4, 1967, Barron’s Magazine on a book by Vladimir Petrov Money and Conquest, Allied Occupation Currencies in World War II. Now the point made by this writer is simply this, that whenever anyone of the countries during World War II occupied an area, for example the Soviets as they took Eastern Europe, the Americans as they took Italy, and the allies as they occupied West Germany, it was to big a job in a country where they did not have all the machinery in hand and to try and fill every office and control every type of activity, to try and institute controls. After all if you’re going to institute controls you have to put in regulations about everything under the sun. And so they used a sure-fire means of control, paper money. Says Petrov “Military currencies offered a very effective means of regulating monetary circulation, and the power to issue these currencies in many instances proved to be a much more effective means of regulating the economies of occupied countries than decrees and regulations, which were often difficult if not impossible to enforce.”

Now you see why you do have paper money, it’s the surest route to total control. And some years ago Charles Rist in a book Triumph of Gold pointed this out, and I quote. “In reality these theoreticians dislike monetary stability because they dislike the fact that by means of money the individual may escape the arbitrariness of government. Stable money is one of the last arms that remains at the disposal of the individual to direct his own affairs, whether it be an enterprise or a simple household, it is certain that nothing so facilitates the seizure of all activities by the government as its liberty of action in monetary affairs.” Unquote.

Now, there it is, the best way to control a people totally is to control the money absolutely. And that’s why Lenin said at the very beginning of the revolution that control of banking, and the issuance of paper money was nine tenths of communism. If you had that in any country, you were nine tenths into communism, so you can see why they have been confident through the years that we’re all going their way. This is why they could survey their weaknesses, they know it better than we do, and our power and be confident why they could say “we will bury you” because they have recognized that you cannot escape communism if you have monetary controls, if you have a paper money. And it is interesting that in this past week we have had one of our shining lights in the treasury declare he will welcome the day when soon the last bar of gold is shipped out of Fort Knox, and we have no more gold. The point of course is that then there will be a situation he believes, of total controls and everything will be in hand. As long as you can be independent by having a wealth they cannot control they cannot have freedom of action. This is the reason for our predicament, and of course this in itself is going to destroy them because what they attempt will not work.

Well I’d like to announce at this time that we have made contact with the village mortuary and we shall have this chapel at eleven o’clock beginning the first week of January. The next two Sundays we will continue to meet at this hour after that at eleven, with that we stand adjourned.