Expositional Lectures

Time and Chaos

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 4-12

Genre: Speech

Track: 074

Dictation Name: RR118A2

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

{?} God our heavenly Father we thank Thee for the blessings of the year past. We thank Thee our Father that we can face the new year in the confidence that Thou art with us. That Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us. We thank Thee our God that the days and years bring unto us only further evidence of Thy grace, of Thy mercy, and of Thy blessings. And so in this confidence our Father, we face the coming year knowing that Thou wilt guide, protect and prosper us according to Thy Word. In Jesus name, Amen.

Our Scripture is from the tenth chapter of Numbers, Numbers 10, verses 1-10. Time and chaos.

(1) And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, (2) Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. (3) And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. (4) And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee. (5) When ye blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east parts shall go forward. (6) When ye blow an alarm the second time, then the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. (7) But when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm. (8) And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow with the trumpets; and they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your generations.

(9) And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies. (10) Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the LORD your God.

Last night New Years Eve was no doubt celebrated in many quarters with a great deal of drinking. This is a very mild form of celebrating New Years Eve. Because the meaning of New Years Eve celebrations as we see it around us, is to be understood in terms of the cults of chaos. Originally mankind felt that before a new year could be ushered in, before that year could be expected to yield any kind of prosperity and plenty, there had to be an invocation of chaos. Chaos was therefore invoked because they believed that the universe arose out of primeval chaos. Chaos was thus the basic power behind all things. And chaos had to be invoked in order to revitalize society. Hence, before beginning a year, you invoked chaos. As a result, every new year was, in antiquity, preceded by all kinds of acts involving chaos. Drunkenness was the mildest of these acts. Adultery, various perversions, every kind of chaotic act imaginable was a necessary, religiously necessary act in order to insure a happy new year. These chaos cults have persisted all over the world and indeed are extremely powerful.

They manifest themselves in every non-biblical system of thought. These chaos cults have attempted to assimilate Christianity, to capture it. And we can, with truth, state that the Christian church has very extensively been captured by these various cults of chaos. So that today what we find in most of the churches is not biblical religion, but the cults of chaos. A belief in primeval chaos as the source of regeneration. Hence it is that the churches invoke revolutionary activity in that revolutionary activity is an invocation of chaos as the means to social renewal, social regeneration. However the attempt to assimilate Christianity is always a failure. Because the biblical faith is inassimilable by any other faith. It is totally at odds with all other religions, every other religion begins with chaos, chaos then is its basic force. Its basic vitality, the basic energy. But the biblical faith has as its beginning the sovereign and triune God, who by His sovereign created act, and that in the space of six days, brought heaven and earth into being. From beginning to end, the biblical revelation militates against the chaos cults. As a result, it becomes impossible, finally, to assimilate it, even though the institutional forms are captured. And as a result, you have, recurring, the death of God philosophy as a means of capturing, not only the Church, but of destroying biblical religion. The death of God philosophy is not new. In the early centuries, among other things, Gnosticism represented such a movement. In the Medieval period the {?} philosophy became extremely powerful and influential on a wide variety of peoples. Prominent rulers and emperors, poets like Dante, and practical men like Christopher Columbus.

The essence of the {?} philosophy was that history could be divided into three eras. The first era was called the age of the Father, this was the Old Testament religion, the second era was the age of the Son, the age of Christianity and the Church, and the third age, the age of the Holy Spirit, was the dawning age, they asserted, when the death of God was acknowledged and all men became gods and all religions became equally true because they all made way for the supremacy, the deity of man. The modern attempt at the death of God philosophy therefore is not new. It is the recurring attempt of the chaos cults to assimilate, or to destroy, biblical religion. One of the leaders of the current movement is Thomas J.J Altizer, professor of bible at Emery University, a Methodist school. Altizer himself is a Episcopalian who professes a Buddhist faith. This is a good combination for our day and age. Altizer has called for the death of God, and the destruction, of course, of the whole body of absolute truth, of ultimate truth and righteousness that biblical revelation asserts. The death of God, he says, must be followed by the epiphany of Satan. That is, we must turn from God and from righteousness and truth, and affirm evil. This must be done in order to further the death of God. Then after this great affirmation of evil, of chaos, of revolution, of the total negation of any absolute truth or any absolute good, there will come the true birth of humanity. Man becoming his own god.

The chaos cults are then very much with us. And as we mark the beginning of another year and are mindful of the New Years Eve celebrations, relics of the old Saturnalias, it brings us then to the consideration of the calendar. Outside of biblical faith history is viewed as cyclical. The calendar seems to man only to signify the endless recurrence of all things. Just as {?} follow one another so the cycles of history endless recur. So that time does not move forward, history has no progress, no point to it. It is only the eternal return. Therefore the goal of history must be the end of history. And all non-biblical religions and especially modern secular philosophies, Marxism, Fabianism, virtually every form of politics today, assert the end of history and a final order. History is to be destroyed because history is inescapably ethical. History involved responsibilities. It involves moral choice between good and evil. History involves work. History is a product of the Fall. But even without the Fall man had a history. He had to work, even though his work was not cursed. He had responsibilities, but he was better able to meet those responsibilities. History therefore is, from the biblical perspective, inescapable. It is a necessary outworking of creation. History must work its way to its end conclusion, epistemological self consciousness, that is the full development of all the implications of history for evil and for good, and the triumph over good over evil. History therefore culminates after untold centuries of battle and the full triumph of the kingdom of God.

The pagan view is cyclical. It seeks an end to history, but even as it seeks an end to history it is doomed to believing that its end to history is doomed to collapse, to fall. So that man will thrown back into history, will again have alienation, will again repeat this ugly cycle. The biblical calendar thus is radically different from all other calendars. In terms of the biblical calendar the year begins, not with a festival of chaos, but it was marked by the Passover, regeneration through the atoning work of God. And the year was ushered in by the blowing of trumpets. Now in our text Numbers 10:1-10, we saw how Moses was commanded have trumpets made of pure silver and of a single piece. Those of you who enjoy visiting missions have no doubt observed some of the bells at missions. And perhaps at one or another mission, one of the fathers or friars had told you of one particular bell that they are fortunate to have one, of which they are particularly proud. And perhaps have rung it for you. And you have immediately detected the clear more beautiful tone of that bell. The reason? When it was cast, a small amount of silver was included in the casting. And any bell that has any silver in it has a far sweeter, a far lovelier tone. The bell at the {?} Mission that is near the chapel has silver in it. Listen to it sometime. We can get something of the same difference if we simply take out of our pocket sometime a silver dollar and a Johnson slug and let them drop on the table and listen to their ring. This is the difference between silver and other metals. The silver trumpets had a beauty and involved a luxury that our rich age cannot afford. They had a tremendously beautiful sound. The trumpets had, moreover, a symbolism.

According to Moses in Exodus at the giving of the Ten Commandments, the trumpets were symbolic of the voice of God. As a result, when the trumpets sounded, we are told in Numbers, it was a summons either to the convocation of the congregation of Israel, or a summons to battle and to victory, a summons to march with God by His silver voice, assuring them of victory. But Revelation also makes clear to us that for the ungodly, the sound of God’s trump is the sound of judgment. A sound of defeat and of destruction. The biblical year began with the sounding of the trumpets. It was a call to march. History moves forward, time moves forward to God’s conclusions in terms of God’s purposes. Time is progressive. The year began with the Passover, signified regeneration. At the beginning of each month as our text states, there was the festival of the blowing of the trumpets, indicating that time moves always in terms of God’s purpose. That men either fulfill it or they are judged by it. But time moves, relentlessly, in terms of God’s kingdom. The trumpet therefore indicate that God’s judgment on sin is always operative. He dispossesses the powers of evil in order to make this world the kingdom of God. He summons by the trumpets His people to move forward in the confidence that if God if be for us, who can be against us. The biblical year therefore was markedly different. And the Festival of Trumpets indicated this belief in the possibilities of history, the reality of history. History not to be ended, not to be terminated, but to be lived.

And to be lived in the confidence that it does lead to triumph. We are today faced by the return of mythology. And the essence of this mythology is its belief that time can be ended. The essence of myth is precisely this. A belief that man magically can terminate history. Can escape from the necessity of work, from the necessity of responsibility, can go beyond good and evil, that is, beyond moral choice. Can end alienation, can terminate all the processes that being a creature involves. The governing force is myth. The instrumentality of myth is magic. And the essence of magic is simply the belief that man can totally govern nature and the supernatural, that man can be the ultimate, that man can be god. Now the instrumentalities of magic have become greatly sophisticated, today they are highly scientific, but the purposes of science today are totally magical and the purposes of our scientific socialisms, our scientific politics, are totally mythical. An end to all problems, the termination of history, this their goal. Man shall be beyond good and evil, beyond, we are told today, even the possibility of death. Because sickness together with poverty and disease and death, are to be abolished. We face then, on all sides, the return of myth and magic with its faith in the power of chaos. What men again are seeking is precisely what Altizer has spoken of. The death of God, the epiphany of Satan, the total destruction of the things around us, the entire world, so that magically, this new world can be formed. But every effort by men to negate history and to wipe out history, only accelerates history’s march to judgment.

Because, for the Bible history is the development of good and evil, of epistemological self-consciousness. It is according to Matthew 13 and the parables of the tares and the wheat, the development of both seeds so that each becomes more specifically what it is, the tares become tares and the wheat become wheat, so that the line of division becomes more clear and the destruction of the one becomes more obvious. We are then in a time of crisis. As these two issues come clearer and clearer in their purpose. But as we begin the year we begin it even though, without the silver trumpets, we begin it with that which the silver trumpets represent, the voice of God. His very Word, the Scripture. And this Word of God assures us that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. If God be for us, who can be against us? And our Lord’s words to us as He left remain the marching orders of everyday. Go ye into all the world and make disciples of the nations, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. But He said one thing more. All power is given unto Me, in heaven and on earth. This then is our assurance, with every month, day, and year, this is our God and history moves in terms of His purposes. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that the time in terms of which we live, move and have our being is the time of Thy creating. And the universe is Thy creation and that we move, oh Lord, in terms of Thy holy calling. Make us bold therefore in faith. Confident in knowledge, knowing, oh Lord God, that we are called unto victory and the gates of hell cannot prevail against us, cannot withstand us. And Thou, Lord are King of kings, and Lord of lords, and of the increase of Thy government there shall be no end. Our God how wonderful Thou art. And we praise Thee. In Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions now?

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Basically, Bishop Pike belongs to the same school as Altizer, he has not openly stated that he is a member of the death of God school theology, however, at the summer session of the Pacific school of religion last year, or this past year, yes, {?}, he taught a course in situation ethics, which of course, is the ethics of the death of God school theology.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Toynbee is basically a humanist. His religious faith is primarily a syncretistic one. He wants an amalgamation of all faiths. His view of history is very, very superficial, but very learned. That is, he has all the massive documentation and book noting, but it doesn’t add up to much. So that there not much you can say about Toynbee’s perspective other than that it is humanistic. It’s been sometime since I’ve done any extensive reading of Toynbee, about twenty years ago I thumbed through I think the first six volumes and I felt that there was nothing but endless repetition of a few trite things. But Toynbee’s position, if anything, I understand, has deteriorated even more. Basically, all that he says is that there is challenge and response, you ever meet the challenge, or you don’t. now, this, superficially fits into an ethical framework, with regard to history. But since he’s denied any absolute ethics, what is the challenge and what is the response? It’s not ethical.

And basically therefore, the only challenge and response that Toynbee has is, are you going to accept man? And how broad will your acceptance of man become? This is the only challenge and response. So that man has become his ultimate. And therefore the criterion of his creed is will you bow down to man and admit his ultimacy.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] What Toynbee does is, in a sense, {?} to what the {?} theologians do. He uses many terms which are reminiscent of biblical theology, but he gives them a totally psychological meaning. Now, ultimately what is this {?} in the soul for Toynbee? It’s that we are a divided humanity. So that when you get through all that he has to say, you find out, the only way to over come all these problems is to bring all men, all religions, into one conglomerate mass.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] A very good question. I would say, basically, yes. On any consistent basis. I’m sure that au-millennial’s would give me quite an argument on that, but basically, post-millennial thinking is the one that most logically moves in terms of epistemological self consciousness.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, certainly, Augustine’s whole ‘City of God’ deals with the fact that there are two cities in history, two kingdoms, two realms. The kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. And that history is the developing of these two kingdoms, and that these two kingdoms will progressively become more and more logically consistent to their presuppositions.

Humanism will become more and more humanistic, biblical faith will become more and more consistently biblical and will have less..

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Dr. Rushdoony] Right. And this thesis has been recognized through centuries. Bishop {?} in the Middle Ages wrote an excellent treatise on this, in fact bewailing that in his time the two cities had become confused so extensively. So that you do have of course, not a straight development upward, its zigzagging, but it basically moves to a given conclusion, or it spirals, perhaps, that’s a better image that’s been given.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}… Science in itself is a good thing, isn’t it?

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Now, we have to distinguish, when we’re talking about science, between the technicians and the theoreticians. Much of the great progress that we have seen is due to the technicians. But we tend to give all the glory to the theoreticians and say that they are the ones who are the persons who produced all this. And there’s a vast difference between the two. For example, in the field of geology. The geologists in the universities are despised by the field geologists. Why? Because the geologist in the school is the theoretician. And he is interested in an evolutionary framework. This is what he has to develop. Because he is trying to be consistent to a theory. But the field geologist is interested in discovering oil or something else.

Now, most of the time he’s not a Christian either, but he is not guided by these theoretical considerations and, I’m told by someone who has had extensive contact with the largest geological society in the United States, of practical geologists, that they have nothing but contempt for the theories of the academy, because they are nonsense, for the most part. They are interested in practical, workable geology. But we give credit to the theoreticians in the professorial chair, for the practical results of a very different kind of geological operation. And thus it is in almost every area. And as a result, by unifying the two in our imagination, we have failed to realize the broad gap between the two. Now as far as the Christians are concerned, there are very, very few in the sciences who are consistently Christian. Most of them are Christian only in that they go to church and they believe the Bible. They’ve made no attempt to apply their faith. Just as we have a great many doctors, who are Christian, but very little Christian medicine. Very little attempt to apply biblical faith to medical theory. There’s an excellent book on the coming crisis in medicine written by a professor of medicine who feels that our medical theory, being so badly weakened in recent years by the influx of Hellenic thinking again, is reaching a crisis. Dr. {?} ‘In Mind and Body’. Very excellent work. Unfortunately now out of print, it came out a very limited edition and disappeared very quickly. But we do need this. And this is one reason why there is need for an academic institution that is geared to a development of the Christian presuppositions in every area of knowledge.

Any other questions?

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, I think it is. That would take a couple of days, really. It’s a good question, and I can understand your interest in it, but I think it would be opening up a subject that’s broader than we can go into right now.

I was very interested in the December 23 1966, ‘Christianity Today’, which ostensibly is an evangelical Christian magazine, but very often is our worst enemy. It professes to be a good conservative evangelical periodical but its basic position is one of radical compromise. I think it reached a point of particular absurdity in this special news report. ‘NCC on the Beach: an Opening to the Right’. Now, this rather lengthy news story which I’m not going to bother to quote because it goes on and on, has one point in essence. As you know, the national counsel met in Miami in December, and at that time they, according to their study guide, proposed a rather revolutionary program for adoption by the churches. There was no hostility to this program. The essence of it is simply this. The Church must accept the situation ethics, which implies, of course, the death of God philosophy, it must also move in terms of the times, which means not only acceptance of the new morality but also the recognition that just as the tribe was a good thing in its day, but it’s now passé, so the family is outmoded and so on. And of course, the NCC, the National Counsel of Churches, is very much a part of our Fabian establishment. And more and more in recent years, not only prominent members of this board but its executive officers have been chosen from the ranks of the establishment, and the new president of the NCC is {?}, so that we can hardly call this a turn to the right. There was nothing said that indicated a turn on the right. But what gives Christianity today this feeling that now they are going to become a great evangelic conservative force, or at least they’re giving us very definite powerful indications of it, {?} Billy Graham’s book {?}. It gave them a standing ovation and why not? Billy Graham has been in favor of everything they have done and has financed {?}.

Has contributed as much as 67,000 dollars from a single one of his campaigns. Billy Graham is a part of the establishment. But, we are told, this is a turn to the right. I don’t very often like to criticize individuals, I prefer to deal with movements, but Billy Graham is getting to be something of a movement, so he ought to be criticized, because a great many people are not only assuming that he is a Christian leader but they are confusing him with God. I spoke at one place in northern California and one question came up about Billy Graham, the chairman interrupted to say before I answered, that didn’t stop me from my answer, that anyone who criticized Billy Graham was of the devil. Now this is the kind of attitude that prevails, so that when we are told that this is a turn to the right, we can {?} the faith of Christianity today in Carl Henry the editor and others {?}.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] I’ve never heard of it and I think it’s a {?}. But I doubt that he would ever be interested because why should he risk anything, he’s got everything in his favor now. He is one of the most favored {?} visitors in any administration. He is all things to all men and highly pleasing to all men.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No, he’s what he always was. He’s simply been tested. And shown for what he is. And this is nothing surprising, after all the New Testament records that one of the company of missionary apostles was Demas, and Demas was with Paul through the years to the last, when at the time of testing it was not only Paul or Silas or Barnabas who was tested but Demas. And when it came to a showdown for Demas, he ceased to be a Christian. Every faith will be tested.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Demas was never a Christian. What the end product is with regard to Billy Graham we don’t yet know, but certainly he is not taking a Christian course. So we are entitled to some doubts.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, because of their Arminianism they are basically humanistic. The basic orientation is man and the salvation of man, not the glory of God. So that this gives them a predisposition, and either they’re going to have to change their theology as they grow, if they grow, or else they’re going to have to follow their theology to its ultimate implication, which is humanism. Because Arminianism is basically Aristotelianism, which is humanism. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, this is not new, this has been done for a long, long time, Jesus as a revolutionary. Well, of course, it’s so absurd, the thesis is that, and it has been said, if Jesus were here today He would lead a social revolution and so on and so forth. And the basic premise of course, of revolution, is that our ills are environmental. So that if you change the environment you will change the condition of man. This then is the answer. Revolution. Destroy the existing environment and create a new one, and man will be different. Well, the answer to that of course is that the {biblical radically anti-environment?} its thesis is that man is spiritually responsible. That the course he takes is a moral choice. That he has, in the Fall of Adam, chosen a course of evil and the only course for him now, {?}, is regeneration.

And to have regeneration he must acknowledge that indeed he is a sinner. That that which comes out of him is basically evil, essentially evil. That only through the grace of God can he be changed, redirected. Now, the two points of view are irreconcilable. To make Jesus a revolutionist you have to deny the biblical Jesus and create a mythical Jesus.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Right. Our presidents have, of course, been basically revolutionaries, even though, by intent they have believe themselves to be otherwise. But in their basic environmentalism, they have been revolutionary. Now, Johnson has plainly stated that our goal is to abolish poverty and ignorance and hunger and disease from the face of the earth. And then we will have, he has said very plainly, world peace and world brotherhood. Now this is as simple an environmentalism as you can have, and as clear cut a one. Well if that’s what man’s problem is, then he might as well be a Marxist. The Marxist says we’ll get you there faster. We’re going to smash all of these things overnight. So why be gradual about it? If these things are evil and it’s smashing the old environment and creating the new one, let’s do it by revolutionary means. So once you accept the premises of environmentalism, you’re {?}, you’re not a revolutionist. And so we don’t stand up very well as against the Soviet Union. We have the same premises, but they’re more consistent to their environmental premises than we are. So we flounder around because we’re trying to be good boys, you know, in terms of a vague Christian hangover. We don’t want to be these bad boys, but basically we believe everything they do. So naturally we are committed to co-existence. We are working for it, for {?}, for everything.

So that we’re floundering because of this divided allegiance. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Well, the purpose is to pave the way for negotiations. As far as I’m concerned, we might as well have that as anything else however, for this simple reason, we’re not in there for any honest purpose. We are not there to win. We are there, basically, to prevent victory. We are there to set the stage for negotiations on our terms. We’re sacrificing lives everyday for a dishonest purpose. You’re not going to get out of that in any honorable way, so as far as I’m concerned it’s going to be one dishonorable means or another. And I don’t see even remotely the possibility of anything else. Unless there is a totally unforeseen development in the next year or two, and I don’t see it. So it might as well one as the other. It isn’t going to be good anyway. We have no business in there to begin with, and we are going to sacrifice lives if we believe that delaying any program that ..{?}.. Or Johnson or anyone else has is going to give us any kind of victory in the situation. It’s a sick situation from start to finish.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] If we declared war it would not be really a war on the Viet Cong, it would be a war on you. Because its purpose would be primarily economic, we are at war, as far as the fact is concerned. What would the declaration of war do, except to give every kind of excuse for the imposition of controls on the economy. So this would be, basically a war against you, a declaration of war. So there’s nothing to be gained by it.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Washington’s advice still stands. I might say, though Maxwell mentioned what it’s doing, the world today is doing to his business, patents, I’d like to urge to read, in the January issue of ‘Analog’, it’s a science fiction/fact magazine and the editor John Campbell is the best editorial writer in the United States, I think. And he has an excellent editorial about eleven pages in the current January issue in {?} ‘Secret Science’. And it’s on what the government is doing to pass it. Its destructive effect on science and how it’s creating a tremendous amount of secrecy because your patents are less and less protected by the government, more and more destroyed by the federal government.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] I don’t know, but I do know that the article calls attention to the fact that Italy can produce {?} without any protection to the patent holder, which means they can be sold more cheaply in this country than the producing companies, because the producing companies have to pay for the high cost of research when they sell you the drugs.

Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.