Expositional Lectures

Down Condemned Row

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 7-12

Genre: Speech

Track: 077

Dictation Name: RR120A1

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] St. Mark 11:1-26. Down condemned row. St. Mark 11:1-26. Down condemned row.

Mar 11:1-26

(1) And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two of his disciples,

(2) And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him.

(3) And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither.

(4) And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him.

(5) And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the colt?

(6) And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go.

(7) And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him.

(8) And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down branches off the trees, and strawed them in the way.

(9) And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord:

(10) Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.

(11) And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.

(12) And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry:

(13) And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.

(14) And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

(15) And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;

(16) And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.

(17) And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.

(18) And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine.

(19) And when even was come, he went out of the city.

(20) And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.

(21) And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.

(22) And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.

(23) For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

(24) Therefore I say unto you, What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

(25) And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

(26) But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.

In order to understand the significance of Palm Sunday, it is imperative that we analyze it first of all from the perspective of our Lord’s disciples as well as the enemy. Jesus has set His face steadfastly for Jerusalem, He’s determined to go there, looking forward to it as His moment of triumph, as the beginning of His glory. But the disciples followed Him reluctantly. They felt that it was a march down condemned row. That it was a march to death. And therefore they did their most to dissuade Him. And finally Thomas said let us go and die with Him also. This was their expectation. It was certain death, it was the defeat of everything they hoped for, well, at least we can die with Him. The Pharisees looked forward to His coming, their attitude was let Him come, it will be the last mile for Him, it will be down condemned row. Because we’ve already passed sentence, we’ve already decreed it is better for this one man to die than for the nation to perish. And so when he comes it will be the end. But our Lord entered not as the victim, but as the victor. And His attitude was that as He marched down the road to Jerusalem, it was not He who was condemned, but all those around Him. He entered as the Messianic King. And so on the outskirts He prepared Himself as the King. A year ago we saw the significance of His use of the animal. This was in deliberate fulfillment of the prophecy of Zachariah. It was His assertion that He was King and therefore by eminent domain, could take anything and everything that He chose, the Lord hath need of him.

That was all. He was the Lord, the King, the God King and therefore He had the right to take anything and all things, for He was the Maker of all things. And so He marched in. Hailed as the King. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in {?} the eagle is the American symbol, and the flag is the American symbol, so the fig tree was a symbol of Israel. So that when He came to the fig tree and it was not a time, we are told, of harvest. It was in the spring, the leaves had just barely come out. But He approached it and demanded figs of it and cursed it. No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever. And the next day the disciples called to His attention, in amazement, the tree was dead. By this act our Lord sentenced Israel to death. Judgment was soon to descend upon them. Jerusalem was to be destroyed and as He told His disciples, within a few days, …{?}….Not one stone shall be left standing upon another.

He was the King, if you will receive then His blessing and His prosperity would be upon the people who receive Him. If He were not received, if He were rejected, then His judgment was upon all those who rejected Him. No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever. Israel was blind. And though indeed Israel as a nation has been reconstituted, no man can eat fruit of Israel, no man can find spiritual nourishment from Israel forever.

{?} saying unto them, is it not written, My House shall be called of all nations a House of Prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. My House you have made a den of thieves. Here Jesus Christ openly identified Himself as God. And as God He had come into to cleanse the temple. His House had been perverted and therefore everything {?}. He would not suffer that any man should carry any vessels through the temple. It is no longer a fit place for worship. At His death the veil of the temple was rent in twain and the Holy of Holies desecrated. Its work was finished. In the morning, when the disciples saw the fig tree was dried from the roots, Peter said, behold the fig tree which Thou cursed is withered away. And Jesus answering saith unto them, have faith in God for verily I say unto you, that whosever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that those things that he saith shall come to pass, he shall whatsoever he saith. This mountain, Mt. Sinai in Israel, {?}. As the Church faces the enemy, and the Church that becomes an enemy and the nation that becomes an enemy, let them say, let it be uprooted and cast into the sea, given over to distrusting. And it shall be done of God.

Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire or when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them. But how, when ye stand praying forgive if ye have ought against any, that your Father also which is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses, but if ye do not forgive neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. Notice the startling juxtaposition here. On the one hand destruction upon His enemies, Israel cursed, blasted from the roots up, let no man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever. Let this mount be cast into the sea and if you pray so your prayer shall be answered. Yet, when you pray, if ye have ought against any, pray for forgiveness of your enemy, that your Father in Heaven may forgive you. Notice the contrast. If we are to be blessed and to be delivered and our enemies given over to destruction, at our prayer, we must come to God in terms of His total law. His enemies must be our enemies, and if we pray for the destruction of His enemies, they will be cast into the sea, they will be destroyed, they will be blasted from the roots up, but we are not to come in terms of our petty law, in terms of our personal enmity, we are to forgive one another. But we are to pray for the judgment of God upon the enemies of God. This is the meaning of Palm Sunday. Our Lord entered Jerusalem as King. And therefore as the God King, because they refused Him and because they had turned His Church into a den of thieves, He pronounced judgment upon them. And so He went to the cross, not as a victim, but as victor.

To destroy the power of sin and death and to pronounce judgment upon His enemies. Great as His deliverance was of His people from sin and death, so great was His condemnation of those who sin against Him. Because if sin is so serious in the sight of God that it requires the death of the only begotten Son of God, how great is His judgment upon those who reject the Son of God? Palm Sunday therefore was the triumphal entry of our Lord in judgment upon Jerusalem. Not one stone left standing upon another. It was a triumphal march, not because of the crowd but because of Him. Because He entered as Lord and judge. And what about the day? It was Palm Sunday but it is also a day of blasphemy. Because it has been proclaimed a time of mourning for very wicked men, and the flags they’re flying at half-mast so that we are dishonoring our nation as well as our God. And so this Palm Sunday has been made an open invitation to judgment from Almighty God. It has become a day that has marked how far gone we are as a people. Troops of this country stand and watch looters gut and burn stores and walk off carrying their loot. What are they protecting apart from the White House? Evil is openly tolerated and we are called upon on the local, state and national level to mourn the death of a man who claimed to be a minister of God, and whose every act was blasphemy. Is not this day made into the culmination of insult and blasphemy?

And can it pass without judgment? Because God is God there shall be judgment. And because God is God, the curse will be laid upon the world today, the entire world which is caught up in this blasphemy, which characterizes not only Washington but London and Moscow, {?} Rome and Peking. And we have better recognize the certainty of this judgment. They’ve asked for it, they’ve invited it, they have set their seal upon it. And when the world openly asks for judgment, by insult upon insult and blasphemy upon blasphemy, it will get it. And it behooves us as the people of God to do exactly that which our Lord commanded His disciples. To pray that the judgment comes, that these great mountains, these great nations be cast into the sea, that they be destroyed. And that we go into the presence of God having set aside all our petty personal enmities, but mindful of the enemies of God. That we pray that there be judgment, that we be delivered, and that there be a new birth of freedom{?} in terms of godly righteousness. That this nation again become a Christian republic. On this day we too should be in prayer, but for very different reasons. Let us pray.

Our and our God, we thank Thee that Jesus Christ entered into Jerusalem in triumph. That He pronounced sentence upon Jerusalem, that He pronounced judgment upon the Church, and all its loyal priesthood and clergy that went down into destruction and Hell at His word. And we thank Thee our God that Thou doest rule today, and that it will not be the plans of the evil ones that will triumph, that will not be their counsel of evil that prevails, but Thy Word and Thy judgments.

And so our Father, we pray that these mountains of evil in Peking, Moscow, Rome, Paris, London, Washington, all around the world, be smashed by the Rod of our Lord. Broken into pieces like a potters vessel. In Thy righteousness set forth a godly people delivered unto the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. We thank Thee our God for the triumphal entry of our Lord. And we thank Thee that Thou art reigning in triumph, and Thou show forth Thy triumph before our eyes in the days ahead. Our God we praise Thee. In Jesus name, Amen.

*The word Palm Sunday comes from the fact that the children, as they were going into Jerusalem and saw our Lord riding, accompanied by His disciples, used palm branches, a symbol of victory and life{?}, to {?} His coming. So that by displaying and waving, throwing forth the palm branches, they were signifying that Christ was coming as the King of victory and life. It was symbolic therefore of His kingdom{?}. Now{?}, the crowd that hailed Christ into Jerusalem, the crowd later {?}, was basically the same crowd. The reason for the difference is this, they wanted the fulfillment of the Jews hope of a kingdom in which the Jews, or the Israelites, {?}, reign over all nations. It was to be of this world, a materialistic kingdom. This was their humanistic hope. The perversion of the biblical faith.

And so as our Lord {?} Jerusalem, {?} he made it clear, and particularly in His last great teaching on Wednesday of Holy Week, the children shall be taken from you and given to another people. And they cried out in {?}. And so they changed against Him, with that He ended His {?}. So, their expectation was, now that He has openly declared Himself a King by marching into Jerusalem in fulfillment of Zachariah’s prophecy, maybe He’s going to be the kind of king we want. He’ll defeat the Romans, He will put the whole world under our rule. This was all they were interested in. So they were ready to turn against Him. Now, this is a common story today, that supposedly the crowd was changed by the Pharisees to shout against Jesus and to mock Him at the cross. The reason for this myth, this modern myth, is the concerted effort on the part both of Jewish scholars and so called Christian scholars to say that there was no blame to be attached to the Jews. In other words, they were basically good people and it was a klick{?} at the top whose paid some agitators who were responsible for the whole thing. If that’s true then our Lord was completely wrong in pronouncing a judgment on the nation, because He was judging the whole nation for the guilt of a handful. And this is altogether false. they were all involved in it. And they all paid for it. And the fact that this happened at the time of the Passover is significant. Because Jerusalem was a sizable city, estimates vary from the scholars at very conservative, they put it down as a quarter of a million, others {?} a million. But at the time of the Passover they had a million to a million and a half pilgrims come from all over the world. Israelites who lived elsewhere. So, it is a time of tremendous {?}. And it was at this time in particular that the whole nation was involved and the whole nation was found guilty and wanting in the sight of God.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] What happened then was, it was the end of Israel as the chosen people of God, as the kingdom of God. Now the Church took its place. We are now the true Israel of God. And Paul writes to the churches, Gentile believers and calls them the Israel of God. And he says, ye are Abraham’s sons by faith. You see. Now, this means that Israel, that Judaism, is finished, it has no relationship, as a people, as a nation, to God. Only as individuals, as they become Christians, will they {?} the judgment of God. They can become believers, they can be saved, and many are, and today you are finding a great many converts, more than we’ve had for generations, among the Jews. But if Israel could become Christian tomorrow, its place in the sight of God will be no different from that of, say, the United States, if it again becomes Christian tomorrow. In other words, they no longer are the source of nourishment, it was Israel as a nation that was the people of God, it was cut off, now it is only {?}. They have no place any longer in the plan of God, except as individual, except that they come in Christ, then they have a place that is no different from any other.

They are the chosen people only as they believe. As in individuals. They will have a national blessing as any other nation that becomes Christian. But it is only in Christ that any people ever has any blessing, even in the Old Testament. Whenever they departed from the faith, they were punished by God. And they were subjected to invasions or to captivity. When then God did not give them anything special in of apostasy, how can we now bless them in unbelief?

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Any kind of murder is a crime and a sin. And the murder of Martin Luther King was a murder. It was vicious, it was ugly, it was senseless. A dozen men can replace him, that’s {?}. The hearts of men have to be changed, you cannot reform a situation by killing a man. When Kennedy was killed what happened? We only got Johnson. When {?} shot down, what are his successors going to be like, only worse. This is no answer and we must always bewail senseless, vicious violations of God’s law. We must regret it always. Just as we must regret any such thing as the murder of a mafia member by another member of the mafia. And we had many of those in the last year. Now, we deal with those things through the law. We don’t proclaim a day of national mourning and treat the dead as though they were heroes. It is just the day of his death that the papers declared that Martin Luther King had openly express his defiance of the Federal Court which forbade another march and said he was going back there, he was going to conduct another march, {?}.

His whole life was dedicated to antichristian, anti-American activity. The flag of stars{?} at half-mast is a shocking thing. Why not fly the flags at half-mast for a mafia member when {?}. Why not have a day of mourning when a member of the mafia is killed? If you are going mourn, why not mourn the victims of the violence which King created? And with other such {?} created? This is simply to ask the judgment of God, because we have made him into a great leader, in fact he’s been proclaimed a living {?}. Now, because this is really to treat justice with contempt, to mourn such a thing {?}. {?} He didn’t deserve any extension{?} of anything. It only calls attention to the fact that we’ve become a godless people, a sentimental people, that’s the kindest thing you can say, it only calls attention to the fact that we’ve dignified evil, by asking for {?}. And short we should pray, let there be a more resolute prosecution of all lawbreakers, let there be a more resolute prosecution of all those hoodlums who are marching and who are demonstrating and who are involved in open revolutionary activity, let there be a beating down of all those who rob and loot. But we not only proclaim that a day of mourning but we openly show on television the fact that the National Guard is standing there and letting the rioters walk off {?}. What are they there for? To make sure that nobody protects their property? Particularly that this should be on Palm Sunday compound the blasphemy, because {?} a living {?} as though his body were the body of our Lord, this is so appalling it’s unthinkable. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] The guilt is being placed on us. What about the guilt of Martin Luther King {?}…, it was a presidential order the flying of the flags at half-mast and therefore it was valid for all public places. At least one individual corporation in this state is not flying the flag half-mast. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Exactly. In this situation we’ve had anything but the truth, and everything but the truth. No attempt to show exactly what the man was. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. {?} I believe you had your hand up.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] What was that?

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The black man’s Moses. Right. Our time is almost up, but I’d like to read this little item from the American Federation of {?}, February newsletter, 1958. Malcolm X{?}, in Memoriam. Interestingly, {?} misspelled memoriam. ‘On this the third anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X it is important for us as keepers{?} in this community to understand certain things about him. We must know and understand who Malcolm X was. Malcolm X was a teacher. He was one of the greatest teachers this country has ever produced. He had the ability to reach masses of black people on a level they understood. He received the same type of education that the overwhelming majority of black people receive in this country, an education of survival. {?} were no strangers to him. He taught black America to be proud of their African ancestry and to identify with the oppressed masses of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He taught Afro-Americans who their real enemy is, an exploitive racist system. His very life was a lesson. The development from a brainwashed hoodlum to a reactionary black nationalist, to a revolutionary black nationalist, is unparalleled in American history. To study and understand Malcolm is to understand the Afro-American rebellion. To love Malcolm is to love oppressed, {?} people all over the world.’ Now when this is the kind of thing that educators stand for, you realize how far gone we are. Another example of how far gone we are came to me vividly and dramatically last night, when someone telephoned me, who has an extensive file on various {?}, and said that, that this person had just received the longest call from the South and this person of some prominence had said, everyone is up in arms here in the South over what’s going on in Washington D.C.

And I’m going to fly out to get some of your documentation on King, so that we can do something about it.’ Did anything more aptly express the impotence of this generation, is there any man in their right mind who is in doubt as to what King is, or was? Or where he is now? And to ask for more documentation. I suppose these people when these revolutionaries come into their homes to murder them, to rape them, and to burn down their houses, are going to take notes so they can document it. This the end conclusion of the enlightenment doctrine of salvation by knowledge. You document. So let’s save the world and the country by facts, and so these well to do and powerful conservatives in the South are going to document some more on Martin Luther King. They’re going to die as with their documentation{?}. No man is saved by documentation, no man is saved by knowledge, they’re only saved God through Jesus Christ. And until people wake up to this fact, this fundamental {?}.

[everything from here on is a repeat from * right before to ]